Chapter VI

The Path of Napoleonic Empire.[13]

Napoleon and the Neutral Powers — The Protectorate of Portugal and the End of Etruria — Annexation of the Papal Legations — Seizure of the Danish Fleet by Great Britain — The Degradation of Spain — Godoy's Impolicy — The Spanish Court and the Heir Apparent — Effects of the Russian Alliance in Paris — Napoleon's Commentary on the Treaty — His Administrative Wisdom — Public Works in France — The Jews in France — The Sanhedrim — Napoleon's Successful Reforms — War Indemnities and Finance — Annoyances of the Continental System.

But in order to fulfil the purposes and realize the possibilities which were indicated in the treaties of Tilsit, no time was to be lost. The fate of Sweden and the Hanse towns having been virtually settled, there remained three small maritime states in Europe which still maintained a nominal neutrality—Denmark, Portugal, and Etruria. One and all, they must choose between England and France. To each a summons was to be addressed, and Napoleon wrote the preliminary directions at Dresden. Between the lines of his despatches it was clear that the precious naval armaments of all three powers—ships, arsenals, stores, and men—must be put at the disposal of France. "A thing must needs be done before the announcement of your plan," was one of Napoleon's own principles, and it was his intention so to proceed in this case. At Dresden, also, was promulgated the new constitution of Warsaw. Modeled on that of France, it was far from liberal; but it abolished serfdom, made all citizens equal before the law, and introduced the civil code.

In 1804 Portugal had purchased her neutrality for the duration of the war with the sum of sixteen million francs. She was now ordered to close her ports to the British, to seize all their goods and ships, and finally to declare war against Great Britain. Junot, formerly imperial ambassador at Lisbon, was despatched with twenty-seven thousand men, designated as a "corps of observation," to be ready on the frontier to enforce the command. In reply, England seized the Portuguese fleet, and kept it in security until the close of the war. During the late campaigns in Poland and Prussia, King Louis of Etruria had died, and his helpless widow, the Spanish infanta, Maria Louisa, acting as regent for her young son, had admitted the English to the harbor of Leghorn. Prince Eugène was now ordered to take another "corps of observation" of six thousand men, and drive them out. He did so promptly. Duroc at once suggested to the Spanish minister that Napoleon would like some proposition for the indemnification of Maria Louisa for the loss of Etruria—say one portion of Portugal for her, and the rest for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace.

This "deformity" removed from the Italian peninsula, it revealed a still greater one—the fact that the Papal States disturbed the connection between the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Pius VII, returning disillusioned and embittered after the coronation ceremony, and finding that his temporal weapons had failed him, had taken a stand with his spiritual armor. It has already been recalled that he began to refuse everything Napoleon desired,—the coronation as Western emperor, the extension of the Concordat to Venice, the confirmation of bishops appointed in France and Italy by the temporal power, the annulment of Jerome's marriage, the recognition of Joseph's royalty,—except in return for a guarantee of his own independence and neutrality; in short, he feebly abjured the French alliance and all its works. There now came a demand from Napoleon that henceforth there should be as many French cardinals as Roman, that the agents of hostile powers should be banished from the Papal States, and that the papal ports should be closed to England. The Emperor was weary, too, of the petty squabbles in connection with the Church, of the threats to excommunicate him and declare his throne vacant. Did they mean to put him in a convent and whip him like Louis the Pious? If not, let the full powers of an ambassador be sent to the cardinal legate at Paris; in any case, let there be an end to menaces. At the same time Eugène showed to Pius a personal letter from his stepfather, which, though marked confidential, was intended to be thus shown. It contained the threat that the Emperor contemplated calling a council of the Gallican, Italian, German, and Polish churches to liberate those peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer dallying would compel him to annex Ancona, Urbino, and Macerata to the kingdom of Italy. Pius yielded at once, nominating Bayanne, agreeing to enter the federation with France, and promising to crown Napoleon; but the annexation took place quite as expeditiously as the surrender—was, in fact, complete before it!

In none of their many sovereignties had the incapacity of the Bourbons been more completely demonstrated than in Spain. With intermittent flickerings, the light of that famous land had been steadily growing dimmer ever since Louis XIV exultingly declared that the Pyrenees had ceased to exist. Stripped of her colonial supremacy, shattered in naval power, reduced to pay tribute to France, she looked silently on while Napoleon trafficked with her lands, mourning that even the memory of her former glories was fading out in foreign countries. The proud people themselves had, however, never forgotten their past; with each successive humiliation their irritation grew more extreme, and soon after Trafalgar they made an effort to organize under the crown prince against the scandalous régime of Godoy. Both parties sought French support, and the quarrel was fomented from Paris until the whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.

When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and the French legions were about to face those trained in the school of Frederick the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy in Madrid to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too, at the same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon, that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.

These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist. Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his father's life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe for Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.

Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations—a harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafés coldly discussing an entire reconstruction of Europe—two empires, and seventeen new kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow, astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others, beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers. Wise men think that the treaties, being as advantageous to Russia as to France, necessarily contain a germ which in developing will prove dangerous to the latter." In reality there was not now a state in Europe toward which the French empire did not stand in strained relations, not a nationality besides the French which did not feel its self-respect wounded, and resent the abasement.

This, however, was not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was no longer an actor in merely human history: he was a man of the heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise to his lofty place. On August sixteenth the Emperor opened the legislature in person. "Since your last session," he said, "new wars, new triumphs, new treaties, have changed the face of Europe." If the house of Brandenburg still reigned, he continued, it was due to the sincere friendship he felt for the Czar. A French prince would rule on the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, he affirmed, his pole-star had been the happiness of his people, dearer to him than his own glory. He would like maritime peace, and for its sake would overlook the exasperations caused by a people tossed and torn by party strife. Whatever happened, he would be worthy of his people, as they had shown themselves to be worthy of him. Their behavior in his absence had only increased his esteem for their character. He had thought of several measures to simplify and perfect their institutions.

This picture of martial and political renown, painted by a master who had on one campaign changed the meaning of his title from its primitive sense of military ruler to its later and grander one of chief among and over princes, thus realizing the revival of the Western Empire, could not but please the fancy and arouse the enthusiasm of a generous, imaginative, forgiving people. The impression was heightened by their Emperor's activity in keeping faith as to their own prosperity. As after Austerlitz, his first care was now finance. The new commercial code was promulgated, and it proved scarcely less satisfactory to the merchants than the civil code had been to the people at large. The Bank of France was immediately compelled to lower its rate of discount, and a council was held to consider how Italy and the Rhine Confederation could be made tributary to French industry and commerce. Recourse was also had to those measures of internal development by the execution of great public works which had been begun after Austerlitz, but were suspended before Jena.

Before the last campaign the Emperor and Empress had been accustomed to visit various portions of France. During every halt the Emperor would mount his horse, and, attended occasionally by one or more of the local officials, but usually only by Rustan or an adjutant, would gallop hither and thither, gathering information, examining conditions, and making suggestions. Immediately afterward he would throw off a sketch of needed improvements: public buildings, almshouses, roads, canals, aqueducts, town streets, mountain roads—anything, in short, which would arouse local enthusiasm and benefit the country at large. Many—most, perhaps—of these schemes remained inchoate; but many of the grandest were executed, and Napoleon has left his impress as indelibly upon France itself as upon its society. The routes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis, the great canals which bind together the river systems, the restoration of the cathedral at St. Denis, the quays of the Seine in Paris, the great Triumphal Arch, the Vendôme Column, the Street of Peace, the Street of Rivoli, the bridges of Austerlitz, Jena, and the Arts—these are some of the magnificent enterprises due to his initiative. Such works were pushed throughout the summer of 1807 by employing large numbers of laborers and artisans, while local workshops were opened in every department to furnish employment to all who could not otherwise find it. The political economist may lift his eyebrows and shrug his shoulders in contemplating such shifts; but they were imperial shifts, and created a high degree of comfort at the time, while they satisfied in permanency that passion for beauty in utility which does not sufficiently enter as an element into economic science.

Closely connected with this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably in the northeast. This was attributed to the presence of Jews in large numbers. The stringent laws of the old régime had crowded that unfortunate people out of all occupations but two—peddling and money-lending. In both of these they became experts, and when emancipated by the Revolution they used their liberty, not to widen their activities, but to intensify the evils of the monopoly which they had secured. Since 1791 large numbers of Polish and German Jews had established themselves on the right bank of the Rhine; and reaching hands across that stream to their kinsfolk on the left bank, they combined to strip the French peasantry by the familiar arts of barter and usury, which need not be described here, until in a few years they were creditors to the extent of twenty-three million francs, and had become extensive landed proprietors. They were never seen to labor with their hands, and having no family name, they evaded the conscription laws with impunity, while the courts of justice became their humble servants in enforcing the collection of scandalous debts or in the foreclosure of inflated mortgages.

In 1806 a temporary decree had suspended all legal executions in certain districts, and many Jews of the better class made ready to bow before the coming tempest and come to the assistance of the government. Napoleon, aware that the Old Testament law was civil and political as well as religious, shrewdly asked advice from these and other men of the more enlightened sort. It was agreed to call a council. The Emperor summoned his prefects to name its members, and appointed a committee to represent the government at its sessions. Decisions taken by this assembly were to be submitted to a general Sanhedrim of all Europe. The assembly of French Israelites met in Paris during the latter part of 1806, and after due deliberation gave satisfactory answers to a carefully prepared set of questions propounded by the government commission. In 1807 the economic situation had nevertheless become graver. The Sanhedrim met early in February. Its members vied in flattery with the Roman priesthood, setting the imperial eagle above the ark of the covenant, and blending the letters N and J with those of the Jehovah in a monogram for the adornment of their meeting-place. On March fourth they issued a decree which is still the basis of religious instruction among Jewish youth. They forbade polygamy, and admitted the principle of civil marriage without anathema; they ordered all Israelites to treat those who believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth as fellow-citizens and brothers; to obey the civil and military laws, including that of conscription, and to train their children to industry and handiwork; they also invited them to enter the learned professions, and to attach themselves to the country by the purchase of public obligations. Usury was absolutely forbidden, the Israelite being enjoined as a religious precept to make no distinction in money transactions between Hebrew and Christian. The minutest details of the whole transaction were foreseen and regulated by Napoleon, and may be studied in his correspondence with his ministers.

While in ways like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed principle that France should not pay for his wars, except with her children. He knew too well the thrift of the whole nation and the greed of the lower classes to jeopardize their good will either by the emission of paper money or by the increase of tax rates. The panic of 1805 had been precipitated by the virtual failure of a bankers' syndicate which made advances to the government on its taxes and on the annual Spanish contribution as well. In 1807 the war indemnity exacted from Prussia, Poland, and Westphalia was used for a double purpose, the creation of two funds: one to furnish an immediate supply of cash on the outbreak of war, the other to replace the bankers' syndicate by making advances on the taxes whenever required. There was therefore no increase in the rate of taxation, work was abundant, and under the forcing process the wheels were moving in almost every department of trade and industry. The price of the imperial bonds on the Bourse rose to ninety-nine, a price never afterward reached in Napoleon's day.

There was one sharp pinch. Coffee and sugar were no longer luxuries, but necessities; and through the continental embargo colonial wares had become, and were likely to remain, very dear and very scarce. Such substitutes as ingenuity could devise were gradually accepted for the former; to provide the latter the beet-root industry was fostered by every means. The Emperor kept a sample of sugar made from beets on his chimney-piece as an ornament, and occasionally sent gifts of the precious commodity to his fellow-sovereigns. The story is told that an official who had been banished from favor recovered his standing entirely by planting a whole estate with beets. Such traits were considered evidence of plain, homely common sense by the people, who enjoyed the sensation that their Emperor shared their feelings and participated in their daily shifts.[Back to Contents]