CHAPTER XIV.

THE FRENCH DEPENDENCIES, AND SWITZERLAND.

Napoleon told Roederer in August, 1800, that it was his policy to govern men as the majority wished to be governed. “It is,” he said, “by turning Catholic that I finished the war in the Vendée; by turning Mussulman that I established myself in Egypt; by turning Ultramontane that I won the Italian mind. If I governed a people of Jews I would rebuild the temple of Solomon. So, too, I would speak of liberty in the free part of San Domingo, while I would confirm slavery in the lie de Bourbon and in that part of San Domingo where slavery now exists.” Such flexibility was undoubtedly a safer recipe for empire than the rigid propaganda of the Revolution. Administration must be adapted to men’s needs; and these in turn are shaped by climate, locality, and historic forces. A good administration does not expect the surface of humanity to be regular; it expects it to be irregular, and gently fits itself into the indentations, trusting to time and some patient process of friction to plane down uncomfortable angles. It has fixed principles, but it applies them with charitable modifications. It is well-instructed, just, pure-handed. It has its professional code of honour, of which it is proud. Checks and counter-checks do not obstruct its celerity. It has the courage of its opinions and strikes hard at waste, inefficiency, and old abuses. It is served by every variety of trained and technical experience. It is neither radical, nor conservative, but knows when to be the one, and when the other. To build up an ideal bureaucracy capable of governing foreign peoples, both European and coloured, in such a way as to command their confidence and respect, is no easy task. It argues a high standard of public morals, a passion for public improvement, a copious equipment of tact, an easy-going good-humour coupled with strict attention to detail, an instinct which may be called propagandist on the part of the governing nation, and a readiness to learn and be guided on the part of the governed. Such a coincidence of happy qualities is necessarily the result of complex forces, and cannot be contrived by any one mind.

The French Empire at its zenith stretched from Lübeck to the Ebro and from Brest to Rome. It was divided into 130 departments, 46 of which were alien to France in race, language, and temperament. Dutchmen and Belgians, Germans and Italians, Croatians and Spaniards were swallowed up in the great machine; and over and above these alien departments of the Empire there were the vassal principalities and kingdoms, all of which were ultimately controlled from Paris and made to contribute to the military and financial strength of France. It may well be asked how a country which had managed its own affairs so badly as to experience ten years of hideous disorder could accomplish such a task as the civil government of these miscellaneous regions.

The French administration under Napoleon had behind it the momentum of a creed, and the momentum of a person. It believed in what England contemptuously called “French principles”, not with a passive traditional acceptance but with the zeal of a convert who with infinite struggle has refashioned his inner life. The best of Napoleon's servants regarded themselves as missionaries of some higher civilisation which it was their duty to diffuse through the world; and to this momentum was added the force of Napoleon’s character and genius. Discursive in council, in action he sped straight to his end; he was a sure judge of men; and when he had picked his team he drove it hard. His eye was everywhere. His appetite and memory for detail were such that slovenly work rarely escaped him, and he knew how to inspire and to encourage as well as how to frighten and to coerce. Nor was this all. Connected with the momentum which acted on the will, there was a great illumination of the intelligence. Almost every question relating to the fabric of society or the government of man had come up for discussion during the French Revolution. Daring experiments had been made, great disasters endured; and a rich experience was crowded in a narrow space of time. The new generation was more sober, more practical, more critical of vague ideals, and yet fully capable of being excited by the large horizons which Napoleon unfolded to France.

Another factor was, that the French Government, having a coherent body of principles to administer, found in almost every part of central Europe a state of opinion either favourable or not violently unfavourable to their acceptance. This was not only or mainly due to the fact that French principles could easily be explained and bore a self-evident and superior air of rationality about them. It was largely due to the long historic preparation which Europe had received for the acceptance of French ascendancy; to the general diffusion of the French language which prevailed in all the large towns in Holland, Germany, and Italy; and to the continuance of the feeling that France was the mistress of the arts and sciences, and the centre of European intelligence. There were other reasons of equal weight, among which may be mentioned indifference to the displaced rulers, fatigue consequent upon foreign war and civil turmoil, and the overwhelming ascendancy of the French arms.

On the other hand, the Napoleonic system laboured under several grave disadvantages. The Revolution, while increasing the material comfort of France, had spread great demoralisation through political life; and, although this was to a considerable extent corrected by the return to orderly government under Napoleon, it was far from eradicated, and did much to discredit French rule abroad. Towns were pillaged of their art treasures; soldiers and civilians made fortunes by black mail; bribes were accepted even by men in the highest places. Another great disadvantage was due to the war, and to the peculiar policy which the war forced Napoleon to adopt. On every new department and on every new dependency the war imposed a heavy tribute of men and money; and, in order to ease the French taxpayer, the dependencies, in addition to the expense of their own levies, were forced to contribute to the support of the French army. Thus, while higher and more expensive standards of civil government were being intro­duced, the budgets of the vassal States were burdened by a military expenditure out of all proportion to the other items of the account. It is true that improved financial methods, the abolition of privilege in taxation, and the confiscation of monastic wealth, enabled larger revenues to be raised with less loss to the taxpayer. But it must be remembered that the decline of the volume of commerce due to the Continental Blockade diminished indirect sources of revenue; and that in every dependency a considerable portion of the state domain was reserved for the benefit of French generals and other servants of the Empire. The object of these dotations was to give to the military and official class a strong pecuniary interest in the maintenance of the French conquests, and to create in every vassal State a group of families attached to the Imperial connexion. The result was to cause embarrassment to the local exchequer, and to aggravate the impression that the dependency was being exploited for ends which were not its own. The Continental Blockade was another and most harassing consequence of the war, leading as it did not only to great material losses, but also to the irritating intrusion of French custom-house officers. If the dependencies had been thoroughly incorporated in the French fiscal system, freedom of trade with the great French market might have offered some compen­sation. But they experienced all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of a fiscal connexion with the Empire. They were not allowed to compete with the French manufacturer, and they were com­pelled to lower or demolish their barriers against French wares.

There was another drawback incidental to the national temperament. Frenchmen of the best kind did not readily go abroad except in pursuit of military glory, and when abroad were generally anxious to come home again. Nor were they apt at picking up the colloquial use of a foreign language, partly because they regarded any foreign language as an inferior kind of patois, and partly because they expected foreigners to talk to them in French. Napoleon was well aware of these drawbacks, and hoped to create in the auditeurs attached to his Council of State a body of young, intelligent, enterprising civilians, drawn from every part of the Empire, versed in affairs, sufficiently wealthy to be above pecuniary temptation, and ready to go anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice. Had the Empire lasted ten years longer, the Council of State, with its brilliant nimbus of disciples, would probably have become a great seminary of public virtue.

Napoleon, who created so many States, institutions, armies, and careers, was, despite his high administrative gifts, a frequent source of disorder, distrust, and even despair to the men who worked under him. He was very restless, constantly altering the boundaries of States, and rearranging the map of Europe. He was very inquisitive, employing hundreds of spies and police agents, and receiving secret reports even as to the conduct of his own brothers. He was often very harsh and unfeeling, and always brutally direct both in his written and spoken words. He therefore contrived, though perhaps only in the last four years of his Empire, to convey the impression that none of his political creations would be enduring, that he suspected his own agents, and that pity and benevolence had no place in the conduct of affairs.

The Italian Republic, whose formation and early history down to 1803 has already been described, made a beginning which impressed one person at least as unpromising and ill-omened. Count Melzi, the Vice-President of the Republic, was not a man of sanguine temperament; and some deductions must be made by readers of his querulous correspondence. It would appear, however, that the blessings of self­government were inadequately appreciated by those for whom they were intended, and that, while the Electoral Colleges regarded the franchise as a burden, the College of the Dotti resented the connexion with France. The legislators preferred the cafe to the council-room, and, through their factious and careless conduct, had greatly fallen in public esteem. Good prefects and good clerks were difficult to discover. The “passive animosity” against France was almost universal. With these complaints directed against his countrymen, Melzi combined criticisms of the Napoleonic system. In January, 1804, he pointed out that the Republic was paying a third of its revenues to France, that the department of Olona alone sent to Paris one-ninth more revenue than had been raised by Austria from Milan and Mantua together, and that local expenses were augmented in the same proportion. Out of a budget of 90,000,000 francs, 4,000,000 were spent upon fortifications, 25,500,000 upon the French army, and 22,500,000 upon the Italian army. Moreover, while Melzi desired economic freedom, Napoleon refused to lower his own tariff in favour of the Italian Republic.

Nevertheless some progress was made towards the organisation of the State. The ministers were hard-working and capable, and carefully drawn from the different provinces; and the government, if not popular, was free from the taint of peculation. A Veronese prefect was sent to Bologna, a Novarese to Modena; and this principle of selection, based on the desire to obliterate local divisions, was universally acted upon by the French in Italy. A gendarmerie, organised on the French model, proved to be a most efficient instrument for the suppression of brigandage and other forms of crime. The conscription was introduced; and a native army was rapidly formed, in which the Romagnols proved to be the most vigorous element, leaving a strong imprint of their dialect upon the new and common language of the camp. In September, 1803, 6000 Italians were ordered up to the coast of the English Channel. In the following July the Republic was inspired to make a voluntary gift of 1,200,000 francs towards the war.

Still Bonaparte was dissatisfied. In 1804 he became Emperor of the French; and that the head of an Empire should also be president of a Republic seemed to him anomalous. He was not entirely pleased with Melzi, and doubtless reflected that a French prince in Milan would have more authority than an Italian nobleman, especially in military affairs. It may perhaps also have occurred to him that a kingdom of Italy would evoke historic memories and national hopes, and therefore enlist a larger stock of active assent from the Lombard people than they were willing to give to the Republic. He determined therefore to revive the old Lombard monarchy, and to offer the crown to his eldest brother. The plan would fall in with other parts of a great scheme which was now shaping itself in his mind—the scheme of a number of allied and tributary kingdoms governed by members of the Bonaparte family. But Joseph and Louis both preferred their chances of succession in France to an Italian crown; so Napoleon took the crown himself. On March 17, 1805, a Constitutional Statute was issued, which called the Emperor of the French to the throne of Italy. But the kingdom was to be kept distinct from the Empire; and upon the conclusion of peace Napoleon promised to resign it to his natural or adopted son. To a deputation of the Republic he promised that he would make the new kingdom free and himself go to Milan to take the Iron Crown.

Napoleon’s visit to northern Italy in 1805 was like the passing of a hailstorm over parched land. Wherever he went he poured out ideas, schemes, improvements. He was crowned King with great pomp in Milan Cathedral, and then nominated his step-son Eugene Beauharnais to act as viceroy. He told the Italian legislature (June 7) that good and splendid results always proceeded from a uniform and simple system, and that to this end he had simplified the administration. The Code had been given to Italy; and the Council had been asked to prepare a judicial system which should secure to the Italian people all the advantages of strong judicial benches, public procedure, and fair trial.

The jury, however, would not be admitted. To enhance the credit of the country, the public debt was to bear the name of “Monte Napoleone” Public instruction was no longer to be departmental, but based on a uniform policy for the whole kingdom. Departmental expenses were to be equalised, the richer departments being forced to contribute to the needs of the poorer. “My people of Italy,” he continued, “is of all the peoples of Europe the least heavily taxed”; and he assured his hearers that no new charge would be laid upon them. Measures had been taken to provide the clergy with a suitable endowment; and, though some monastic establishments had been amalgamated, it was his intention to protect those which were of public utility, or which supplied the place of the secular clergy. “The Italians should remember that arms are the principal support of a State. It is time that the youth who live in idleness in the great towns should cease to fear the fatigues and dangers of war.” Eugene was reminded that he must study to please the Italians. “Cultivate their language; let them be your principal companions; distinguish them in a particular manner at festivals; approve what they approve, love what they love... Your grand interest is to treat the nation well, to know them all, their names, their families.” He was rarely to preside over the Council of State, to speak little, to work twice a week with his ministers, to distrust spies, to write every day to the Emperor, to surround himself with young Italians, to study the history of all the towns in the kingdom, to be inflexible with dishonest officials, to visit the fortresses, and every week to report on the force of each corps—how many were on the sick list, how many on the active list, where they were quartered, how went the conscription. An experienced French publicist, Mejean, was deputed to guide his footsteps.

Everyone in Milan liked Eugene. He was not clever or experienced, but he was frank and manly, loyal and laborious, with a gift for the right word; a keen professional soldier rather than a statesman, but even as a statesman above the average of Italian rulers. He served Napoleon well, and was well served by his subjects. Indeed it was said in after-times, when the Austrians ruled in Milan, that if you met a clever-looking man in the streets, or heard of any one as a book-lover, as subscribing for instance to the collected edition of Alfieri, he was sure to be an ex-civil servant of the Viceroy. The bureaucracy was so strenuous, there was such a thrilling air of improvement and economy, of adventure and high politics, in the kingdom, that the whole tone of society was braced up. It was observed, for instance, that the Milanese aristocracy became more economical and flung away less money in carriages and theatres, and that in spite of heavy taxation they were richer at the end of the reign than at the beginning. It was observed that house-building proceeded rapidly, though the taxes rose from 82,000,000 francs in 1805 to 144,000,000 in 1812. The public works carried out by the Government, the canals and roads, the ornamental boulevards and gardens, constituted in themselves a kind of education. The Po was cleared of floating brushwood, so that it became navigable by night; the cathedral of Milan was finished; every important town received some embellishment. The prison and sanitary legislation was far in advance of earlier standards. Agriculture was encouraged by schools, mendicity diminished, public order enforced by a stricter police. The comparative immunity of northern Italy from crime during the later portion of Eugene’s rule, and the subsequent recrudescence of acts of violence, have been noted by Sir Samuel Romilly.

It is true that the government was a despotism. The legislature, which was somewhat obscurantist, was suppressed for criticising the first budget of the kingdom; and afterwards (March, 1808) a Senate was formed upon the French model to take its place. Being mainly composed of government officials, and merely qualified to register the acts of the sovereign and the Council of State, this body was both servile and useless. Nor was there any outside criticism. The press was kept down with a firm hand; and the faintest attempt at political comment was severely punished. Lattanzi, the editor of a fashionable Milanese weekly, was put into a madhouse for hinting at the annexation of Etruria.

Yet the play of higher upon lower minds, if discouraged in the sphere of politics, was fortified in other directions. The great vice of Italian education had long been the sacrifice of solid learning to frivolous accomplishments. The French rule gave a more serious and practical bent to the Italian intellect. Special schools were instituted for music, agriculture, engineering. Lycées in the French style were planned in every department; at Milan, Bologna, and Venice, academies of art were created which were to elect a commission dell’ornato, charged with the duty of embellishing cities; military education became quite as serious, and far more scientific than it had been elsewhere, even in Prussia; and the study of military history experienced a renascence. The effect of the army upon the country was profound and far-reaching. It helped to obliterate provincial and social distinctions; it provided a career for talent; it roused the rich from their lethargy, and formed an admirable school for patriotism ; it restored to the Italians their self-respect. At the Boulogne manoeuvres, in the Austerlitz campaign, at the sieges of Kolberg and Stralsund, in the difficult fighting in Catalonia, at the battle of the Raab, and in the Moscow campaign, the Italian troops proved themselves inferior to none. Officers returning from the wars believed in the union of Italy.

The kingdom of Italy was successively increased by the addition of Venice in 1806, of the Marches in 1808, and of Italian Tyrol in 1810. Dalmatia, which was ceded to Napoleon together with Venice, was in the first instance placed under the control of Eugene, but afterwards (August, 1806) transferred to Marmont; and, when three years later Austria was stripped of her remaining Illyrian provinces, these were added to the command of the Governor-General of Dalmatia. Whatever may have been Napoleon’s original intention when he appointed Eugene, when he arranged for his marriage, and when he adopted him as a son, he showed clearly by his subsequent conduct that he did not intend a Beauharnais to rule over a united Italy. For not only did he establish a French monarchy in Naples, but side by side with these two kingdoms he built up “a French Italy”, an Italy annexed to the Empire, which seemed likely to swallow up the whole peninsula. Indeed, in 1810 he frankly told Eugene that, if he did not show zeal in the Continental Blockade, his kingdom would be annexed to France.

Of these Franco-Italian provinces, Piedmont was the earliest specimen. It was, as Bonaparte explained, a tête-du-pont necessary for France; and its hardy subalpine population, trained to the barrack and the camp, afforded an additional inducement to annex it. Accordingly, from 1802 to 1814, Piedmont, divided into six departments, was administered as a French province by French laws. The French tongue, which had formerly been fashionable, was now official; and a bilingual newspaper, the Courier de Turin, was provided by the Government, to educate the shopkeepers and the rustics in the language of their conquerors. The Piedmontese debt was taken over by France; tithes and feudal dues were suppressed ; and the French fiscal system was introduced by Gaudin in all its vigorous completeness in 1805. But here, as in Lombardy, the First Consul was determined that the anti-clerical democrats, who had triumphed at the fall of the Sardinian House, should triumph no longer. General Menou, who governed the Piedmontese departments from 1803 to 1808, was, though married to an illiterate Egyptian, himself well-born, and assiduously angled for the graces of the Piedmontese nobility. With all his ostentation, his debts, and his amours, Menou rendered some substantial services to the province, organising as he did a much-needed system of poor-relief, and completely stamping out brigandage. Napoleon, too, visited Piedmont in 1805, and was prolific in policies. Bread was to be cheapened; rivers were to be bridged; fortifications were to be demolished; and Turin, under the new administration, was to assume “the popular and paternal physiognomy of a French town.” Three years later, wishing to console the Piedmontese for the loss of a Court, he created the post of “Governor-General of the departments beyond the Alps”, and appointed his brother-in-law Camille Borghese to hold it. Borghese was a young, good-looking Roman, without intellect or parts, and would have been unequal to serious responsibilities. But as a gaudy fly thrown to attract the nobility of Piedmont and Liguria (for the Genoese departments were placed within his sphere), Borghese could serve the Emperor’s turn. He was instructed to speak French, to hold levies and give banquets, to write to the Emperor every day, and to take his orders from the ministers in Paris.

Piedmont had always been noted for certain peculiarities. It was very monarchical; it was very clerical; it was very military; and it was very un-Italian. If the Sardinian House was to be exiled, annexation to France was as acceptable a destiny as any other, though there was a party who favoured a connexion with the Italian kingdom. Being military in their tastes, the Piedmontese were not averse, as were other Italians, from the conscription; and the name of Napoleon was revered by many a veteran long after the Empire had passed away. Though many noble families still secretly hoped for a Sardinian restoration, many accepted office and title from the French. Eight Piedmontese entered the Senate of the Empire; nine at least sat in the Legislative Body; two were in Napoleon’s Council of State. Wider careers flattered the professional class; popular festivals and military reviews amused the people. Though the taxes were heavy, though the use of the French tongue was a source of hardship in the country districts, though the anticlerical policy of the later Empire went against popular sentiment, and many parts of the Code were contrary to tradition, there was no serious opposition to French rule.

The boundaries of French Italy were eventually expanded by the annexation of Parma and Piacenza, of Tuscany, and of the remaining portions of the Roman State. In 1800 Moreau de Saint-Mery was sent as resident to Duke Ferdinand of Parma; and, after the Duke’s death in October, 1802, he was named as administrator of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. Moreau abolished torture, improved the judicial system, and prepared the way for annexation, which was formally proclaimed on Sept. 23, 1805. In 1806, after a peasant revolt had been crushed by Junot and the public debt liquidated by Gaudin, the duchies received the designation of “the department of the Taro”, and were placed under the general government of Piedmont and Liguria.

The kingdom of Etruria, annexed three years later, was a more important addition to the Empire. Founded in 1801 for Louis, the weakly and superstitious son of Duke Ferdinand of Parma, Etruria had experienced nothing but humiliations and disasters. The policy of the Court of Florence was controlled by Napoleon, who quartered his troops in the country, abstracted the Venus de’ Medici, prescribed the acceptance of his Code, and insisted upon the closure of Livorno to English vessels. The kingdom was overrun with French soldiery; and the Queen Regent, whose husband had died in 1802, was overawed by the French resident. But, though powerless to oppose French schemes, Marie-Louise was not the woman to support them. She had all the inertia, all the stupidity, all the abject superstition of the Spanish Bourbons. While Napoleon was plunging deeper and deeper into his struggle with the Papacy, the Queen Regent of Etruria was the patroness of monks and the plaything of favourites; and her rule appeared all the more lifeless and dark, when compared with the active proceedings of Elise Bonaparte in the neighbouring principality of Lucca. Herself able and laborious, an admirable ruler of her tiny State, Élise both envied and despised, annoyed and depreciated her Spanish rival. Her strictures and aspirations were no secret to Napoleon, who, having created the kingdom of Etruria to obtain colonial concessions from Spain, now came to view it as “a deformity in the Italian peninsula.”

On October 27, 1807, a secret treaty was signed with Spain at Fontainebleau, in virtue of which the heir of Marie-Louise was to surrender Tuscany for a principality in Portugal. When all had been settled, the Queen Regent was informed that she had ceased to reign, that she must pack up her goods and spend the rest of her life as a pensioner and an exile. On May 30, 1808, Tuscany was united to France, receiving three places in the Senate and twelve in the Legislative Body. In the meantime an Extraordinary Junta had been appointed to organise the country. It was headed by General Menou, and contained among its numbers Chaban, the experienced prefect of Brussels, d’Auchy, the financier, de Gerando, soldier, philosopher, administrator, and philanthropist, and a young Piedmontese named Cesare Balbo, who was destined to make a mark in the annals of Italy. It was explained that the object of the annexation was to extend the French coasts, to aid naval recruiting, and to enable a military port upon the scale of Toulon to be constructed at Spezia.

Seven months and eighteen octavo volumes of ordinances sufficed to convert “the mother of modern civilisation” into a little French frontier town. A French prefect was sent to Florence; the country was carved into three departments, Arno, Ombrone, Mediterranée; the Leopoldine system of justice and administration was swept away. The Italian language was however admitted into official acts and documents—a wise concession duly appreciated; and in time many prominent Tuscans rallied to the new government. In March, 1809, “a General Government of the Departments of Tuscany” was created upon the model of that which had been established in Turin. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, as it was now called, was given to Élise Bonaparte; and it was hoped that the festivities of a grand-ducal Court would bring consolation to Florence for the extinction of the Medici and the expulsion of the Bourbons. The powers of the Grand Duchess were limited to transmitting the orders received from the ministers in Paris to the intendant of her Treasury, the director of her police, the chief of her staff, and a general of division (her own husband), all of whom were named by the Emperor. When Élise attempted to neglect or amend the instruction of a minister, she was reminded that as a French subject she was liable to arrest.

Of all the Italian States, Tuscany had least to gain and most to lose by the imposition of the French system. Her judicial system had been excellent, her penal law mild and humane in comparison with that which she was now compelled to receive. She had already grown out of feudalism and reformed her monasteries; and, though her administration was complex and still bore evidence of the historic dualism between Florence and Siena, it was the product of an intelligent race versed in the arts of management. The French improved the law of mortgage, encouraged the cultivation of cotton, helped the woollen manufacturers, flattered the universities; and, by abolishing religious congregations, enabled the debt to be liquidated. But the most civilised peasantry in Europe loathed the crude barbarity of the conscription; and all the benefits of French rule could not efface the resentment which the military policy of Napoleon aroused in the Tuscan mind.

The temporal power of the Papacy had long appeared to Napoleon to be anomalous and inconvenient; and in his first Italian campaign he had enforced the cession of the Legations to the Cisalpine Republic. The March of Ancona, stretching along the eastern coast of Italy and connecting the Italian with the Neapolitan kingdom, formed the next object of attack. On August 5, 1807, Napoleon expounded to Eugene the advisability of annexing this portion of Italy; and on October 3 General Lemarrois was ordered to fix his head-quarters at Ancona, to sequester the revenue, to take command of the papal troops in the district, and to establish a provisional administration. In the spring of 1808 the last pretence of reserve was thrown away. The March of Ancona and the duchies of Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino were incorporated in the Italian kingdom, divided into three departments (Metauro, Musone, Tronto), and subjected to the Italian Concordat. Prina was despatched to liquidate the debt and arrange the budget. The port of Ancona was to be cleared; the city was to be fortified; and, while the coasts were to be carefully surveyed, a regiment was to be formed out of the papal troops. But, while the northern provinces fell to the Italian kingdom, the most precious and distinctive portion of the State, including the capital, was annexed to the French Empire.

Of all the events which occurred during this crowded period of Italian history, none, not even the partition of Venetia, cut so deep to the Italian heart. Religious scepticism was common enough in Italy; Gallican principles were widely held, men of intelligence readily acknowledged that priestly government meant stagnation and inefficiency. But the Papacy was a possession common to all Italians; and Rome was the sacred city of the race. An Italian might serve the French in Piedmont, or even in Tuscany, and feel no searchings of heart; but to gallicise Rome, to arrest the head of the Catholic religion, was quintessential impiety and treason to the deeper instincts. The pretexts for the annexation and the circumstances which attended it made collusion peculiarly ignominious. It was asserted that Charlemagne had wished the Pope to be a vassal of the Empire; that Pius VII had allied himself with Protestants; and that, if the Papal States were not annexed, Rome would become the “refuge of brigands raised or vomited by the enemies of his Majesty in the territory of Naples”. The plain facts were that the Pope had declined to join in an offensive alliance against England; that he had contested the extension of the French Concordat to Piedmont and Liguria, and the extension of the Italian Concordat to Venetia; that he had refused to sanction the divorce of Jerome; and that he asserted the old papal claim to suzerainty over Naples. In other words, he had fought for the traditions of his office, for the spiritual and temporal independence of his See.

To chastise such insolence, General Miollis was commanded (January, 1808) to quarter his troops in Rome, to seize the Castle of Sant Angelo, and to arrest every English resident and Neapolitan refugee. The Pope was then subjected to every humiliation. He was forced to dismiss one secretary after another; his guard was dissolved; a Roman newspaper was launched against the temporal power. On May 17, 1809, a few days before the battle of Aspern, a decree was issued annexing the Papal States to the French Empire; and a Consulta was appointed to carry on the government. The Pope responded with the Bull Quam Memoranda, directed against all who should take part in the spoliation of the Church; and for this offence he was made prisoner, hurried out of the capital, and transported to Savona. The act was concerted between Murat and Miollis, and transgressed the measure of Napoleon’s instructions. But, once done, it could not be undone; and it proved the signal for a revelation of fortitude in an unexpected quarter. The Roman clergy did not stand high in the public esteem; and no section of Italian society seemed less likely to furnish a pattern of manly independence. Yet, when an oath of obedience and fealty to the Emperor was proposed to them, and though it was well understood that not only preferment, but liberty and a livelihood depended upon their answer, the majority of them declined to swear. Arrest, imprisonment, exile made no impression. “I began to suspect”, wrote Balbo, the secretary of the Roman Consulta, “ hat these despised priests were the strongest men, perhaps the only strong men in Italy.” Out of 3106 monks, 1868 declined to accept pensions from the French Government.

Consistently with the proscription of the non-jurors, the transition was to be effected as painlessly as possible. The Consulta was told that it was Napoleon’s intention to diminish rather than increase the taxes. A Senate of sixty members, chosen from the highest ranks of Roman society, was to conduct the affairs and flatter the pride of the city. Though feudal dues were to be suppressed, the nobility might preserve their titles and liveries. Two Romans were to sit in the Imperial Senate, and two in the Council of State. On August 22, 1809, it was announced that a palace, a country-house, and a civil list of a million francs were to be allotted to a grand dignitary of the Empire thereafter to be named. Meanwhile the city was to lose its distinctively ecclesiastical aspect. It was the first duty of the Consulta to suppress the Inquisition. The wearing of the clerical habit was restricted to ecclesiastics; the monasteries were dissolved; and a great reduction was effected in the number of dioceses and parishes.

The conduct of the Consulta was marked by the zeal, the energy, and the consideration characteristic of the best French officials. The taxes were fairly assessed; and the liquidation of the debt was here, as elsewhere, provided for by confiscated monastic wealth. The medieval traditions which impeded judicial efficiency—torture, the right of asylum, the exclusive use of Latin in the Courts—were now abolished; while the brigand bands which infested the Campagna were at last broken up. The government took in hand the draining of the Pontine Marshes, the regulation of the Tiber, the restoration of the Appian Way, the improvement of agriculture and the industrial arts. Prizes were offered for the best compositions in Italian prose and verse; a rational system of poor relief was instituted; a university was founded at Perugia; a plan was devised for the restoration of the ancient monuments of Rome, and enthusiastically received by Napoleon. When the Consulta finished its work in January, 1810, the departments of Rome and Trasimene were fully organised. The papal troops had been drafted into the Neapolitan army; the Codes were being administered in the Roman Courts; and bishops, canons, and priests were drawing exiguous stipends from the French exchequer.

Nevertheless the city was not satisfied. Murat represented that the population had shrunk by forty thousand owing to the loss of the papal Court; and, as the taxes were doubled and the conscription was introduced, while the subordinate fiscal officials abused their power, the populace looked back with regret to the soft and indolent rule of the Pope. But meanwhile Napoleon was expecting the birth of an heir; and his expectations were blended with new schemes and ambitions. On February 17,1810, a Senatus Consultum was issued, which declared Rome to be the second city in the Empire. The Prince Imperial was to assume the title of King of Rome, to hold an imperial Court there, and to renew the splendour of the arts; and, in order that the analogy with the old Empire might be more complete, it was added that the Emperors of France were to be crowned in St Peter’s before the tenth year of their reign. The independence of the Papal See was at an end. The Pope was to swear to the Gallican Articles, to accept a civil list of 2,000,000 francs, and to have a palace in Paris as well as in Rome. The expenses of the Sacred College and the Propaganda were declared imperial. “Rome will stand higher than she has stood since the last of the Caesars. She will be the sister of the cherished city of Napoleon. The “capital of a small State”  was henceforward to become “one of the capitals of a great empire”. In time the old papal feeling would die out. By throwing Church lands to the value of 200,000,000 francs into the market, Napoleon intended to form a proprietary, whose interests would be bound up with the continuance of French rule.

In no quarter of Italy was there a more crying need for energetic reform than in the kingdom of Naples. Here was a people still plunged in medieval barbarism, ignorant, poor, lazy, superstitious, degraded not only by inherent faults of character but by long centuries of oppression and neglect. A rich and privileged absentee landlord class extorted, through the medium of its rapacious agents, every form of due or service which the unfettered tyranny of the noble caste had been able to devise. The burden of the State taxes fell almost entirely on the poor. The course of justice was habitually interfered with by the King; and the judges not only bought their places, but received presents from the litigants who pleaded before them. Torture indeed was abolished, but starvation and chains remained, and all the horrors of the dark and pestilential Neapolitan dungeons. Trials were still held in secret, and verdicts prescribed by authority. That the galleys might be filled more rapidly, prisoners were often tried in a batch and condemned without a pretence of justice; on the other hand, men were sometimes immured for twenty years or more without being brought to trial. In the country districts brigandage was chronic, and was the only career which a young man of spirit could adopt. Agriculture was almost entirely neglected ; it was strangled by fourteen hundred different kinds of feudal dues, by a vicious system of taxation, and by the free rights of grazing possessed by the nobility. Monks and priests, beggars and bandits, formed the staple of the country population; while in the capital, 150,000 half-starving and half-naked lazzaroni constituted a real danger to personal security. The fiscal system combined the maximum of harm to the people with the minimum of benefit to the State. More than a hundred direct imposts were levied by the municipalities, which paid a fixed proportion to the government, and the remainder to the feudal lord. Almost every article of food was taxed; and the duties so raised, the arrendamenti, were contracted out to a farmer. A heavy tax on salt, rendered additionally oppressive by compulsory purchase, was specially burdensome to the poor. The law was a chaos of precedents and customs, municipal statutes and royal decrees; but its obscurity was almost immaterial, for it was constantly supplemented or transgressed by the exceptional action of the Crown.

In 1806 Ferdinand IV was compelled to make way for Joseph Bonaparte; and there were some grounds for hoping that the second French occupation of Naples would be more permanent than the first. The Bourbons, after all, were intruders, half-French, half-Spanish; and the bloodthirsty revenge which they had taken on their antagonists in 1799 had made them many enemies. Joseph was an Italian, who could speak the language and appreciate the characteristics of his subjects; and he came to Naples backed by the reputation of the Empire and aided by the sword of Massena and Regnier. Though no soldier and destitute of any conspicuous talent for action, Joseph had a good fund of common sense, and some genuine popular sympathies. That he was entirely subjugated by the will of his brother, and that he was overfond of display is true enough. But he was disinterested, laborious, anxious to improve the lot of his subjects; and it would be an insult to compare him to the degraded and worthless creature whom he displaced.

The situation was one of exceptional difficulty. The Queen of Naples had emptied the bank and absconded with the fleet; and the whole coast was exposed to British cruisers. The Pope declined to recognise the new King, and the Archbishop of Naples refused to consecrate him—a serious flaw in the eyes of a superstitious people. As the Court had taken the precaution of levying part of the year’s revenue in advance, and commerce was intercepted by the naval war, the Government found itself from the first in grave financial embarrassment. A protracted campaign of a peculiarly harassing kind added to its per­plexities. Gaeta, gallantly defended by the Prince of Hesse-Philipstadt, held out for five months against all the efforts of Massena’s army; and this, combined with Sir John Stuart’s victory over Regnier at Maida, stirred up all Calabria to revolt. It was a war of ambuscades and skirmishes, of midnight assassinations and the firing of villages; and, while untold atrocities were perpetrated in the South, a British fleet landed a garrison at Capri within sight of Naples itself. There were other difficulties more insidious still. “You have to do,” wrote Napoleon, “with a woman who is crime personified”; and more than one conspiracy was unmasked which traced its origin to Maria Carolina.

Napoleon’s own views as to the prospects and functions of the new government were unfolded to his brother with the brutal directness characteristic of all his correspondence. If the lazzaroni gave trouble they were to be shot; and three or four batteries might be erected which could throw bombs into different parts of Naples if the capital should prove restive. A few big villages should be burnt to edify the Calabrians; and a war contribution of 30,000,000 francs should be levied to meet immediate expenses. The King was to impose a severe and equal system of taxation which should bring in a revenue of 100,000,000 francs from the mainland alone, to create a number of big fiefs for French officers, and to introduce the Civil Code; so that, while the French laws of inheritance would tend to subdivide Neapolitan fortunes, the establishment of a system of entails for a certain number of selected fiefs would strengthen and perpetuate the power of the French connexion. If, however, the institution of divorce should offend clerical prejudice, Joseph was at liberty to drop it, and to leave the registration of births, marriages, and deaths in the hands of the priests. Above all he was warned against optimism. The utmost caution was required in raising a Neapolitan force. In every act Joseph was to ask himself, “How would this be if the French were beaten back to Alessandria?”

As a precaution against ill-fortune, Napoleon recommended the construction of a strong fortress, a sort of Strasbourg, in which the French might defend themselves for a year or two in the event of disasters to the eagles in central Europe. Meanwhile the chief duties of the Neapolitan King were to stamp out the Calabrian revolt, to conquer Sicily, to create a good army corps and a squadron, and to aid Napoleon to become master of the Mediterranean, “the principal and constant aim of my policy”. He must not expect to receive financial aid from France; on the contrary, he must pay for the French army of occupation, and permit the establishment of six imperial fiefs, to be increased to nine in the event of the annexation of Sicily, as well as a reserved domain producing a million francs per annum, to be distributed to French generals and officers. His ties to France were still imperiously emphasised. He was a Grand Elector of the Empire, the heir-apparent to the throne, subject in all matters foreign and domestic to his brother’s will. But it was provided in the statute which conferred the Neapolitan crown, that it was never to be held with the crown of France.

An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary measures; and Joseph was compelled to raise a special tax of 5,000,000 francs from Naples and to negotiate a loan in Holland. Even so, his revenue was not adequate to his expenditure, three-fifths of which was accounted for by the army and navy. But by the end of his reign, thanks to the skill of Roederer, Neapolitan finance had been put upon a sound basis. The admirable French system of audit and control was introduced; the duties on commodities (arrendamenti) were taken out of the hands of the farmers, and henceforward collected by the State. In place of the old direct taxes, 104 in number, a single tax was substituted (fondiaria) upon all incomes, lay, ecclesiastical, noble, and non-noble, which were derived from land. The incredible complication of the Neapolitan octroi duties was done away with; the customs tariff’ was revised. On November 27, 1807, Roederer was able to report that a tenth of the national debt had already been liquidated by the sale of national domain, and that measures had been taken for extinguishing three-quarters of the remainder by the confiscation of monastic lands. In the two years of Joseph’s rule the revenue was doubled and the debt halved; and the only blots upon an otherwise excellent system were the retention by the State of exclusive and compulsory powers to sell salt, and a civil list which absorbed one-fifth of the revenue.

These were not the only reforms. Every commune was endowed with a free school, every province with a college. Communal and provincial councils were established, with consultative functions; and, though little could be expected of them at first, they might with experience develop into useful bodies. The abolition of feudalism was decreed, and the whole land-system was revolutionised by the division of communal property, the abolition of primogeniture and entails, the conversion of the vitalizi or rents of younger sons into freehold property, and the confiscation of the vast estates belonging to the Orders of St Bernard and St Benedict. While these changes increased the number of proprietors and promoted the agricultural energy of the population, measures were taken to abridge the grazing rights on the tavoliere of Apulia, and to bring a larger acreage under tillage. Prison reform and law reform were other subjects which occupied the attention of the government; and, though the moment was not favourable to experiments in clemency, the prisons were placed for the first time under humane regulations, and the country introduced to the benefits of public trial. In view of the Calabrian revolt, four extraordinary and semi-military Courts were created to despatch summary justice; they were not abolished till 1808. The jury system was never introduced into any part of Italy ; but, with these qualifications, and others belonging to the nature of the Codes themselves, the judicial system introduced by the French forms a favourable contrast to the system which it displaced.

Joseph had reigned barely two years when, on March 10, 1808, he was commanded to exchange his kingdom for the throne of Spain. From Bayonne he issued a constitution to his former subjects, the main feature of which was a parliament of a hundred members, eighty of whom were to be named by the King and twenty by the electoral colleges. But even this limited concession to the parliamentary system was regarded as untimely, both by the Government and by the Neapolitans themselves; and, though orders were issued in 1810 for the convocation of departmental councils, there was so general a reluctance to serve upon them that further progress in the direction of political liberty was arrested. French rule in Naples resulted in a liberal despotism, untrammelled by constitutional forms or privileged corporations.

Joachim Murat, being offered his choice, wisely determined to reign in Naples rather than in Portugal. His spectacular appearance, his brilliant military record, his affable manners, made him at once a favourite with the idle and impressionable Neapolitan populace; and his wife Caroline, the sister of the Emperor, a handsome and capable woman, added to his prestige and popularity. Primarily a soldier, “Jacino” devoted his main attention to military affairs. The Neapolitan army was steadily increased, until in 1814 its numbers stood at 80,000. A bold attack upon Capri resulted in the expulsion of its Corsican and Maltese garrison. This greatly impressed the Neapolitans; and, though the attempted invasion of Sicily in 1809 was less successful and led to a formidable recrudescence of brigandage, Calabria was ultimately pacified by the systematic severities of General Manhes. In the meantime the reforms of the previous reign, many of which existed only on paper, were earned into execution. A Feudal Commission, presided over by Giuseppe Zurlo, the Minister of the Interior, dealt with all the questions which arose out of the new land-laws, distributed domain-lands, settled scales of compensation, and completed its arduous task by 1810. Through careful finance the revenue rose steadily, and showed a surplus in 1810 and 1811. Agricultural societies were founded in every province; and real energy was thrown into educational reform.

If the continuance of the French rule in Naples had depended on a plebiscite of liberal and intelligent Neapolitan opinion, King Joachim would have been secure. But, as time went on, the real divergence between the interests of the Neapolitan kingdom and the exigencies of Imperial policy became more and more apparent. The correspondence between Murat and his master is filled with complaints on the one hand, with reproof and recrimination on the other. Burdens (says Murat) are thrown upon the Neapolitan exchequer which do not properly belong to it and which it can ill afford to bear. Native industry is damaged and the revenue diminished by the exemption of French imports from duty. Despite licenses, the merchants are ruined by the Continental Blockade. The King petitions that he may be allowed to send home at least 15,000 of the French troops quartered upon his country; or that he may recall his own troops from Spain, where they are serving at the charges of the Neapolitan exchequer. It was all in vain. With regard to the blockade, finances, and military preparation, Napoleon was inexorable. In 1811 he threatened Murat with deposition. Yet there were already over 76,000 men on the naval and military establishment, a strain which bade fair to compromise the success of all the French reforms.

Great as was Napoleon’s influence south of the Alps, it was no less far-reaching in Germany. The secularisation of the ecclesiastical princi­palities, the mediatisation of the Imperial Knights, the elimination of Austria, tire extinction of the Holy Roman Empire, the additions made to the dignity and power of the south-German Princes, the simplification of the political geography of the country—these achievements entitle Napoleon to be called one of the makers of modern Germany. Yet, while this was the ultimate result, it was far from being the immediate intention. In a letter to Louis, Napoleon said that it was the principal end of his policy to denationalise (depayser) the German mind.

The German mind, so far as it was expressed by the captains of literature, readily lent itself to the process. It was sufficiently cool and cosmopolitan to appreciate the fine points of French civilisation, and sufficiently intelligent to condemn the absurdities of the medieval German policy. Thus, while the Holy Roman Empire perished in an atmosphere of home-made ridicule, the new Rhine Confederation carried with it no distinct idea of historic sacrilege. The south-German Princes, enriched and dignified by Napoleon, had been enabled to pay off their old scores against Austria; and the south-German population was generally content to follow where its Princes led.

The influence of France upon the internal polity of the States of the Confederation was none the less marked for being indirect. It made at once for autocracy and centralisation, for civil equality and political subservience. The object of Napoleon being to extract military assistance from his German allies, every constitutional check upon the will of the sovereign was an obstacle which ought to be removed; and the Princes who were his confederates were ready enough to take the hint, and to purchase autocracy at home at the price of subservience in their foreign relations. But there were other parts of Germany where French influence was more directly exerted, parts which were ruled by French prefects or by German prefects obeying a French master. This French Germany, or German France, as it may be called, was made up of a series of accretions. The process began with the conquest of the Rhenish electorates in 1792; it ended with the annexation of the Hanseatic towns and the duchy of Oldenburg in 1811. It did not follow any preordained plan, but was governed by the circumstances of the moment; and the component parts of the new territory were frequently altered, both as to their boundaries, and as to their organisation. Hanover, for instance, was subjected to military occupation in 1803; then part of it was taken away and incorporated in the kingdom of Westphalia (1806); then the remaining portion was given to Westphalia (1810); a few months afterwards, the whole of the original portion ceded in 1806 and most of the additional portion ceded in 1810 formed part of the French Empire. Some districts, such as Erfurt, never received regular civil organisation, but were simply charged with the support of French troops; others, like Fulda and Hanau, after a period of military government, were fused into a State on the French pattern.

This inequality in the duration of methodised French rule must be taken into account in considering the history of French Germany. Ultimately the four Rhenish departments and the two departments formed out of the Hanseatic lands were administered on the same plan; but this outward similarity conceals the most divergent conditions. The four Rhenish departments had long lost all semblance of interest in their old masters, in the motley host of archbishops and bishops, princes and counts, Imperial towns and Imperial knights, who had borne sway over the land. They had never been in the full current of German life; they had no great university; their peasantry had greatly profited by the fall of the sovereigns and the land-sales of the Revolution, and were content enough with French rule, as soon as it put off Jacobinical excesses. Until 1814 the departements reams suffered little from war. Nowhere was the Imperial government more intelligent, more zealous, more anxious to make the “new Frenchmen” at home in France. The French language was encouraged, but not to the exclusion of German; the French market was opened to Rhenish trade.

It was far otherwise with the Hanseatic departments. The governments of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck had been such as to enlist a large amount of active municipal patriotism. The burghers of these city-States were proud of their polities and jealous of their independence. They had been forced to lend money on doubtful security to the French government of Hanover; and ever since 1806 they had been pillaged by French soldiery, and molested by French policemen. They lived for commerce, and their commerce was destroyed by the blockade; and in the loss of their liberties they saw little else than the desire of Napoleon to sweep more sailors into his navy, to burn more English wares, and to plague their lives by more effectual requisitions and more searching domiciliary visits. Whereas the Rhine departments had been the earliest among the conquests of the Revolution, the Hanseatic departments were among the latest annexations of the Empire. The Rhine province had been conquered in obedience to one of the oldest historical impulses of the French race; its conservation was a point of national pride, and the contentment of its habitants an imperious charge upon national activity. The mouths of the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe lay outside the proper sphere of French ambition. The occupation of these was a military measure ; and, though good men were sent to survey and organise the new departments, few believed that the French control of this region would be permanent.

Among the Napoleonic States carved out of German soil the Grand Duchy of Berg was the earliest, and it presents some features of special interest. It was never actually annexed to the French Empire, and yet from 1808 to 1813 it was practically governed from Paris. It was never given a paper constitution, yet it received the French Codes (with some modifications adjusted to local conditions), the French municipal system, the French taxes, coins, weights and measures. It contained within its borders the most important industrial region in Germany, and was therefore peculiarly injured by the Continental Blockade; yet its manu­factures were shut out of the French and Dutch markets by a tariff wall. Desiring annexation in order to escape industrial ruin, it was kept at arm’s length by the country which fixed its budgets, consumed its soldiers, and dictated the forms of its administration.

Formed in March, 1806, out of the Prussian duchy of Cleves and the Bavarian appanage of Berg, this little State was intended to serve as a convenient military outpost on the lower Rhine. It was a French “march” against Brandenburg, just as Brandenburg in old days had been a German “march” against the Wends; and, since it was framed for a military purpose, it was appropriately entrusted to the government of a soldier, Prince Joachim Murat, brother-in-law to the Emperor and the finest leader of horse in the French army. From the first, Murat complained of narrow boundaries and exiguous revenues; and, 'when the terms of the Confederation of the Rhine were settled in June, 1806, the Grand Duchy of Berg, while bound to contribute 3000 men to the army of the Confederation, was practically doubled by the addition of parts of Nassau and Dillenburg. The humiliation of Prussia in the following autumn paved the way for further increments; and, after some months of acrimonious negotiation, a treaty was struck (January 20, 1808) by which the Grand Duchy received the Prussian countships of Mark and Tecklenburg, the Prussian portion of the principality of Munster, and the countship of Lingen, in return for which it was compelled to cede the important Rhine fortress of Wesel to France. It now contained some 900,000 inhabitants; but, though its area was modest, its social structure was diverse and composite. While Munster was Catholic and aristocratic, Nassau was humble and Calvinist. While in the county of Mark there was great industrial activity, Bavarian rule had done nothing to correct the ignorance and inertia of Berg.

The French administrators soon learnt to respect the work of their Prussian predecessors; but they had nothing but contempt for the confused and feeble practices of the old Government at Dusseldorf. Under the rule of Murat the French principles of equality were introduced into the financial system; and a Prussian enactment which forbade burghers to acquire noble land in Cleves was abolished. An end was made of municipal autonomy; and, as in France, so in Berg, the budgets of the towns were now to be decreed by the central executive. A supreme court of appeal was erected at Dusseldorf; and a legal commission was appointed to confer with lawyers drawn from the different provinces of the duchy as to the introduction of the Codes. Many other important and beneficial schemes were planned or partially executed; but in February, 1808, the Grand Duke was summoned to Bayonne, and shortly afterwards invested with the crown of Naples. He had only paid two flying visits to his humble German principality.

Count Beugnot, who had helped to introduce French rule in West­phalia, was now appointed to act as Imperial Commissioner in the duchy of Berg; and, not long afterwards, the grand-ducal title was bestowed upon Napoleon Louis, Prince Royal of Holland, a child of four-and-a-half years. Beugnot was a good and zealous administrator, careful of the best interests of the people, and prompt to represent their grievances at headquarters. He was assisted by a German minister of the interior, and a German minister of justice; and, as he was himself conservative in temperament, the Government at Dusseldorf could not be accused of precipitancy or iconoclasm. In a brief and tempestuous visit (1811), which has been immortalised in Heine’s poetic prose, Napoleon attempted to quicken the process of change. A university, a lycee, a bishopric, and a seminary were prescribed for Dusseldorf. The principles of the Con­cordat were to be extended to the duchy; and, while no boy was to be educated save in a French or grand-ducal school, some selected youths were to be despatched to Saint-Cyr or Saint-Germain to receive such military education as would entitle them to hold commissions.

Beugnot, in his memoirs, congratulates himself upon the excellent results achieved by his government; and the archives of Dusseldorf and Paris testify to the honest and enlightened zeal of the local administration. But here, as elsewhere, good intentions were 'wrecked by impossible conditions. Napoleon claimed half the domains, levied a war contribution on the Prussian provinces added in 1808, and steadily raised his demand for conscripts. The taxes were tripled; but, since one-half of the revenue was employed for military purposes, religion, education, and justice were equally starved. Yet some permanent benefit was derived from the French occupation—the abolition of caste, the establishment of free trade in land, the disappearance of internal customs dues, the growth of a spirit of cooperation between contiguous districts which had hitherto lived self-centred lives, the break-up of the guilds, the foundation of a small proprietary, a better penal law, a more active, intelligent, and tasteful direction of the public works.

If the kingdom of Westphalia was the second of the Franco-German States in point of time, it was easily first in point of importance. It contained a population of 2,000,000 and extended over some of the most classic soil in Germany. But, like all the Napoleonic States, it was devoid of marked boundaries or any pre-existing principle of inner union. Its main constituents were the electorates of Hesse-Cassel, the duchy of Brunswick, the Westphalian provinces of Prussia, and the southern portion of Hanover. Its capital, Cassel, was Hessian; of its three principal universities, Gottingen was Hanoverian, Halle was Prussian, Marburg was Hessian. Its chief fortress, Magdeburg, was Prussian. The Hessians, who formed the nucleus of the population, were rugged Calvinists, imbued with strong military tastes and a touching loyalty for the harsh and selfish dynasty which had governed them so ill. The Brunswickers, who had lived under a more humane and politer rule, were better educated and more enlightened; and it is a curious fact that, having more cause to regret the past, they were at once more willing and better trained to accept the present. Various as were its elements, and shaken though it was by five small risings and conspiracies, the kingdom of Westphalia attained a reasonable degree of consistency. The best talents rallied round the Crown; nobles and gentry took part in the administration. Prussians and Brunswickers, Hessians and Hanoverians, all cooperated to carry on the work of the State.

The person nominated to rule the Westphalian kingdom was Jerome, the youngest and favourite brother of the Emperor, who had gleaned a little military reputation in the Silesian campaign. Jerome was full of amiable intentions, agreeable in manner, quick in counsel, and by no means destitute of sympathy. But he was untrained, impetuous, and self-willed; and he consistently sacrificed the material interests of his subjects to his own vulgar and prodigal pleasures. The Constitution, which was framed in Paris, laid down the conditions upon which the Crown was to be held, and fixed the principles upon which the govern­ment was to be conducted. As a member of the Rhenish Confederation, the new kingdom was compelled to furnish a contingent of 25,000 men to the French Empire; and one-half of the allodial domains of the expropriated Princes was to be reserved for the Emperor to serve as dotations to French officers. The King of Westphalia was to remain a French prince; and, in case of the expiration of his lawful line, his kingdom was to devolve upon the Emperor. The Civil List was fixed at the enormous figure of 5,000,000 frs. The Code Napoleon was to form the civil law of the kingdom. Procedure was to be public ; trial by jury was introduced in criminal cases; while conscription was declared a fundamental law of the kingdom. The French monetary system and the French system of weights and measures were to be established. Corporations previously existing were doomed to extinction; and serfage and the exclusive privileges of the aristocracy were to suffer the same fate. The Estates of the realm were to be composed of a hundred members, named, after the Italian plan, by electoral colleges, but were denied the right of initiative or public discussion. Departments and prefects, districts and sub-prefects, cantons and justices of the peace, municipalities and mayors, were prescribed and accepted.

It was not a liberal constitution, but it was an advance upon anything which had been experienced in these provinces; and the Westphalians determined to make the best of it. The French system of justice won the approval of many competent lawyers, as alike more speedy, simple, and efficient than the law or the procedure to which they had been accustomed. The Jews, who everywhere save in Brunswick had been liable to the most onerous disabilities, now found themselves free and full citizens of the State; and, if the aristocracy suffered from the loss of feudal dues, this was in a measure compensated by places at Court and public offices. Military life was no novelty in Hesse; and the Westphalian army proved attractive as a profession. The German prefects threw themselves with zeal into the business of administration; and, as the department of the interior was manned by German clerks, and presided over by an old minister of the Duke of Brunswick, French principles were applied with due consideration of German proclivities. The difficulty of language never became acute, for, though French was exclusively spoken at Court and in the Council, and the portfolios of war and justice were held by Frenchmen, German was never proscribed. It was the language of the law-courts, of the Codes (specially translated for Westphalian use), and of many of the public offices. It was still taught in the schools, though French was made obligatory in addition ; and the official organ of the government, the Moniteur Westphalien, was bilingual. It is true that the machine of administration and of justice had been set going by French officials, and that the highest posts in the Westphalian army were reserved to Frenchmen. But the French element in the Government was not preponderant, or more than was sufficient to secure an intelligent and appreciative execution of the principles upon which the business of the State was to be conducted. The all-important ministry of finance was held in succession by two Germans.

Yet, in spite of many elements of promise, the kingdom of Westphalia ended in shame and bankruptcy. The territories out of which it was made up were poor and backward; and, before Jerome set foot in his kingdom they had been exhausted by a year of French military requi­sitions. Every consideration of policy should have prompted Napoleon to ease the financial situation of the government which was to display to all Germany the benefits of the French method. But, if the kingdom of Westphalia had been a deadly and treacherous foe, it could hardly have been handled with greater harshness. Every penny which Napoleon could wring out of Westphalia for the French Treasury he was determined to exact. He claimed the debts due to the ex-Elector; he claimed half the domains; he refused to pay the charges which had been incurred during the French military occupation of 1809; he exacted an immense war-contribution ; he required the kingdom to maintain a force of 25,000 armed men, half of whom were in the first instance to be French; and, as soon as he was assured of their loyalty, he prompted his brother to raise more and more Westphalian troops. The Westphalian financiers found themselves confronted by a deficit, in the first year, of 40,000,000 frs. But all entreaty and expostulation were in vain. Napoleon would not listen to Jerome; and Jerome, with his wild and lavish courses, was not in a position to remonstrate with effect. In 1812 the Government repudiated two-thirds of its inherited debt, fixed the land-tax at 25 per cent, of the net revenue, and decreed a forced loan of 5,000,000 frs.

If enlightened finance ended in desperate extortion and bankruptcy, the greater part of the blame rests with Napoleon. He set an extravagant and untried youth to govern a new kingdom; he gave him too large an income; and he imposed financial and military obligations upon his subjects which they were quite unable to bear. A share in the disaster is also attributable to Jerome. He knew how the Westphalian peasantry were suffering from the taxes and requisitions, how commerce was paralysed and houses were allowed to fall out of repair; and he was capable of describing to Napoleon the miseries of his subjects in tones of genuine compassion. But, though there were good and prudent heads in his ministry, he never checked for an instant the flow of his senseless prodigality, and never surrendered a pleasure or a vice.

A third variety of political experiment was exhibited on the banks of the Main. In 1805 Napoleon had spoken of the free city of Frankfort as a centre of English conspiracy and contraband; and, when the Prussian war broke out, a heavy hand was laid upon the purses and liberties of the Frankforters. They were compelled to pay a war-tax of 4,000,000 frs. and to lose their cherished autonomy. The city of Frankfort was now included in the small principality composed of Aschaffenburg and Ratisbon, which in 1803 had been created for Carl von Dalberg, the Prince-Primate of the Rhenish Confederation, and the last surviving representative of the great ecclesiastical Princes of Germany. Dalberg was humane and enlightened; and his great reputation as a patriot, a reformer, a man of letters, and a churchman, rendered him a useful ally to Napoleon. As he was unbounded in his enthusiasm for the Emperor, he could be trusted with a territory of some strategical importance. But he was known to be elderly, weak, and amiable; and, while his policy was strictly watched by the French resident in Frankfort, Napoleon made no scruple in quartering French troops upon his territory.

Dalberg addressed himself to the task of alleviating the disabilities of the Frankfort Jews, and began a faint assault upon the exclusive privi­leges of the Lutheran Senate. But it was difficult for any of Napoleon's agents to obtain immunity from interruption. In 1810 the Dalbergian principality was entirely remodelled. The Prince-Primate was forced to cede Ratisbon to Bavaria and to accept in exchange the county of Hanau and the bishopric of Fulda, both of which provinces had been utterly exhausted by four years of French military occupation. His State was now christened the Grand Duchy of Frankfort, and bound to contribute a quota of 4200 men to the Confederation of the Rhine, to provide endowments for two marshals, to reserve an income for the Emperor, and to introduce the French legal and administrative system at the earliest opportunity. Upon the decease of the reigning Grand Duke, the principality was to lapse to the Viceroy of Italy.

The tragicomedy of the situation which ensued may be imagined. On the one hand there is the mild old German prelate, issuing a constitution drafted on the Westphalian model, summoning his Estates to Hanau, carving his little principality into four departments, scheming a university here and a law-school there, naming departmental councils and inviting their opinions; now sanguine and exuberant, now cowed and depressed, but meeting with an unexpected amount of intelligent German support, as well as a good deal of tough opposition from the oligarchy of Frankfort. On the other hand there is the French agent, d’Hedouville or Bacher, corresponding with the Foreign Office in Paris and calling the tune. He inspects every act and proclamation before it is published in the official gazette, and, in defiance of the Constitution, promulgates acts which have never received the assent of the Estates; he suppresses political newspapers, carries out domiciliary visits, goads the Prince-Primate if he is remiss, checks him if he is hasty; while on the financial side he is assisted by “the Director of Domains in the service of France”, who arranges the budget and introduces the searching and unpopular methods of the French Treasury. Meanwhile English wares are burnt in the towns; and a continual procession of French troops passes to and fro through the country, which is burdened with the cost of their support. Outwardly the Grand Duchy is a little German State, governed on a constitutional system by an elderly German philanthropist. In reality it is a French military tyranny which ends by alienating every heart. Yet, notwithstanding, in the reaction which followed the downfall of Napoleon, the judicial system introduced into these regions by the French was substantially preserved.

In the catalogue of squandered opportunities the history of the Belgian departments should take a high place. At the outbreak of the French Revolution there seemed to be every reason for expecting a permanent and wholesome coalescence between the French and Belgian populations. The inhabitants of the Austrian Netherlands had no history which could be called national, nor were they divided from the French by the barrier of language. Belgians had frequently taken service in the French army; and, in the revolt against the iconoclastic policy of Joseph II, the Belgian Liberals rested on the support and sympathy of France. It is true that in Luxemburg there was a genuine devotion to Austria, and that many wealthy Belgians had placed their savings in the bank of Vienna. It is true that a considerable trade was done with England. Yet such obstacles as these might easily have been overcome by just and considerate government.

There were, however, two circumstances which made the problem of Belgian incorporation exceptionally delicate. The population of the Netherlands was both devout and unmilitary. Nowhere, save perhaps in Spain, had the Catholic Church so complete and unqualified a dominion. It had neither been discredited by a Jansenist schism, nor shaken by the clarifying blasts of French philosophy. The doctors of Louvain persevered in their rejection of the Gallican Articles, and instilled into their disciples an abhorrence of Erastianism which had been deepened by the injudicious measures of Joseph II. During the Revolution and more particularly under the Directory, everything had been done to lacerate the conscience and to impair the well-being of these unfortunate provinces. They were pillaged by ignorant and brutal commissioners; they were subjected to the conscription; their taxes were increased; their Church was persecuted. With an inconceivable lack of statesmanship, the French Government applied to the Belgian departments all the religious legislation which had torn asunder the Church in France; and the consequence was that they raised a Belgian Vendee. Consequently, at the establishment of the Consulate, the nine departments, far from having acquired an attachment to their new masters, were angry, miserable, and impotent. Population had dwindled; roads were broken and neglected; banditti swarmed over the country; and the hero of every parish was its non-juring and persecuted priest.

The policy of the Consulate was well calculated to heal the breach which had grown up between France and her new subjects. Capable French prefects were sent to govern the departments, and ruled them with honesty, energy, and good sense. Canals and roads were made; prisons were reformed; brigandage was stamped out; order was introduced into municipal and village finance; a cadastral survey was pushed forward towards completion; and while the material havoc was thus skilfully repaired, the Concordat brought peace to the Church, especially as the government wisely refrained from appointing “Constitutional” bishops to the Belgian sees. Papalist to the backbone, the Belgian clergy did not go behind the decision of the Pope.

Still, the profound Erastianism of the Napoleonic system was sure, sooner or later, to cause trouble in this quarter. An able pamphleteering priest, Alfred Stevens, took up his pen against the Organic Articles, and poured satire on the new Imperial festivals and the new Imperial catechism. A great mistake was made when the Emperor insisted that the professors in the seminaries should subscribe to the Gallican Articles and teach them to their pupils; and the news of the formation of the University of France and of the inclusion of the Belgian departments within the sphere of its control was received in a spirit of angry distrust. The conscription had been peculiarly unpopular from the first; and the clergy keenly resented the obligation to promote it from the pulpit. In 1808 there was already widespread disaffection, which every fresh turn in Napoleon’s quarrel with the Papacy served to intensify. Their commerce injured by the blockade, their privacy violated by the police, their homes emptied by the conscription, their deepest religious sensibilities outraged by the religious policy of the Emperor, the population of the nine departments was in no humour to appreciate the splendid work of men like Chaban at Brussels, or Micoud d’Unions at Liege. Indeed, the closing years of the Imperial administration were disfigured by an ignominious persecution of priests and seminarists.

It was comparatively late in the reign of Napoleon that the United Provinces, long a subordinate republic or kingdom, became a part of the French Empire. Napoleon’s early dealings with the Batavian Republic, the conversion of the republic into a kingdom in favour of Louis Bonaparte (1806), and the events which brought about the resignation of Louis and the annexation of his kingdom (1810), have been described in previous chapters of this volume. It only remains here to consider the condition of the Dutch provinces during the brief period in which they were directly under Napoleon’s rule. The decree of annexation laid down that Amsterdam was to rank after Paris and Rome as the third city of the Empire; that Holland was to contribute six members to the Senate, three to the Council of State, and twenty-five to the Legislative Body, not to speak of two judges to the Court of Cassation, three Auditors, and three masters of requests. Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza, and Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, was appointed Lieutenant-General in Holland and instructed to introduce the French system.  “I am about to open the Continent to your industry”, said Napoleon to the Dutch deputies who were summoned to Paris to assist in the task of incorporation. “My intention”, he wrote to Lebrun, his urbane and dignified lieutenant, “is to govern the country myself.”

The consequences of the expulsion of “good King Louis” were rapidly made evident. The interest on the public debt was reduced by two-thirds; a tax of 50 per cent, was levied on colonial merchandise found in Dutch warehouses; a revenue of 60,000,000 florins was extorted from a population of 2,000,000; and, while the blockade was now for the first time strictly enforced, the conscription was introduced with all its rigours. With a singular refinement of stringency two Belgian prefects were appointed to rule the important departments of Zuider See (capital Amsterdam) and the Bouches de Meuse (capital Rotterdam); and the cruelty and rigour with which de Celles and de Stassart enforced the conscription left an indelible impression on the country. The domiciliary visits of the French police, the necessity of obtaining a police pass for the smallest journey, and the inquisitorial methods necessitated by the new excise duties, increased the general discontent. It seemed to be the French policy to obliterate all the national memories. The names of the old provinces were abolished, and the country was divided into seven departments. It was enacted that French should be taught in all the primary schools, and that after the lapse of a year no person should be received as a master who should not be capable of teaching the rudiments. Every book had to satisfy the censor at Amsterdam or at Paris. All public acts had to be accompanied by a French translation; and, while no department was allowed, more than one political newspaper, that newspaper had to be bilingual. That the country might be still further denationalised, a third of the officers in the Dutch army must be French, while it was a principle to employ, as far as possible, Dutch officers and generals outside their own country. The universities of Leyden and Groningen were converted into academies of the University of France, while lycées of the usual French pattern were set up in Groningen, Leyden, and Utrecht. It is true, as Mollien remarks, that the revenue derived from the Dutch departments, at a rate per head almost double that imposed upon France, was exclusively spent in the departments themselves; but it was spent upon objects with which the population had no sympathy, dockyards and ships, forts and soldiers. The best French administrators acknowledged that the Dutch had little to learn from them in economy, exactitude, and business method.

Among the European dependencies of the Empire none were more miscellaneous, more remote, or more calculated to test the flexibility of the French system than the Illyrian provinces, a tract of coast-land extending from the Tyrolese mountains to the Paschalik of Scutari, and containing a sparse population of some two million inhabitants. Of this large Adriatic domain two portions, the Venetian province of Dalmatia and the tiny republic of Ragusa, had been absorbed into the French system in 1806; the remainder, including the ports of Trieste and Fiume, was stripped from Austria three years later. A lengthy decree, issued on April 15, 1811, and published in the Moniteur for May 12, placed the new dependency under three officials, a governor-general, a general in­tendant of finance, and a commissioner of justice; divided it into one military and six civil provinces (military Croatia, civil Croatia, Carniola, Carinthia, Istria, Dalmatia, Ragusa); ordered the erection of lycées at Laibach and Ragusa; and, while defining the outlines of the judicial and administrative system, commanded the introduction of the French Codes at the opening of the ensuing year.

Several currents of Imperial policy, some clear and steady, others hidden and intermittent, are reflected in the acquisition of the Illyrian provinces, which provided a strong bulwark against Austria, a military base against Turkey, and distant endowments for the French marshals. It was worthwhile to acquire a string of harbours in which a fleet might be built, and whence an expedition might start for the recovery of Egypt; worthwhile to win a new strip of coast for the Continental Blockade, and to divert the overland consignments of Eastern cotton from the German route to Imperial territory. The Illyrian provinces were valuable, whether they were considered as a military march, or as a pawn in the game of diplomatic exchanges. The climate was delicious, the scenery romantic; and in the olive gardens and vineyards of the coast the French were reminded of their beloved Provence. Yet Illyria was for the most part in a half-barbarous condition, without roads, without schools, without posts, plagued with brigands, and neglectful of the arts of agriculture and forestry. The woods which formerly clothed the Dalmatian mountains had been wilfully destroyed by the inhabitants, in order that they might escape the burden of supplying timber to the Venetian navy; and the upland population, though splendid in physique and valorous in temper, was poor, superstitious, and paralysed into economic inertia by the raids of Turkish and Albanian brigands. There was more prosperity among the Italian shippers and fruit-growers of the coast; and the republic of Ragusa was specially notable for its polite and exclusive aristocracy, its prosperous middle class of retired sea­captains and merchants, and its well-to-do and laborious peasantry. But Dalmatia had always cost Venice more than it brought in. A cadastral survey was unknown; taxes were largely paid in kind. In the interior there were still traces of archaic communism; justice and administration were alike venal; and, but for the active ministrations of the Franciscan missionaries, the rural population would have been left in outer darkness. In the seaports a few forward spirits had caught some fragments of democratic phraseology; but otherwise the intellectual preparation for French rule was singularly wanting. The popular sympathies were Venetian, Hungarian, Austrian. The task of winning them over to France was entrusted to Marmont, the first governor-general, and the finest political intelligence in the Imperial army.

Marmont built the great coast-road which leads from Zara to Spalatro. “The Austrians” (so went a Dalmatian saying) “discussed plans for eight years ; Marmont mounted his horse, and when he got off the road was made.” He broke up the robber bands, equipped the country with primary, secondary, and technical schools, and, divesting himself of the stereotyped anticlericalism of the army, assumed the protectorship of the Franciscan Order in Dalmatia. The foible of uniformity, dear to the logical mind, was not one of Marmont’s failings. His administrative areas varied according to the locality, small where communications were difficult, large where they were easy. He was not afraid to sanction communal and feudal institutions, as for instance in military Croatia, where he successfully justified the arrangements of the Austrian Government to the critics in Paris. That he did not obtain financial equilibrium was due to the exigencies of the Emperor and the maritime war, rather than to any lack of administrative dexterity on his own part or on that of d’Auchy, the financial intendant. The fiscal history of the Illyrian provinces is one of desperate expedients and growing deficits. Thus, while the vigour and effectiveness of the French Government procured permanent benefits to the dependency, these advantages were purchased at the expense of much temporary suffering. A report upon the Illyrian provinces, drawn up in July, 1813, for the instruction of the Duke of Otranto when he came to take up the governorship, speaks of the ruin of commerce, the ruthless exaction of taxes, the unsatisfactory personnel of the judicature, the scanty and unpunctual remuneration of the clergy, the failure to appreciate the Civil Code, the oppression of every class in the community. This is a dark picture to be set beside the brilliant canvas of Marmont’s memoirs. Yet in the archives of Paris there is ample testimony to the zeal and intelligence of the officials who were sent to explore Illyrian men and manners and to advise upon the institutions adapted to the country.

The project of restoring the French colonial empire in the West belongs specifically to the period of the Consulate. Then it was that Louisiana was purchased from Spain, and that a great army was despatched to San Domingo to revive the influence of France in the richest of her colonics. It was then also that the Spanish government was pressed to part with the Floridas in exchange for Parma. The loss of Egypt and the postponement of designs upon the further East would in this way be balanced by the formation of a new empire in and round the Gulf of Mexico, stretching from French Guiana northwards to the St John’s River and the lower waters of the Mississippi. Its central point would be San Domingo. In one direction it might be made to extend as far north as Lake Superior and the St Lawrence.

The colonial policy of the ancien régime had reposed upon three principles—the preservation of an aristocratic planter society, served by slave-labour, the restriction of colonial commerce in the interests of the mother-country, and the exercise of direct political control by the central government. With all these principles Napoleon was in sympathy. He believed in the natural inferiority of the black; he supported slavery; he was in favour of commercial monopoly and jealous of the least symptom of colonial independence. Yet, when he began to turn his attention to colonial problems, he found that the greatest colony of France was governed by a negro, who had drilled a black army, promulgated a constitution, and opened the ports of San Domingo to British and American traders. Everything which was most odious to Napoleon, black ascendancy, free trade, colonial autonomy, seemed to be concentrated in this island of the Antilles. He told his Council that he did not know the slaves of America, but that he had seen the slaves of Egypt and Darfour, and found them no better than brute beasts. “In the interests of civilisation” he determined to destroy “the new Algiers which was being organised in the middle of America”; and no intelligence could have been more grateful than this to the exiled planters of the Club de Massiac, whose fortunes had been crippled by the “romance of the revolution,” and who had long besieged the Government with clamours for restitution and revenge.

The negro ruler of San Domingo styled himself Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was a man of rare endowments, so abstemious that a glass of water and two bananas would often suffice for a day’s nourishment, so hardy and laborious that he rarely slept more than two hours in the twenty-four. To the unctuous piety of a convert he added the zeal of a revolutionary, the courage of a soldier, and the reserve of a statesman. His ascendancy over his fellow-negroes was complete, for he understood their natures, formulated their ambitions, and could speak in vivid and homely parables to their understanding. But he saw that the fortress of civilisation was not to be captured by sudden violence, and that discipline is the master-key.to progress. In the summer of 1794, at the darkest hour in the history of the French colony, when the mulattoes were freely raging in the south, and the western and northern strongholds had passed into the hands of the English or the Spaniards, Toussaint marched 4000 blacks to the rescue of the last French garrison in the island. His assistance was decisive. By May, 1800, the whole of the French colony, save Les Cayes, which still held out for Rigaud, the mulatto chief, had passed into the power of Toussaint.

It had been stipulated by the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1795 that the Spanish or eastern half of the island should be handed over to France on the conclusion of a general peace, Toussaint resolved to anticipate the event. He was aware that Napoleon had risen to supreme power in France; and emulation or precaution prompted him to acquire the mastery of the whole island before the First Consul had time to intervene. Compelling the French commissioner at Le Cap to authorise the expedition, Toussaint marched his black army into the Spanish colony and carried all before him. On January 26, 1801, San Domingo, the capital, was in his hands; and the sleepy Spanish Government had come to an end.

It is improbable that Toussaint intended to make himself independent of the French Republic. Himself a convert of French missionaries, he had sent his two sons to be educated in France, and had refused an English offer to recognise him as king of the island. It is true that, in the constitution which had been drafted by a small knot of white and yellow admirers, Toussaint had been appointed governor for life and given the power to name his successor. But, as throughout his career he had been careful to obtain the shelter of French authority, so now (July, 1801) he sent Colonel Vincent to Paris to lay the constitution before Napoleon. His idea was to found an autonomous government under French suzerainty, defended by black battalions, but assisted by the skill of white civilians and mechanics. Vincent reported that he was the only man who could rescue the colony from anarchy and keep it faithful to France. But there were letters from the West which spoke of him as full of treacherous designs.

Toussaint was fond of saying that the liberty of the blacks could only be consolidated by the prosperity of agriculture, and he set his face against agrarian revolution. Not only were the white planters urged to return to the island, but Toussaint forced negro labour back to the plantations and dragooned his compatriots to revert to their old tasks. He would not even allow the blacks to acquire small plots of land, holding that a peasant proprietary would be idle and undisciplined. His finance was excellent; his policy of free imports from America was essential not only to the well-being but even to the sustenance of the colony; and there had always been a party among the planters favourable to some scheme of colonial autonomy. On the whole, it would have been wise to leave him undisturbed, until he had shown clear proof of disloyalty to the French connexion.

The command of the French expedition was given to General Leclerc, the first husband of Pauline Bonaparte; and from his secret instructions the character of Napoleon’s colonial policy may be judged. Leclerc was named captain of the whole island, but was instructed to maintain a strict separation between the French and Spanish areas. The blacks were to be disarmed everywhere; but, whereas in the French colony they were to be free, in the Spanish colony they were to remain in a condition of servitude. The French colony was to be divided into de­partments and municipalities, the Spanish into dioceses and jurisdictions; “administration, commerce, justice, everything must be different”. Tous­saint and his principal generals were in the first instance to be flattered and confirmed in their commands, and then to be kidnapped and deported to France. When the black power had been broken—for it was likely that there would be some guerilla fighting in the mountains—the French government would show its hand. All the principal agents, whether white or black, lay or clerical, of Toussaint’s government, would then be deported to France. The exiled proprietors would be restored to their plantations; and the donations made by the black government would be annulled. The creoles would be compelled to send their children to France for education, and no public instruction of any kind would be permitted in the island. The foreign trade, as in old days, would be reserved for France.

Napoleon said at St Helena that the expedition to San Domingo was the greatest act of folly in his life. Short-sighted and disastrous it certainly proved to be, though Toussaint was successfully deported to die in prison among the rigours of the Jura. The yellow fever decimated the French army; the blacks fought bravely in the western mountains; and the resumption of the war with England closed the sea-ways to France and broke the project of a western empire. The fleet which was to have brought French organisation into Louisiana never crossed the Atlantic; the tricolour never waved over Florida. Yet, even apart from circumstances connected with the general war, Napoleon’s colonial policy was neither honest nor wise. Toussaint is an enigma; but, whatever view may be taken of his intentions, he was treated with cruelty and guile. It was short-sighted to suppose that the systems of slavery and freedom could coexist in the same or in adjoining islands. Such a policy would lead the free negroes to revolt from suspicion, and the slaves to revolt from envy. Nor was it wise to revive the old system of preferential trade, which sacrificed the material interests of the colony to those of the mother-country. More might be said for the autocratic type of colonial government, for the substitution of nominated Chambers of Commerce with advisory powers for the old free planters’ assemblies. Measures were taken to strengthen the connexion between the mother-country and the colonies. A section of the Council of State was entrusted with colonial affairs; a representative from every colonial Chamber of Commerce was forced to be resident in Paris, and a liberal allowance of places in the French prytaneum was allotted to colonial students. That the coalescence of the white and dark races might be promoted, Napoleon, according to his own account, contemplated legalising polygamy. Such was his colonial policy, full of noble aims and unwise expedients, and scorning every accepted canon of conventional morality.

The Act of Mediation (1803) brought Switzerland completely under the control of Bonaparte. For the year 1803 he appointed, as Landammann of the Swiss Federation, Louis d’Affry of Fribourg. The choice was significant. D’Affry belonged to an old patrician family, which had supplied officers and ambassadors to France; and he himself had served in the Swiss guard under Louis XVI. He was, in fact, one of those courtiers of the old regime of whom Bonaparte had said, “It is only the nobles who understand service”. Of attractive manners, polished and courteous, quick-witted and moderate in his views, he became a valuable servant to Bonaparte. The First Consul, moreover, in order to secure his services, paid over to d’Affry, on the day on which he took office, a sum of 31,000 francs from the secret service money at the disposal of the police, revived in his favour an extinct royal pension, and wrote him a letter in which he said, “I shall seize every opportunity of showing you favour.” In similar fashion Bonaparte strove to gain over other members of the Swiss aristocracy, to whom, in his own words, he offered “power, honour, and wealth”; but in these attempts at corruption he was less successful.

On July 4, 1803, the first meeting of the Diet was held at Fribourg. It was presided over by d’Affry, who opened the assembly with an eloquent speech, in which he set forth the advantages of the Act of Mediation, and urged on his fellow-citizens the expediency of union, moderation, and attachment to France. General Ney, the French ambassador, then announced that France was prepared to conclude with Switzerland a defensive alliance and a military convention. This treaty, which marked a further stage in the dependence of Switzerland on France, produced a painful impression on the patriots. Bonaparte, in point of fact, called upon the Federation to furnish four regiments of 400 (1 men each): Switzerland, in return, had the right to send twenty young Swiss to the École Polytechnique; and Swiss officers were made eligible to all commands and dignities in France. The Diet, after a somewhat heated discussion, accepted the inevitable.

These Swiss regiments in the French service were never at their full strength. The soldiers were volunteers and were recruited with difficulty. In 1810 Bonaparte declared his intention of establishing compulsory service. The Diet protested against a measure contrary to the terms of the convention, and implored Bonaparte to agree to a fresh arrangement which should relieve Switzerland from her crushing military burden. Curiously enough, Bonaparte acceded to this on the eve of his Russian campaign. On March 28, 1812, a fresh convention reduced the strength of each regiment to three battalions of 1000 men apiece. During the wars of the Empire the Swiss soldiers maintained their old reputation for bravery. “The Swiss,” Napoleon wrote, “are the only foreign soldiers who arc brave and trustworthy.” In Russia the Swiss regiments were heavily engaged. Most of them were left on the battlefield, but they lost neither eagle nor flag.

Napoleon’s protection did the Swiss more harm than good, for the military convention of 1803 was cited by the Allies in 1814 as their excuse for violating the neutrality of Switzerland. It is only fair, however, to acknowledge that until 1814 Switzerland was preserved from the evils of war. In 1S04 Bonaparte withdrew his troops; and this measure, which in other times would have been followed by dis­turbances, did not affect the tranquillity of the country. There was, indeed, an insurrection in the spring of 1804, but it was purely local in character. Some peasants of Zurich were dissatisfied because their Grand Council had fixed a higher rate for the redemption of their tithes than that paid by the other cantons, and they rose in revolt. It became necessary to call in the Federal troops, and they had some difficulty in reducing the insurgents to submission.

This rising called the attention of the Diet to the need of a better organisation of the Federal forces ; and in 1804 the Diet asked Bonaparte for his permission to create a permanent staff, which should be the nucleus of a militia. Bonaparte flatly refused to accede to their wishes; and his refusal elicited from the Landammann, de Watteville, the following letter—“The chief aim of France is clearly to weaken Switzerland by depriving her of the military organisation which she might and should have, and so to tie her down. This affords matter for the most discouraging reflexions; and there can be no doubt that, if France persists in her unjust refusal, doubt and distrust will soon replace the genuine feeling of attachment which, after the Aet of Mediation, the conduct of the French Government inspired.”

It needed some courage on the part of a Landammann of Switzerland to write this letter, for Bonaparte had now become the Emperor Napoleon, and no longer concealed his design of annexing to the Empire those countries which were dependent on France. So early as 1805 it was believed in Switzerland that the last hour of the Federation had struck. The Emperor, when he broke up his camp at Boulogne, desired to know if Switzerland was in a position to compel respect for her neutrality. Fortunately the Diet, on the resumption of hostilities, had decided to mobilise the Federal forces. This did not satisfy Napoleon, who was clearly seeking for a pretext to violate the neutrality of Switzerland if the war approached her frontier. Such was, however, not the ease; and Swiss neutrality was preserved.

It may be said that, so long as the Empire lasted, the threat of annexation hung over Switzerland. In 1809, on the outbreak of the Austrian war, Napoleon said to the envoy Reinhard: “If I have need to march into Switzerland, I shall do it. I can always find a pretext ; the most insignificant pamphlet aimed at me will serve my purpose.” In 1810 certain events happened which seemed to forebode actual annexation: the formal absorption of Valais, which had hitherto remained an independent republic; and the occupation of Ticino by troops sent from Italy, on the pretence of putting down the smuggling of English goods.

Johann von Muller, in his letters written at the time, bewailed the fate of the old Federation; and it was commonly reported that Napoleon proposed to convert the ancient republic into a kingdom for one of his brothers or for his protege, Berthier, who was already Prince of Neuchatel. What is certain is that in 1811 the question of creating a kingdom of Helvetia for the Elector Charles of Baden, the husband of Stephanie de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s adopted daughter, was seriously considered. But this project was never carried out.

Switzerland suffered much from the Continental Blockade. Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century she had possessed certain flourishing industries which had already gained a reputation abroad—the manufacture of cotton goods in St Gallen, Zurich, and Glarus, of linens and embroideries in St Gallen, of silk stuffs in Zurich and Basel, and of clocks and watches in Geneva and the Jura. In addition to these, an important manufacture of machinery had been established at Zurich at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Act of Mediation had created hopes that a fresh impulse would be given to the industrial movement, and new markets created abroad. Napoleon had promised the Swiss an addition to the convention of 1803 or a treaty of com­merce; but neither the promised additional clauses nor the treaty ever saw the light Worse than this, although the convention had stipulated that the Swiss should be placed on the footing of the most favoured nation, an enormous prohibitory tax was laid on their cotton goods. The Swiss Government protested against an arrangement which was ruining one of their most flourishing industries; but Napoleon would not listen. On the contrary, he doubled the tariff in 1805; and in 1806 he forbade altogether the importation of Swiss cottons into France.

In Switzerland the Continental System was applied with extreme rigour. The inhabitants were ordered to exclude all British merchandise, with the exception of cotton yarn, a raw material indispensable to the cotton industry. Prohibitive duties were imposed on all colonial products, and all manufactured products of British origin discovered in the country were confiscated. When he saw that, in spite of his precautions, British goods were smuggled in, Napoleon forced the Swiss to establish on all their frontiers a network of custom-houses under French supervision. This involved the ruin of a great number of Swiss industries. At the close of 1810 more than 10,000 families were out of work. In 1812 the distress had become so great that the Diet decided to address a petition to Napoleon, beseeching him to put an end to their calamities. This appeal was unheard amid the din of the preparations for the Russian campaign. But it was the Russian campaign which brought deliverance to the Swiss. Hardly had the news of the retreat of the Grande Armée arrived in Switzerland than there was a general relaxation in the Continental Blockade; and in the following year, after Leipzig, the Diet, in an extraordinary session held at Zurich on November 15, declared formally that the Continental System was at an end.

During these years of subjection the Diet could hardly effect much, but it showed an anxiety to do something towards improving the future of the country. Among the first tasks of the new Government were the liquidation of the debt of the Helvetic Republic, and the settlement of questions relating to the national funds and the management of the public estates. A committee, appointed in 1803 to deal with these matters, rejected all claims to indemnity in respect of confiscations suffered during the Revolution, whether such claims were made by civil or religious corporations or by private individuals, and determined the share of each of the cantons in the national funds. The Diet would have been well pleased could it have secured the money for the central authority; for the latter, however insignificant were its powers, had certain expenses to meet. In the absence of a central fund, these expenses had to be paid out of the yearly sums contributed by the cantons towards the maintenance of the Federal forces.

The Diet, too, would have been glad to create a uniform system of weights, measures, money, and customs duties throughout the various cantons. Proposals to this end were made by certain deputies who had suffered from the existing confusion, so prejudicial to the trade and the general prosperity of the country; but, as most of these reforms would have been contrary to the Act of Mediation, it was impossible to adopt them. The cantons, on the other hand, did not hesitate to infringe certain provisions of the Act. Thus, in spite of the declaration that all religious beliefs were free, and that any Swiss might reside in any canton, some of the cantonal governments, mostly those in Old Switzerland, forbade the settlement of Protestants in their territories. Liberty of thought was, moreover, reduced to the narrowest limits; and the press was subject to a censorship not less rigorous than that which existed in France.

A confederation which possessed neither authority nor revenue was incapable of carrying through any great work of public utility. All matters such as the repair of roads, the creation and maintenance of canals, the straightening and embankment of rivers, and the replanting of mountain-sides, were left-to the cantons; and they, in the absence of funds, did nothing. Fortunately, the spirit of initiative, always strongly developed in the Swiss nature, made good the insufficiency of state resources. Many important works were, during this period, undertaken by private individuals. In 1804, Escher, a celebrated geologist of Zurich, undertook, at the instigation of the Diet and with the help of some fellow-countrymen, to drain the marshes which reached from the lake of Wallenstadt to the lake of Zurich, a distance of four leagues; he cut a canal through them and so brought a wide extent of barren and unhealthy land into cultivation.

To turn to the sphere of moral activity, the Swiss Society of Public Utility, which has produced and still produces important results, was founded at Zurich in 1810 by certain philanthropists. Other institutions of an educational character date from this period, such as the schools of Pestalozzi at Burgdorf and Yverdon, and the agricultural school and general institute of the Bernese Fellenberg at Hofwyl. There was at the same time no slackening of intellectual activity. While living in Germany, Johann von Muller continued and completed his history of the Swiss Confederation. At Zurich, Pestalozzi wrote his educa­tional books, Martin Usteri and Ulrich Hegner their popular tales. In Aargau, Heinrich Zschokke published his novels and his historical works. French Switzerland was adorned by the brilliant society "which Madame de Stael assembled at Coppet, and which included Benjamin Constant, the publicist of Lausanne, Sismondi, the Genevese historian, Bonstetten, the Bernese philosopher, and August Wilhelm Schlegel, the German critic. Geneva, although at that time actually part of France, re­mained the intellectual centre of French Switzerland. The Genevese were not inclined to allow their national spirit to be absorbed by France. Ever since the Reformation, there had been a continual exchange of ideas between Great Britain and the city of Calvin; and all the publicists of the Genevese school, Burlamaqui, Dclolme, and J. J. Rousseau, were strongly influenced by English writers. “Geneva,” said Sismondi in 1803, “is a city where men speak and write in French, but where men read and think in English.” To meet their taste for what was English, Marc-Auguste Pictet, Professor of Physics at Calvin’s ancient Academy, where he was the worthy successor of Horace-Benedicte de Saussure, founded in conjunction with his brother, Pictet de Rochemont, the Bibliothèque britannique. This review rapidly took an important place in Europe as an international organ. In this publication the Genevese ventured, at a time when to speak favourably of things English was looked upon as treason, to keep the Continent informed of all that was passing in England. Its influence is shown by the remark of Talleyrand, who, at the Congress of Vienna, observed to Pictet de Rochemont, “Your review has behind it such a weight of public opinion that its suppression would have amounted to a coup d’état”.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PENINSULAR WAR, 1808-14.