Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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Such was the system which, based to a great extent upon the preferences of
the French people, fixed even more deeply in the national character the
willingness to depend upon an omnipresent, all-directing power. Through its
rational order, its regularity, its command of the highest science and
experience, this system of government could not fail to confer great and
rapid benefits upon the country. It has usually been viewed by the French
themselves as one of the finest creations of political wisdom. In
comparison with the self-government which then and long afterwards existed
in England, the centralisation of France had all the superiority of
progress and intelligence over torpor and self-contradiction. Yet a heavy,
an incalculable price is paid by every nation which for the sake of
administrative efficiency abandons its local liberties, and all that is
bound up with their enjoyment. No practice in the exercise of public right
armed a later generation of Frenchmen against the audacity of a common
usurper: no immortality of youth secured the institutions framed by
Napoleon against the weakness and corruption which at some period undermine
all despotisms. The historian who has exhausted every term of praise upon
the political system of the Consulate lived to declare, as Chief of the
State himself, that the first need of France was the decentralisation of
power. [84]

[State policy of Bonaparte.]

After ten years of disquiet, it was impossible that any Government could be
more welcome to the French nation than one which proclaimed itself the
representative, not of party or of opinion, but of France itself. No
section of the nation had won a triumph in the establishment of the
Consulate; no section had suffered a defeat. In his own elevation Bonaparte
announced the close of civil conflict. A Government had arisen which
summoned all to its service which would employ all, reward all, reconcile
all. The earliest measures of the First Consul exhibited the policy of
reconciliation by which he hoped to rally the whole of France to his side.
The law of hostages, under which hundreds of families were confined in
retaliation for local Royalist disturbances, was repealed, and Bonaparte
himself went to announce their liberty to the prisoners in the Temple.
Great numbers of names were struck off the list of the emigrants, and the
road to pardon was subsequently opened to all who had not actually served
against their country. In the selection of his officers of State, Bonaparte
showed the same desire to win men of all parties. Cambaceres, a regicide,
was made Second Consul; Lebrun, an old official of Louis XVI., became his
colleague. In the Ministries, in the Senate, and in the Council of State
the nation saw men of proved ability chosen from all callings in life and
from all political ranks. No Government of France had counted among its
members so many names eminent for capacity and experience. One quality
alone was indispensable, a readiness to serve and to obey. In that
intellectual greatness which made the combination of all the forces of
France a familiar thought in Bonaparte's mind, there was none of the moral
generosity which could pardon opposition to himself, or tolerate energy
acting under other auspices than his own. He desired to see authority in
the best hands; he sought talent and promoted it, but on the understanding
that it took its direction from himself. Outside this limit ability was his
enemy, not his friend; and what could not be caressed or promoted was
treated with tyrannical injustice. While Bonaparte boasted of the career
that he had thrown open to talent, he suppressed the whole of the
independent journalism of Paris, and banished Mme. de Stael, whose guests
continued to converse, when they might not write, about liberty. Equally
partial, equally calculated, was Bonaparte's indulgence towards the ancient
enemies of the Revolution, the Royalists and the priests. He felt nothing
of the old hatred of Paris towards the Vendean noble and the superstitious
Breton; he offered his friendship to the stubborn Breton race, whose
loyalty and piety he appreciated as good qualities in subjects; but failing
their submission, he instructed his generals in the west of France to burn
down their villages, and to set a price upon the heads of their chiefs.
Justice, tolerance, good faith, were things which had no being for
Bonaparte outside the circle of his instruments and allies.

[France ceases to excite democracy abroad, but promotes equality under
monarchical systems.]

[Effect of Bonaparte's autocracy outside France.]

In the foreign relations of France it was not possible for the most
unscrupulous will to carry aggression farther than it had been already
carried; yet the elevation of Bonaparte deeply affected the fortunes of all
those States whose lot depended upon France. It was not only that a mind
accustomed to regard all human things as objects for its own disposal now
directed an irresistible military force, but from the day when France
submitted to Bonaparte, the political changes accompanying the advance of
the French armies took a different character. Belgium and Holland, the
Rhine Provinces, the Cisalpine, the Roman, and the Parthenopean Republics,
had all received, under whatever circumstances of wrong, at least the forms
of popular sovereignty. The reality of power may have belonged to French
generals and commissioners; but, however insincerely uttered, the call to
freedom excited hopes and aspirations which were not insincere themselves.
The Italian festivals of emancipation, the trees of liberty, the rhetoric
of patriotic assemblies, had betrayed little enough of the instinct for
self-government; but they marked a separation from the past; and the period
between the years 1796 and 1799 was in fact the birth-time of those hopes
which have since been realised in the freedom and the unity of Italy. So
long as France had her own tumultuous assemblies, her elections in the
village and in the county-town, it was impossible for her to form republics
beyond the Alps without introducing at least some germ of republican
organisation and spirit. But when all power was concentrated in a single
man, when the spoken and the written word became an offence against the
State, when the commotion of the old municipalities was succeeded by the
silence and the discipline of a body of clerks working round their chief,
then the advance of French influence ceased to mean the support of popular
forces against the Governments. The form which Bonaparte had given to
France was the form which he intended for the clients of France. Hence in
those communities which directly received the impress of the Consulate, as
in Bavaria and the minor German States, authority, instead of being
overthrown, was greatly strengthened. Bonaparte carried beyond the Rhine
that portion of the spirit of the Revolution which he accepted at home, the
suppression of privilege, the extinction of feudal rights, the reduction of
all ranks to equality before the law, and the admission of all to the
public service. But this levelling of the social order in the client-states
of France, and the establishment of system and unity in the place of
obsolete privilege, cleared the way not for the supremacy of the people,
but for the supremacy of the Crown. The power which was taken away from
corporations, from knights, and from ecclesiastics, was given, not to a
popular Representative, but to Cabinet Ministers and officials ranged after
the model of the official hierarchy of France. What the French had in the
first epoch of their Revolution endeavoured to impart to Europe--the spirit
of liberty and self-government--they had now renounced themselves. The
belief in popular right, which made the difference between the changes of
1789 and those attempted by the Emperor Joseph, sank in the storms of the
Revolution.

[Bonaparte legislates in the spirit of the reforming monarchs of the 18th
century.]

Yet the statesmanship of Bonaparte, if it repelled the liberal and
disinterested sentiment of 1789, was no mere cunning of a Corsican soldier,
or exploit of mediaeval genius born outside its age. Subject to the fullest
gratification of his own most despotic or most malignant impulse, Bonaparte
carried into his creations the ideas upon which the greatest European
innovators before the French Revolution had based their work. What
Frederick and Joseph had accomplished, or failed to accomplish, was
realised in Western Germany when its Sovereigns became the clients of the
First Consul. Bonaparte was no child of the French Revolution; he was the
last and the greatest of the autocratic legislators who worked in an unfree
age. Under his rule France lost what had seemed to be most its own; it most
powerfully advanced the forms of progress common to itself and the rest of
Europe. Bonaparte raised no population to liberty: in extinguishing
privilege and abolishing the legal distinctions of birth, in levelling all
personal and corporate authority beneath the single rule of the State, he
prepared the way for a rational freedom, when, at a later day, the
Government of the State should itself become the representative of the
nation's will.




CHAPTER V.


Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massena
besieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses the
St. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle of
Marengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England and
Austria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace of
Luneville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle of
Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army enters
Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo and
Alexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at
London, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and his
retirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during the
Continental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany under
French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States and Free
Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The Civil Code--The
Concordat.


[Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and to England, 1799.]

The establishment of the Consulate gave France peace from the strife of
parties. Peace from foreign warfare was not less desired by the nation; and
although the First Consul himself was restlessly planning the next
campaign, it belonged to his policy to represent himself as the mediator
between France and Europe. Discarding the usual diplomatic forms, Bonaparte
addressed letters in his own name to the Emperor Francis and to King George
III., deploring the miseries inflicted by war upon nations naturally
allied, and declaring his personal anxiety to enter upon negotiations for
peace. The reply of Austria which was courteously worded, produced an offer
on the part of Bonaparte to treat for peace upon the basis of the Treaty of
Campo Formio. Such a proposal was the best evidence of Bonaparte's real
intentions. Austria had re-conquered Lombardy, and driven the armies of the
Republic from the Adige to within a few miles of Nice. To propose a peace
which should merely restore the situation existing at the beginning of the
war was pure irony. The Austrian Government accordingly declared itself
unable to treat without the concurrence of its allies. The answer of
England to the overtures of the First Consul was rough and defiant. It
recounted the causes of war and distrust which precluded England from
negotiating with a revolutionary Government; and, though not insisting on
the restoration of the Bourbons as a condition of peace, it stated that no
guarantee for the sincerity and good behaviour of France would be so
acceptable to Great Britain as the recall of the ancient family. [85]

Few State papers have been distinguished by worse faults of judgment than
this English manifesto. It was intended to recommend the Bourbons to France
as a means of procuring peace: it enabled Bonaparte to represent England as
violently interfering with the rights of the French people, and the
Bourbons as seeking their restoration at the hand of the enemy of their
country. The answer made to Pitt's Government from Paris was such as one
high-spirited nation which had recently expelled its rulers might address
to another that had expelled its rulers a century before. France, it was
said, had as good a right to dismiss an incapable dynasty as Great Britain.
If Talleyrand's reply failed to convince King George that before restoring
the Bourbons he ought to surrender his own throne to the Stuarts, it
succeeded in transferring attention from the wrongs inflicted by France to
the pretensions advanced by England. That it affected the actual course of
events there is no reason to believe. The French Government was well
acquainted with the real grounds of war possessed by England, in spite of
the errors by which the British Cabinet weakened the statement of its
cause. What the mass of the French people now thought, or did not think,
had become a matter of very little importance.

[Situation of the Armies.]

[Moreau invades South Germany, April, 1800.]

The war continued. Winter and the early spring of 1800 passed in France
amidst vigorous but concealed preparations for the campaign which was to
drive the Austrians from Italy. In Piedmont the Austrians spent months in
inaction, which might have given them Genoa and completed the conquest of
Italy before Bonaparte's army could take the field. It was not until the
beginning of April that Melas, their general, assailed the French positions
on the Genoese Apennines; a fortnight more was spent in mountain warfare
before Massena, who now held the French command, found himself shut up in
Genoa and blockaded by land and sea. The army which Bonaparte was about to
lead into Italy lay in between Dijon and Geneva, awaiting the arrival of
the First Consul. On the Rhine, from Strasburg to Schaffhausen, a force of
100,000 men was ready to cross into Germany under the command of Moreau,
who was charged with the task of pushing the Austrians back from the Upper
Danube, and so rendering any attack through Switzerland upon the
communications of Bonaparte's Italian force impossible. Moreau's army was
the first to move. An Austrian force, not inferior to Moreau's own, lay
within the bend of the Rhine that covers Baden and Wuertemberg. Moreau
crossed the Rhine at various points, and by a succession of ingenious
manoeuvres led his adversary, Kray, to occupy all the roads through the
Black Forest except those by which the northern divisions of the French
were actually passing. A series of engagements, conspicuous for the skill
of the French general and the courage of the defeated Austrians, gave
Moreau possession of the country south of the Danube as far as Ulm, where
Kray took refuge in his entrenched camp. Beyond this point Moreau's
instructions forbade him to advance. His task was fulfilled by the
severance of the Austrian army from the roads into Italy.

[Bonaparte crosses the Alps, May, 1800.]

Bonaparte's own army was now in motion. Its destination was still secret;
its very existence was doubted by the Austrian generals. On the 8th of May
the First Consul himself arrived at Geneva, and assumed the command. The
campaign upon which this army was now entering was designed by Bonaparte to
surpass everything that Europe had hitherto seen most striking in war. The
feats of Massena and Suvaroff in the Alps had filled his imagination with
mountain warfare. A victory over nature more imposing than theirs might, in
the present position of the Austrian forces in Lombardy, be made the
prelude to a victory in the field without a parallel in its effects upon
the enemy. Instead of relieving Genoa by an advance along the coast-road,
Bonaparte intended to march across the Alps and to descend in the rear of
the Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from their
communications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of their
army or in the evacuation of the whole of the country that they had won,
Bonaparte led his army into the mountains. The pass of the Great St.
Bernard, though not a carriage-road, offered little difficulty to a
commander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill;
and by this road the army crossed the Alps. The cannons were taken from
their carriages and dragged up the mountain in hollowed trees; thousands of
mules transported the ammunition and supplies; workshops for repairs were
established on either slope of the mountain; and in the Monastery of St.
Bernard there were stores collected sufficient to feed the soldiers as they
reached the summit during six successive days (May 15-20). The passage of
the St. Bernard was a triumph of organisation, foresight, and good
management; as a military exploit it involved none of the danger, none of
the suffering, none of the hazard, which gave such interest to the campaign
of Massena and Suvaroff.

[Bonaparte cuts off the Austrian army from Eastern Lombardy.]

Bonaparte had rightly calculated upon the unreadiness of his enemy. The
advanced guard of the French army poured down the valley of the Dora-Baltea
upon the scanty Austrian detachments at Ivrea and Chiusella, before Melas,
who had in vain been warned of the departure of the French from Geneva,
arrived with a few thousand men at Turin to dispute the entrance into
Italy. Melas himself, on the opening of the campaign, had followed a French
division to Nice, leaving General Ott in charge of the army investing
Genoa. On reaching Turin he discovered the full extent of his peril, and
sent orders to Ott to raise the siege of Genoa and to join him with every
regiment that he could collect. Ott, however, was unwilling to abandon the
prey at this moment falling into his grasp. He remained stationary till the
5th of June, when Massena, reduced to the most cruel extremities by famine,
was forced to surrender Genoa to the besiegers. But his obstinate endurance
had the full effect of a battle won. Ott's delay rendered Melas powerless
to hinder the movements of Bonaparte, when, instead of marching upon Genoa,
as both French and Austrians expected him to do, he turned eastward, and
thrust his army between the Austrians and their own fortresses. Bonaparte
himself entered Milan (June 2); Lannes and Murat were sent to seize the
bridges over the Po and the Adda. The Austrian detachment guarding Piacenza
was overpowered; the communications of Melas with the country north of the
Powere completely severed. Nothing remained for the Austrian commander but
to break through the French or to make his escape to Genoa.

[Battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800.]

[Conditions of Armistice.]

The French centre was now at Stradella, half-way between Piacenza and
Alessandria. Melas was at length joined by Ott at Alessandria, but so
scattered were the Austrian forces, that out of 80,000 men Melas had not
more than 33,000 at his command. Bonaparte's forces were equal in number;
his only fear was that Melas might use his last line of retreat, and escape
to Genoa without an engagement. The Austrian general, however, who had
shared with Suvaroff the triumph over Joubert at Novi, resolved to stake
everything upon a pitched battle. He awaited Bonaparte's approach at
Alessandria. On the 12th of June Bonaparte advanced westward from
Stradella. His anxiety lest Melas might be escaping from his hands
increased with every hour of the march that brought him no tidings of the
enemy; and on the 13th, when his advanced guard had come almost up to the
walls of Alessandria without seeing an enemy, he could bear the suspense no
longer, and ordered Desaix to march southward towards Novi and hold the
road to Genoa. Desaix led off his division. Early the next morning the
whole army of Melas issued from Alessandria, and threw itself upon the
weakened line of the French at Marengo. The attack carried everything
before it: at the end of seven hours' fighting, Melas, exhausted by his
personal exertions, returned into Alessandria, and sent out tidings of a
complete victory. It was at this moment that Desaix, who had turned at the
sound of the cannon, appeared on the field, and declared that, although one
battle had been lost, another might be won. A sudden cavalry-charge struck
panic into the Austrians, who believed the battle ended and the foe
overthrown. Whole brigades threw down their arms and fled; and ere the day
closed a mass of fugitives, cavalry and infantry, thronging over the
marshes of the Bormida, was all that remained of the victorious Austrian
centre. The suddenness of the disaster, the desperate position of the army,
cut off from its communications, overthrew the mind of Melas, and he agreed
to an armistice more fatal than an unconditional surrender. The Austrians
retired behind the Mincio, and abandoned to the French every fortress in
Northern Italy that lay west of that river. A single battle had produced
the result of a campaign of victories and sieges. Marengo was the most
brilliant in conception of all Bonaparte's triumphs. If in its execution
the genius of the great commander had for a moment failed him, no mention
of the long hours of peril and confusion was allowed to obscure the
splendour of Bonaparte's victory. Every document was altered or suppressed
which contained a report of the real facts of the battle. The descriptions
given to the French nation claimed only new homage to the First Consul's
invincible genius and power. [86]

[Austria continues the war.]

At Vienna the military situation was viewed more calmly than in Melas'
camp. The conditions of the armistice were generally condemned, and any
sudden change in the policy of Austria was prevented by a treaty with
England, binding Austria, in return for British subsidies, and for a secret
promise of part of Piedmont, to make no separate peace with France before
the end of February, 1801. This treaty was signed a few hours before the
arrival of the news of Marengo. It was the work of Thugut, who still
maintained his influence over the Emperor, in spite of growing unpopularity
and almost universal opposition. Public opinion, however, forced the
Emperor at least to take steps for ascertaining the French terms of peace.
An envoy was sent to Paris; and, as there could be no peace without the
consent of England, conferences were held with the object of establishing a
naval armistice between England and France. England, however, refused the
concessions demanded by the First Consul; and the negotiations were broken
off in September. But this interval of three months had weakened the
authority of the Minister and stimulated the intrigues which at every great
crisis paralysed the action of Austria. At length, while Thugut was
receiving the subsidies of Great Britain and arranging for the most
vigorous prosecution of the war, the Emperor, concealing the transaction
from his Minister, purchased a new armistice by the surrender of the
fortresses of Ulm and Ingolstadt to Moreau's army. [87]

[Battle of Hohenlinden, Dec. 3, 1800.]

A letter written by Thugut after a council held on the 25th of September
gives some indication of the stormy scene which then passed in the
Emperor's presence. Thugut tendered his resignation, which was accepted;
and Lehrbach, the author of the new armistice, was placed in office. But
the reproaches of the British ambassador forced the weak Emperor to rescind
this appointment on the day after it had been published to the world. There
was no one in Vienna capable of filling the vacant post; and after a short
interval the old Minister resumed the duties of his office, without,
however, openly resuming the title. The remainder of the armistice was
employed in strengthening the force opposed to Moreau, who now received
orders to advance upon Vienna. The Archduke John, a royal strategist of
eighteen, was furnished with a plan for surrounding the French army and
cutting it off from its communications. Moreau lay upon the Isar; the
Austrians held the line of the Inn. On the termination of the armistice the
Austrians advanced and made some devious marches in pursuance of the
Archduke's enterprise, until a general confusion, attributed to the
weather, caused them to abandon their manoeuvres and move straight against
the enemy. On the 3rd of December the Austrians plunged into the
snow-blocked roads of the Forest of Hohenlinden, believing that they had
nothing near them but the rear-guard of a retiring French division. Moreau
waited until they had reached the heart of the forest, and then fell upon
them with his whole force in front, in flank, and in the rear. The defeat
of the Austrians was overwhelming. What remained of the war was rather a
chase than a struggle. Moreau successively crossed the Inn, the Salza, and
the Traun; and on December 25th the Emperor, seeing that no effort of Pitt
could keep Moreau out of Vienna, accepted an armistice at Steyer, and
agreed to treat for peace without reference to Great Britain.

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