Worlds Best Histories France Vol 7 by M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

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Napoleon wished to captivate his vanquished enemy, whom he desired to make
his ally; he succeeded in doing so with ease. Master of the destinies of
the world--in his own idea more so than he even was in reality--he had
resolved upon offering to Alexander compensations which might satisfy him,
whilst distracting his attention from the conquests and encroachments
which Napoleon reserved for himself. On the eve of Austerlitz, Napoleon
had said to Prince Dolgorouki: "Ah well! let Russia extend herself at the
expense of her neighbors!" It was the same thought that he was about to
present to the young monarch, humiliated and conquered, wishing to display
it before his eyes in order to blind him more completely.

The Russians and Prussians were equally irritated against England. She had
granted them money, but her military efforts had not corresponded with her
promises; and it was to her obstinate hatred of France that the two
monarchs attributed the origin of their defeats. "If you have a grudge
against England," said Alexander, "we shall easily understand each other,
for I have myself to complain of her as much as you have." It was in this
first interview the sole effort of Napoleon to develop in the mind of
Alexander the sentiments of anger and weariness by which he had been
inspired by the selfishness which he imputed to Great Britain and the
inability and weakness which he recognized in Prussia, and to engage the
Russian emperor to become friendly with the only power which could offer
him a glorious and profitable alliance. In the mind of the emperor, we
have already said, the necessity for a continental alliance had long since
made itself felt. "Austria or Russia," he had said to Talleyrand. Napoleon
offered his hand to the Emperor Alexander.

The city of Tilsit was neutralized, and the two emperors established their
quarters there. Before quitting the opposite shore of the Niemen,
Alexander presented the King of Prussia to Napoleon in that floating
pavilion on the river which flowed between the two nations. Honest,
moderate, and dignified even in his profound abasement, Frederick William
neither experienced nor exercised in any degree the seductiveness to which
the Emperor Alexander succumbed, and which he was in his turn capable of
displaying. He entreated his ally to make constant and persevering efforts
in his behalf, which Alexander felt himself compelled to do not without a
secret ill feeling. It was with an ostentatious display of graciousness
and condescension that Napoleon ceaselessly reminded the young Czar that
he accorded no favor to the King of Prussia except out of regard for his
entreaties.

"In the midst of the war in which Russia and France have been engaged,"
wrote Napoleon, on the 4th of July, 1807, "both sovereigns, enlightened as
to the situation and the true policy of their empires, have desired the
re-establishment not only of peace, but of a common accord, and by the
force of reason and truth have wished to form an alliance, and to pass in
a single instant from open war to the most intimate relations. The
boundless amity and confidence which the high qualities of the Emperor
Alexander have inspired in the Emperor Napoleon have caused his heart to
seal that which his reason had already approved and ratified. The
protection of the emperor will result in the King of Prussia being allowed
to re-enter into the possession of all the countries which border on the
two Haffs, extending from the sources of the Oder to the sea. Solely with
a desire of pleasing the Emperor Alexander, a large number of fortified
towns will be restored to the King of Prussia. The policy of the Emperor
Napoleon is that his immediate influence should be bounded by the Elbe;
and he has adopted this policy because it is the only one which can be
reconciled with the system of sincere and constant amity which he wishes
to maintain with the great empire of the north."

Under the veil of this apparent moderation the pretensions or resolutions
of the Emperor Napoleon were thus summed up: King Frederick William
recovered Old Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Upper and Lower Silesia; he
would abandon all the provinces to the left of the Elbe, which were to
constitute, with the Grand Duchy of Hesse, a kingdom of Westphalia,
destined for Joseph Bonaparte. The Duchies of Posen and Warsaw, snatched
from Russian Poland, were to form a Polish State under the title of the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw, of which the Elector of Saxony, recently elevated
to the royal dignity, received the gift, on condition of maintaining a
military road across Silesia. All the States founded by Napoleon were to
be recognized. Russia was charged with the mediation between France and
England; France became arbitrator between Russia and the Porte.

It was much, and indeed too much, for Prussia, torn asunder without being
completely destroyed, reduced to the half of its territory, and deprived
of its most important towns--for Dantzig became a free city, and Magdeburg
formed part of the new kingdom of Westphalia. When these hard conditions
were revealed to Frederick William by the Emperor Alexander, the
unfortunate king protested against a ruin so complete. He conceived, for a
moment, the vain hope of obtaining from Napoleon some concessions, by
bringing to bear on him the influence of the genius and beauty of Queen
Louisa. This princess quitted Memel to present herself at Tilsit. "She is
charming," wrote Napoleon to the Empress Josephine; but this cold
appreciation of the accomplishments of the woman exercised no influence
upon the resolutions of the conqueror and the politician. The queen in
vain brought into play all the resources of her intellect and her charming
graces; in vain presenting to the conqueror a rose which she had just
plucked, she ventured to ask for Magdeburg in exchange for her flower. "It
is you who have offered it to me, madame," said Napoleon, roughly. Queen
Louisa quitted Memel, humiliated and sorrowful down to the very depths of
her soul. Her children and her people were never to pardon us for their
wrongs.

Alexander had loyally defended his friend, and felt assured of having
obtained for him all that it was possible to obtain; in his secret
thoughts he consoled himself for the concessions he had been constrained
to make for others as well as for himself, by the dazzling prospects which
Napoleon knew so well how to open brightly to his view. To the north and
south the young Czar believed himself master of new territories, long
objects of ambition to the Russian Empire. The Sultan Selim had just
fallen at Constantinople before a revolt of the Janissaries; he was a
prisoner in his own palace, and the government which was about to succeed
him would naturally be hostile to French influence. Napoleon then found
himself free to abandon to Russia a large part of that Ottoman Empire
always coveted by her. "Constantinople! never!" Napoleon had said, in
exclamation to himself, heard by one of his secretaries; "the empire of
the world is at Constantinople!" But the _debris_ of the Turkish power
were of a character to satisfy all the claimants; and in case Turkey
should not accept the peace, the secret treaty concluded between France
and Russia assured to the Czar all the European provinces, with the
exception of Constantinople and Roumelia. In case of the cabinet of London
refusing the mediation of Russia, Alexander engaged himself to declare war
against England. Should Portugal and Sweden, equally subject to European
influence, participate in the same refusal, it was agreed that the Emperor
Napoleon should send an army into Portugal, and that the Emperor Alexander
should enter Sweden. Finland lay very convenient for the Russian Empire.
"The King of Sweden is in truth your brother-in-law and your ally," said
Napoleon; "let him follow the changes in your policy, or let him undergo
the consequences of his ill-will. Sweden is the geographical enemy of
Russia. St. Petersburg finds itself too near to Finland. The good Russians
must no longer hear from their palaces at St. Petersburg the cannon of the
Swedes."

The treaty of Tilsit was concluded on the 7th of July, 1807, and was
signed on the 8th. The King and Queen of Prussia departed immediately,
full of bitter sorrow and discouragement. The two emperors separated on
the 9th, with a cordiality at that time sincere in its ostentatious
display. More than once they had together passed their troops in review;
yet once again they showed themselves to the two armies. Napoleon
decorated, with his own hand, a soldier of the Russian army, who had been
pointed out to him by the Czar. At last he accompanied Alexander to the
shores of the Niemen, waiting upon the bank until his friend and ally had
reached the farther shore. Then entering his carriage, he took the road to
Koenigsberg, and immediately afterwards that to France, charging Berthier
and Marshal Kalbreuth with the regulation of the details of the evacuation
of Prussia, and the payment of the war contributions with which the
conquered countries were to be crushed down. On the 27th of July, at six
o'clock in the morning, the emperor re-entered Paris, which he had quitted
the preceding year, and which, since then, he had so many times
intoxicated with the report of his victories. The military glory was
brilliant and even dazzling; the political work remained precarious, by
its nature as well as by its immensity. Empires founded upon conquest are
necessarily fragile, even when the war has been undertaken from serious
and legitimate motives. When the war is carried on through the ambition of
a man or a people, in scorn of right or justice--when it injures at once
the interests, the pride, and the repose of all nations--no genius or
brightness of glory can succeed in assuring its duration, or
legitimatizing its success. France perceived this in the midst of the
enthusiasm of victory. England repeated it with malicious confidence, in
the hope of confirming the courage of its people. Once more the latter
power found itself alone, in face of the ever-increasing might of France
and the incomparable genius of its sovereign.

It is the mournful effect of a weakening of the moral sense in the chief
of a state, to enfeeble that moral sense at the same time, and by an
inevitable contagion, amongst his rivals and adversaries. In presence of
the continental blockade, and of the resolution which the Emperor Napoleon
had announced of imposing it upon the whole of Europe, the English
cabinet, henceforth directed by the inheritors of the policy of Pitt, by
Canning and Lord Castlereagh, resolved upon using violence in its turn.
Fearful of seeing the maritime forces of Denmark pass into the power of
Napoleon, England violated the neutrality of this little kingdom, and
forestalled the secret conditions of the treaty of Tilsit. Lord Cathcart,
at the head of a considerable squadron, was charged with the duty of
summoning the Prince Regent to deliver to him the Danish fleet, as a
pledge of the loyal intentions of his country; he offered at the same time
to defend the Danish territory and all its colonies. The prince responded
with bitter irony, "Your protection? Have we not seen your allies waiting
for succor more than a year, without receiving it?" Copenhagen was
bombarded; Sir Arthur Wellesley, whose name, for the first time, became
known in Europe, effected his disembarkation with a corps of 10,000 men.
The prince saw himself compelled to capitulate, and deliver to the English
his fleet, with all the materiel of his arsenals. Vehemently did Europe
reprobate this act of violence. The English cabinet made public the
article of the Treaty of Tilsit, which had furnished the motive for its
aggression. But any effort at mediation was now ridiculous. The Emperor
Alexander perceived it to be so. On the 11th of November, Lord Leveson
Gower, then Ambassador of England at St. Petersburg, received his
passports, and the Czar haughtily adhered to the French alliance. "I deem
it prudent to close one's eyes against the orders which English mercantile
vessels have received to quit Russian ports," said General Savary, whom
Napoleon had accredited to the Emperor Alexander. The latter treated the
French envoy with distinction, but the court and world of St. Petersburg
had not forgotten the part that Savary had taken in the murder of the Duke
d'Enghien; he remained isolated in his palace, and even in the saloons of
the emperor. The Russian declaration of war was responded to by the
manifesto of England. "Publish the treaty of Tilsit, with the secret
articles," said Canning; "they have not been communicated to England, but
we are acquainted with them, nevertheless; they will explain to Europe our
conduct and our fears, as well as the change of attitude on the part of
Russia." The Emperor Napoleon was already regretting the magnificent
prospect which he had opened before the Czar on the side of Turkey; the
government of the Sublime Porte had adroitly accepted the mediation of
France. Napoleon sought to excite the covetousness of the Russians towards
the north; M, de Caulaincourt, who had replaced Savary at St. Petersburg,
pushed forward with ardor the war against Sweden, and the conquest of
Finland. As a consequence of the English aggression, Denmark had cast
itself into the arms of France; it accordingly became easy to close
against England the passage of the Sound. The Czar and his favorite
counsellor, M. de Romanzoff, returned ceaselessly to the hopes that
Napoleon had led them to conceive. "The ancient Ottoman Empire is played
out," said the Russian minister; "unless the Czar lays his hand on it, the
Emperor Napoleon will be soon obliged to announce in the _Moniteur_ that
the succession of the Sultans is open, and the natural heirs have only to
present themselves."

In the meantime, and as a constant menace against an ally whom he was not
completely satisfying, Napoleon was prolonging his occupation of the
Prussian territory, under the pretext of the alleged slowness of payment
of the war contributions; he was organizing provisionally the government
of Hanover, which he had reserved as a future bait for the English
government; and he was treating with Spain for the passage of troops
necessary for the invasion of Portugal. This power, constantly faithful to
the English alliance, having refused to give in its adhesion to the
continental blockade, the emperor had sent against it General Junot with
26,000 men. The negotiations with Madrid had not been completed, and the
French soldiers had already entered Spanish territory. A second army was
preparing to follow them. Austria remained disquieted, and ready to take
offence; a convention favorable to her was signed at Fontainebleau, on
October 10th. On the 27th the eventual and provisional partition of
Portugal was accepted by the Spanish envoy, Yzquierdo. A kingdom of
Southern Lusitania was assigned to the Queen of Etruria, who renounced her
Italian possessions; the independent principality of Algarve was to be
constituted for the Prince de la Paix; the emperor reserved for himself
the centre of the country, conquered by anticipation. A Spanish corps was
to join the French troops for the invasion of Portugal. General Junot
marched upon Lisbon. Vast projects, unjustifiable in their nature, were
linked with this invasion of the Peninsula, necessarily entailing blunders
and crimes as dangerous as lamentable. Napoleon had resolved upon driving
the Bourbons from all the thrones of Europe, in order to replace them with
Bonapartes. He set out for Italy with the view of completing one part of
his work before laying his hand on Spain.

Quitting Paris on November 16th, the Emperor surprised Eugene Beauharnais
(whom he was about solemnly to adopt) by assuring to him the succession of
the crown of Italy. He ran through the north of the Italian peninsula,
reorganizing at Venice the public services, which had fallen into
desuetude; decreeing the creation of a commune on Mont Cenis; and
providing for the needs of travellers by the new route which he had
opened. At Mantua he had an interview with his brother Lucien, whom he
would have wished to place upon the throne of Portugal, but that the
latter remained obstinately rebellious against the authority of his all-
powerful brother, who required of him the rupture of an already old union
with Madame Jouberthon. Having returned to Milan on the 13th of December,
Napoleon published there, on the 17th, a decree destined to aggravate the
rigors of the continental blockade. By reprisals as unjust as awkward,
directed against decree of Berlin, the English Cabinet had promulgated, on
the 11th of November, 1807, an Order in Council which compelled the ships
of all neutral nations to touch at an English port to import or export
merchandise, paying custom-house dues averaging 25 per cent. The ships
which neglected this precaution were to be declared lawful prizes. In
response, the Emperor Napoleon decreed that any vessel touching at an
English port, or submitting to inspection from an English ship, should be
by that very fact deneutralized, and become in its turn a lawful prize. In
this insensate rivalry, which ruined at the same time the commerce of
England and of the world, the Cabinet of London had taken no care to
modify, in favor of the United States, the rigor of its ordinances. This
was for England the occasion of grave difficulties, and of a war at one
time dangerous. Arbitrary interference and violence were the rule on all
the seas.

Through difficulties and sufferings which threatened to destroy the army
placed under his orders, General Junot arrived at the gates of Lisbon. He
had to struggle with no other enemy than the bad roads and the want of
provisions. Terror had seized upon the royal house of Portugal. The
_Moniteur_ of November 13th already contained an article upon the fall of
the illustrious house of Braganza. "The Prince Regent of Portugal loses
his throne," said the official journal; "he loses it influenced by the
intrigues of the English; he loses it for not having been willing to seize
the English merchandise at Lisbon. What does England do.--this ally so
powerful? She regards with indifference all that is passing in Portugal.
What will she do when Portugal shall be taken? Will she go to seize
Brazil? No; if the English make this attempt the Catholics will drive them
out. The fall of the House of Braganza will remain another proof that the
fall of whatever attaches itself to the English is inevitable."

The Prince Regent of Portugal had thought it possible to arrest the march
of General Junot by sending to him emissaries charged to make all the
submissions required by Napoleon. The envoys had not been able to meet the
French army, scattered and decimated by the ills it had undergone; it
advanced, however, and the news of its approach drove the Court of
Portugal on board the ships which were still to be found at the mouth of
the Tagus. On November 27th the mad queen, her son the prince regent, her
daughters, and nearly all the families of distinction in Lisbon,
accompanied by their servants, crowded on board the Portuguese fleet,
resolved to take their flight to Brazil. From seven to eight thousand
persons, with all their portable property, thus obstructed the mouth of
the Tagus, protected by the English fleet; on the 28th a favorable wind
permitted them to sail. When General Junot entered Lisbon, on the 30th of
November, at eight o'clock in the morning, the treasures which he was
charged to seize were beyond his reach. He established himself without
resistance in the capital, soon overwhelmed with confiscations and war
contributions. "Everything is more easy in the first moment than
afterwards," wrote the Emperor to Junot on the 13th of December, 1807. "Do
not seek for popularity at Lisbon, nor for the means of pleasing the
nation; that would be failing in your aim, emboldening the people, and
preparing misfortunes for yourself. The hope that you conceive of commerce
and prosperity, is a chimera with which one is lulled asleep."

Jerome Bonaparte had been declared King of Westphalia on the 8th of
December. On the 10th the act announced by the treaty of Fontainebleau was
consummated. The Queen Regent of Etruria, Maria Louisa of Bourbon,
declared to her subjects, in the name of her son, that she was called upon
to reign over a new kingdom. Tuscany then fell directly into the hands of
the Emperor Napoleon, who confided its government to his sister, Eliza
Baciocchi, to whom he had already given the principality of Lucca and
Piombino.

Submission or flight! such was the only alternative that seemed to remain
to continental sovereigns in presence of the exactions and the imperious
will of Napoleon. The Pope alone, as already for two years past, was still
resisting his demands, and was evincing an independence with regard to him
which was every day irritating more and more the all-powerful master of
Europe. Sadly disabused of the illusions and the hopes which had drawn him
to Paris for the coronation of Napoleon, Pius VII. had preserved in his
personal communications with the emperor a paternal and tender
graciousness. He had much to obtain and much to fear on the part of the
conqueror. Returning to Italy in the month of June, 1805, he said, in his
allocution to the cardinals: "We have clasped in our arms at Fontainebleau
this prince, so powerful and so full of love for us. Many things have
already been done, and are only the earnest of that which is yet to be
accomplished."

Meanwhile, the Code Napoleon had been applied to Italy, authorizing
divorce, and taking the place of the Italian Concordat, which declared the
Catholic religion to be the religion of the State. The Pope had complained
of it, not without warmth, and had received on the part of the emperor
assurances which were as vain as they were futile. But already the
conflict was becoming personal and more pressing; the refusal of the Holy
Father to dissolve the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with Miss Paterson
(June, 1805), at once produced antagonism between the conscience of the
Pope and the views of Napoleon as to the elevation of his family to the
new or ancient thrones which he destined for them in Europe. Pius VII. had
long studied canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers
nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It
is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if
we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render
ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and
your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a
sentence contrary to the testimony of our conscience and to the invariable
principles of our Church."

Napoleon's anger remained warm, but he had surmounted the difficulty by
dissolving by an imperial decree the marriage of his brother, and by
causing him soon after to marry a princess of Wurtemberg. The disagreement
with the Court of Rome, which was soon to break forth, depended on his
all-powerful will, and caused him no care. In the movement of the troops,
necessitated in October, 1805, by his campaign against Austria, the
emperor had charged General Gouvion St. Cyr to traverse the States of the
Church in order to take up a position in Lombardy. Upon the route lay the
town of Ancona. The French troops received an order to seize the place and
establish a garrison there, an order which was immediately executed.

In spite of the difficulties which had recently arisen between the emperor
and himself, the Pope thought that Napoleon and the French Revolution were
much indebted to him personally. Europe took this view, and frequent
reproaches had been addressed to the Court of Rome by the powers who were
enemies or rivals of France. It was, then, with astonishment, mingled with
indignation, that Pius VII. learnt the news of the occupation of Ancona;
he wrote, on the 13th November, 1805, a personal and secret letter to the
emperor:--"We avow frankly to your Majesty the keen chagrin that we
experience in seeing ourselves treated in a way that we do not think we
have in any degree merited. Our neutrality has been recognized by your
Majesty, as by all other powers. The latter have fully respected it, and
we had especial motives for thinking that the sentiments of amity which
your Majesty professed with regard to us would have preserved us from such
a cruel affront. We will tell you frankly, since our return from Paris we
have experienced only bitterness and trouble, and we do not find in your
Majesty a return of those sentiments which we think ourselves warranted in
justly expecting from you. That which we owe to ourselves is to ask from
your Majesty the evacuation of Ancona, and, if met with a refusal, we
should not see how to reconcile therewith a continuation of a good
understanding with the French minister."

It was from Munich, on the morrow of the battle of Austerlitz and of the
peace of Presburg, that Napoleon at length responded, on the 7th of
January, 1806, to the letter of the Pope, in the midst of the concert of
adulations and transports which were lavished on him by the vanquished as
well as by his courtiers. The protest of Pius VII. recalled to him the
disagreeable remembrance of an independent authority, and one which he had
not been always able to submit to his will; the anger of the despot broke
forth with violence at once spontaneous and measured: "Your Holiness
complains that since your return from Paris you have had nothing but
causes of sorrow. The reason is, that since then all those who were
fearing my power and testifying their friendship have changed their
sentiments, thinking themselves authorized to do so by the power of the
coalition; and that since the return of your Holiness to Rome I have
experienced nothing but refusals to all my designs, even those that were
of the utmost importance to religion; as, for example, when it was a
question of hindering Protestantism from raising its head in France. I
look upon myself as the protector of the Holy See, and by this title I
have occupied Ancona. I look upon myself, like my predecessors of the
second and third dynasty, as the eldest son of the Church, as alone
bearing the sword to protect it and to shelter it from being defiled by
Greeks and Mussulmans. I should ever be the friend of your Holiness, if
you would only consult your heart and the true friends of religion. If
your Holiness wishes to send away my minister, you are free to do so. You
are free to receive in preference the English and the Caliph of
Constantinople. God is the judge who has done most for the religion of all
the princes who reign."