In contrast with this intellectual power and becoming simplicity of attire, how stupid and tawdry were the bevies of soulless women and the dumb groups of half-tamed soldiers! How vapid also the rules of etiquette and precedence which starched the men and agitated the minds of their consorts! Yet, while soaring above these rules with easy grace, the First Consul imposed them rigidly on the crowd of eager courtiers. On these burning questions he generally took the advice of M. de Remusat, whose tact and acquaintance with Court customs were now of much service; while the sprightly wit of his young wife attracted Josephine, as it has all readers of her piquant but rather spiteful memoirs. In her pages we catch a glimpse of the life of that singular Court; the attempts at aping the inimitable manners of the ancien regime; the pompous nullity of the second and third Consuls; the tawdry magnificence of the costumes; the studied avoidance of any word that implied even a modicum of learning or a distant acquaintance with politics; the nervous preoccupation about Napoleon's moods and whims; the graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm away his humours, except when she herself had been outrageously slighted for some passing favourite; above all, the leaden dullness of conversation, which drew from Chaptal the confession that life there was the life of a galley slave. And if we seek for the hidden reason why a ruler eminently endowed with mental force and freshness should have endured so laboured a masquerade, we find it in his strikingly frank confession to Madame de Remusat: It is fortunate that the French are to be ruled through their vanity. <

* * * * *



CHAPTER XIV

THE PEACE OF AMIENS

The previous chapter dealt in the main with the internal affairs of France and the completion of Napoleon's power: it touched on foreign affairs only so far as to exhibit the close connection between the First Consul's diplomatic victory over England and his triumph over the republican constitution in his adopted country. But it is time now to review the course of the negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Amiens.

In order to realize the advantages which France then had over England, it will be well briefly to review the condition of our land at that time. Our population was far smaller than that of the French Republic. France, with her recent acquisitions in Belgium, the Rhineland, Savoy, Nice, and Piedmont, numbered nearly 40,000,000 inhabitants: but the census returns of Great Britain for 1801 showed only a total of 10,942,000 souls, while the numbers for Ireland, arguing from the rather untrustworthy return of 1813, may be reckoned at about six and a half millions. The prodigious growth of the English-speaking people had not as yet fully commenced either in the motherland, the United States, or in the small and struggling settlements of Canada and Australia. Its future expansion was to be assured by industrial and social causes, and by the events considered in this and in subsequent chapters. It was a small people that had for several months faced with undaunted front the gigantic power of Bonaparte and that of the Armed Neutrals.

This population of less than 18,000,000 souls, of which nearly one-third openly resented the Act of Union recently imposed on Ireland, was burdened by a National Debt which amounted to L537,000,000, and entailed a yearly charge of more than L20,000,000 sterling. In the years of war with revolutionary France the annual expenditure had risen from L19,859,000 (for 1792) to the total of L61,329,000, which necessitated an income tax of 10 per cent. on all incomes of L200 and upwards. Yet, despite party feuds, the nation was never stronger, and its fleets had never won more brilliant and solid triumphs. The chief naval historian of France admits that we had captured no fewer than 50 ships of the line, and had lost to our enemies only five, thereby raising the strength of our fighting line to 189, while that of France had sunk to 47.[181] The prowess of Sir Arthur Wellesley was also beginning to revive in India the ancient lustre of the British arms; but the events of 1802-3 were to show that our industrial enterprise, and the exploits of our sailors and soldiers, were by themselves of little avail when matched in a diplomatic contest against the vast resources of France and the embodied might of a Napoleon.

Men and institutions were everywhere receiving the imprint of his will. France was as wax under his genius. The sovereigns of Spain, Italy, and Germany obeyed his fiat. Even the stubborn Dutch bent before him. On the plea of defeating Orange intrigues, he imposed a new constitution on the Batavian Republic whose independence he had agreed to respect. Its Directory was now replaced by a Regency which relieved the deputies of the people of all responsibility. A plebiscite showed 52,000 votes against, and 16,000 for, the new regime; but, as 350,000 had not voted, their silence was taken for consent, and Bonaparte's will became law (September, 1801).

We are now in a position to appreciate the position of France and Great Britain. Before the signature of the preliminaries of peace at London on October 1st, 1801, our Government had given up its claims to the Cape, Malta, Tobago, Martinique, Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice, and Curacoa, retaining of its conquests only Trinidad and Ceylon.

A belated attempt had, indeed, been made to retain Tobago. The Premier and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, were led by the French political agent in London, M. Otto, to believe that, in the ensuing negotiations at Amiens, every facility would be given by the French Government towards its retrocession to us, and that this act would be regarded as the means of indemnifying Great Britain for the heavy expense of supporting many thousands of French and Dutch prisoners. The Cabinet, relying on this promise as binding between honourable men, thereupon endeavoured to obtain the assent of George III. to the preliminaries in their ultimate form, and only the prospect of regaining Tobago by this compromise induced the King to give it. When it was too late, King and Ministers realized their mistake in relying on verbal promises and in failing to procure a written statement.[182]

The abandonment by Ministers of their former claim to Malta is equally strange. Nelson, though he held Malta to be useless as a base for the British fleet watching Toulon, made the memorable statement: "I consider Malta as a most important outwork to India." But a despatch from St. Petersburg, stating that the new Czar had concluded a formal treaty of alliance with the Order of St. John settled in Russia, may have convinced Addington and his colleagues that it would be better to forego all claim to Malta in order to cement the newly won friendship of Russia. Whatever may have been their motive, British Ministers consented to cede the island to the Knights of St. John under the protection of some third Power.

The preliminaries of peace were further remarkable for three strange omissions. They did not provide for the renewal of previous treaties of peace between the late combatants. War is held to break all previous treaties; and by failing to require the renewal of the treaties of 1713, 1763, and 1783, it was now open to Spain and France to cement, albeit in a new form, that Family Compact which it had long been the aim of British diplomacy to dissolve: the failure to renew those earlier treaties rendered it possible for the Court of Madrid to alienate any of its colonies to France, as at that very time was being arranged with respect to Louisiana.

The second omission was equally remarkable. No mention was made of any renewal of commercial intercourse between England and France. Doubtless a complete settlement of this question would have been difficult. British merchants would have looked for a renewal of that enlightened treaty of commerce of 1786-7, which had aroused the bitter opposition of French manufacturers. But the question might have been broached at London, and its omission from the preliminaries served as a reason for shelving it in the definitive treaty—a piece of folly which at once provoked the severest censure from British manufacturers, who thereby lost the markets of France, and her subject States, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Genoa, and Etruria.

And, finally, the terms of peace provided no compensation either for the French royal House or for the dispossessed House of Orange. Here again, it would have been very difficult to find a recompense such as the Bourbons could with dignity have accepted; and the suggestion made by one of the royalist exiles to Lord Hawkesbury, that Great Britain should seize Crete and hand it over to them, will show how desperate was their case.[183] Nevertheless, some effort should have been made by a Government which had so often proclaimed its championship of the legitimist cause. Still more glaring was the omission of any stipulation for an indemnity for the House of Orange, now exiled from the Batavian Republic. That claim, though urged at the outset, found no place in the preliminaries; and the mingled surprise and contempt felt in the salons of Paris at the conduct of the British Government is shown in a semi-official report sent thence by one of its secret agents:

"I cannot get it into my head that the British Ministry has acted in good faith in subscribing to preliminaries of peace, which, considering the respective position of the parties, would be harmful to the English people.... People are persuaded in France that the moderation of England is only a snare put in Bonaparte's way, and it is mainly in order to dispel it that our journals have received the order to make much of the advantages which must accrue to England from the conquests retained by her; but the journalists have convinced nobody, and it is said openly that if our European conquests are consolidated by a general peace, France will, within ten years, subjugate all Europe, Great Britain included, despite all her vast dominions in India. Only within the last few days have people here believed in the sincerity of the English preliminaries of peace, and they say everywhere that, after having gloriously sailed past the rocks that Bonaparte's cunning had placed in its track, the British Ministry has completely foundered at the mouth of the harbour. People blame the whole structure of the peace as betraying marks of feebleness in all that concerns the dignity and the interests of the King; ... and we cannot excuse its neglect of the royalists, whose interests are entirely set aside in the preliminaries. Men are especially astonished at England's retrocession of Martinique without a single stipulation for the colonists there, who are at the mercy of a government as rapacious as it is fickle. All the owners of colonial property are very uneasy, and do not hide their annoyance against England on this score."[184]

This interesting report gives a glimpse into the real thought of Paris such as is rarely afforded by the tamed or venal Press. As Bonaparte's spies enabled him to feel every throb of the French pulse, he must at once have seen how great was the prestige which he gained by these first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the foothold of the English Ministers on the slippery grade of concession to which they had been lured. Addington surely should have remembered that only the strong man can with safety recede at the outset, and that an act of concession which, coming from a master mind, is interpreted as one of noble magnanimity, will be scornfully snatched from a nerveless hand as a sign of timorous complaisance. But the public statements and the secret avowals of our leaders show that they wished "to try the experiment of peace," now that France had returned to ordinary political conditions and Jacobinism was curbed by Bonaparte. "Perhaps," wrote Castlereagh, "France, satisfied with her recent acquisitions, will find her interest in that system of internal improvement which is necessarily connected with peace."[185] There is no reason for doubting the sincerity of this statement. Our policy was distinctly and continuously complaisant: France regained her colonies: she was not required to withdraw from Switzerland and Holland. Who could expect, from what was then known of Bonaparte's character, that a peace so fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French honour and his own ambition?

Peace, then, was an "experiment." The British Government wished to see whether France would turn from revolution and war to agriculture and commerce, whether her young ruler be satisfied with a position of grandeur and solid power such as Louis XIV. had rarely enjoyed. Alas! the failure of the experiment was patent to all save the blandest optimists long before the Preliminaries of London took form in the definitive Treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte's aim now was to keep our Government strictly to the provisional terms of peace which it had imprudently signed. Even before the negotiations were opened at Amiens, he ordered Joseph Bonaparte to listen to no proposal concerning the King of Sardinia and the ex-Stadholder of Holland, and asserted that the "internal affairs of the Batavian Republic, of Germany, of Helvetia, and of the Italian Republics" were "absolutely alien to the discussions with England." This implied that England was to be shut out from Continental politics, and that France was to regulate the affairs of central and southern Europe. This observance of the letter was, however, less rigid where French colonial and maritime interests were at stake. Dextrous feelers were put forth seawards, and it was only when these were repulsed that the French negotiators encased themselves in their preliminaries.

The task of reducing those articles to a definitive treaty devolved, on the British side, on the Marquis Cornwallis, a gouty, world-weary old soldier, chiefly remembered for the surrender which ended the American War. Nevertheless, he had everywhere won respect for his personal probity in the administration of Indian affairs, and there must also have been some convincing qualities in a personality which drew from Napoleon at St. Helena the remark: "I do not believe that Cornwallis was a man of first-rate abilities: but he had talent, great probity, sincerity, and never broke his word.... He was a man of honour—a true Englishman."

Against Lord Cornwallis, and his far abler secretary, Mr. Merry, were pitted Joseph Bonaparte and his secretaries. The abilities of the eldest of the Bonapartes have been much underrated. Though he lacked the masterful force and wide powers of his second brother, yet at Luneville Joseph proved himself to be an able diplomatist, and later on in his tenure of power at Naples and Madrid he displayed no small administrative gifts. Moreover, his tact and kindliness kindled in all who knew him a warmth of friendship such as Napoleon's sterner qualities rarely inspired. The one was loved as a man: for the other, even his earlier acquaintances felt admiration and devotion, but always mingled with a certain fear of the demi-god that would at times blaze forth. This was the dread personality that urged Talleyrand and Joseph Bonaparte to their utmost endeavours and steeled them against any untoward complaisance at Amiens.

The selection of so honourable a man as Cornwallis afforded no slight guarantee for the sincerity of our Government, and its sincerity will stand the test of a perusal of its despatches. Having examined all those that deal with these negotiations, the present writer can affirm that the official instructions were in no respect modified by the secret injunctions: these referred merely to such delicate and personal topics as the evacuation of Hanover by Prussian troops and the indemnities to be sought for the House of Orange and the House of Savoy. The circumstances of these two dispossessed dynasties were explained so as to show that the former Dutch Stadholder had a very strong claim on us, as well as on France and the Batavian Republic; while the championship of the House of Savoy by the Czar rendered the claims of that ancient family on the intervention of George III. less direct and personal than those of the Prince of Orange. Indeed, England would have insisted on the insertion of a clause to this effect in the preliminaries had not other arrangements been on foot at Berlin which promised to yield due compensation to this unfortunate prince. Doubtless the motives of the British Ministers were good, but their failure to insert such a clause fatally prejudiced their case all through the negotiations at Amiens.

The British official declaration respecting Malta was clear and practical. The island was to be restored to the Knights of the Order of St. John and placed under the protection of a third Power other than France and England. But the reconstitution of the Order was no less difficult than the choice of a strong and disinterested protecting Power. Lord Hawkesbury proposed that Russia be the guaranteeing Power. No proposal could have been more reasonable. The claims of the Czar to the protectorate of the Order had been so recently asserted by a treaty with the knights that no other conclusion seemed feasible. And, in order to assuage the grievances of the islanders and strengthen the rule of the knights, the British Ministry desired that the natives of Malta should gain a foothold in the new constitution. The lack of civil and political rights had contributed so materially to the overthrow of the Order that no reconstruction of that shattered body could be deemed intelligent, or even honest, which did not cement its interests with those of the native Maltese. The First Consul, however, at once demurred to both these proposals. In the course of a long interview with Cornwallis at Paris,[186] he adverted to the danger of bringing Russia's maritime pressure to bear on Mediterranean questions, especially as her sovereigns "had of late shown themselves to be such unsteady politicians." This of course referred to the English proclivities of Alexander I., and it is clear that Bonaparte's annoyance with Alexander was the first unsettling influence which prevented the solution of the Maltese question. The First Consul also admitted to Cornwallis that the King of Naples, despite his ancient claims of suzerainty over Malta, could not be considered a satisfactory guarantor, as between two Great Powers; and he then proposed that the tangle should be cut by blowing up the fortifications of Valetta.

The mere suggestion of such an act affords eloquent proof of the difficulties besetting the whole question. To destroy works of vast extent, which were the bulwark of Christendom against the Barbary pirates, would practically have involved the handing over of Valetta to those pests of the Mediterranean; and from Malta as a new base of operations they could have spread devastation along the coasts of Sicily and Italy. This was the objection which Cornwallis at once offered to an other-wise specious proposal: he had recently received papers from Major-General Pigot at Malta, in which the same solution of the question was examined in detail. The British officer pointed out that the complete dismantling of the fortifications would expose the island, and therefore the coasts of Italy, to the rovers; yet he suggested a partial demolition, which seems to prove that the British officers in command at Malta did not contemplate the retention of the island and the infraction of the peace.

Our Government, however, disapproved of the destruction of the fortifications of Valetta as wounding the susceptibilities of the Czar, and as in no wise rendering impossible the seizure of the island and the reconstruction of those works by some future invader. In fact, as the British Ministry now aimed above all at maintaining good relations with the Czar, Bonaparte's proposal could only be regarded as an ingenious device for sundering the Anglo-Russian understanding. The French Minister at St. Petersburg was doing his utmost to prevent the rapprochement of the Czar to the Court of St James, and was striving to revive the moribund league of the Armed Neutrals. That last offer had "been rejected in the most peremptory manner and in terms almost bordering upon derision." Still there was reason to believe that the former Anglo-Russian disputes about Malta might be so far renewed as to bring Bonaparte and Alexander to an understanding. The sentimental Liberalism of the young Czar predisposed him towards a French alliance, and his whole disposition inclined him towards the brilliant opportunism of Paris rather than the frigid legitimacy of the Court of St. James. The Maltese affair and the possibility of reopening the Eastern Question were the two sources of hope to the promoters of a Franco-Russian alliance; for both these questions appealed to the chivalrous love of adventure and to the calculating ambition so curiously blent in Alexander's nature. Such, then, was the motive which doubtless prompted Bonaparte's proposal concerning Valetta; such also were the reasons which certainly dictated its rejection by Great Britain.

In his interview with the First Consul at Paris, and in the subsequent negotiations at Amiens with Joseph Bonaparte, the question of Tobago and England's money claim for the support of French prisoners was found to be no less thorny than that of Malta. The Bonapartes firmly rejected the proposal for the retention of Tobago by England in lieu of her pecuniary demand. A Government which neglected to procure the insertion of its claim to Tobago among the Preliminaries of London could certainly not hope to regain that island in exchange for a concession to France that was in any degree disputable. But the two Bonapartes and Talleyrand now took their stand solely on the preliminaries, and politely waved on one side the earlier promises of M. Otto as unauthorized and invalid, They also closely scrutinized the British claim to an indemnity for the support of French prisoners. Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, which was urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave yet incisive irony. They suggested that the claim must be considered in relation to a counter-claim, soon to be sent from Paris, for the maintenance of all prisoners taken by the French from the various forces subsidized by Great Britain, a charge which "would probably not leave a balance so much in favour of His [Britannic] Majesty as His Government may have looked forward to." This retort was not so terrible as it appeared; for most of the papers necessary for the making up of the French counterclaim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution. Yet the threat told with full effect on Cornwallis, who thereafter referred to the British claim as a "hopeless debt."[187] The officials of Downing Street drew a distinction between prisoners from armies merely subsidized by us and those taken from foreign forces actually under our control; but it is clear that Cornwallis ceased to press the claim. In fact, the British case was mismanaged from beginning to end: the accounts for the maintenance of French and Dutch prisoners were, in the first instance, wrongly drawn up; and there seems to have been little or no notion of the seriousness of the counter-claim, which came with all the effect of a volley from a masked battery, destructive alike to our diplomatic reputation and to our hope of retaining Tobago.

It is impossible to refer here to all the topics discussed at Amiens. The determination of the French Government to adopt a forward colonial and oceanic policy is clearly seen in its proposals made at the close of the year 1801. They were: (1) the abolition of salutes to the British flag on the high seas; (2) an absolute ownership of the eastern and western coasts of Newfoundland in return for a proposed cession of the isles of St. Pierre and Miquelon to us—which would have practically ceded to France in full sovereignty all the best fishing coasts of that land, with every prospect of settling the interior, in exchange for two islets devastated by war and then in British hands; (3) the right of the French to a share in the whale fishery in those seas; (4) the establishment of a French fishing station in the Falkland Isles; and (5) the extension of the French districts around the towns of Yanaon and Mahe in India.[188] To all these demands Lord Cornwallis opposed an unbending opposition. Weak as our policy had been on other affairs, it was firm as a rock on all maritime and Indian questions. In fact, the events to be described in the next chapter, which led to the consolidation of British power in Hindostan, would in all probability never have occurred but for the apprehensions excited by these French demands; and our masterful proconsul in Bengal, the Marquis Wellesley, could not have pursued his daring and expensive schemes of conquest, annexation, and forced alliances, had not the schemes of the First Consul played into the hands of the soldiers at Calcutta and weakened the protests of the dividend-hunters of Leadenhall Street.

The persistence of French demands for an increase of influence in Newfoundland and the West and East Indies, the vastness of her expedition to Saint Domingo and the thinly-veiled designs of her Australian expedition (which we shall notice in the next chapter), all served to awaken the suspicions of the British Government. The negotiations consequently progressed but slowly. From the outset they were clogged by the suspicion of bad faith. Spain and Holland, smarting under the conditions of a peace which gave to France all the glory and to her allies all the loss, delayed sending their respective envoys to the conferences at Amiens, and finally avowed their determination to resist the surrender of Trinidad and Ceylon. In fact, pressure had to be exerted from Paris and London before they yielded to the inevitable. This difficulty was only one of several: there then remained the questions whether Portugal and Turkey should be admitted to share in the treaty, as England demanded; or whether they should sign a separate peace with France. The First Consul strenuously insisted on the exclusion of those States, though their interests were vitally affected by the present negotiations, He saw that a separate treaty with the Sublime Porte would enable him, not only to extract valuable trading concessions in the Black Sea trade, but also to cement a good understanding with Russia on the Eastern Question, which was now being adroitly reopened by French diplomacy. Against the exclusion of Turkey from the negotiations at Amiens, Great Britain firmly but vainly protested. In fact, Talleyrand had bound the Porte to a separate agreement which promised everything for France and nothing for Turkey, and seemed to doom the Sublime Porte to certain humiliation and probable partition.[189]

Then there were the vexed questions of the indemnities claimed by George III. for the Houses of Orange and of Savoy. In his interview with Cornwallis, Bonaparte had effusively promised to do his utmost for the ex-Stadholder, though he refused to consider the case of the King of Sardinia, who, he averred, had offended him by appealing to the Czar. The territorial interests of France in Italy doubtless offered a more potent argument to the First Consul: after practically annexing Piedmont and dominating the peninsula, he could ill brook the presence on the mainland of a king whom he had already sacrificed to his astute and masterful policy. The case of the Prince of Orange was different. He was a victim to the triumph of French and democratic influence in the Dutch Netherlands. George III. felt a deep interest in this unfortunate prince and made a strong appeal to the better instincts of Bonaparte on his behalf. Indeed, it is probable that England had acquiesced in the consolidation of French influence at the Hague, in the hope that her complaisance would lead the First Consul to assure him some position worthy of so ancient a House. But though Cornwallis pressed the Batavian Republic on behalf of its exiled chief, yet the question was finally adjourned by the XVIIIth clause of the definitive Treaty of Amiens; and the scion of that famous House had to take his share in the forthcoming scramble for the clerical domains of Germany.[190]

For the still more difficult cause of the House of Savoy the British Government made honest but unavailing efforts, firmly refusing to recognize the newest creations of Bonaparte in Italy, namely, the Kingdom of Etruria and the Ligurian Republic, until he indemnified the House of Savoy. Our recognition was withheld for the reasons that prompt every bargainer to refuse satisfaction to his antagonist until an equal concession is accorded. This game was played by both Powers at Amiens, and with little other result than mutual exasperation. Yet here, too, the balance of gain naturally accrued to Bonaparte; for he required the British Ministry to recognize existing facts in Etruria and Liguria, while Cornwallis had to champion the cause of exiles and of an order that seemed for ever to have vanished. To pit the non-existent against the actual was a task far above the powers of British statesmanship; yet that was to be its task for the next decade, while the forces of the living present were to be wielded by its mighty antagonist. Herein lay the secret of British failures and of Napoleon's extraordinary triumphs.

Leaving, for a space, the negotiations at Amiens, we turn to consider the events which transpired at Lyons in the early weeks of 1802, events which influenced not only the future of Italy, but the fortunes of Bonaparte.

It will be remembered that, after the French victories of Marengo and Hohenlinden, Austria agreed to terms of peace whereby the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic, and Batavian Republics were formally recognized by her, though a clause expressly stipulated that they were to be independent of France. A vain hope! They continued to be under French tutelage, and their strongholds in the possession of French troops.

It now remained to legalize French supremacy in the Cisalpine Republic, which comprised the land between the Ticino and the Adige, and the Alps and the Rubicon. The new State received a provisional form of government after Marengo, a small council being appointed to supervise civil affairs at the capital, Milan. With it and with Marescalchi, the Cisalpine envoy at Paris, Bonaparte had concerted a constitution, or rather he had used these men as a convenient screen to hide its purely personal origin. Having, for form's sake, consulted the men whom he had himself appointed, he now suggested that the chief citizens of that republic should confer with him respecting their new institutions. His Minister at Milan thereupon proposed that they should cross the Alps for that purpose, assembling, not at Paris, where their dependence on the First Consul's will might provoke too much comment, but at Lyons. To that city, accordingly, there repaired some 450 of the chief men of Northern Italy, who braved the snows of a most rigorous December, in the hope of consolidating the liberties of their long-distracted country. And thus was seen the strange spectacle of the organization of Lombardy, Modena, and the Legations being effected in one provincial centre of France, while at another of her cities the peace of Europe and the fortunes of two colonial empires were likewise at stake. Such a conjunction of events might well impress the imagination of men, bending the stubborn will of the northern islanders, and moulding the Italian notables to complete complaisance. And yet, such power was there in the nascent idea of Italian nationality, that Bonaparte's proposals, which, in his absence, were skilfully set forth by Talleyrand, met with more than one rebuff from the Consulta at Lyons.

Bitterly it opposed the declaration that the Roman Catholic religion was the religion of the Cisalpine Republic and must be maintained by a State budget. Only the first part of this proposal could be carried: so keen was the opposition to the second part that, as a preferable plan, property was set apart for the support of the clergy; and clerical discipline was subjected to the State, on terms somewhat similar to those of the French Concordat.[191]

Secular affairs gave less trouble. The apparent success of the French constitution furnished a strong motive for adopting one of a similar character for the Italian State; and as the proposed institutions had been approved at Milan, their acceptance by a large and miscellaneous body was a foregone conclusion. Talleyrand also took the most unscrupulous care that the affair of the Presidency should be judiciously settled. On December 31st, 1801, he writes to Bonaparte from Lyons:

"The opinion of the Cisalpines seems not at all decided as to the choice to be made: they will gladly receive the man whom you nominate: a President in France and a Vice-President at Milan would suit a large number of them."

Four days later he confidently assures the First Consul:

"They will do what you want without your needing even to show your desire. What they think you desire will immediately become law."[192]

The ground having been thus thoroughly worked, Bonaparte and Josephine, accompanied by a brilliant suite, arrived at Lyons on January 11th, and met with an enthusiastic reception. Despite the intense cold, followed by a sudden thaw, a brilliant series of fetes, parades, and receptions took place; and several battalions of the French Army of Egypt, which had recently been conveyed home on English ships, now passed in review before their chief. The impressionable Italians could not mistake the aim of these demonstrations; and, after general matters had been arranged by the notables, the final measures were relegated to a committee of thirty. The desirability of this step was obvious, for urgent protests had already been raised in the Consulta against the appointment of a foreigner as President of the new State. When a hubbub arose on this burning topic:

"Some officers of the regiments in garrison at Lyons appeared in the hall and imposed silence upon all parties. Notwithstanding this, Count Melzi was actually chosen President by the majority of the Committee of Thirty; but he declined the honour, and suggested in significant terms that, to enable him to render any service to the country, the committee had better fix upon General Bonaparte as their Chief Magistrate. This being done, Bonaparte immediately appointed Count Melzi Vice-President."[193]

Bonaparte's determination to fill this important position is clearly seen in his correspondence. On the 2nd and 4th of Pluviose (January 22nd and 24th), he writes from Lyons:

"All the principal affairs of the Consulta are settled. I count on being back at Paris in the course of the decade."

"To-morrow I shall review the troops from Egypt. On the 6th [of Pluviose] all the business of the Consulta will be finished, and I shall probably set out on my journey on the 7th."

The next day, 5th Pluviose, sees the accomplishment of his desires:

"To-day I have reviewed the troops on the Place Bellecour; the sun shone as it does in Floreal. The Consulta has named a committee of thirty individuals, which has reported to it that, considering the domestic and foreign affairs of the Cisalpine, it was indispensable to let me discharge the first magistracy, until circumstances permit and I judge it suitable to appoint a successor."

These extracts prove that the acts of the Consulta could be planned beforehand no less precisely than the movements of the soldiery, and that even so complex a matter as the voting of a constitution and the choice of its chief had to fall in with the arrangements of this methodizing genius. Certainly civilization had progressed since the weary years when the French people groped through mists and waded in blood in order to gain a perfect polity: that precious boon was now conferred on a neighbouring people in so sure a way that the plans of their benefactor could be infallibly fixed and his return to Paris calculated to the hour.

The final address uttered by Bonaparte to the Italian notables is remarkable for the short, sharp sentences, which recall the tones of the parade ground. Passing recent events in rapid review, he said, speaking in his mother tongue:

"...Every effort had been made to dismember you: the protection of France won the day: you have been recognized at Luneville. One-fifth larger than before, you are now more powerful, more consolidated, and have wider hopes. Composed of six different nations, you will be now united under a constitution the best possible for your social and material condition. ... The selections I have made for your chief offices have been made independently of all idea of party or feeling of locality. As for that of President, I have found no one among you with sufficient claims on public opinion, sufficiently free from local feelings, and who had rendered great enough services to his country, to intrust it to him.... Your people has only local feelings: it must now rise to national feelings."

In accordance with this last grand and prophetic remark, the name Italian was substituted for that of Cisalpine: and thus, for the first time since the Middle Ages, there reappeared on the map of Europe that name, which was to evoke the sneers of diplomatists and the most exalted patriotism of the century. If Bonaparte had done naught else, he would deserve immortal glory for training the divided peoples of the peninsula for a life of united activity.

The new constitution was modelled on that of France; but the pretence of a democratic suffrage was abandoned. The right of voting was accorded to three classes, the great proprietors, the clerics and learned men, and the merchants. These, meeting in their several "Electoral Colleges," voted for the members of the legislative bodies; a Tribunal was also charged with the maintenance of the constitution. By these means Bonaparte endeavoured to fetter the power of the reactionaries no less than the anti-clerical fervour of the Italian Jacobins. The blending of the new and the old which then began shows the hand of the master builder, who neither sweeps away materials merely because they are old, nor rejects the strength that comes from improved methods of construction: and, however much we may question the disinterestedness of his motives in this great enterprise, there can be but one opinion as to the skill of the methods and the beneficence of the results in Italy.[194]



The first step in the process of Italian unification had now been taken at Lyons. A second soon followed. The affairs of the Ligurian Republic were in some confusion; and an address came from Genoa begging that their differences might be composed by the First Consul. The spontaneity of this offer may well be questioned, seeing that Bonaparte found it desirable, in his letter of February 18th, 1802, to assure the Ligurian authorities that they need feel no disquietude as to the independence of their republic. Bonaparte undertook to alter their constitution and nominate their Doge.

That the news of the events at Lyons excited the liveliest indignation in London is evident from Hawkesbury's despatch of February 12th, 1802, to Cornwallis:

"The proceedings at Lyons have created the greatest alarm in this country, and there are many persons who were pacifically disposed, who since this event are desirous of renewing the war. It is impossible to be surprised at this feeling when we consider the inordinate ambition, the gross breach of faith, and the inclination to insult Europe manifested by the First Consul on this occasion. The Government here are desirous of avoiding to take notice of these proceedings, and are sincerely desirous to conclude the peace, if it can be obtained on terms consistent with our honour."

Why the Government should have lagged behind the far surer instincts of English public opinion it is difficult to say. Hawkesbury's despatch of four days later supplies an excuse for his contemptible device of pretending not to see this glaring violation of the Treaty of Luneville. Referring to the events at Lyons, he writes:

"Extravagant and unjustifiable as they are in themselves, [they] must have led us to believe that the First Consul would have been more anxious than ever to have closed his account with this country."

Doubtless that was the case, but only on condition that England remained passive while French domination was extended over all neighbouring lands. If our Ministers believed that Bonaparte feared the displeasure of Austria, they were completely in error. Thanks to the utter weakness of the European system, and the rivalry of Austria and Prussia, he was now able to concentrate his ever-increasing power and prestige on the negotiations at Amiens, which once more claim our attention.

Far from being sated by the prestige gained at Lyons, he seemed to grow more exacting with victory. Moreover, he had been cut to the quick by some foolish articles of a French emigre named Peltier, in a paper published at London: instead of treating them with the contempt they deserved, he magnified these ravings of a disappointed exile into an event of high policy, and fulminated against the Government which allowed them. In vain did Cornwallis object that the Addington Cabinet could not venture on the unpopular act of curbing freedom of the Press in Great Britain. The First Consul, who had experienced no such difficulty in France, persisted now, as a year later, in considering every uncomplimentary reference to himself as an indirect and semiofficial attack.

To these causes we may attribute the French demands of February 4th: contradicting his earlier proposal for a temporary Neapolitan garrison of Malta, Bonaparte now absolutely refused either to grant that necessary protection to the weak Order of St. John, or to join Great Britain in an equal share of the expenses—L20,000 a year—which such a garrison would entail. The astonishment and indignation aroused at Downing Street nearly led to an immediate rupture of the negotiations; and it needed all the patience of Cornwallis and the suavity of Joseph Bonaparte to smooth away the asperities caused by Napoleon's direct intervention. It needs only a slight acquaintance with the First Consul's methods of thought and expression to recognize in the Protocol of February 4th the incisive speech of an autocrat confident in his newly-consolidated powers and irritated by the gibes of Peltier.[195]

The good sense of the two plenipotentiaries at Amiens before long effected a reconciliation. Hawkesbury, writing from Downing Street, warned Cornwallis that if a rupture were to take place it must not be owing to "any impatience on our part": and he, in his turn, affably inquired from Joseph Bonaparte whether he had any more practicable plan than that of a Neapolitan garrison, which he had himself proposed. No plan was forthcoming other than that of a garrison of 1,000 Swiss mercenaries; and as this was open to grave objections, the original proposal was finally restored. On its side, the Court of St. James still refused to blow up the fortifications at Valetta; and rather than destroy those works, England had already offered that the independence of Malta should be guaranteed by the Great Powers—Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, Spain, and Prussia: to this arrangement France soon assented. Later on we demanded that the Neapolitan garrison should remain in Malta for three years after the evacuation of the island by the British troops; whereas France desired to limit the period to one year. To this Cornwallis finally assented, with the proviso that, "if the Order of St. John shall not have raised a sufficient number of men, the Neapolitan troops shall remain until they shall be relieved by an adequate force, to be agreed upon by the guaranteeing Powers." The question of the garrison having been arranged, other details gave less trouble, and the Maltese question was settled in the thirteen conditions added to Clause X. of the definitive treaty.

Though this complex question was thus adjusted by March 17th, other matters delayed a settlement.



Hawkesbury still demanded a definite indemnity for the Prince of Orange, but Cornwallis finally assented to Article XVIII. of the treaty, which vaguely promised "an adequate compensation." Cornwallis also persuaded his chief to waive his claims for the direct participation of Turkey in the treaty. The British demand for an indemnity for the expense of supporting French prisoners was to be relegated to commissioners—who never met. Indeed, this was the only polite way of escaping from the untenable position which our Government had heedlessly taken upon this topic.

It is clear from the concluding despatches of Cornwallis that he was wheedled by Joseph Bonaparte into conceding more than the British Government had empowered him to do; and, though the "secret and most confidential" despatch of March 22nd cautioned him against narrowing too much the ground of a rupture, if a rupture should still occur, yet three days later, and after the receipt of this despatch, he signed the terms of peace with Joseph Bonaparte, and two days later with the other signatory Powers.[196] It may well be doubted whether peace would ever have been signed but for the skill of Joseph Bonaparte in polite cajolery and the determination of Cornwallis to arrive at an understanding. In any case the final act of signature was distinctly the act, not of the British Government, but of its plenipotentiary.

That fact is confirmed by his admission, on March 28th, that he had yielded where he was ordered to remain inflexible. At St. Helena, Napoleon also averred that after Cornwallis had definitely pledged himself to sign the treaty as it stood on the night of March 24th, he received instructions in a contrary sense from Downing Street; that nevertheless he held himself bound by his promise and signed the treaty on the following day, observing that his Government, if dissatisfied, might refuse to ratify it, but that, having pledged his word, he felt bound to abide by it. This story seems consonant with the whole behaviour of Cornwallis, so creditable to him as a man, so damaging to him as a diplomatist. The later events of the negotiation aroused much annoyance at Downing Street, and the conduct of Cornwallis met with chilling disapproval.

The First Consul, on the other hand, showed his appreciation of his brother's skill with unusual warmth; for when they appeared together at the opera in Paris, he affectionately thrust his elder brother to the front of the State box to receive the plaudits of the audience at the advent of a definite peace. That was surely the purest and noblest joy which the brothers ever tasted.

With what feelings of pride, not unmixed with awe, must the brothers have surveyed their career. Less than nine years had elapsed since their family fled from Corsica, and landed on the coast of Provence, apparently as bankrupt in their political hopes as in their material fortunes. Thrice did the fickle goddess cast Napoleon to the ground in the first two years of his new life, only that his wondrous gifts and sublime self-confidence might tower aloft the more conspicuously, bewildering alike the malcontents of Paris, the generals of the old Empire, the peoples of the Levant, and the statesmen of Britain. Of all these triumphs assuredly the last was not the least. The Peace of Amiens left France the arbitress of Europe, and, by restoring to her all her lost colonies, it promised to place her in the van of the oceanic and colonizing peoples.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XV

A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE

ST. DOMINGO—LOUISIANA—INDIA—AUSTRALIA

"Il n'y a rien dans l'histoire du monde de comparable aux forces navales de l'Angleterre, a l'etendue et a la richesse de son commerce, a la masse de ses dettes, de ses defenses, de ses moyens, et a la fragilite des bases sur lesquelles repose l'edifice immense de sa fortune."—BARON MALOUET, Considerations historiques sur l'Empire de la Mer.

There are abundant reasons for thinking that Napoleon valued the Peace of Amiens as a necessary preliminary to the restoration of the French Colonial Empire. A comparison of the dates at which he set on foot his oceanic schemes will show that they nearly all had their inception in the closing months of 1801 and in the course of the following year. The sole important exceptions were the politico-scientific expedition to Australia, the ostensible purpose of which insured immunity from the attacks of English cruisers even in the year 1800, and the plans for securing French supremacy in Egypt, which had been frustrated in 1801 and were, to all appearance, abandoned by the First Consul according to the provisions of the Treaty of Amiens. The question whether he really relinquished his designs on Egypt is so intimately connected with the rupture of the Peace of Amiens that it will be more fitly considered in the following chapter. It may not, however, be out of place to offer some proofs as to the value which Bonaparte set on the valley of the Nile and the Isthmus of Suez. A letter from a spy at Paris, preserved in the archives of our Foreign Office, and dated July 10th, 1801, contains the following significant statement with reference to Bonaparte: "Egypt, which is considered here as lost to France, is the only object which interests his personal ambition and excites his revenge." Even at the end of his days, he thought longingly of the land of the Pharaohs. In his first interview with the governor of St. Helena, the illustrious exile said emphatically: "Egypt is the most important country in the world." The words reveal a keen perception of all the influences conducive to commercial prosperity and imperial greatness. Egypt, in fact, with the Suez Canal, which his imagination always pictured as a necessary adjunct, was to be the keystone of that arch of empire which was to span the oceans and link the prairies of the far west to the teeming plains of India and the far Austral Isles.

The motives which impelled Napoleon to the enterprises now to be considered were as many-sided as the maritime ventures themselves. Ultimately, doubtless, they arose out of a love of vast undertakings that ministered at once to an expanding ambition and to that need of arduous administrative toils for which his mind ever craved in the heyday of its activity. And, while satiating the grinding powers of his otherwise morbidly restless spirit, these enterprises also fed and soothed those imperious, if unconscious, instincts which prompt every able man of inquiring mind to reclaim all possible domains from the unknown or the chaotic. As Egypt had, for the present at least, been reft from his grasp, he turned naturally to all other lands that could be forced to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and the coasts of New Holland.

The peculiarities of the condition of France furnished another powerful impulse towards colonization. In the last decade her people had suffered from an excess of mental activity and nervous excitement. From philosophical and political speculation they must be brought back to the practical and prosaic; and what influence could be so healthy as the turning up of new soil and other processes that satisfy the primitive instincts? Some of these, it was true, were being met by the increasing peasant proprietary in France herself. But this internal development, salutary as it was, could not appease the restless spirits of the towns or the ambition of the soldiery. Foreign adventures and oceanic commerce alone could satisfy the Parisians and open up new careers for the Praetorian chiefs, whom the First Consul alone really feared.

Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a paper which Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective nation. His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight into the maladies of his own people and the sources of social and political strength enjoyed by the United States, where he had recently sojourned. Referring to their speedy recovery from the tumults of their revolution, he said: "The true Lethe after passing through a revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of every avenue of hope.—Revolutions leave behind them a general restlessness of mind, a need of movement." That need was met in America by man's warfare against the forest, the flood, and the prairie. France must therefore possess colonies as intellectual and political safety-valves; and in his graceful, airy style he touched on the advantages offered by Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, both for their intrinsic value and as opening the door of work and of hope to a brain-sick generation.

Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat later date, remarked the tendency of the French people, now that the revolutionary strifes were past, to settle down contentedly on their own little plots; and he emphasized the need of a colonial policy such as would widen the national life. The remark has been largely justified by events; and doubtless he discerned in the agrarian reforms of the Revolution an influence unfavourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances of the ancien regime had helped to scatter on the shores of the St. Lawrence the seeds of a possible New France. Primogeniture was ever driving from England her younger sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her rather strive to regain the first place in colonial activity which the follies of Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds of civilization, lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy military and naval adventures, and unconsciously revert to the ideas and governmental methods of the age of le grand monarque.

The French possessions beyond the seas had never shrunk to a smaller area than in the closing years of the late war with England. The fact was confessed by the First Consul in his letter of October 7th, 1801, to Decres, the Minister for the Navy and the Colonies: "Our possessions beyond the sea, which are now in our power, are limited to Saint Domingo, Guadeloupe, the Isle of France (Mauritius), the Isle of Bourbon, Senegal, and Guiana." After rendering this involuntary homage to the prowess of the British navy, Bonaparte proceeded to describe the first measures for the organization of these colonies: for not until March 25th, 1802, when the definitive treaty of peace was signed, could the others be regained by France.

* * * * *

First in importance came the re-establishment of French authority in the large and fertile island of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It needs an effort of the imagination for the modern reader to realize the immense importance of the West Indian islands at the beginning of the century, whose close found them depressed and half bankrupt. At the earlier date, when the name Australia was unknown, and the half-starved settlement in and around Sydney represented the sole wealth of that isle of continent; when the Cape of Good Hope was looked on only as a port of call; when the United States numbered less than five and a half million souls, and the waters of the Mississippi rolled in unsullied majesty past a few petty Spanish stations—the plantations of the West Indies seemed the unfailing mine of colonial industry and commerce. Under the ancien regime, the trade of the French portion of San Domingo is reported to have represented more than half of her oceanic commerce. But during the Revolution the prosperity of that colony reeled under a terrible blow.

The hasty proclamation of equality between whites and blacks by the French revolutionists, and the refusal of the planters to recognize that decree as binding, led to a terrible servile revolt, which desolated the whole of the colony. Those merciless strifes had, however, somewhat abated under the organizing power of a man, in whom the black race seemed to have vindicated its claims to political capacity. Toussaint l'Ouverture had come to the front by sheer sagacity and force of character. By a deft mixture of force and clemency, he imposed order on the vapouring crowds of negroes: he restored the French part of the island to comparative order and prosperity; and with an army of 20,000 men he occupied the Spanish portion. In this, as in other matters, he appeared to act as the mandatory of France; but he looked to the time when France, beset by European wars, would tacitly acknowledge his independence. In May, 1801, he made a constitution for the island, and declared himself governor for life, with power to appoint his successor. This mimicry of the consular office, and the open vaunt that he was the "Bonaparte of the Antilles," incensed Bonaparte; and the haste with which, on the day after the Preliminaries of London, he prepared to overthrow this contemptible rival, tells its own tale.

Yet Corsican hatred was tempered with Corsican guile. Toussaint had requested that the Haytians should be under the protection of their former mistress. Protection was the last thing that Bonaparte desired; but he deemed it politic to flatter the black chieftain with assurances of his personal esteem and gratitude for the "great services which you have rendered to the French people. If its flag floats over St. Domingo it is due to you and your brave blacks"—a reference to Toussaint's successful resistance to English attempts at landing. There were, it is true, some points in the new Haytian constitution which contravened the sovereign rights of France, but these were pardonable in the difficult circumstances which had pressed on Toussaint: he was now, however, invited to amend them so as to recognize the complete sovereignty of the motherland and the authority of General Leclerc, whom Bonaparte sent out as captain-general of the island. To this officer, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, the First Consul wrote on the same day that there was reported to be much ferment in the island against Toussaint, that the obstacles to be overcome would therefore be much less formidable than had been feared, provided that activity and firmness were used. In his references to the burning topic of slavery, the First Consul showed a similar reserve. The French Republic having abolished it, he could not, as yet, openly restore an institution flagrantly opposed to the Rights of Man. Ostensibly therefore he figured as the champion of emancipation, assuring the Haytians in his proclamation of November 8th, 1801, that they were all free and all equal in the sight of God and of the French Republic: "If you are told, 'These forces are destined to snatch your liberty from you,' reply, 'The Republic has given us our liberty: it will not allow it to be taken from us.'" Of a similar tenor was his public declaration a fortnight later, that at St. Domingo and Guadeloupe everybody was free and would remain free. Very different were his private instructions. On the last day of October he ordered Talleyrand to write to the British Government, asking for their help in supplying provisions from Jamaica to this expedition destined to "destroy the new Algiers being organized in American waters"; and a fortnight later he charged him to state his resolve to destroy the government of the blacks at St. Domingo; that if he had to postpone the expedition for a year, he would be "obliged to constitute the blacks as French"; and that "the liberty of the blacks, if recognized by the Government, would always be a support for the Republic in the New World." As he was striving to cajole our Government into supporting his expedition, it is clear that in the last enigmatic phrase he was bidding for that support by the hint of a prospective restoration of slavery at St. Domingo. A comparison of his public and private statements must have produced a curious effect on the British Ministers, and many of the difficulties during the negotiations at Amiens doubtless sprang out of their knowledge of his double-dealing in the West Indies.

The means at the First Consul's disposal might have been considered sufficient to dispense with these paltry devices; for when the squadrons of Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, and Toulon had joined their forces, they mustered thirty-two ships of the line and thirty-one frigates, with more than 20,000 troops on board. So great, indeed, was the force as to occasion strong remonstrances from the British Government, and a warning that a proportionately strong fleet would be sent to watch over the safety of our West Indies.[197] The size of the French armada and the warnings which Toussaint received from Europe induced that wily dictator to adopt stringent precautionary measures. He persuaded the blacks that the French were about to enslave them once more, and, raising the spectre of bondage, he quelled sedition, ravaged the maritime towns, and awaited the French in the interior, in confident expectation that yellow fever would winnow their ranks and reduce them to a level with his own strength.

His hopes were ultimately realized, but not until he himself succumbed to the hardihood of the French attack. Leclerc's army swept across the desolated belt with an ardour that was redoubled by the sight of the mangled remains of white people strewn amidst the negro encampments, and stormed Toussaint's chief stronghold at Crete-a-Pierrot. The dictator and his factious lieutenants thereupon surrendered (May 8th, 1802), on condition of their official rank being respected—a stipulation which both sides must have regarded as unreal and impossible. The French then pressed on to secure the subjection of the whole island before the advent of the unhealthy season, which Toussaint eagerly awaited. It now set in with unusual virulence; and in a few days the conquerors found their force reduced to 12,000 effectives. Suspecting Toussaint's designs, Leclerc seized him. He was empowered to do so by Bonaparte's orders of March 16th, 1802:

"Follow your instructions exactly, and as soon as you have done with Toussaint, Christopher, Dessalines, and the chief brigands, and the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send to the continent all the blacks and the half-castes who have taken part in the civil troubles."

Toussaint was hurried off to France, where he died a year later from the hardships to which he was exposed at the fort of Joux among the Juras.

Long before the cold of a French winter claimed the life of Toussaint, his antagonist fell a victim to the sweltering heats of the tropics. On November 2nd, 1802, Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and to his ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes dictated at St. Helena, Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to some strictures for his indiscretion in regard to the proposed restoration of slavery. The official letters of that officer expose the injustice of the charge. The facts are these. After the seeming submission of St. Domingo, the First Consul caused a decree to be secretly passed at Paris (May 20th, 1802), which prepared to re-establish slavery in the West Indies; but Decres warned Leclerc that it was not for the present to be applied to St. Domingo unless it seemed to be opportune. Knowing how fatal any such proclamation would be, Leclerc suppressed the decree; but General Richepanse, who was now governor of the island of Guadeloupe, not only issued the decree, but proceeded to enforce it with rigour. It was this which caused the last and most desperate revolts of the blacks, fatal alike to French domination and to Leclerc's life. His successor, Rochambeau, in spite of strong reinforcements of troops from France and a policy of the utmost rigour, succeeded no better. In the island of Guadeloupe the rebels openly defied the authority of France; and, on the renewal of war between England and France, the remains of the expedition were for the most part constrained to surrender to the British flag or to the insurgent blacks. The island recovered its so-called independence; and the sole result of Napoleon's efforts in this sphere was the loss of more than twenty generals and some 30,000 troops.

The assertion has been repeatedly made that the First Consul told off for this service the troops of the Army of the Rhine, with the aim of exposing to the risks of tropical life the most republican part of the French forces. That these furnished a large part of the expeditionary force cannot be denied; but if his design was to rid himself of political foes, it is difficult to see why he should not have selected Moreau, Massena, or Augereau, rather than Leclerc. The fact that his brother-in-law was accompanied by his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, for whom venomous tongues asserted that Napoleon cherished a more than brotherly affection, will suffice to refute the slander. Finally, it may be remarked that Bonaparte had not hesitated to subject the choicest part of his Army of Italy and his own special friends to similiar risks in Egypt and Syria. He never hesitated to sacrifice thousands of lives when a great object was at stake; and the restoration of the French West Indian Colonies might well seem worth an army, especially as St. Domingo was not only of immense instrinsic value to France in days when beetroot sugar was unknown, but was of strategic importance as a base of operations for the vast colonial empire which the First Consul proposed to rebuild in the basin of the Mississippi.

* * * * *

The history of the French possessions on the North American continent could scarcely be recalled by ardent patriots without pangs of remorse. The name Louisiana, applied to a vast territory stretching up the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri, recalled the glorious days of Louis XIV., when the French flag was borne by stout voyageurs up the foaming rivers of Canada and the placid reaches of the father of rivers. It had been the ambition of Montcalm to connect the French stations on Lake Erie with the forts of Louisiana; but that warrior-statesman in the West, as his kindred spirit, Dupleix, in the East, had fallen on the evil days of Louis XV., when valour and merit in the French colonies were sacrificed to the pleasures and parasites of Versailles. The natural result followed. Louisiana was yielded up to Spain in 1763, in order to reconcile the Court of Madrid to cessions required by that same Peace of Paris. Twenty years later Spain recovered from England the provinces of eastern and western Florida; and thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the red and yellow flag waved over all the lands between California, New Orleans, and the southern tip of Florida.[198]

Many efforts were made by France to regain her old Mississippi province; and in 1795, at the break up of the First Coalition, the victorious Republic pressed Spain to yield up this territory, where the settlers were still French at heart. Doubtless the weak King of Spain would have yielded; but his chief Minister, Godoy, clung tenaciously to Louisiana, and consented to cede only the Spanish part of St. Domingo—a diplomatic success which helped to earn him the title of the Prince of the Peace. So matters remained until Talleyrand, as Foreign Minister, sought to gain Louisiana from Spain before it slipped into the horny fists of the Anglo-Saxons.

That there was every prospect of this last event was the conviction not only of the politicians at Washington, but also of every iron-worker on the Ohio and of every planter on the Tennessee. Those young but growing settlements chafed against the restraints imposed by Spain on the river trade of the lower Mississippi—the sole means available for their exports in times when the Alleghanies were crossed by only two tracks worthy the name of roads. In 1795 they gained free egress to the Gulf of Mexico and the right of bonding their merchandise in a special warehouse at New Orleans. Thereafter the United States calmly awaited the time when racial vigour and the exigencies of commerce should yield to them the possession of the western prairies and the little townships of Arkansas and New Orleans. They reckoned without taking count of the eager longing of the French for their former colony and the determination of Napoleon to give effect to this honourable sentiment.

In July, 1800, when his negotiations with the United



States were in good train, the First Consul sent to Madrid instructions empowering the French Minister there to arrange a treaty whereby France should receive Louisiana in return for the cession of Tuscany to the heir of the Duke of Parma. This young man had married the daughter of Charles IV. of Spain; and, for the aggrandizement of his son-in-law, that roi faineant, was ready, nay eager, to bargain away a quarter of a continent; and he did so by a secret convention signed at St. Ildefonso on October 7th, 1800.

But though Charles rejoiced over this exchange, Godoy, who was gifted with some insight into the future, was determined to frustrate it. Various events occurred which enabled this wily Minister, first to delay, and then almost to prevent, the odious surrender. Chief among these was the certainty that the transfer from weak hands to strong hands would be passionately resented by the United States; and until peace with England was fully assured, and the power of Toussaint broken, it would be folly for the First Consul to risk a conflict with the United States. That they would fight rather than see the western prairies pass into the First Consul's hands was abundantly manifest. It is proved by many patriotic pamphlets. The most important of these—"An Address to the Government of the United States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French," published at Philadelphia in 1802—quoted largely from a French brochure by a French Councillor of State. The French writer had stated that along the Mississippi his countrymen would find boundless fertile prairies, and as for the opposition of the United States—"a nation of pedlars and shopkeepers"—that could be crushed by a French alliance with the Indian tribes. The American writer thereupon passionately called on his fellow-citizens to prevent this transfer: "France is to be dreaded only, or chiefly, on the Mississippi. The Government must take Louisiana before it passes into her hands. The iron is now hot: command us to rise as one man and strike." These and other like protests at last stirred the placid Government at Washington; and it bade the American Minister at Paris to make urgent remonstrances, the sole effect of which was to draw from Talleyrand the bland assurance that the transfer had not been seriously contemplated.[199]

By the month of June, 1802, all circumstances seemed to smile on Napoleon's enterprise: England had ratified the Peace of Amiens, Toussaint had delivered himself up to Leclerc: France had her troops strongly posted in Tuscany and Parma, and could, if necessary, forcibly end the remaining scruples felt at Madrid; while the United States, with a feeble army and a rotting navy, were controlled by the most peaceable and Franco-phil of their presidents, Thomas Jefferson. The First Consul accordingly ordered an expedition to be prepared, as if for the reinforcement of Leclerc in St. Domingo, though it was really destined for New Orleans; and he instructed Talleyrand to soothe or coerce the Court of Madrid into the final act of transfer. The offer was therefore made by the latter (June 19th) in the name of the First Consul that in no case would Louisiana ever be alienated to a Third Power. When further delays supervened, Bonaparte, true to his policy of continually raising his demands, required that Eastern and Western Florida should also be ceded to him by Spain, on condition that the young King of Etruria (for so Tuscany was now to be styled) should regain his father's duchy of Parma.[200]

A word of explanation must here find place as to this singular proposal. Parma had long been under French control; and, in March, 1801, by the secret Treaty of Madrid, the ruler of that duchy, whose death seemed imminent, was to resign his claims thereto, provided that his son should gain Etruria—as had been already provided for at St. Ildefonso and Luneville. The duke was, however, allowed to keep his duchy until his death, which occurred on October 9th, 1802; and it is stated by our envoy in Paris to have been hastened by news of that odious bargain.[201] His death now furnished Bonaparte with a good occasion for seeking to win an immense area in the New World at the expense of a small Italian duchy, which his troops could at any time easily overrun. This consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma. The re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as East and West Florida.

From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge our attention. Both Bonaparte and Charles IV. regarded the most fertile waste lands then calling for the plough as fairly exchanged against half a million of Tuscans; but the former feared the resentment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rupture until he could coerce them by overwhelming force. It is equally clear that, had he succeeded in this enterprise, France might have gained a great colonial empire in North America protected from St. Domingo as a naval and military base, while that island would have doubly prospered from the vast supplies poured down the Mississippi; but this success he would have bought at the expense of a rapprochement between the United States and their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to postpone to the end of the century.

The prospect of an Anglo-American alliance might well give pause even to Napoleon. Nevertheless, he resolved to complete this vast enterprise, which, if successful, would have profoundly affected the New World and the relative importance of the French and English peoples. The Spanish officials at New Orleans, in pursuance of orders from Madrid, now closed the lower Mississippi to vessels of the United States (October, 1802). At once a furious outcry arose in the States against an act which not only violated their treaty rights, but foreshadowed the coming grip of the First Consul. For this outburst he was prepared: General Victor was at Dunkirk, with five battalions and sixteen field-pieces, ready to cross the Atlantic, ostensibly for the relief of Leclerc, but really in order to take possession of New Orleans.[202] But his plan was foiled by the sure instincts of the American people, by the disasters of the St. Domingo expedition, and by the restlessness of England under his various provocations. Jefferson, despite his predilections for France, was compelled to forbid the occupation of Louisiana: he accordingly sent Monroe to Paris with instructions to effect a compromise, or even to buy outright the French claims on that land. Various circumstances favoured this mission. In the first week of the year 1803 Napoleon received the news of Leclerc's death and the miserable state of the French in St. Domingo; and as the tidings that he now received from Egypt, Syria, Corfu, and the East generally, were of the most alluring kind, he tacitly abandoned his Mississippi enterprise in favour of the oriental schemes which were closer to his heart. In that month of January he seems to have turned his gaze from the western hemisphere towards Turkey, Egypt, and India. True, he still seemed to be doing his utmost for the occupation of Louisiana, but only as a device for sustaining the selling price of the western prairies.

When the news of this change of policy reached the ears of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, it aroused their bitterest opposition. Lucien plumed himself on having struck the bargain with Spain which had secured that vast province at the expense of an Austrian archduke's crown; and Joseph knew only too well that Napoleon was freeing himself in the West in order to be free to strike hard in Europe and the East. The imminent rupture of the Peace of Amiens touched him keenly: for that peace was his proudest achievement. If colonial adventures must be sought, let them be sought in the New World, where Spain and the United States could offer only a feeble resistance, rather than in Europe and Asia, where unending war must be the result of an aggressive policy.

At once the brothers sought an interview with Napoleon. He chanced to be in his bath, a warm bath perfumed with scents, where he believed that tired nature most readily found recovery. He ordered them to be admitted, and an interesting family discussion was the result. On his mentioning the proposed sale, Lucien at once retorted that the Legislature would never consent to this sacrifice. He there touched the wrong chord in Napoleon's nature: had he appealed to the memories of le grand monarque and of Montcalm, possibly he might have bent that iron will; but the mention of the consent of the French deputies roused the spleen of the autocrat, who, from amidst the scented water, mockingly bade his brother go into mourning for the affair, which he, and he alone, intended to carry out. This gibe led Joseph to threaten that he would mount the tribune in the Chambers and head the opposition to this unpatriotic surrender. Defiance flashed forth once more from the bath; and the First Consul finally ended their bitter retorts by spasmodically rising as suddenly falling backwards, and drenching Joseph to the skin. His peals of scornful laughter, and the swooning of the valet, who was not yet fully inured to these family scenes, interrupted the argument of the piece; but, when resumed a little later, a sec, Lucien wound up by declaring that, if he were not his brother, he would be his enemy. "My enemy! That is rather strong," exclaimed Napoleon. "You my enemy! I would break you, see, like this box"—and he dashed his snuff-box on the carpet. It did not break: but the portrait of Josephine was detached and broken. Whereupon Lucien picked up the pieces and handed them to his brother, remarking: "It is a pity: meanwhile, until you can break me, it is your wife's portrait that you have broken."[203]

To Talleyrand, Napoleon was equally unbending: summoning him on April 11th, he said:

"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede: it is the whole colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon. I have proved the importance I attach to this province, since my first diplomatic act with Spain had the object of recovering it. I renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate the affair."[204]

After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on for this territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French treasury. For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts west of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his threat of denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter. The war with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned sadly away from the western prairies, which her hardy sons had first opened up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on European conquests. No more was heard of Louisiana, and few references were permitted to the disasters in St. Domingo; for Napoleon abhorred any mention of a coup manque, and strove to banish from the imagination of France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to draw his nephew, to the verge of war with the rising republic of the New World. In one respect, the uncle was more fortunate than the nephew. In signing the treaty with the United States, the First Consul could represent his conduct, not as a dexterous retreat from an impossible situation, but as an act of grace to the Americans and a blow to England. "This accession of territory," he said, "strengthens for ever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride."[205]

* * * * *

In the East there seemed to be scarcely the same field for expansion as in the western hemisphere. Yet, as the Orient had ever fired the imagination of Napoleon, he was eager to expand the possessions of France in the Indian Ocean. In October, 1801, these amounted to the Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of France; for the former French possessions in India, namely, Pondicherry, Mahe, Karikal, Chandernagore, along with their factories at Yanaon, Surat, and two smaller places, had been seized by the British, and were not to be given back to France until six months after the definitive treaty of peace was signed. From these scanty relics it seemed impossible to rear a stable fabric: yet the First Consul grappled with the task. After the cessation of hostilities, he ordered Admiral Gantheaume with four ships of war to show the French flag in those seas, and to be ready in due course to take over the French settlements in India. Meanwhile he used his utmost endeavours in the negotiations at Amiens to gain an accession of land for Pondicherry, such as would make it a possible base for military enterprise. Even before those negotiations began he expressed to Lord Cornwallis his desire for such an extension; and when the British plenipotentiary urged the cession of Tobago to Great Britain, he offered to exchange it for an establishment or territory in India.[206] Herein the First Consul committed a serious tactical blunder; for his insistence on this topic and his avowed desire to negotiate direct with the Nabob undoubtedly aroused the suspicions of our Government.

Still greater must have been their concern when they learnt that General Decaen was commissioned to receive back the French possessions in India; for that general in 1800 had expressed to Bonaparte his hatred of the English, and had begged, even if he had to wait ten years, that he might be sent where he could fight them, especially in India. As was his wont, Bonaparte said little at the time; but after testing Decaen's military capacity, he called him to his side at midsummer, 1802, and suddenly asked him if he still thought about India. On receiving an eager affirmative, he said, "Well, you will go." "In what capacity?" "As captain-general: go to the Minister of Marine and of the Colonies and ask him to communicate to you the documents relating to this expedition." By such means did Bonaparte secure devoted servants. It is scarcely needful to add that the choice of such a man only three months after the signature of the Treaty of Amiens proves that the First Consul only intended to keep that peace as long as his forward colonial policy rendered it desirable.[207]

Meanwhile our Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, was displaying an activity which might seem to be dictated by knowledge of Bonaparte's designs. There was, indeed, every need of vigour. Nowhere had French and British interests been so constantly in collision as in India. In 1798 France had intrigued with Tippoo Sahib at Seringapatam, and arranged a treaty for the purpose of expelling the British nation from India. When in 1799 French hopes were dashed by Arthur Wellesley's capture of that city and the death of Tippoo, there still remained some prospect of overthrowing British supremacy by uniting the restless Mahratta rulers of the north and centre, especially Scindiah and Holkar, in a powerful confederacy. For some years their armies, numbering some 60,000 men, had been drilled and equipped by French adventurers, the ablest and most powerful of whom was M. Perron. Doubtless it was with the hope of gaining their support that the Czar Paul and Bonaparte had in 1800 formed the project of invading India by way of Persia. And after the dissipation of that dream, there still remained the chance of strengthening the Mahratta princes so as to contest British claims with every hope of success. Forewarned by the home Government of Bonaparte's eastern designs, our able and ambitious Governor-General now prepared to isolate the Mahratta chieftains, to cut them off from all contact with France, and, if necessary, to shatter Scindiah's army, the only formidable native force drilled by European methods.

Such was the position of affairs when General Decaen undertook the enterprise of revivifying French influences in India.

The secret instructions which he received from the First Consul, dated January 15th, 1803, were the following:

"To communicate with the peoples or princes who are most impatient under the yoke of the English Company.... To send home a report six months after his arrival in India, concerning all information that he shall have collected, on the strength, the position, and the feeling of the different peoples of India, as well as on the strength and position of the different English establishments; ... his views, and hopes that he might have of finding support, in case of war, so as to be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula.... Finally, as one must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be masters of the sea and could hope for slight succour,"

Decaen is to seek among the French possessions or elsewhere a place serving as a point d'appui, where in the last resort he could capitulate and thus gain the means of being transported to France with arms and baggage. Of this point d'appui he will

"strive to take possession after the first months ... whatever be the nation to which it belongs, Portuguese, Dutch, or English.... If war should break out between England and France before the 1st of Vendemiaire, Year XIII. (September 22nd, 1804), and the captain general is warned of it before receiving the orders of the Government, he has carte blanche to fall back on the Ile de France and the Cape, or to remain in India.... It is now considered impossible that we should have war with England without dragging in Holland. One of the first cares of the captain-general will be to gain control over the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish establishments, and of their resources. The captain-general's mission is at first one of observation, on political and military topics, with the small forces that he takes out, and an occupation of comptoirs for our commerce: but the First Consul, if well informed by him, will perhaps be able some day to put him in a position to acquire that great glory which hands down the memory of men beyond the lapse of centuries."[208]

Had these instructions been known to English statesmen, they would certainly have ended the peace which was being thus perfidiously used by the First Consul for the destruction of our Indian Empire. But though their suspicions were aroused by the departure of Decaen's expedition and by the activity of French agents in India, yet the truth remained half hidden, until, at a later date, the publication of General Decaen's papers shed a flood of light on Napoleon's policy.

Owing to various causes, the expedition did not set sail from Brest until the beginning of March, 1803. The date should be noticed. It proves that at this time Napoleon judged that a rupture of peace was not imminent; and when he saw his miscalculation, he sought to delay the war with England as long as possible in order to allow time for Decaen's force at least to reach the Cape, then in the hands of the Dutch. The French squadron was too weak to risk a fight with an English fleet; it comprised only four ships of war, two transports, and a few smaller vessels, carrying about 1,800 troops.[209] The ships were under the command of Admiral Linois, who was destined to be the terror of our merchantmen in eastern seas. Decaen's first halt was at the Cape, which had been given back by us to the Dutch East India Company on February 21st, 1803. The French general found the Dutch officials in their usual state of lethargy: the fortifications had not been repaired, and many of the inhabitants, and even of the officials themselves, says Decaen, were devoted to the English. After surveying the place, doubtless with a view to its occupation as the point d'appui hinted at in his instructions, he set sail on the 27th of May, and arrived before Pondicherry on the 11th of July.[210]

In the meantime important events had transpired which served to wreck not only Decaen's enterprise, but the French influence in India. In Europe the flames of war had burst forth, a fact of which both Decaen and the British officials were ignorant; but the Governor of Fort St. George (Madras), having, before the 15th of June, "received intelligence which appeared to indicate the certainty of an early renewal of hostilities between His Majesty and France," announced that he must postpone the restitution of Pondicherry to the French, until he should have the authority of the Governor-General for such action.[211]



The Marquis Wellesley was still less disposed to any such restitution. French intervention in the affairs of Switzerland, which will be described later on, had so embittered Anglo-French relations that on October the 17th, 1802, Lord Hobart, our Minister of War and for the Colonies, despatched a "most secret" despatch, stating that recent events rendered it necessary to postpone this retrocession. At a later period Wellesley received contrary orders, instructing him to restore French and Dutch territories; but he judged that step to be inopportune considering the gravity of events in the north of India. So active was the French propaganda at the Mahratta Courts, and so threatening were their armed preparations, that he redoubled his efforts for the consolidation of British supremacy. He resolved to strike at Scindiah, unless he withdrew his southern army into his own territories; and, on receiving an evasive answer from that prince, who hoped by temporizing to gain armed succours from France, he launched the British forces against him. Now was the opportunity for Arthur Wellesley to display his prowess against the finest forces of the East; and brilliantly did the young warrior display it. The victories of Assaye in September, and of Argaum in November, scattered the southern Mahratta force, but only after desperate conflicts that suggested how easily a couple of Decaen's battalions might have turned the scales of war.