The two monarchs now recur to the generous scheme of a European peace, for which the Czar and William Pitt had vainly struggled two years before. The present war is to be fought out to the end, not so as to humble France and interfere in her internal concerns, but in order to assure to Europe the blessings of a solid peace based on the claims of justice and of national independence. France must be satisfied with reasonable boundaries, and Prussia be restored to the limits of 1805 or their equivalent. Germany is to be freed from the dictation of the French, and become a "constitutional federation," with a boundary "parallel to the Rhine." Austria is to be asked to join the present league, regaining Tyrol and the Mincio frontier. England and Sweden must be rallied to the common cause. The allies will also take steps to cause Denmark to join the league. For the rest, the integrity of Turkey is to be maintained, and the future of Italy decided in concert with Austria and England, the Kings of Sardinia and Naples being restored. Even should Austria, England, and Sweden not join them, yet Russia and Prussia will continue the struggle and not lay down their arms save by mutual consent.

Had all the Powers threatened by Napoleon at once come forward and acted with vigour, these ends might, even now, have been attained. But Austria merely renewed her offers of mediation, a well-meaning but hopeless proposal. England, a prey to official incapacity, joined the league, promised help in men and money, and did little or nothing except send fruitless expeditions to Alexandria and the Dardanelles with the aim of forcing the Turks to a peace with Russia. In Sicily we held our own against Joseph's generals, but had no men to spare for a diversion against Marmont's forces in Dalmatia, which Alexander urged. Still less could we send from our own shores any force for the effective aid of Prussia. Though we had made peace with that Power, and ordinary prudence might have dictated the taking of steps to save the coast fortresses, Danzig and Colberg, from the French besiegers, yet our efforts were limited to the despatch of a few cruisers to the former stronghold. Even more urgent was the need of rescuing Stralsund, the chief fortress of Swedish Pomerania. Such an expedition clearly offered great possibilities with the minimum of risk. From the Isle of Ruegen Mortier's corps could be attacked; and when Stralsund was freed, a dash on Stettin, then weakly held by the French, promised an easy success that would raise the whole of North Germany in Napoleon's rear.[126]

But arguments were thrown away upon the Grenville Ministry, which clung to its old plan of doing nothing and of doing it expensively. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Howick, replied that the allies must not expect any considerable aid from our land forces. Considering that the Income or War Tax of 2s. in the L had yielded close on L20,000,000, and that the army numbered 192,000 men (exclusive of those in India), this declaration did not shed lustre on the Ministry of all the Talents. That bankrupt Cabinet, however, was dismissed by George III. in March, 1807, because it declined to waive the question of Catholic Emancipation, and its place was filled by the Duke of Portland, with Canning as Foreign Minister. Soon it was seen that Pitt's cloak had fallen on worthy shoulders, and a new vigour began to inspirit our foreign policy. Yet the bad results of frittering away our forces on distant expeditions could not be wiped out at once. In fact, our military expert, Lord Cathcart, reported that only some 12,000 men could at present be spared for service in the Baltic; and, as it would be beneath our dignity to send so small a force, it would be better to keep it at home ready to menace any part of the French coast. As to Stralsund, he thought that plan was more feasible, but that, even there, the allies would not make head against Mortier's corps.[127]

This is a specimen of the reasoning that was fast rendering Britain contemptible alike to friends and foes. It is not surprising that such timorous selfishness should have at last moved the Czar to say to our envoy: "Act where you please, provided that you act at all."[128] In the end the new Ministry did venture to act: it engaged to send 20,000 men to the succour of Stralsund; but, with the fatality that then dogged our steps, that decision was formed on June the 17th, three days after the Coalition was shattered by the mighty blow of Friedland.

In striking contrast to the faint-hearted measures of the allies was the timely energy of Napoleon in bringing up reinforcements. These were drawn partly from Mortier's corps in Pomerania, now engaged in watching the Swedes, who made a truce; partly from the Bavarians and Saxons; but mostly from French troops already in Central Germany, their places being taken by Italians, Spaniards, Swiss, and Dutch. In France a new levy of conscripts was ordered—the third since the outbreak of war with Prussia. The Turks were encouraged to press on the war against Russia and England; and a mission was sent to the Shah of Persia to strengthen his arms against the Czar. To this last we will now advert.

For some time past Napoleon had been coquetting with Persia, and an embassy from the Shah now came to the castle of Finkenstein, a beautiful seat not far from the Vistula, where the Emperor spent the months of spring. A treaty was drawn up, and General Gardane was deputed to draw closer the bonds of friendship with the Court of Teheran. The instructions secretly issued to this officer are of great interest. He is ordered to proceed to Persia by way of Constantinople, to concert an alliance between Sultan and Shah, to redouble Persia's efforts against her "natural enemy," Russia, and to examine the means of invading India. For this purpose a number of officers are sent with him to examine the routes from Egypt or Syria to Delhi, as also to report on the harbours in Persia with a view to a maritime expedition, either by way of Suez or the Cape of Good Hope. The Shah is to be induced to form a corps of 12,000 men, drilled on the European model and armed with weapons sold by France. This force will attack the Russians in Georgia and serve later in an expedition to India. With a view to the sending of 20,000 French troops to India, Gardane is to communicate with the Mahratta princes and prepare for this enterprise by every possible means.

We may note here that Gardane proceeded to Persia and was urging on the Shah to more active measures against Russia when the news of the Treaty of Tilsit diverted his efforts towards the east. At the close of the year, he reported to Napoleon that, for the march overland from Syria to the Ganges, Cyprus was an indispensable base of supplies: he recommended the route Bir, Mardin, Teheran, Herat, Cabul, and Peshawar: forty to fifty thousand French troops would be needed, and thirty or forty thousand Persians should also be taken up. Nothing came of these plans; but it is clear that, even when Napoleon was face to face with formidable foes on the Vistula, his thoughts still turned longingly to the banks of the Ganges.[129]

The result of Napoleon's activity and the supineness of his foes were soon apparent. Danzig surrendered to the French on May the 24th, and Neisse in Silesia a little later; and it was not till the besiegers of these fortresses came up to swell the French host that Bennigsen opened the campaign. He was soon to rue the delay. His efforts to drive the foe from the River Passarge were promptly foiled, and he retired in haste to his intrenched camp at Heilsberg. There, on June the 10th, he turned fiercely at bay and dealt heavy losses to the French vanguard. In vain did Soult's corps struggle up towards the intrenchments; his men were mown down by grapeshot and musketry: in vain did Napoleon, who hurried up in the afternoon, launch the fusiliers of the Guard and a division of Lannes' corps. The Muscovites held firm, and the day closed ominously for the French. It was Eylau over again on a small scale.

But Bennigsen was one of those commanders who, after fighting with great spirit, suffer a relapse. Despite the entreaties of his generals, he had retreated after Eylau; and now, after a day of inaction, his columns filed off towards Koenigsberg under cover of the darkness. In excuse for this action it has been urged that he had but two days' supply of bread in the camp, and that a forward move of Davoust's corps round his right flank threatened to cut him off from his base of supplies, Koenigsberg.[130]

The first excuse only exposes him to greater censure. The Russian habit at that time usually was to live almost from hand to mouth; but that a carefully-prepared position like that of Heilsberg should be left without adequate supplies is unpardonable. On the two next days the rival hosts marched northward, the one to seize, the other to save, Koenigsberg. They were separated by the winding vale of the Alle. But the course of this river favoured Napoleon as much as it hindered Bennigsen. The Alle below Heilsberg makes a deep bend towards the north-east, then northwards again towards Friedland, where it comes within forty miles of Koenigsberg, but in its lower course flows north-east until it joins the Pregel.

An army marching from Heilsberg to the old Prussian capital by the right bank would therefore easily be outstripped by one that could follow the chord of the arc instead of the irregular arc itself. Napoleon was in this fortunate position, while the Russians plodded amid heavy rains over the semicircular route further to the east. Their mistake in abandoning Heilsberg was now obvious. The Emperor halted at Eylau on the 13th for news of the Prussians in front and of Bennigsen on his right flank. Against the former he hurled his chief masses under the lead of Murat in the hope of seizing Koenigsberg at one blow.[131] But, foreseeing that the Russians would probably pass over the Alle at Friedland he despatched Lannes to Domnau to see whether they had already crossed in force. Clearly, then, Napoleon did not foresee what the morrow had in store for him: his aim was to drive a solid wedge between Bennigsen and the defenders of Koenigsberg, to storm that city first, and then to turn on Bennigsen. The claim of some of Napoleon's admirers that he laid a trap for the Russians at Friedland, as he had done at Austerlitz, is therefore refuted by the Emperor's own orders.

None the less did Bennigsen walk into a trap, and one of his own choosing. Anxious to thrust himself between Napoleon and the old Prussian capital, he crossed the river at Friedland and sought to strengthen his position on the left bank by driving Lannes' vanguard back on Domnau, by throwing three bridges over the stream, and by crowning the hills on the right bank with a formidable artillery. But he had to deal with a tough and daring opponent. Throughout the winter Lannes had been a prey to ill-health and resentment at his chief's real or fancied injustice: but the heats of summer re-awakened his thirst for glory and restored him to his wonted vigour. Calling up the Saxon horse, Grouchy's dragoons, and Oudinot's grenadiers, he held his ground through the brief hours of darkness. Before dawn he posted his 10,000 troops among the woods and on the plateau of Posthenen that lies to the west of Friedland and strove to stop the march of 40,000 Russians. After four hours of fighting, his men were about to be thrust back, when the divisions of Verdier and Dupas—the latter from Mortier's corps—shared the burden of the fight until the sun was at its zenith. When once more the fight was doubtful, the dense columns of Ney and Victor were to be seen, and by desperate efforts the French vanguard held its ground until this welcome aid arrived.

Napoleon, having received Lannes' urgent appeals for help, now rode up in hot haste, and in response to the cheers of his weary troops repeatedly exclaimed: "Today is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo." Their ardour was excited to the highest pitch, Oudinot saluting his chief with the words: "Quick, sire! my grenadiers can hold no longer: but give me reinforcements and I'll pitch the Russians into the river."[132] The Emperor cautiously gave them pause: the fresh troops marched to the front and formed the first line, those who had fought for nine hours now forming the supports. Ney held the post of honour in the woods on the right flank, nearly above Friedland; behind him was the corps of Bernadotte, which, since the disabling of that Marshal by a wound had been led by General Victor: there too were the dragoons of Latour-Maubourg, and the imposing masses of the Guard. In the centre, but bending in towards the rear, stood the remnant of Lannes' indomitable corps, now condemned for a time to comparative inactivity; and defensive tactics were also enjoined on Mortier and Grouchy on the left wing, until Ney and Victor should decide the fortunes of the second fight. The Russians, as if bent on favouring Napoleon's design, continued to deploy in front of Friedland, keeping up the while a desultory fight; and Bennigsen, anxious now about his communications with Koenigsberg, detached 6,000 men down the right bank of the river towards Wehlau. Only 46,000 men were thus left to defend Friedland against a force that now numbered 80,000: yet no works were thrown up to guard the bridges—and this after the arrival of Napoleon with strong reinforcements was known by the excitement along the enemy's front.



Nevertheless, as late as 3 p.m., Napoleon was in doubt whether he should not await the arrival of Murat. At his instructions, Berthier ordered that Marshal to leave Soult at Koenigsberg and hurry back with Davoust and the cavalry towards Friedland: "If I perceive at the beginning of this fight that the enemy is in too great force, I might be content with cannonading to-day and awaiting your arrival." But a little later the Emperor decides for instant attack. The omens are all favourable. If driven back the Russians will fight with their backs to a deep river. Besides, their position is cut in twain by a mill-stream which flows in a gulley, and near the town is dammed up so as to form a small lake. Below this lies Friedland in a deep bend of the river itself. Into this cul-de-sac he will drive the Russian left, and fling their broken lines into the lake and river.

At five o'clock a salvo of twenty guns opened the second and greater battle of Friedland. To rush on the Muscovite van and clear it from the wood of Sortlack was for Ney's leading division the work of a moment; but on reaching the open ground their ranks were ploughed by the shot of the Russian guns ranged on the hills beyond the river. Staggered by this fire, the division was wavering, when the Russian Guards and their choicest squadrons of horse charged home with deadly effect. But Ney's second division, led by the gallant Dupont, hurried up to restore the balance, while Latour-Maubourg's dragoons fell on the enemy's horsemen and drove them pell-mell towards Friedland.

The Russian artillery fared little better: Napoleon directed Senarmont with thirty-six guns to take it in flank and it was soon overpowered. Freed now from the Russian grapeshot and sabres, Ney held on his course like a torrent that masters a dam, reached the upper part of the lake, and threw the bewildered foe into its waters or into the town. Friedland was now a death-trap: huddled together, plied by shell, shot and bayonet, the Russians fought from street to street with the energy of despair, but little by little were driven back on the bridges. No help was to be found there; for Senarmont, bringing up his guns, swept the bridges with a terrific fire: when part of the Russian left and centre had fled across, they burst into flames, a signal that warned their comrades further north of their coming doom. On that side, too, a general advance of the French drove the enemy back towards the steep banks of the river. But on those open plains the devotion and prowess of the Muscovite cavalry bore ampler fruit: charging the foe while in the full swing of victory, these gallant riders gave time for the infantry to attempt the dangers of a deep ford: hundreds were drowned, but others, along with most of the guns, stole away in the darkness down the left bank of the river.

On the morrow Bennigsen's army was a mass of fugitives straggling towards the Pregel and fighting with one another for a chance to cross its long narrow bridge. Even on the other side they halted not, but wandered on towards the Niemen, no longer an army but an armed mob. On its banks they were joined by the defenders of Koenigsberg, who after a stout stand cut their way through Soult's lines and made for Tilsit. There, behind the broad stream of the Niemen, the fugitives found rest.

It will always be a mystery why Bennigsen held on to Friedland after French reinforcements arrived; and the feeling of wonder and exasperation finds expression in the report of our envoy, Lord Hutchinson, founded on the information of two British officers who were at the Russian headquarters:

"Many of the circumstances attending the Battle of Friedland are unexampled in the annals of war. We crossed the River Alle, not knowing whether we had to contend with a corps or the whole French army. From the commencement of the battle it was manifest that we had a great deal to lose and probably little to gain: ... General Bennigsen would, I believe, have retired early in the day from ground which he ought never to have occupied; but the corps in our front made so vigorous a resistance that, though occasionally we gained a little ground, yet we were never able to drive them from the woods or the village of Heinrichsdorf."[133]

This evidence shows the transcendent services of Lannes, Oudinot, and Grouchy in the early part of the day; and it is clear that, as at Jena, no great battle would have been fought at all but for the valour and tenacity with which Lannes clung to the foe until Napoleon came up.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XXVII

TILSIT

Even now matters were not hopeless for the allies. Crowds of stragglers rejoined the colours at Tilsit, and Tartar reinforcements were near at hand. The gallant Gneisenau was still holding out bravely at Kolberg against Brune's divisions; and two of the Silesian fortresses had not yet surrendered. Moreover, Austria seemed about to declare against Napoleon, and there were hopes that before long England would do something. But, above all, since the war was for Prussia solely an affair of honour,[134] it deeply concerned Alexander's good name not to desert an ally to whom he was now pledged by all the claims of chivalry until satisfactory terms could be gained.

But Alexander's nature had not as yet been strengthened by misfortune and religious convictions: it was a sunny background of flickering enthusiasms, flecked now and again by shadows of eastern cunning or darkened by warlike ambitions—a nature in which the sentimentalism of Rousseau and the passions of a Boyar alternately gained the mastery. No realism is more crude than that of the disillusionized idealist; and for months the young Czar had seen his dream of a free and happy Europe fade away amidst the smoke of Napoleon's guns and the mists of English muddling. At first he blenched not even at the news of Friedland. In an interview with our ambassador, Lord Gower, on June the 17th, he bitterly upbraided him with our inactivity in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and the non-fulfilment of our promise of a loan; as for himself, "he would never stoop to Bonaparte: he would rather retire to Kazan or even to Tobolsk." But five days later, acting under pressure from his despairing generals, some of whom reminded him of his father's fate, he arranged an armistice with the conqueror.[135] Five days only were allowed in which Prussia might decide to follow his example or proceed with the war alone. She accepted the inevitable on the following day.

The international situation was now strangely like that which followed immediately upon the battle of Austerlitz. Then it was Prussia, now it was Austria, that played the part of the cautious friend at the very time when the beaten allies were meditating surrender. For some time past the Court of Vienna had been offering its services for mediation: they were well received at London, with open disappointment by Prussia, and with ill-concealed annoyance by Napoleon. As at the time when Haugwitz came to him to dictate Prussia's terms, so now the Emperor kept the Austrian envoy waiting without an answer, until the blow of Friedland was dealt.[136] Even then Austria seemed about to enter the lists, when news arrived of the conclusion of the armistice at Tilsit. This enabled her to sheathe her sword with no loss of honour; but, as was the case with Prussia at the close of 1805, her conduct was seen to be timid and time-serving; and it merited the secret rebuke of Canning that she "was (as usual) just ten days too late in her determination, or the world might have been saved."[137]

Whether Austria had been beguiled by the recent diplomatic caresses of Napoleon may well be doubted; for they were obviously aimed at keeping her quiet until he had settled scores with Prussia and Russia. His advances only began on the eve of the last war, and the sharpness of the transition from threats to endearments could not be smoothed over even by Talleyrand's finesse.[138] When the slaughter at Eylau placed him in peril, he again bade Talleyrand soothe the Austrian envoy with assurances that, if his master was anxious to maintain the integrity of Turkey, France would maintain it; or if he desired to share in an eventual partition, France would also arrange that to his liking.[139] But as the prospects for the campaign improved, Napoleon's tone hardened. On March the 14th he states that he has enough men to keep Austria quiet and to "get rid of the Russians in a month." And now he looks on an alliance with the Hapsburgs merely as giving a short time of quiet, whereas an alliance with Russia would be "very advantageous."[140] He had also felt the value of alliance with Prussia, as his repeated overtures during the campaign testify; but when Frederick William persistently rejected all accommodation with the man who had so deeply outraged his kingly honour, he turned finally to Alexander.

The Czar was made of more pliable stuff. Moreover, he now cherished one sentiment that brought him into sympathy with Napoleon, namely, hatred of England. He certainly had grave cause for complaint. We had done nothing to help the allies in the Polish campaign except to send a few cruisers and 60,000 muskets, which last did not reach the Swedish and Russian ports until the war was over. True, we had gone out of our way to attack Constantinople at his request; but that attack had failed; and our attitude towards his Turkish policy was one of veiled suspicion, varied with moral lectures.[141] As for the loan of five millions sterling which the Czar had asked us to guarantee, we had put him off, our envoy finally reminding him that it had been of the first importance to help Austria to move. Worst of all, our cruisers had seized some Russian merchantmen coming out of French ports, and despite protests from St. Petersburg the legality of that seizure was maintained. Thus, in a war which concerned our very existence we had not rendered him a single practical service, and yet strained the principles of maritime law at the expense of Russian commerce.[142]

Over against our policy of blundering delay there was that of Napoleon, prompt, keen, and ever victorious. The whole war had arisen out of the conflict of these two Powers; and Napoleon had never ceased to declare that it was essentially a struggle between England and the Continent. After Eylau Alexander was proof against these arguments; but now the triumphant energy of Napoleon and the stolid apathy of England brought about a quite bewildering change in Russian policy. Delicate advances having been made by the two Emperors, an interview was arranged to take place on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen (June 25th).

"I hate the English as much as you do, and I will second you in all your actions against them." Such are said to have been the words with which Alexander greeted Napoleon as they stepped on to the raft. Whereupon the conqueror replied: "In that case all can be arranged and peace is made."[143] As the two Emperors were unaccompanied at that first interview, it is difficult to see on what evidence this story rests. It is most unlikely that either Emperor would divulge the remarks of the other on that occasion; and the words attributed to Alexander seem highly impolitic. For what was his position at this time? He was striving to make the best of a bad case against an opponent whose genius he secretly feared. Besides, we know for certain that he was most anxious to postpone his rupture with England for some months.[144] All desire for an immediate break was on Napoleon's side.

We can therefore only guess at what transpired, from the vague descriptions of the two men themselves. They are characteristic enough: "I never had more prejudices against anyone than against him," said Alexander afterwards; "but, after three-quarters of an hour of conversation, they all disappeared like a dream"; and later he exclaimed: "Would that I had seen him sooner: the veil is torn aside and the time of error is past." As for Napoleon, he wrote to Josephine: "I have just seen the Emperor Alexander: I have been very pleased with him: he is a very handsome, good, and young Emperor: he has an intellect above what is commonly attributed to him."[145] The tone of these remarks strikes the keynote of all the conversations that followed. At the next day's conference, also held in the sumptuous pavilion erected on the raft, the King of Prussia was present; but towards him Napoleon's demeanour was cold and threatening. He upbraided him with the war, lectured him on the duty of a king to his people, and bade him dismiss Hardenberg. Frederick William listened for the most part in silence; his nature was too stiff and straightforward to practise any Byzantine arts; but when his trusty Minister was attacked, he protested that he should not know how to replace him. Napoleon had foreseen the plea and at once named three men who would give better advice. Among them was the staunch patriot Stein!

From the ensuing conferences the King was almost wholly excluded. They were held in a part of the town of Tilsit which was neutralized for that purpose, as also for the guards and diplomatists of the three sovereigns. There, too, lived the two Emperors in closest intercourse, while on most days the Prussian King rode over from a neighbouring village to figure as a sad, reproachful guest at the rides, parades, and dinners that cemented the new Franco-Russian alliance. Yet, amid all the melodious raptures of Alexander over Napoleon's newly discovered virtues, it is easy to detect the clinging ground-tone of Muscovite ambition. An event had occurred which excited the hopes of both Emperors. At the close of May, the Sultan Selim was violently deposed by the Janissaries who clamoured for more vigorous measures against the Russians. Never did news come more opportunely for Napoleon than this, which reached him at Tilsit on, or before, June the 24th. He is said to have exclaimed to the Czar with a flash of dramatic fatalism: "It is a decree of Providence which tells me that the Turkish Empire can no longer exist."[146]

Certain it is that the most potent spell exerted by the great conqueror over his rival was a guarded invitation to share in some future partition of the Turkish Empire. That scheme had fascinated Napoleon ever since the year 1797, when he gazed on the Adriatic. Though laid aside for a time in 1806, when he roused the Turks against Russia, it was never lost sight of; and now, on the basis of a common hatred of England and a common desire to secure the spoils of the Ottoman Power, the stately fabric of the Franco-Russian alliance was reared.

On his side, Alexander required some assurance that Poland should not be reconstituted in its integrity—a change that would tear from Russia the huge districts stretching almost up to Riga, Smolensk, and Kiev, which were still Polish in sympathy. Here Napoleon reassured him, at least in part. He would not re-create the great kingdom of Poland: he would merely carve out from Prussia the greater part of her Polish possessions.

These two important questions being settled, it only remained for the Czar to plead for the King of Prussia, to acknowledge Napoleon's domination as Emperor of the West, while he himself, as autocrat of the East, secured a better western boundary for Russia. At first he strove to gain for Frederick William the restoration of several of his lands west of the Elbe. This championship was not wholly disinterested; for it is now known that the Czar had set his heart on a great part of Prussian Poland.

In truth, he was a sufficiently good disciple of the French revolutionists to plead very cogently his claims to a "natural frontier." He disliked a "dry frontier": he must have a riverine boundary: in fact, he claimed the banks of the Lower Niemen, and, further south, the course of the rivers Wavre, Narew and Bug. To this claim he had perhaps been encouraged by some alluring words of Napoleon that thenceforth the Vistula must be the boundary of their empires. But his ally was now determined to keep Russia away from the old Polish capital; and in strangely prophetic words he pointed out that the Czar's claims would bring the Russian eagles within sight of Warsaw, which would be too clear a sign that that city was destined to pass under the Russian rule.[147] Divining also that Alexander's plea for the restoration by France of some of Prussia's western lands was linked with a plan which would give Russia some of her eastern districts,[148] Napoleon resolved to press hard on Prussia from the west. While handing over to the Czar only the small district around Bialystock, he remorselessly thrust Prussia to the east of the Elbe.

From this neither the arguments of the Czar nor the entreaties of Queen Louisa availed to move him. And yet, in the fond hope that her tears might win back Magdeburg, that noble bulwark of North German independence, the forlorn Queen came to Tilsit to crave this boon (July 6th). It was a terrible ordeal to do this from the man who had repeatedly insulted her in his official journals, figuring her, first as a mailed Amazon galloping at the head of her regiment, and finally breathing forth scandals on her spotless reputation.

Yet, for the sake of her husband and her people, she braced herself up to the effort of treating him as a gentleman and appealing to his generosity. If she was able to conceal her loathing, this was scarcely so with her devoted lady in waiting, the Countess von Voss, who has left us an acrid account of Napoleon's visit to the Queen at the miller's house at Tilsit.[149]

"He is excessively ugly, with a fat swollen sallow face, very corpulent, besides short and entirely without figure. His great eyes roll gloomily around; the expression of his features is severe; he looks like the incarnation of fate: only his mouth is well shaped, and his teeth are good. He was extremely polite, talked to the Queen a long time alone.... Again, after dinner, he had a long conversation with the Queen, who also seemed pretty well satisfied with the result."[150]

Queen Louisa's verdict about his appearance was more favourable; she admired his head "as that of a Caesar." With winsome boldness inspired by patriotism, she begged for Magdeburg. Taken aback by her beauty and frankness, Napoleon had recourse to compliments about her dress. "Are we to talk about fashion, at such a time?" was her reply. Again she pleaded, and again he fell back on vapidities. Nevertheless, her appeals to his generosity seemed to be thawing his statecraft, when the entrance of that unlucky man, her husband, gave the conversation a colder tone. The dinner, however, passed cheerfully enough; and, according to French accounts, Napoleon graced the conclusion of dessert by offering her a rose. Her woman's wit flew to the utterance: "May I consider it a token of friendship, and that you grant my request for Magdeburg?" But he was on his guard, parried her onset with a general remark as to the way in which such civilities should be taken, and turned the conversation. Then, as if he feared the result of a second interview, he hastened to end matters with the Prussian negotiators.[151]

He thus described the interview in a letter to Josephine:

"I have had to be on my guard against her efforts to oblige me to some concessions for her husband; but I have been gallant, and have held to my policy."

This was only too clear on the following day, when the Queen again dined with the sovereigns.

"Napoleon," says the Countess von Voss, "seemed malicious and spiteful, and the conversation was brief and constrained. After dinner the Queen again conversed apart with him. On taking leave she said to him that she went away feeling it deeply that he should have deceived her. My poor Queen: she is quite in despair."

When conducted to her carriage by Talleyrand and Duroc, she sank down overcome by emotion. Yet, amid her tears and humiliation, the old Prussian pride had flashed forth in one of her replies as the rainbow amidst the rain-storm. When Napoleon expressed his surprise that she should have dared to make war on him with means so utterly inadequate, she at once retorted: "Sire, I must confess to Your Majesty, the glory of Frederick the Great had misled us as to our real strength"—a retort which justly won the praise of that fastidious connoisseur, Talleyrand, for its reminder of Prussia's former greatness and the transitoriness of all human grandeur.[152]

On that same day (July 7th) the Treaty of Tilsit was signed. Its terms may be thus summarized. Out of regard for the Emperor of Russia, Napoleon consented to restore to the King of Prussia the province of Silesia, and the old Prussian lands between the Elbe and Niemen. But the Polish lands seized by Prussia in the second and third partitions were (with the exception of the Bialystock district, now gained by Russia) to form a new State called the Duchy of Warsaw. Of this duchy the King of Saxony was constituted ruler. Danzig, once a Polish city, was now declared a free city under the protection of the Kings of Prussia and Saxony, but the retention there of a French garrison until the peace made it practically a French fortress. Saxe-Coburg, Oldenburg, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin were restored to their dukes, but the two last were to be held by French troops until England made peace with France. With this aim in view, Napoleon accepted Alexander's mediation for the conclusion of a treaty of peace with England, provided that she accepted that mediation within one month of the ratification of the present treaty.

On his side, the Czar now recognized the recent changes in Naples, Holland, and Germany; among the last of these was the creation of the Kingdom of Westphalia for Jerome Bonaparte out of the Prussian lands west of the Elbe, the Duchy of Brunswick, and the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel. Holland gained East Frisia at the expense of Prussia. As regards Turkey, the Czar pledged himself to cease hostilities at once, to accept the mediation of Napoleon in the present dispute, and to withdraw Russian troops from the Danubian Provinces as soon as peace was concluded with the Sublime Porte. Finally, the two Emperors mutually guaranteed the integrity of their possessions and placed their ceremonial and diplomatic relations on a footing of complete equality.

Such were the published articles of the Treaty of Tilsit. Even if this had been all, the European system would have sustained the severest blow since the Thirty Years' War. The Prussian monarchy was suddenly bereft of half its population, and now figured on the map as a disjointed land, scarcely larger than the possessions of the King of Saxony, and less defensible than Jerome Bonaparte's Kingdom of Westphalia; while the Confederation of the Rhine, soon to be aggrandized by the accession of Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, seemed to doom the House of Hohenzollern to lasting insignificance.[153]

But the published treaty was by no means all. There were also secret articles, the chief of which were that the Cattaro district—to the west of Montenegro—and the Ionian Islands should go to France, and that the Czar would recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of Sicily when Ferdinand of Naples should have received "an indemnity such as the Balearic Isles, or Crete, or their equivalent." Also, if Hanover should eventually be annexed to the Kingdom of Westphalia, a Westphalian district with a population of from three to four hundred thousand souls would be retroceded to Prussia. Finally, the chiefs of the Houses of Orange-Nassau, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick were to receive pensions from Murat and Jerome Bonaparte, who dispossessed them.

Most important of all was the secret treaty of alliance with Russia, also signed on July 7th, whereby the two Emperors bound themselves to make common cause in any war that either of them might undertake against any European Power, employing, if need be, the whole of their respective forces. Again, if England did not accept the Czar's mediation, or if she did not, by the 1st of December, 1807, recognize the perfect equality of all flags at sea, and restore her conquests made from France and her allies since 1805, then Russia would make war on her. In that case, the present allies will "summon the three Courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Lisbon to close their ports against the English and declare war against England. If any one of the three Courts refuse, it shall be treated as an enemy by the high contracting parties, and if Sweden refuse, Denmark shall be compelled to declare war on her." Pressure would also be put on Austria to follow the same course. But if England made peace betimes, she might recover Hanover, on restoring her conquests in the French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies. Similarly, if Turkey refused the mediation of Napoleon, he would in that case help Russia to drive the Turks from Europe—"the city of Constantinople and the province of Roumelia alone excepted."[154]

The naming of the city of Constantinople, which is in Roumelia, betokens a superfluity of prudence. But it helps to confirm the statement of Napoleon's secretary, M. Meneval, that the future of that city led to a decided difference of opinion between the Emperors. After one of their discussions, Napoleon stayed poring over a map, and finally exclaimed, "Constantinople! Never! It is the empire of the world." Doubtless it was on this subject that Alexander cherished some secret annoyance. Certain it is that, despite all his professions of devotion to Napoleon, he went back to St. Petersburg ill at ease and possessed with a certain awe of the conqueror. For what had he gained? He received a small slice of Prussian Poland, and the prospect of aggrandizement on the side of Turkey and Sweden, Finland being pointed out as an easy prey. For these future gains he was to close his ports to England and see his commerce, his navy, and his seaboard suffer. It is not surprising that before leaving Tilsit he remarked to Frederick William that "the most onerous condition imposed by Napoleon was common to Russia and Prussia."[155]

This refers to the compulsion put upon them to join Napoleon's Continental System. In the treaty signed with Prussia on July 9th, Napoleon not only wrested away half her lands, but required the immediate closing of all her ports to British vessels. We may also note here that, by the extraordinary negligence of the Prussian negotiator, Marshal Kalckreuth, the subsequent convention as to the evacuation of Prussia by the French troops left open a loophole for its indefinite occupation. Each province or district was to be evacuated when the French requisitions had been satisfied.[156] The exaction of impossible sums would therefore enable the conquerors, quite legally, to keep their locust swarms in that miserable land. And that was the policy pursued for sixteen months.

Why this refinement of cruelty to his former ally? Why not have annexed Prussia outright? Probably there were two reasons against annexation: first, that his army could live on her in a way that would not be possible with his own subjects or allies; second, that the army of occupation would serve as a guarantee both for Russia's good faith and for the absolute exclusion of British goods from Prussia.[157] This had long been his aim. He now attained it, but only by war that bequeathed a legacy of war, and a peace that was no peace.

Napoleon's behaviour at Tilsit has generally been regarded, at least in England, as prompted by an insane lust of power; and the treaty has been judged as if its aim was the domination of the Continent. But another explanation, though less sweeping and attractive, seems more consonant with the facts of the case.

He hoped that, before so mighty a confederacy as was framed at Tilsit, England would bend the knee, give up not only her maritime claims but her colonial conquests, and humbly take rank with Powers that had lived their day. The conqueror who had thrice crumpled up the Hapsburg States, and shattered Prussia in a day, might well believe that the men of Downing Street, expert only in missing opportunities and exasperating their friends, would not dare to defy the forces of united Europe, but would bow before his prowess and grant peace to a weary world. In his letter of July 6th, 1807, to the Czar, he advised the postponement of the final summons to the British Government, because it would "give five months in which the first exasperation will die down in England, and she will have time to understand the immense consequences that would result from so imprudent a struggle." Neither Napoleon nor Alexander was deaf to generous aspirations. They both desired peace, so that their empires might expand and consolidate. Above all, France was weary of war; and by peace the average Frenchman meant, not respite from Continental strifes that yielded a surfeit of barren glories, but peace with England. The words of Lucchesini, the former Prussian ambassador in Paris, on this subject are worth quoting:

"The war with England was at bottom the only one in which the French public took much interest, since the evils it inflicted on France were felt every moment: nothing was spoken of so decidedly among all classes of the people as the wish to have done with that war; and when one spoke of peace at Paris, one always meant peace with England: peace with the others was as indifferent to the public as the victories or the conquests of Bonaparte."[158]

If the French middle classes longed for a maritime peace so that coffee and sugar might become reasonably cheap, how much more would their ruler, whose heart was set on colonies and a realm in the Orient? In Poland he had cheered his troops with the thought that they were winning back the French colonial empire; and, as we have seen, he was even then preparing the ground in Persia for a future invasion of India. These plans could only be carried out after a time of peace that should rehabilitate the French navy. Humanitarian sentiment, patriotism, and even the promptings of a wider ambition, therefore bade him strive for a general pacification, such as he seemed to have assured at Tilsit.

But the means which he adopted were just those that were destined to defeat this aim. Where he sought to intimidate, he only aroused a more stubborn resistance: where he should have allayed national fears, he redoubled them. He did not understand our people: he saw not that, behind our official sluggishness and muddling, there was a quenchless national vitality, which, if directed by a genius, could defy a world-wide combination. If, instead of making secret compacts with the Czar and trampling on Prussia; if, instead of intriguing with the Sultan and the Shah, and thus reawakening our fears respecting Egypt and India, he had called a Congress and submitted all the present disputes to general discussion, there is reason to think that Great Britain would have received his overtures. George III.'s Ministers had favoured the proposal of a Congress when put forward by Austria in the spring;[159] and they would doubtless have welcomed it from Napoleon after Friedland, had they not known of far-reaching plans which rendered peace more risky than open war. This great genius had, in fact, one fatal defect; he had little faith except in outward compulsion; and his superabundant energy of menace against England blighted the hopes of peace which he undoubtedly cherished.

Long before Alexander's offer of mediation was forwarded to London, our Ministers had taken a sudden and desperate resolution. They determined to compel Denmark to join England and Sweden, and to hold the fleet at Copenhagen as a gauge of Danish fidelity.

That momentous resolve was formed on or just before July the 16th, in consequence of news that had arrived from Memel and Tilsit. The exact purport of that news, and the manner of its acquisition, have been one of the puzzles of modern history. But the following facts seem to furnish a solution. Our Foreign Office Records show that our agent at Tilsit, Mr. Mackenzie, who was on confidential terms with General Bennigsen, left post haste for England immediately after the first imperial interview; and the news which he brought, together with reports of the threatening moves of the French on Holstein, clinched the determination of our Government to checkmate the Franco-Russian aims by bringing strong pressure to bear on Denmark. To keep open the mouth of the Baltic was an urgent necessity, otherwise we should lose touch with the Anglo-Swedish forces campaigning against the French near Stralsund.[160] Furthermore, it should be noted that Denmark held the balance in naval affairs. France and her allies now had fifty-nine sail of the line ready for sea: the compact with the Czar would give her twenty-four more; and if Napoleon seized the eighteen Danish and nine Portuguese battleships, his fighting strength would be nearly equal to our own.[161] Canning therefore determined, on July 16th, to compel Denmark to side with us, or at least to observe a neutrality favourable to the British cause; and, to save her honour, he proposed to send an irresistible naval force.

"Denmark's safety," he wrote on July 16th, "is to be found, under the present circumstances of the world, only in a balance of opposite dangers. For it is not to be disguised that the influence which France has acquired from recent events over the North of Europe, might, unless balanced by the naval power of Great Britain, leave to Denmark no other option than that of compliance with the demands of Bonaparte."[162]

A balance of opposite dangers! In this phrase Canning summed up his policy towards Denmark. Threatened by Napoleon on the land, she was to be threatened by us from the sea; and Canning hoped that these opposite forces would, at least, secure Danish neutrality, without which Sweden must succumb in her struggle against France. That some compulsion would be needed had long been clear. In fact, the use of compulsion had first been recommended by the Russian and Prussian Governments, which had gone so far as to include in the Treaty of Bartenstein a proposal of common action, along with England, Austria and Sweden, to compel Denmark to side with the allies against Napoleon.[163] To this resolve England still clung, despite the defection of the Czar. In truth, his present conduct made the case for the coercion of Denmark infinitely more urgent.

As to the reality of Napoleon's designs on Denmark, there can be no doubt. After his return to France, he wrote from St. Cloud, directing Talleyrand to express his displeasure that Denmark had not fulfilled her promises: "Whatever my desire to treat Denmark well, I cannot hinder her suffering from having allowed the Baltic to be violated [by the English expedition to Stralsund]; and, if England refuses Russia's mediation, Denmark must choose either to make war against England, or against me."[164] Whence it is clear that Denmark had given Napoleon grounds for hoping that she would declare the Baltic a mare clausum.

The British Government had so far fathomed these designs as to see the urgency of the danger. Accordingly it proposed to Denmark a secret defensive alliance, the chief terms of which were the handing over of the Danish fleet, to be kept as a "sacred pledge" by us till the peace, a subsidy of L100,000 paid to Denmark for that fleet, and the offer of armed assistance in case she should be attacked by France. This offer of defensive alliance was repulsed, and the Danish Prince Royal determined to resist even the mighty armada which was now nearing his shores. Towards the close of August, eighty-eight British ships were in the Sound and the Belt; and when the transports from Ruegen and Stralsund joined those from Yarmouth, as many as 15,400 troops were at hand, under the command of Lord Cathcart. A landing was effected near Copenhagen, and offers of alliance were again made, including the deposit of the Danish fleet; "but if this offer is rejected now, it cannot be repeated. The captured property, public and private, must then belong to the captors: and the city, when taken, must share the fate of conquered places." The Danes stoutly repelled offers and threats alike: the English batteries thereupon bombarded the city until the gallant defenders capitulated (September 7th). The conditions hastily concluded by our commanders were that the British forces should occupy the citadel and dockyard for six weeks, should take possession of the ships and naval stores, and thereupon evacuate Zealand.

These terms were scrupulously carried out; and at the close of six weeks our forces sailed away with the Danish fleet, including fifteen sail of the line, fifteen frigates, and thirty-one small vessels. This end to the expedition was keenly regretted by Canning. In a lengthy Memorandum he left it on record that he desired, not merely Denmark's fleet, but her alliance. In his view nothing could save Europe but a firm Anglo-Scandinavian league, which would keep open the Baltic and set bounds to the designs of the two Emperors. Only by such an alliance could Sweden be saved from Russia and France. Indeed, foreseeing the danger to Sweden from a French army acting from Zealand as a base, Canning proposed to Gustavus that he should occupy that island, or, failing that, receive succour from a British force on his own shore of the Sound. But both offers were declined. The final efforts made to draw Denmark into our alliance were equally futile, and she kept up hostilities against us for nearly seven years. Thus Canning's scheme of alliance with the Scandinavian States failed. Britain gained, it is true, a further safeguard against invasion; but our statesman, while blaming the precipitate action of our commanders in insisting solely upon the surrender of the fleet, declared that that action, apart from an Anglo-Danish alliance, was "an act of great injustice."[165]

And as such it has been generally regarded, that is, by those who did not, and could not, know the real state of the case. In one respect our action was unpardonable: it was not the last desperate effort of a long period of struggle: it came after a time of selfish torpor fatal alike to our reputation and the interests of our allies. After protesting their inability to help them, Ministers belied their own words by the energy with which they acted against a small State. And the prevalent opinion found expression in the protests uttered in Parliament that it would have been better to face the whole might of the French, Russian, and Danish navies than to emulate the conduct of those who had overrun and despoiled Switzerland.

Moreover, our action did not benefit Sweden, but just the reverse. Cathcart's force, that had been helping the Swedes in the defence of their Pomeranian province, was withdrawn in order to strengthen our hands against Copenhagen. Thereupon the gallant Gustavus, overborne by the weight of Marshal Brune's corps, sued for an armistice. It was granted only on the condition that Stralsund should pass into Brune's hands (August 20th); and the Swedes, unable even to hold Ruegen, were forced to give up that island also. Sick in health and weary of a world that his chivalrous instincts scorned, Gustavus withdrew his forces into Sweden. Even there he was menaced. The hostilities which Denmark forthwith commenced against England and Sweden exposed his southern coasts; but he now chose to lean on the valour of his own subjects rather than on the broken reed of British assistance, and awaited the attacks of the Danes on the west and of the Russians on his province of Finland.

The news from Copenhagen also furnished the Czar with a good excuse for hostilities with England. For such an event he had hitherto been by no means desirous. On his return from Tilsit to St. Petersburg he found the nobility and merchants wholly opposed to a rupture with the Sea Power, the former disdaining to clasp the hand of the conqueror of Friedland, the latter foreseeing ruin from the adoption of the Continental System; and when Napoleon sent Savary on a special mission to the Czar's Court, the Empress-Mother and nobles alike showed their abhorrence of "the executioner of the Duc d'Enghien." In vain were imperial favours lavished on this envoy. He confessed to Napoleon that only the Czar and the new Foreign Minister, Romantzoff, were favourable to France; and it was soon obvious that their ardour for a partition of Turkey must disturb the warily balancing policy which Napoleon adopted as soon as the Czar's friendship seemed assured.

The dissolution of this artificial alliance was a task far beyond the powers of British statesmanship. To Alexander's offer of mediation between France and England Canning replied that we desired first to know what were "the just and equitable terms on which France intended to negotiate," and secondly what were the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit. That there were such was obvious; for the published treaty made no mention of the Kings of Sardinia and of the two Sicilies, in whom Alexander had taken so deep an interest. But the second request annoyed the Czar; and this feeling was intensified by our action at Copenhagen. Yet, though he pronounced it an act of "unheard-of violence," the Russian official notes to our Government were so far reassuring that Lord Castlereagh was able to write to Lord Cathcart (September 22nd): "Russia does not show any disposition to resent or to complain of what we have done at Copenhagen.... The tone of the Russian cabinet has become much more conciliatory to us since they heard of your operations at Copenhagen."[166] It would seem, however, that this double-dealing was prompted by naval considerations. The Czar desired to temporize until his Mediterranean squadron should gain a place of safety and his Baltic ports be encased in ice; but on 27th October (8th November, N.S.) he broke off all communications with us, and adopted the Continental System.

Meanwhile, at the other extremity of Europe, events were transpiring that served as the best excuse for our harshness towards Denmark. Even before our fleet sailed for the Sound, Napoleon was weaving his plans for the destruction of Portugal. It is clear that he designed to strike her first before taking any action against Denmark. During his return journey from Tilsit to Paris, he directed Talleyrand to send orders to Lisbon for the closing of all Portuguese ports against British goods by September the 1st—"in default of which I declare war on Portugal." He also ordered the massing of 20,000 French troops at Bayonne in readiness to join the Spanish forces that were to threaten the little kingdom.[167]

What crime had Portugal committed? She had of late been singularly passive: anxiously she looked on at the gigantic strifes that were engulfing the smaller States one by one. Her conduct towards Napoleon had been far less provocative than that of Denmark towards England. Threatened with partition by him and Spain in 1801, she had eagerly snatched at peace, and on the rupture of the Peace of Amiens was fain to purchase her neutrality at the cost of a heavy subsidy to France, which she still paid in the hope of prolonging her "existence on sufferance."[168] That hope now faded away.

As far back as February, 1806, Napoleon had lent a ready ear to the plans which Godoy, the all-powerful Minister at Madrid, had proposed for the partition of Portugal; and, in the month of July following, Talleyrand held out to our plenipotentiary at Paris the threat that, unless England speedily made peace with France, Napoleon would annex Switzerland—"but still less can we alter, for any other consideration, our intention of invading Portugal. The army destined for that purpose is already assembling at Bayonne." A year's respite was gained for the House of Braganza by the campaigns of Jena and Friedland. But now, with the tenacity of his nature, the Emperor returned to the plan, actually tried in 1801 and prepared for in 1806, of crushing our faithful ally in order to compel us to make peace. On this occasion he counted on certain success, as may be seen by the following extract from the despatch of the Portuguese ambassador at Paris to his Government:

"On Sunday afternoon [August 2nd] there was a diplomatic Levee. The Emperor came up to me as I stood in the circle, and in a low voice said: 'Have you written to your Court? Have you despatched a courier with my final determination?'—I replied in the affirmative.—'Very well,' said the Emperor, 'then by this time your Court knows that she must break with England before the 1st of September. It is the only way to accelerate peace.'—As the place did not permit discussion on my part, I answered: 'I should think, Sire, that England must now be sincerely anxious to make peace.'—'Oh,' replied the Emperor, 'we are very certain of that: however, in all cases, you must break either with England or France before the 1st of September.'—He then turned about and addressed himself to the Danish Minister, as far as I could judge to the same purport."[169]

Equally confident is Napoleon's tone in the lately published letter of September 7th:

"As soon as I received news of the English expedition against Copenhagen,[170] I caused Portugal to be informed that all her ports must be closed to England, and I massed an army of 40,000 men at Bayonne to join the Spaniards in enforcing this action, if necessary. But a letter I have just received from the Prince Regent [of Portugal] leads me to presume that this last measure will not be necessary, that the Portuguese ports will be closed to the English by the time this is read, and that Portugal will have declared war against England. On the other hand, my flotilla will be ready for action on 1st October, and I shall have a large army at Boulogne, ready to attempt a coup de main on England."

The letter concludes by ordering that all British diplomatists are to be driven out of Europe, and that Sweden must make common cause with France and Russia. Such were the means to be used for forcing affrighted Peace again to visit this distracted earth.

In truth, the fate of the British race seemed for the time to hang upon the events at Copenhagen and Lisbon. Very much depended on the action of the Prince Regent of Portugal. Had he tamely submitted to Napoleon's ukase and placed his fleet and his vast colonial empire at the service of France, it is doubtful whether even the high-souled Canning would not have stooped to surrender in face of odds so overwhelming. The young statesman's anxiety as to the action of Portugal is attested by many a long and minutely corrected despatch to Viscount Strangford, our envoy at Lisbon. But, fortunately for us, Napoleon committed the blunder which so often marred his plans: he pushed them too far: he required the Prince Regent to adopt a course of conduct repellent to an honourable man, namely, to confiscate the merchandise and property of British merchants who had long trusted the good faith of the House of Braganza. To this last demand the prince opposed a dignified resistance, though on all other points he gave way. This will appear from Lord Strangford's despatch of August 13th:

" ... The Portuguese Ministers place all their hopes of being able to ward off this terrible blow in the certainty which they entertain of England being obliged to enter into negotiations for a general peace.... The very existence of the Portuguese Monarchy depends on the celerity with which England shall meet the pacific interference of the Emperor of Russia. The Prince Regent gives the most solemn promise that he will not on any account consent to the measure of confiscating the property of British subjects residing under his protection. But I think that if France could be induced to give up this point, and limit her demands to the exclusion of British commerce from Portugal, the Government of this country would accede to them...."

A week later he states that Portugal begged England to put up with a temporary rupture, and reports that a quantity of diamonds had been taken out of the Treasury and sent to Paris to be distributed in presents to persons supposed to possess influence over the minds of Bonaparte and Talleyrand. It would be interesting to trace the history of these diamonds. But, as Napoleon had recently awarded sums amounting in all to 26,582,000 francs from out of the estates confiscated in Poland,[171] signs of sudden affluence were widespread in Paris and rendered it difficult to detect the receivers of the gems. Talleyrand was the usual recipient of such douceurs. But on August the 14th he had retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gaining the title of Vice Grand-Elector; and, if we are to be guided, not by the statements of his personal foes, Hauterive and Pasquier, but by the determination which he is known to have formed at Tilsit, that he would not be "the executioner of Europe," we may judge that he disapproved of the barbarous treatment meted out to Prussia and now planned against Portugal.[172]

As has been stated above, the partition of this kingdom had been planned by Godoy in concert with Napoleon early in 1806. That pampered minion of the Spanish Court, angry at the shelving of plans which promised to yield him a third of Portugal, called Spain to arms while Napoleon was marching to Jena, an affront which the conqueror seemed to overlook but never really forgave. Now, however, he appeared wholly to enter into Godoy's scheme; and, while the Prince Regent of Portugal was appealing to his pity, the Emperor (September 25th, 1807) charged Duroc to confer with Godoy's confidential agent at Paris, Don Izquierdo. " ...As for Portugal, I make no difficulty about granting to the King of Spain a suzerainty over Portugal, and even taking part of it away for the Queen of Etruria and the Prince of the Peace [Godoy]." Duroc was also to point out the difficulty, now that "all Italy" belonged to Napoleon, of allowing "that deformity," the kingdom of Etruria, to disfigure the peninsula. The change would in fact, doubly benefit the French Emperor. It would enable him completely to exclude British commerce from the port of Leghorn, where it was trickling in alarmingly, and also to place the mouths of the Tagus and Douro in the hands of obedient vassals.

Such was the scheme in outline. Despite the offer of the Prince Regent to obey all Napoleon's behests except that relating to the seizure of British subjects and their property, war was irrevocably resolved on by October the 12th.[173] And on October the 27th a secret convention was signed at the Palace of Fontainebleau for arranging "the future lot of Portugal by a healthy policy and conformably to the interests of France and Spain." Portugal was now to be divided into three very unequal parts: the largest portion, comprising Estremadura, Beira, and Tras-os Montes, was reserved for a future arrangement at the general peace, but meanwhile was to be held by France: Algarve and Alemtejo were handed over to Godoy; while the diminutive province of Entre Minho e Douro was flung as a sop to the young King of Etruria and his mother, a princess of the House of Spain, to console them for the loss of Etruria. A vague promise was made that the House of Braganza might be reinstated in the first of these three portions, in case England restored Gibraltar, Trinidad, and other colonies taken by her from Spain or her allies; and Napoleon guaranteed to the King of Spain his possessions in Europe, exclusive of the Balearic Isles, offering also to recognize him as Emperor of the Two Americas.

Meanwhile Junot was leading his army corps from Bayonne towards Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, to give effect to this healthful arrangement. This general, whom it was desirable to remove from Paris on account of his rather too open liaison with one of the Bonaparte princesses, was urged to the utmost speed and address by the Emperor. He must cover the whole 200 leagues in thirty-five days; lack of provisions must not hinder the march, for "20,000 men can live anywhere, even in a desert"; and, above all, as the Prince Regent had again offered to declare war on England, he (Junot) could represent that he came as an ally: "I have already informed you that my intention in authorizing you to enter that land as an ally was to enable you to seize its fleet, but that my mind was fully made up to take possession of Portugal."[174] Lisbon, in fact, was to be served as Venice was ten years before, the lion donning the skin of the fox so as to effect a peaceful seizure. But that ruse could hardly succeed twice. The Prince Regent had his ships ready for flight. The bluff and headstrong Junot, nicknamed "the tempest" by the army, was too artless to catch the prince by guile; but he hurried his soldiers over mountains and through flooded gorges until, on November 30th, 1,500 tattered, shoeless, famished grenadiers straggled into Lisbon—to find that the royal quarry had flown.

The Prince Regent took this momentous resolve with the utmost reluctance. For many weeks he had clung to the hope that Napoleon would spare him; and though he accepted a convention with England, whereby he gained the convoy of our men-of-war across the Atlantic and the promise of aggrandizement in South America, he still continued to temporize, and that too, when a British fleet was at hand in the Tagus strong enough to thwart the designs of the Russian squadron there present to prevent his departure. When the French were within two days' march of Lisbon, Lord Strangford feared that the Portuguese fleet would be delivered into their hands; and only after a trenchant declaration that further vacillation would be taken as a sign of hostility to Great Britain, did the Prince Regent resolve to seek beyond the seas the independence which was denied to him in his own realm.[175]

Few scenes are more pathetic than the departure of the House of Braganza from the cradle of its birth. Love for the Prince Regent as a man, mingled with pity for the demented Queen, held the populace of Lisbon in tearful silence as the royal family and courtiers filed along the quays, followed by agonized groups of those who had decided to share their trials. But silence gave way to wails of despair as the exiles embarked on the heaving estuary and severed the last links with Europe. Slowly the fleet began to beat down the river in the teeth of an Atlantic gale. Near the mouth the refugees were received with a royal salute by the British fleet, and under its convoy they breasted the waves of the ocean and the perils of the future.

The conduct of England towards Denmark and that of Napoleon towards Portugal call for a brief comparison. Those small kingdoms were the victims of two powerful States whose real or fancied interests prompted them to the domination of the land and of the sea. But when we compare the actions of the two Great Powers, important differences begin to reveal themselves. England had far more cause for complaint against Denmark than Napoleon had against Portugal. The hostility of the Danes to the recent coalition was notorious. To compel them to change their policy without loss of national honour, we sent the most powerful armada that had ever left our shores, with offers of alliance and a demand that their fleet, the main object of Napoleon's designs, should be delivered up to be held in deposit. The offer was refused, and we seized the fleet. The act was brutal, but it was at least open and above board, and the capitulation of September 7th was scrupulously observed, even when the Danes prepared to renew hostilities.

On the other hand, the demands of Napoleon on the Court of Lisbon were such as no honourable prince could accept; they were relentlessly pressed on in spite of the offer of the Prince Regent to meet him in every particular save one; the appeals of the victim were deliberately used by the aggressor to further his own rapacious designs; and the enterprise fell short of ending in a massacre only because the glamour of the French arms so dazzled the susceptible people of the south that, for the present, they sank helplessly away at the sight of two battalions of spectres. Finally, Portugal was partitioned—or rather it was kept entirely by Napoleon; for, after the promises of partition had done their work, the sleeping partners in the transaction were quietly shelved, and it was then seen that Portugal had finally served as the bait for ensnaring Spain. To this subject we shall return in the next chapter.

In Italy also, the Juggernaut car of the Continental System rolled over the small States. The Kingdom of Etruria, which in 1802 had served as an easy means of buying the whole of Louisiana from the Spanish Bourbons, was now wrested from that complaisant House, and in December was annexed to the French Empire.

The Pope also passed under the yoke. For a long time the relations between Pius VII. and Napoleon had been strained. Gentle as the Pontiff was by nature, he had declined to exclude all British merchandise from his States, or to accept an alliance with Eugene and Joseph. He also angered Napoleon by persistently refusing to dissolve the marriage of Jerome Buonaparte with Miss Paterson; and an interesting correspondence ensued, culminating in a long diatribe which Eugene was charged to forward to the Vatican as an extract from a private letter of Napoleon to himself.[176] Pius VII. was to be privately warned that Napoleon had done more good to religion than the Pope had done harm. Christ had said that His Kingdom was not of this world. Why then did the Pope set himself above Christ? Why did he refuse to render to Caesar that which was Caesar's?—A fortnight later the Emperor advised Eugene to despatch troops in the direction of Bologna—"and if the Pope commits an imprudence, it will be a fine opportunity for depriving him of the Roman States."

No imprudence was committed. Yet, in the following January, Napoleon ordered his troops to occupy Rome, alleging that the Eternal City was a hotbed of intrigues fomented by England and the ex-Queen of Naples, that Neapolitan rebels had sought an asylum in the Papal States, and that, though he had no wish to deprive the Pope of his territories, yet he must include him in his "system." When Pius VII. refused to commit himself to a policy which would involve war with England, Napoleon ordered that his lands east of the Apennines should be annexed to the Kingdom of Italy (April 2nd, 1808). Napoleon thus gained complete control over the Adriatic coasts, which, along with the island of Corfu, had long engaged his most earnest attention.[177]

True to his aim of forcing or enticing all maritime States into a mighty confederacy for the humiliation of England, Napoleon had given most heed to lands possessing extensive seaboards. Northern Italy, Holland, Naples, North Germany, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, and Central Italy had, in turn, adopted his system. On Austria he exerted a less imperious pressure; for her coast-line of Trieste and Croatia was so easily controlled by his Italian and Dalmatian territories that English merchandise with difficulty found admittance. Yet, in order to carry out there also his policy of "Thorough," he brought the arguments of Paris and St. Petersburg to bear on the Court of Vienna; and on February 18th, 1808, Austria was enrolled in a league that might well be called continental; for in the spring of that year it embraced every land save Sweden and Turkey.

His activity at this time almost passes belief. While he fastened his grip on the Continent, gallicized the institutions of Italy and Germany, and almost daily instructed his brothers in the essentials of successful statecraft, he found time to turn his thoughts once more to the East, and to mark every device of England for lengthening her lease of life. Noticing that we had annulled our blockade of the Elbe and Weser, with the aim of getting our goods introduced there by neutral ships, Napoleon charged his Finance Minister, Gaudin, to prepare a decree for pressing hard on neutrals who had touched at any of our ports or carried wares that could be proved to be of British origin.[178]

He was perfectly correct in his surmise that English goods were about to be sent into the Continent extensively on neutral vessels. After the consequences of the Treaty of Tilsit had been fully developed, that was almost their only means of entry. "In August, September and October, British commerce lay prostrate and motionless until a protecting and self-defensive system was interposed by our Orders in Council."[179] The first of these ordered reprisals against the new Napoleonic States (November 4th): a week later came a second which declared that, as the Orders of January had not induced the enemy to relax his commercial hostilities, but these were now enforced with increased rigour, any port whence the British flag was excluded would be treated as if it were actually blockaded; that is, the principle of the legality of a nominal blockade, abandoned in 1801, was now reaffirmed. The carriage of hostile colonial products was likewise prohibited to neutrals, though certain exceptions were allowed. Also any neutral vessel carrying "certificates of origin"—a device for distinguishing between British and neutral goods—was to be considered a lawful prize of war. A third Order in Council of the same date allowed goods to be imported into the United Kingdom from a hostile port in neutral ships, subject to the ordinary duties, and bonding facilities were granted for the re-exportation of such goods to any friendly or neutral port.[180] These orders were designed to draw neutral commerce through our ports, and to give secret facilities for the carriage of our goods by neutrals, while pressing upon those that obeyed Napoleon's system.

The harshest of them was that which encouraged the searching of neutral vessels for certificates of origin—a measure as severe as the confiscation of British property by Napoleon, which it was designed to defeat. And we may note here that the friction resulting from our Orders in Council and our enforcement of the right of search led to the United States passing a Non-Intercourse Act (December 23rd, 1807) that preluded active hostilities against us. It also led Napoleon to confiscate all American ships in his harbours after April 17th, 1808.

The November Orders in Council soon drew a reply from Napoleon. He heard of them during a progress through the north of Italy, and from Milan he flung back his retort, the famous Milan Decrees of November 23rd and December 17th. He thereby declared every neutral ship, which submitted to those orders, to be denationalized and good prize of war; and the same doom was pronounced against every vessel sailing to or from any port in the United Kingdom or its colonies or possessions. But these measures were not to affect ships of those States that compelled Great Britain to respect their flag. The islanders might well be dismayed at the prospect of a seclusion which promised to recall the Virgilian line:

"penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos."

Yet they resolved to pit the resources of the outer world against the militarism of Napoleon; and, drawing the resources of the tropics to the new power-looms of Lancashire and Yorkshire, they might well hope to pour their unequalled goods into Europe from points of vantage such as Sicily, Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and Heligoland. There were many Englishmen who believed that the November Orders in Council brought nothing but harm to our cause. They argued that our manufactured goods must find their way into the Continent in spite of the Berlin Decrees; and they could point to the curious fact that Bourrienne, Napoleon's agent at Hamburg, when charged to procure 50,000 overcoats for the French army during the Eylau campaign, was obliged to buy them from England.[181]

The incident certainly proves the folly of the Continental System. And if we had had to consult our manufacturing interests alone, a policy of laisser faire would doubtless have been the best. England, however, prided herself on her merchant service: to that she looked as the nursery for the royal navy: and the abandonment of the world's carrying trade to neutrals would have seemed an act of high treason. Her acts of retaliation against the Berlin Decrees and the policy of Tilsit were harsh and high-handed. But they were adopted during a pitiless commercial strife; and, in warfare of so novel and desperate a kind, acts must unfortunately be judged by their efficacy to harm the foe rather than by the standards of morality that hold good during peace. Outwardly, it seemed as if England were doomed. She had lost her allies and alienated the sympathies of neutrals. But from the sea she was able to exert on the Napoleonic States a pressure that was gradual, cumulative, and resistless; and the future was to prove the wisdom of the words of Mollien: "England waged a warfare of modern times; Napoleon, that of ancient times. There are times and cases when an anachronism is fatal."

Moreover, at the very time when the Emperor was about to complete his great experiment by subduing Sweden and preparing for the partition of Turkey, it sustained a fatal shock by the fierce rising of the Spanish people against his usurped authority.

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CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SPANISH RISING

The relations of Spain to France during the twelve years that preceded the rising of 1808 are marked by acts of folly and unmanly complaisance that promised utterly to degrade a once proud and sensitive people. They were the work of the senile and spiritless King, Charles IV., of his intriguing consort, and, above all, of her paramour, the all-powerful Minister Godoy. Of an ancient and honourable family, endowed with a fine figure, courtly address, and unscrupulous arts, this man had wormed himself into the royal confidence; and after bringing about a favourable peace with France in 1795, he was styled The Prince of the Peace.

In the next year the meaning of the French alliance was revealed in the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, which required Spain to furnish troops, ships, and subsidies for the war against England, a state of vassalage which was made harder by Napoleon. The results are well known. After being forced by him to cede Trinidad to us at the Peace of Amiens, she sacrificed her navy at Trafalgar, saw her colonies and commerce decay and her finances shrivel for lack of the golden streams formerly poured in by Mexico and Peru.

In the summer of 1806, while sinking into debt and disgrace, the Court of Madrid heard with indignation of Napoleon's design to hand over the Balearic Isles to the Spanish Bourbons whom he had driven from Naples and proposed to drive from Sicily. At once Spanish pride caught fire and clutched at means of revenge.[182] Godoy was further incensed by the sudden abandonment of the plans which he had long discussed with Napoleon for the partition of Portugal, plans which gave him the prospect of reigning as King over the southern portion of that realm.[183] Accordingly, when the Emperor was entering upon the Jena campaign, he summoned the Spanish people to arms in a most threatening manner. The news of the collapse of Prussia ended his bravado. Complaisance again reigned at Madrid, and 15,000 Spaniards were sent, at Napoleon's demand, to serve on the borders of Denmark, while the autocrat of the West perfected his plans against the Iberian Peninsula. As was noted in the previous chapter, the Emperor renewed his offers of a partition of Portugal in the early autumn of 1807; and in pursuance of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau, Junot's corps marched through Spain into Portugal, where they were helped by a Spanish corps.

It is significant that, as early as October 17th, 1807, Napoleon ordered his general to send a detailed description of the country and of his line of march, the engineer officers being specially charged to send sketches, "which it is important to have." Other French divisions then crossed the Pyrenees, under plea of keeping open Junot's communications with France; and spies were sent to observe the state of the chief Spanish strongholds. Others were charged to report on the condition of the Spanish army and the state of public opinion; while Junot was cautioned to keep a sharp watch on the Spanish troops in Portugal, to allow no fortress to be in their hands, and to send all the Portuguese troops away to France. Thus, in the early days of 1808, Napoleon had some 20,000 troops in Portugal, about 40,000 in the north of Spain, and 12,000 in Catalonia. By various artifices they gained admission into the strongholds of Pamplona, Monjuik, Barcelona, St. Sebastian, and Figueras, so that by the month of March the north and west of the peninsula had passed quietly into his hands, while the greater part of the Spanish army was doing his work in Portugal or on the shores of the Baltic.[184]