READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER VI.

THE EMPIRE TO THE PEACE OF PRESBURG.

War was renewed between France and Great Britain in the spring of 1803. Addington’s Government, in their desire for peace, had borne with Bonaparte's aggressions during all the months of negotiation at Amiens; they had met his complaints against the abuse of the English press by prosecuting his Royalist libellers; throughout the Session of 1802 they had upheld the possibility of peace against the attacks of their parliamentary opponents. The invasion of Switzerland in the autumn of 1802, following the annexation of Piedmont, forced the Ministry to alter its tone. The King's Speech at the meeting of Parliament in November declared that the changes in operation on the Continent demanded measures of security on the part of Great Britain. The naval and military forces of the country were restored to a war-footing; the evacuation of Malta by Great Britain, which had hitherto been delayed chiefly through a misunderstanding with Russia, was no longer treated as a matter of certainty. While the English Government still wavered, a challenge was thrown down by the First Consul which forced them into decided action. The Moniteur published on the 13th of January, 1803, a report upon Egypt by Colonel Sebastiani, pointing in the plainest terms to the renewal of French attacks upon the East. The British Government demanded explanations, and declared that until satisfaction was given upon this point they should retain possession of Malta. Malta was in fact appropriated by Great Britain as an equivalent for the Continental territory added to France since the end of the war.

It would have been better policy if, some months earlier, Bonaparte had been required to withdraw from Piedmont or from Switzerland, under pain of hostilities with England. Great Britain had as little technical right to retain Malta as Bonaparte had to annex Piedmont. The desire for peace had, however, led Addington’s Government to remain inactive until Bonaparte's aggressions had become accomplished facts. It was now too late to attempt to undo them: England could only treat the settlement of Amiens as superseded, and claim compensation on its own side. Malta was the position most necessary to Great Britain, in order to prevent Bonaparte from carrying out projects in Egypt and Greece of which the Government had evidence independent of Sebastiani’s report. The value of Malta, so lately denied by Nelson, was now fully understood both in France and England. No sooner had the English Ministry avowed its intention of retaining the island than the First Consul declared himself compelled to take up arms in behalf of the faith of treaties. Ignoring his own violations of treaty-rights in Italy and Switzerland, Bonaparte declared the retention of Malta by Great Britain to be an outrage against all Europe. He assailed the British Ambassador with the utmost fury at a reception held at the Tuileries on the 13th of March; and, after a correspondence of two months, which probably marked his sense of the power and obstinacy of his enemy, the conflict was renewed which was now to continue without a break until Bonaparte was driven from his throne.

So long as England was without Continental allies its warfare was limited to the seizure of colonies and the blockade of ports: on the part of France nothing could be effected against the island Power except by actual invasion. There was, however, among the communities of Germany one which, in the arguments of a conqueror, might be treated as a dependency of England, and made to suffer for its connection with the British Crown. Hanover had hitherto by common agreement been dissociated from the wars in which its Elector engaged as King of England; even the personal presence of King George II. at the battle of Dettingen had been held no ground for violating its neutrality. Bonaparte, however, was untroubled by precedents in a case where he had so much to gain. Apart from its value as a possible object of exchange in the next treaty with England, Hanover would serve as a means of influencing Prussia: it was also worth so many millions in cash through the requisitions which might be imposed upon its inhabitants. The only scruple felt by Bonaparte in attacking Hanover arose from the possibility of a forcible resistance on the part of Prussia to the appearance of a French army in North Germany. Accordingly, before the invasion began, General Duroc was sent to Berlin to inform the King of the First Consul's intentions, and to soothe any irritation that might be felt at the Prussian Court by assurances of friendship and respect.

It was a moment of the most critical importance to Prussia. Prussia was the recognised guardian of Northern Germany; every consideration of interest and of honour required that its Government should forbid the proposed occupation of Hanover-if necessary, at the risk of actual war. Hanover in the hands of France meant the extinction of German independence up to the frontiers of the Prussian State. If, as it was held at Berlin, the cause of Great Britain was an unjust one, and if the connection of Hanover with the British Crown was for the future to make that province a scapegoat for the offences of England, the wisest course for Prussia would have been to deliver Hanover at once from its French and from its English enemies by occupying it with its own forces. The Foreign Minister, Count Haugwitz, appears to have recommended this step, but his counsels were overruled. King Frederick William III, who had succeeded his father in 1797, was a conscientious but a timid and spiritless being. Public affairs were in the hands of his private advisers, of whom the most influential were the so-called cabinet-secretaries, Lombard and Beyme, men credulously anxious for the goodwill of France, and perversely blind to the native force and worth which still existed in the Prussian Monarchy. Instead of declaring the entry of the French into Hanover to be absolutely incompatible with the safety of the other North German States, King Frederick William endeavoured to avert it by diplomacy. He tendered his mediation to the British Government upon condition of the evacuation of Malta; and, when this proposal was bluntly rejected, he offered to the First Consul his personal security that Hanover should pay a sum of money in order to be spared the intended invasion.

Such a proposal marked the depth to which Prussian statemanship had sunk; it failed to affect the First Consul in the slightest degree. While negotiations were still proceeding, a French division, commanded by General Mortier, entered Hanover (May, 1803). The Hanoverian army was lost through the follies of the civil Government; the Duke of Cambridge, commander of one of its divisions, less ingenious than his brother the Duke of York in finding excuses for capitulation, resigned his commission, and fled to England, along with many brave soldiers, who subsequently found in the army of Great Britain the opportunity for honourable service which was denied to them at home. Hanover passed into the possession of France, and for two years the miseries of French occupation were felt to the full. Extortion consumed the homely wealth of the country; the games and meetings of the people were prohibited; French spies violated the confidences of private life; law was administered by foreign soldiers; the press existed only for the purpose of French proselytism. It was in Hanover that the bitterness of that oppression was first felt which subsequently roused all North Germany against a foreign master, and forced upon the race the long-forgotten claims of patriotism and honour.

Bonaparte had justly calculated upon the inaction of the Prussian Government when he gave the order to General Mortier to enter Hanover; his next step proved the growth of his confidence in Prussia's impassivity. A French force was despatched to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, in order to stop the commerce of Great Britain with the interior of Germany. The British Government immediately informed the Court of Berlin that it should blockade the Elbe and the Weser against the ships of all nations unless the French soldiers withdrew from the Elbe. As the linen trade of Silesia and other branches of Prussian industry depended upon the free navigation of the Elbe, the threatened reprisals of the British Government raised very serious questions for Prussia. It was France, not England, that had first violated the neutrality of the river highway; and the King of Prussia now felt himself compelled to demand assurances Bonaparte that the interests of Germany should suffer no further injury at his hands. A letter was written by the King to the First Consul, and entrusted to the cabinet-secretary, Lombard, who carried it to Napoleon at Brussels (July, 1803). Lombard, the son of French parents who had settled at Berlin in the reign of Frederick the Great, had risen from a humble station through his skill in expression in the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments which would have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in the eyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of his mission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascination exercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessness which in Prussia could now be mistaken for the quality of a statesman. Lombard failed to obtain from Napoleon any guarantee or security whatever; yet he wrote back in terms of the utmost delight upon the success of his mission. Napoleon had infatuated him by the mere exercise of his personal charm. “What I cannot describe”, said Lombard, in his report to the King relating his interview with the First Consul, “is the tone of goodness and noble frankness with which he expressed his reverence for your Majesty’s rights, and asked for that confidence from your Majesty which he so well deserves”. “I only wish”, he cried at the close of Napoleon’s address, “that I could convey to the King, my master, every one of your words and the tone in which they are uttered; he would then, I am sure, feel a double joy at the justice with which you have always been treated at his hands”. Lombard’s colleagues at Berlin were perhaps not stronger men than the envoy himself, but they were at least beyond the range of Napoleon's voice and glance, and they received this rhapsody with coldness. They complained that no single concession had been made by the First Consul upon the points raised by the King. Cuxhaven continued in French hands; the British inexorably blockaded the Germans upon their own neutral waters; and the cautious statecraft of Prussia proved as valueless to Germany as the obstinate, speculating warfare of Austria.

There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominion into Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves. The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted to him by Bonaparte since the Peace of Luneville, and was no longer inclined to serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation of Hanover changed the attitude of Alexander into one of coldness and distrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given to Bonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as well as the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, threw him into the arms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new European coalition.

Murder of the Duke of Enghien, March 20, 1804.

The First Bonaparte Consul had determined to assume the dignity of Emperor. The renewal of war with England excited a new outburst of enthusiasm for his person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but the discovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long and carefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, had formed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris in the midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, including General Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy to Paris: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, and other royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all the conspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within the capital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began to make arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was charged with complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison, there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow of the Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte's life, was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. One sacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, who baffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory of Baden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of the exiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalition against France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. French spies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to a suspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to mark him for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized, brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop of French soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house at Ettenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to the fort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night a commission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose grave was already dug, and pronounced sentence of death without hearing a word of evidence. At daybreak the Duke was led out and shot.

If some barbaric instinct made the slaughter of his predecessor's kindred in Bonaparte’s own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not so with Europe generally. One universal sense of horror passed over the Continent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbon showed signs of human passion at the indignity done to Germany by the seizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, but watched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before the Duke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors, and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and passed, after a noble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the Senate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May, without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor of the French.

In France itself the change was one more of the name than of the substance of power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority than he already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; and although the real social equality given to France by the Revolution was beyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a bastard Court and a fictitious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, and Jacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on the part of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three months after the assumption of the Imperial title by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis (Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) assumed the title of Emperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was the virtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Luneville, and the probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe. Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal dignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, the grandeur of the principalities and kingdoms which were united under its dominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a title equal to that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon was already being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the present the Corsican and the Hapsburg C^sar exchanged their hypocritical congratulations.

Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returned to power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt in Addington’s Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself could rally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long in framing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke off diplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced the Court of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of French power. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the opening of Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. announced that an understanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked in general terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treaty was signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and Great Britain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than any which had yet united the Powers against France. Russia and England bound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a European League capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. Great Britain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; no peace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquests made by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until the general peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fix certain disputed points of international right, and to establish a federative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As the immediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion of the French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; the re­establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase of territory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any future usurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Holland and part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in the provision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement of European affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 defined the policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes now suggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces to the Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became from this time understood possibilities.

Policy of Prussia. Prussia neutral.

England and Russia had, however, some difficulty in securing allies. Although in violation of his promises to Austria, Napoleon had accepted the title of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and had crowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), the Ministers at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible; and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when war in some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia was doubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to induce Prussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanover he had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had spared nothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the King over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the friendship of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon's professions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news of the murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with a message of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project of alliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered to the temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and the Foreign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrew for a time from the Court. Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted as his deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peace of Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. A politician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was without that insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite of errors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferior men, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804, Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia was exposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible for Prussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining a good understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg’s neutrality excited the wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian ambassador at Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort to force Prussia to take up arms. A few months more passed; and, when hostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitely offered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg, still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of a French alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urged the King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. But the King shrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. The offer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither with Napoleon nor his enemies.

Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguine estimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have entered upon a new era since the peace of Luneville, and to have turned to the best account all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been no want of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the real state of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of the military administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but the whole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He was deceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation he resigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiency than it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack. Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effected the reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, while he had in fact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond any in Europe by its variety of races and languages.

If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reforms were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State; but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was an insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of Luneville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books printed during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousand works, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrian liberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issued which combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with the ignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered to be sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carrying on the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt in the English Parliament as having effected the regeneration of Austria. Nearer home things were judged in a truer light. Mack's paper-regiments, the helplessness and unreality of the whole system of Austrian officialism, were correctly appreciated by the men who had been most in earnest during the last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The Archduke Charles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with the presentiment of defeat and ruin.

The plans of the Allies for the campaign of 1805 covered an immense field. It was intended that one Austrian army should operate in Lombardy under the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, entered Bavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unite with it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combine with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been worked out with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg masses of troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the order to march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army of Boulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was thrown into the scale against Austria.

Events had occurred at sea which frustrated Napoleon’s plan for an attack upon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it could reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the English coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of the Atlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during the absence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lying blockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament. Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after there meeting with some other ships, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possible speed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort. The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in the British Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all the squadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of its shores. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which marked Napoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine the precision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces of France; it assumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence of resource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. In the present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as far superior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to the generals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies in the spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, before he could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the French squadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departure homewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government of Villeneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the English brigs. The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson's message, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockades of Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre. Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in a partial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressing orders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attempt that movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of the invasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a condition to meet the English force assembled against him. He put back without fighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack upon England was lost.

It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through the army which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, when the Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp of Boulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itself over all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the Upper Danube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte, moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germany half-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables that long disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, the admirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as the inspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon’s genius after learning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employment of the “Army of England” against a Continental coalition had always been an alternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentioned in his letters at a time when Villeneuve's failure was still unknown.

The only advantage which the Allies derived from the remoteness of the Channel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria without resistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed the Inn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to be secretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union with the French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the allied armies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. The preparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; no Russian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, in consequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceed seventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advance through Bavaria were silenced by the assurance that Napoleon had to bring the bulk of his army from the British Channel. In ignorance of the real movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit of Bavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Wurtemberg, where he intended to stand on the defensive until the arrival of the Russians.

Here, in the first days of October, he became aware of the presence of French troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position. With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack nevertheless refused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state of affairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard of Napoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossed North-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advanced from Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisions of the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape was only possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through the French line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action might still have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shown was shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was the titular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with part of the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed around him. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation had become clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that some great disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in the course of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. “Let no man utter the word Surrender”, he proclaimed in an order of October 15th, “the enemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he can continue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions run short, we have three thousand horses to nourish us”. “I myself”, continued the general, “will be the first to eat horseflesh”. Two days later the inevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25,000 men, fell into the hands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of the Austrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments.

Trafalgar, Oct. 21. Effects.

All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture of an entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standards to the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with an event which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted a heavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to any adversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar, won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combined fleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; but the work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolonged in glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power of France upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was in arms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz; Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generation passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's work in history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy, Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumph left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent.

The consequences of Trafalgar lay in the future; the military situation in Germany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the army of Napoleon out of Vienna. In the sudden awakening of Europe to its danger, one solitary gleam of hope appeared in the attitude of the Prussian Court. Napoleon had not scrupled, in his anxiety for the arrival of the Army of Hanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussian territory of Anspach, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It was subsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussian neutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack's escape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insult offered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even Frederick William to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russian forces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had now more than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When the outrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reserved monarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldom witnessed. The Czar was forthwith offered a free passage for his armies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reached the Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. The result of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam, signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand from Napoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance of Prussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the field with 180,000 men.

Napoleon was now close upon Vienna. A few days after the capitulation of Ulm thirty thousand Russians, commanded by General Kutusoff, had reached Bavaria; but Mack’s disaster rendered it impossible to defend the line of the Inn, and the last detachments of the Allies disappeared as soon as Napoleon’s vanguard approached the river. The French pushed forth in overpowering strength upon the capital. Kutusoff and the weakened Austrian army could neither defend Vienna nor meet the invader in the field. It was resolved to abandon the city, and to unite the retreating forces on the northern side of the Danube with a second Russian army now entering Moravia. On the 7th of November the Court quitted Vienna. Six days later the French entered the capital, and by an audacious stratagem of Murat's gained possession of the bridge connecting the city with the north bank of the Danube, at the moment when the Austrian gunners were about to blow it into the air. The capture of this bridge deprived the allied army of the last object protecting it from Napoleon's pursuit. Vienna remained in the possession of the French. All the resources of a great capital were now added to the means of the conqueror; and Napoleon prepared to follow his retreating adversary beyond the Danube, and to annihilate him before he could reach his supports.

The retreat of the Russian army into Moravia was conducted with great skill by General Kutusoff, who retorted upon Murat the stratagem practised at the bridge of Vienna, and by means of a pretended armistice effected his junction with the newly-arrived Russian corps between Olmutz and Brunn. Napoleon's anger at the escape of his prey was shown in the bitterness of his attacks upon Murat. The junction of the allied armies in Moravia had in fact most seriously altered the prospects of the war. For the first time since the opening of the campaign, the Allies had concentrated a force superior in numbers to anything that Napoleon could bring against it. It was impossible for Napoleon, while compelled to protect himself on the Italian side, to lead more than 70,000 men into Moravia. The Allies had now 80,000 in camp, with the prospect of receiving heavy reinforcements. The war, which lately seemed to be at its close, might now, in the hands of a skilful general, be but beginning. Although the lines of Napoleon's communication with France were well guarded, his position in the heart of Europe exposed him to many perils; the Archduke Charles had defeated Massena at Caldiero on the Adige, and was hastening northwards; above all, the army of Prussia was preparing to enter the field. Every mile that Napoleon advanced into Moravia increased the strain upon his resources; every day that postponed the decision of the campaign brought new strength to his enemies. Merely to keep the French in their camp until a Prussian force was ready to assail their communications seemed enough to ensure the Allies victory; and such was the counsel of Kutusoff, who made war in the temper of the wariest diplomatist. But the scarcity of provisions was telling upon the discipline of the army, and the Czar was eager for battle. The Emperor Francis gave way to the ardour of his allies. Weyrother, the Austrian chief of the staff, drew up the most scientific plans for a great victory that had ever been seen even at the Austrian head-quarters; and towards the end of November it was agreed by the two Emperors that the allied army should march right round Napoleon's position near Brunn, and fight a battle with the object of cutting off his retreat upon Vienna.

It was in the days immediately preceding the intended battle, and after Napoleon had divined the plans of his enemy, that Count Haugwitz, bearing the demands of the Cabinet of Berlin, reached the French camp at Brunn. Napoleon had already heard something of the Treaty of Potsdam, and was aware that Haugwitz had started from Berlin. He had no intention of making any of those concessions which Prussia required; at the same time it was of vital importance to him to avoid the issue of a declaration of war by Prussia, which would nerve both Austria and Russia to the last extremities. He therefore resolved to prevent Haugwitz by every possible method from delivering his ultimatum, until a decisive victory over the allied armies should have entirely changed the political situation. The Prussian envoy himself played into Napoleon’s hands. Haugwitz had obtained a disgraceful permission from his sovereign to submit to all Napoleon's wishes, if, before his arrival, Austria should be separately treating for peace; and he had an excuse for delay in the fact that the military preparations of Prussia were not capable of being completed before the middle of December. He passed twelve days on the journey from Berlin, and presented himself before Napoleon on the 28th of November. The Emperor, after a long conversation, requested that he would proceed to Vienna and transact business with Talleyrand. He was weak enough to permit himself to be removed to a distance with his ultimatum to Napoleon undelivered. When next the Prussian Government heard of their envoy, he was sauntering in Talleyrand's drawing-rooms at Vienna, with the cordon of the French Legion of Honour on his breast, exchanging civilities with officials who politely declined to enter upon any question of business.

Haugwitz once removed to Vienna, and the Allies thus deprived of the certainty that Prussia would take the field, Napoleon trusted that a single great defeat would suffice to break up the Coalition. The movements of the Allies were exactly those which he expected and desired. He chose his own positions between Brunn and Austerlitz in the full confidence of victory; and on the morning of the 2nd of December, when the mists disappeared before a bright wintry sun, he saw with the utmost delight that the Russian columns were moving round him in a vast arc, in execution of the turning-movement of which he had forewarned his own army on the day before. Napoleon waited until the foremost columns were stretched far in advance of their supports; then, throwing Soult's division upon the gap left in the centre of the allied line, he cut the army into halves, and crushed its severed divisions at every point along the whole line of attack. The Allies, although they outnumbered Napoleon, believed themselves to be overpowered by an army double their own size. The incoherence of the allied movements was as marked as the unity and effectiveness of those of the French. It was alleged in the army that Kutusoff, the commander-in-chief, had fallen asleep while the Austrian Weyrother was expounding his plans for the battle; a truer explanation of the palpable errors in the allied generalship was that the Russian commander had been forced by the Czar to carry out a plan of which he disapproved. The destruction in the ranks of the Allies was enormous, for the Russians fought with the same obstinacy as at the Trebbia and at Novi. Austria had lost a second army in addition to its capital; and the one condition which could have steeled its Government against all thoughts of peace-the certainty of an immediate Prussian attack upon Napoleon-had vanished with the silent disappearance of the Prussian envoy. Two days after the battle, the Emperor Francis met his conqueror in the open field, and accepted an armistice, which involved the withdrawal of the Russian army from his dominions.

Yet even now the Czar sent appeals to Berlin for help, and the negotiation begun by Austria would possibly have been broken off if help had been given. But the Cabinet of Frederick William had itself determined to evade its engagements; and as soon as the news of Austerlitz reached Vienna, Haugwitz had gone over heart and soul to the conqueror. While negotiations for peace were carried on between France and Austria, a parallel negotiation was carried on with the envoy of Prussia; and even before the Emperor Francis gave way to the conqueror's demands, Haugwitz signed a treaty with Napoleon at Schonbrunn, by which Prussia, instead of attacking Napoleon, entered into an alliance with him, and received from him in return the dominion of Hanover (December 15, 1805). Had Prussia been the defeated power at Austerlitz, the Treaty of Schonbrunn could not have more completely reversed the policy to which King Frederick William had pledged himself six weeks before. While Haugwitz was making his pact with Napoleon, Hardenberg had been arranging with an English envoy for the combination of English and Russian forces in Northern Germany.

There were some among the King's advisers who declared that the treaty must be repudiated, and the envoy disgraced. But the catastrophe of Austerlitz, and the knowledge that the Government of Vienna was entering upon a separate negotiation, had damped the courage of the men in power. The conduct of Haugwitz was first excused, then supported, then admired. The Duke of Brunswick disgraced himself by representing to the French Ambassador in Berlin that the whole course of Prussian policy since the beginning of the campaign had been an elaborate piece of dissimulation in the interest of France. The leaders of the patriotic party in the army found themselves without influence or following; the mass of the nation looked on with the same stupid unconcern with which it had viewed every event of the last twenty years. The King finally decided that the treaty by which Haugwitz had thrown the obligations of his country to the winds should be ratified, with certain modifications, including one that should nominally reserve to King George III a voice in the disposal of Hanover.

Ten days after the departure of the Prussian envoy from Vienna, peace was concluded between France and Austria by the Treaty of Presburg (December 27). At the outbreak of the war Napoleon had declared to his army that he would not again spare Austria, as he had spared her at Campo Formio and at Luneville; and he kept his word. The Peace of Presburg left the Austrian State in a condition very different from that in which it had emerged from the two previous wars. The Treaty of Campo Formio had only deprived Austria of Belgium in order to replace it by Venice; the Settlement of Luneville had only substituted French for Austrian influence in Western Germany: the Treaty that followed the battle of Austerlitz wrested from the House of Hapsburg two of its most important provinces, and cut it off at once from Italy, from Switzerland, and from the Rhine. Venetia was ceded to Napoleon's kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria; the outlying districts belonging to Austria in Western Germany were ceded to Baden and to Wurtemberg. Austria lost 28,000 square miles of territory and 3,000,000 inhabitants. The Emperor recognised the sovereignty and independence of Bavaria, Baden, and Wurtemberg, and renounced all rights over those countries as head of the Germanic Body. The Electors of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, along with a large increase of territory, received the title of King. The constitution of the Empire ceased to exist even in name. It only remained for its chief, the successor of the Roman Caesars, to abandon his title at Napoleon’s bidding; and on the 6th of August, 1806, an Act, published by Francis II. at Vienna, made an end of the outworn and dishonoured fiction of a Holy Roman Empire.

Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition was at an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left the Neapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples had struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to place himself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacant throne was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself in Sicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against the Power which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made either by Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina. In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among the peasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armies of Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy of France, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something against Napoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. A British force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of 1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of the bayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitless barbarities, and of abandoning them to their well-merited chastisement.

The elevation of Napoleon's brother Joseph to the throne of Naples was the first of a series of appointments now made by Napoleon in the character of Emperor of the West. He began to style himself the new Charlemagne; his thoughts and his language were filled with pictures of universal sovereignty; his authority, as a military despot who had crushed his neighbours, became strangely confused in his own mind with that half-sacred right of the Caesars from which the Middle Ages derived all subordinate forms of power. He began to treat the government of the different countries of Western Europe as a function to be exercised by delegation from himself. Even the territorial grants which under the Feudal System accompanied military or civil office were now revived and the commander of a French army corps or the chief of the French Foreign Office became the titular lord of some obscure Italian principality. Napoleon's own family were to reign in many lands, as the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had reigned before them, but in strict dependence on their head. Joseph Bonaparte had not long been installed at Naples when his brother Louis was compelled to accept the Crown of Holland. Jerome, for whom no kingdom was at present vacant, was forced to renounce his American wife, in order that he might marry the daughter of the King of Wurtemberg. Eugene Beauharnais, Napoleon's step-son, held the office of Viceroy of Italy; Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister, had the German Duchy of Berg. Bernadotte, Talleyrand, and Berthier found themselves suzerains of districts whose names were almost unknown to them. Out of the revenues of Northern Italy a yearly sum was reserved as an endowment for the generals whom the Emperor chose to raise to princely honours.

More statesmanlike, more practical than Napoleon's dynastic policy, was his organisation of Western Germany under its native princes as a dependency of France. The object at which all French politicians had aimed since the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both Austria and Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now completely attained. The triumph of French statesmanship, the consummation of two centuries of German discord, was seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western German Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and thirteen minor princes, united themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish Confederacy, under the protection of the French Emperor, and undertook to furnish contingents, amounting to 63,000 men, in all wars in which the French Empire should engage. Their connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had held its meetings was annexed by one of the members of the Confederacy. The Confederacy itself, with a population of 8,000,000, became for all purposes of war and foreign policy a part of France. Its armies were organised by French officers; its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its treaties were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took place within these States the work of consolidation begun in 1801 was carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny principalities which had escaped dissolution in the earlier movement were now absorbed by their stronger neighbours. Governments became more energetic, more orderly, more ambitious. The princes who made themselves the vassals of Napoleon assumed a more despotic power over their own subjects. Old constitutional forms which had imposed some check on the will of the sovereign, like the Estates of Wurtemberg, were contemptuously suppressed; the careless, ineffective routine of the last age gave place to a system of rigorous precision throughout the public services. Military service was enforced in countries hitherto free from it. The burdens of the people became greater, but they were more fairly distributed. The taxes were more equally levied; justice was made more regular and more simple. A career both in the army and the offices of Government was opened to a people to whom the very conception of public life had hitherto been unknown.

The establishment of German unity in our own day after a victorious struggle with France renders it difficult to imagine the voluntary submission of a great part of the race to a French sovereign, or to excuse a policy which, like that of 1806, appears the opposite of everything honourable and patriotic. But what seems strange now was not strange then. No expression more truly describes the conditions of that period than one of the great German poet who was himself so little of a patriot. “Germany”, said Goethe, “is not a nation”. Germany had indeed the unity of race; but all that truly constitutes a nation, the sense of common interest, a common history, pride, and desire, Germany did not possess at all. Bavaria, the strongest of the western States, attached itself to France from a well-grounded fear of Austrian aggression. To be conquered by Austria was just as much conquest for Bavaria as to be conquered by any other Power; it was no step to German unity, but a step in the aggrandisement of the House of Hapsburg. The interests of the Austrian House were not the interests of Germany any more than they were the interests of Croatia, or of Venice, or of Hungary. Nor, on the other hand, had Prussia yet shown a form of political life sufficiently attractive to lead the southern States to desire to unite with it. Frederick’s genius had indeed made him the hero of Germany, but his military system was harsh and tyrannical. In the actual condition of Austria and Prussia, it is doubtful whether the population of the minor States would have been happier united to these Powers than under their own Governments. Conquest in any case was impossible, and there was nothing to stimulate to voluntary union. It followed that the smaller States were destined to remain without a nationality, until the violence of some foreign Power rendered weakness an intolerable evil, and forced upon the better minds of Germany the thought of a common Fatherland.

The necessity of German unity is no self-evident political truth. Holland and Switzerland in past centuries detached themselves from the Empire, and became independent States, with the highest advantage to themselves. Identity of blood is no more conclusive reason for political union between Holstein and the Tyrol than between Great Britain and the United States of America. The conditions which determine both the true area and the true quality of German unity are, in fact, something more complex than an ethnological law or an outburst of patriotic indignation against the French. Where local circumstances rendered it possible for a German district, after detaching itself from the race, to maintain a real national life and defend itself from foreign conquest, there it was perhaps better that the connection with Germany should be severed; where, as in the great majority of minor States, independence resulted only in military helplessness and internal stagnation, there it was better that independence should give place to German unity. But the conditions of any tolerable unity were not present so long as Austria was the leading Power. Less was imperilled in the future of the German people by the submission of the western States to France than would have been lost by their permanent incorporation under Austria.

With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the conquest of Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not overpass, the limits within which the sovereignty of France might probably have been long maintained. It has been usual to draw the line between the sound statesmanship and the hazardous enterprises of Napoleon at the Peace of Luneville: a juster appreciation of the condition of Western Europe would perhaps include within the range of a practical, though mischievous, ideal the whole of the political changes which immediately followed the war of 1805, and which extended Napoleon's dominion to the Inn and to the Straits of Messina. Italy and Germany were not then what they have since become. The districts that lay between the Rhine and the Inn were not more hostile to the foreigner than those Rhenish Provinces which so readily accepted their union with France. The more enterprising minds in Italy found that the Napoleonic rule, with all its faults, was superior to anything that Italy had known in recent times. If we may judge from the feeling with which Napoleon was regarded in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806, and in Italy down to a much later date, the Empire then founded might have been permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking other States. No comparison can be made between the attractive power exercised by the social equality of France, its military glory, and its good administration, and the slow and feeble process of assimilation which went on within the dominions of Austria; yet Austria succeeded in uniting a greater variety of races than France sought to unite in 1806. The limits of a possible France were indeed fixed, and fixed more firmly than by any geographical line, in the history and national character of two other peoples. France could not permanently overpower Prussia, and it could not permanently overpower Spain. But within a boundary-line drawn roughly from the mouth of the Elbe to the head of the Adriatic, that union of national sentiment and material force which checks the formation of empires did not exist. The true turning-point in Napoleon's career was the moment when he passed beyond the policy which had planned the Federation of the Rhine, and roused by his oppression the one State which was still capable of giving a national life to Germany.

CHAPTER VII

DEATH OF PITT TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT

Memoirs relative to the Duke d'Enghien; ... To which are added the Journal of the Duke d'Enghien, written by himself; and historical and inedited documents relative to his trial

The battle of Trafalgar (pdf)

A detailed account of the battle of Austerlitz (pdf),

The Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805), also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important and decisive engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire (modern-day Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic). The decisive victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to a rapid end, with the Treaty of Pressburg signed by the Austrians later in the month.The battle is often cited as a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like Cannae or Gaugamela.

Battle of Maida, July 6, 1806.In early 1806, the French invaded and overran the Kingdom of Naples, forcing King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and his government to flee to Sicily. The Calabrians revolted against their new conquerors and Stuart's expeditionary force tried to exploit the unrest by raiding the coast. While ashore, the British encountered Reynier's division and the two sides engaged in battle. The 19th-century historians presented the action as a typical fight between French columns and British lines. This view of the battle has been called into doubt by at least one modern historian who argued that the French deployed into lines. Nobody questions the result which was a one-sided British victory.

After the battle, Stuart captured some isolated garrisons in Calabria and was transported back to Sicily by the Royal Navy. Two weeks after the battle, the city of Gaeta fell to the French after a long siege. While Stuart succeeded in preventing a French invasion of Sicily and sustained the revolt in Calabria, he missed an opportunity to assist the defenders of Gaeta..