Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

C >> C. A. Fyffe >> History of Modern Europe 1792 1878




The reorganisation of the Prussian military system and the emancipation of
the peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did not
originate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a great
scheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he would
have given to Prussia at least the beginnings of constitutional government.
Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project was
carried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. He
designed to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system of
self-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visited
England in his youth. The history and the literature of England interested
him beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England that
the partnership of the nation in the work of government, so far from
weakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system can
long preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Stein
denounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes it
to their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that the
nation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment of
representative government and the creation of free local institutions in
town and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every other
Prussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorous
monarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanent
executive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at least
the caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt by
the monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than the
English House of Commons, but it was at least not intended to be a mockery,
like those legislative bodies which Napoleon and his clients erected as the
disguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns and
country districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown,
Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitants
themselves. The functions allotted to the new municipal bodies illustrated
the modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction of
self-government, including no more than the care of the poor, the
superintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and public
buildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of the
central Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed to
entrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. In
comparison with the self-government of England or America, the
self-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of the
most elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast to
that which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crushing out the last
elements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation.

[Municipal reform alone carried out.]

Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of the
legislative, the municipal, and the district reforms which he had sketched,
the municipal reform was the only one which he had time to carry out before
being driven from power; and for forty years the municipal institutions
created by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. A
vehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, and
supported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by the
nobles whose peasants he had emancipated, and by the Berlin aristocracy,
which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friendship with
France, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie in
unconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, of
self-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of the
Prussian governing classes of his time. It was not long before the
landowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, who
called him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent into
banishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec., 1808). Stein left the
greater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. The
years of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gathered
together everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a national
revival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after an
interval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to its
victory.




CHAPTER VIII.


Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy--He
affects to be Ferdinand's protector--Dupont's army enters Spain--Murat in
Spain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand to
Bayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of the
Spanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notables at
Bayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands in
Portugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising on
Europe--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Stein
resigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment--
Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleon
leaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the French.


[Spanish affairs, 1793-1806.]

[Spain in 1806.]

Spain, which had played so insignificant a part throughout the
Revolutionary War, was now about to become the theatre of events that
opened a new world of hope to Europe. Its King, the Bourbon Charles IV.,
was more weak and more pitiful than any sovereign of the age. Power
belonged to the Queen and to her paramour Godoy, who for the last fourteen
years had so conducted the affairs of the country that every change in its
policy had brought with it new disaster. In the war of the First Coalition
Spain had joined the Allies, and French armies had crossed the Pyrenees. In
1796 Spain entered the service of France, and lost the battle of St.
Vincent. At the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon surrendered its colony Trinidad
to England; on the renewal of the war he again forced it into hostilities
with Great Britain, and brought upon it the disaster of Trafalgar. This
unbroken humiliation of the Spanish arms, combined with intolerable
oppression and impoverishment at home, raised so bitter an outcry against
Godoy's government, that foreign observers, who underrated the loyalty of
the Spanish people, believed the country to be on the verge of revolution.
At the Court itself the Crown Prince Ferdinand, under the influence of his
Neapolitan wife, headed a party in opposition to Godoy and the supporters
of French dominion. Godoy, insecure at home, threw himself the more
unreservedly into the arms of Napoleon, who bestowed upon him a
contemptuous patronage, and flattered him with the promise of an
independent principality in Portugal. Izquierdo, Godoy's agent at Paris,
received proposals from Napoleon which were concealed from the Spanish
Ambassador; and during the first months of 1806 Napoleon possessed no more
devoted servant than the man who virtually held the government of Spain.

[Spain intends to join Prussia in 1806.]

The opening of negotiations between Napoleon and Fox's Ministry in May,
1806, first shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between
France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any
attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiries
after his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The next
intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been
offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an
indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph
Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous appropriation of Spanish
territory, without even the pretence of consulting the Spanish Government,
excited scarcely less anger at Madrid than the corresponding proposal with
regard to Hanover excited at Berlin. The Court began to meditate a change
of policy, and watched the events which were leading Prussia to arm for the
war of 1806. A few weeks more passed, and news arrived that Buenos Ayres,
the capital of Spanish South America, had fallen into the hands of the
English. This disaster produced the deepest impression, for the loss of
Buenos Ayres was believed, and with good reason, to be but the prelude to
the loss of the entire American empire of Spain. Continuance of the war
with England was certain ruin; alliance with the enemies of Napoleon was at
least not hopeless, now that Prussia was on the point of throwing its army
into the scale against France. An agent was despatched by the Spanish
Government to London (Sept., 1806); and, upon the commencement of
hostilities by Prussia, a proclamation was issued by Godoy, which, without
naming any actual enemy, summoned the Spanish people to prepare for a war
on behalf of their country.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau, Oct., 1807.]

Scarcely had the manifesto been read by the Spaniards when the Prussian
army was annihilated at Jena. The dream of resistance to Napoleon vanished
away; the only anxiety of the Spanish Government was to escape from the
consequences of its untimely daring. Godoy hastened to explain that his
martial proclamation had been directed not against the Emperor of the
French, but against the Emperor of Morocco. Napoleon professed himself
satisfied with this palpable absurdity: it appeared as if the events of the
last few months had left no trace on his mind. Immediately after the Peace
of Tilsit he resumed his negotiations with Godoy upon the old friendly
footing, and brought them to a conclusion in the Treaty of Fontainebleau
(Oct., 1807), which provided for the invasion of Portugal by a French and a
Spanish army, and for its division into principalities, one of which was to
be conferred upon Godoy himself. The occupation of Portugal was duly
effected, and Godoy looked forward to the speedy retirement of the French
from the province which was to be his portion of the spoil.

[Napoleon uses the enmity of Ferdinand against Godoy.]

[Napoleon about to intervene as protector of Ferdinand.]

Napoleon, however, had other ends in view. Spain, not Portugal, was the
true prize. Napoleon had gradually formed the determination of taking Spain
into his own hands, and the dissensions of the Court itself enabled him to
appear upon the scene as the judge to whom all parties appealed. The Crown
Prince Ferdinand had long been at open enmity with Godoy and his own
mother. So long as Ferdinand's Neapolitan wife was alive, her influence
made the Crown Prince the centre of the party hostile to France; but after
her death in 1806, at a time when Godoy himself inclined to join Napoleon's
enemies, Ferdinand took up a new position, and allied himself with the
French Ambassador, at whose instigation he wrote to Napoleon, soliciting
the hand of a princess of the Napoleonic House. [145] Godoy, though unaware
of the letter, discovered that Ferdinand was engaged in some intrigue. King
Charles was made to believe that his son had entered into a conspiracy to
dethrone him. The Prince was placed under arrest, and on the 30th of
October, 1807, a royal proclamation appeared at Madrid, announcing that
Ferdinand had been detected in a conspiracy against his parents, and that
he was about to be brought to justice along with his accomplices. King
Charles at the same time wrote a letter to Napoleon, of whose connection
with Ferdinand he had not the slightest suspicion, stating that he intended
to exclude the Crown Prince from the succession to the throne of Spain. No
sooner had Napoleon received the communication from the simple King than he
saw himself in possession of the pretext for intervention which he had so
long desired. The most pressing orders were given for the concentration of
troops on the Spanish frontier; Napoleon appeared to be on the point of
entering Spain as the defender of the hereditary rights of Ferdinand. The
opportunity, however, proved less favourable than Napoleon had expected.
The Crown Prince, overcome by his fears, begged forgiveness of his father,
and disclosed the negotiations which had taken place between himself and
the French Ambassador. Godoy, dismayed at finding Napoleon's hand in what
he had supposed to be a mere palace-intrigue, abandoned all thought of
proceeding further against the Crown Prince; and a manifesto announced that
Ferdinand was restored to the favour of his father. Napoleon now
countermanded the order which he had given for the despatch of the Rhenish
troops to the Pyrenees, and contented himself with directing General
Dupont, the commander of an army-corps nominally destined for Portugal, to
cross the Spanish frontier and advance as far as Vittoria.

[Dupont enters Spain, Dec., 1807.]

[French welcomed in Spain as Ferdinand's protectors.]

Dupont's troops entered Spain in the last days of the year 1807, and were
received with acclamations. It was universally believed that Napoleon had
espoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nation
from the detested rule of Godoy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinand
in the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who was
personally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol of
the people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards Godoy and the
Queen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which Godoy
effected in the hope of attaching to himself the more enlightened classes
only served to complete his unpopularity with the fanatical mass of the
nation. The French, who gradually entered the Peninsula to the number of
80,000, and who described themselves as the protectors of Ferdinand and of
the true Catholic faith, were able to spread themselves over the northern
provinces without exciting suspicion. It was only when their commanders, by
a series of tricks worthy of American savages, obtained possession of the
frontier citadels and fortresses, that the wiser part of the nation began
to entertain some doubt as to the real purpose of their ally. At the Court
itself and among the enemies of Ferdinand the advance of the French roused
the utmost alarm. King Charles wrote to Napoleon in the tone of ancient
friendship; but the answer he received was threatening and mysterious. The
utterances which the Emperor let fall in the presence of persons likely to
report them at Madrid were even more alarming, and were intended to terrify
the Court into the resolution to take flight from Madrid. The capital once
abandoned by the King, Napoleon judged that he might safely take everything
into his own hands on the pretence of restoring to Spain the government
which it had lost.

[Murat sent to Spain, Feb., 1808.]

[Charles IV. abdicates, March 17, 1808.]

On the 20th of February, 1808, Murat was ordered to quit Paris in order to
assume the command in Spain. Not a word was said by Napoleon to him before
his departure. His instructions first reached him at Bayonne; they were of
a military nature, and gave no indication of the ultimate political object
of his mission. Murat entered Spain on the 1st of March, knowing no more
than that he was ordered to reassure all parties and to commit himself to
none, but with full confidence that he himself was intended by Napoleon to
be the successor of the Bourbon dynasty. It was now that the Spanish Court,
expecting the appearance of the French army in Madrid, resolved upon that
flight which Napoleon considered so necessary to his own success. The
project was not kept a secret. It passed from Godoy to the Ministers of
State, and from them to the friends of Ferdinand. The populace of Madrid
was inflamed by the report that Godoy was about to carry the King to a
distance, in order to prolong the misgovernment which the French had
determined to overthrow. A tumultuous crowd marched from the capital to
Aranjuez, the residence of the Court. On the evening of the 17th of March,
the palace of Godoy was stormed by the mob. Godoy himself was seized, and
carried to the barracks amid the blows and curses of the populace. The
terrified King, who already saw before him the fate of his cousin, Louis
XVI., first published a decree depriving Godoy of all his dignities, and
then abdicated in favour of his son. On the 19th of March Ferdinand was
proclaimed King.

[French enter Madrid, March 23.]

Such was the unexpected intelligence that met Murat as he approached
Madrid. The dissensions of the Court, which were to supply his ground of
intervention, had been terminated by the Spaniards themselves: in the place
of a despised dotard and a menaced favourite, Spain had gained a youthful
sovereign around whom all classes of the nation rallied with the utmost
enthusiasm. Murat's position became a very difficult one; but he supplied
what was wanting in his instructions by the craft of a man bent upon
creating a vacancy in his own favour. He sent his aide-de-camp, Monthieu,
to visit the dethroned sovereign, and obtained a protest from King Charles
IV., declaring his abdication to have been extorted from him by force, and
consequently to be null and void. This document Murat kept secret; but he
carefully abstained from doing anything which might involve a recognition
of Ferdinand's title. On the 23rd of March the French troops entered
Madrid. Nothing had as yet become known to the public that indicated an
altered policy on the part of the French; and the soldiers of Murat, as the
supposed friends of Ferdinand, met with as friendly a reception in Madrid
as in the other towns of Spain. On the following day Ferdinand himself made
his solemn entry into the capital, amid wild demonstrations of an almost
barbaric loyalty.

[Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne, April, 1808.]

In the tumult of popular joy it was noticed that Murat's troops continued
their exercises without the least regard to the pageant that so deeply
stirred the hearts of the Spaniards. Suspicions were aroused; the
enthusiasm of the people for the French soldiers began to change into
irritation and ill-will. The end of the long drama of deceit was in fact
now close at hand. On the 4th of April General Savary arrived at Madrid
with instructions independent of those given to Murat. He was charged to
entice the new Spanish sovereign from his capital, and to bring him, either
as a dupe or as a prisoner, on to French soil. The task was not a difficult
one. Savary pretended that Napoleon had actually entered Spain, and that he
only required an assurance of Ferdinand's continued friendship before
recognising him as the legitimate successor of Charles IV. Ferdinand, he
added, could show no greater mark of cordiality to his patron than by
advancing to meet him on the road. Snared by these hopes, Ferdinand set out
from Madrid, in company with Savary and some of his own foolish confidants.
On reaching Burgos, the party found no signs of the Emperor. They continued
their journey to Vittoria. Here Ferdinand's suspicions were aroused, and he
declined to proceed farther. Savary hastened to Bayonne to report the delay
to Napoleon. He returned with a letter which overcame Ferdinand's scruples
and induced him to cross the Pyrenees, in spite of the prayers of statesmen
and the loyal violence of the simple inhabitants of the district. At
Bayonne Ferdinand was visited by Napoleon, but not a word was spoken on the
object of his journey. In the afternoon the Emperor received Ferdinand and
his suite at a neighbouring chateau, but preserved the same ominous
silence. When the other guests departed, the Canon Escoiquiz, a member of
Ferdinand's retinue, was detained, and learned from Napoleon's own lips the
fate in store for the Bourbon Monarchy. Savary returned to Bayonne with
Ferdinand, and informed the Prince that he must renounce the crown of
Spain. [146]

[Charles and Ferdinand surrender their rights to Napoleon.]

[Attack on the French in Madrid, May 2.]

For some days Ferdinand held out against Napoleon's demands with a
stubbornness not often shown by him in the course of his mean and
hypocritical career. He was assailed not only by Napoleon but by those
whose fall had been his own rise; for Godoy was sent to Bayonne by Murat,
and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his
humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that
astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal
until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The
irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the
populace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to remove
the remaining members of the royal family from the palace, the capital had
broken into open insurrection, and wherever French soldiers were found
alone or in small bodies they were massacred. (May 2.) Some hundreds of the
French perished; but the victory of Murat was speedy, and his vengeance
ruthless. The insurgents were driven into the great central square of the
city, and cut down by repeated charges of cavalry. When all resistance was
over, numbers of the citizens were shot in cold blood. Such was the
intelligence which reached Bayonne in the midst of Napoleon's struggle with
Ferdinand. There was no further need of argument. Ferdinand was informed
that if he withheld his resignation for twenty-four hours longer he would
be treated as a rebel. He yielded; and for a couple of country houses and
two life-annuities the crown of Spain and the Indies was renounced in
favour of Napoleon by father and son.

[National spirit of the Spaniards.]

The crown had indeed been won without a battle. That there remained a
Spanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not a
circumstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had as
yet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In the
larger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil of
France, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it no
disgrace to pass under the rule of Napoleon. The Germans on both sides of
the Rhine knew of a fatherland only as an arena of the keenest jealousies.
In Prussia and in Austria the bond of citizenship was far less the love of
country than the habit of obedience to government. England and Russia,
where patriotism existed in the sense in which it existed in Spain, had as
yet been untouched by French armies. Judging from the action of the Germans
and the Italians, Napoleon might well suppose that in settling with the
Spanish Government he had also settled with the Spanish people, or, at the
worst, that his troops might have to fight some fanatical peasants, like
those who resisted the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. But the
Spanish nation was no mosaic of political curiosities like the Holy Roman
Empire, and no divided and oblivious family like the population of Italy.
Spain, as a single nation united under its King, had once played the
foremost part in Europe: when its grandeur departed, its pride had remained
behind: the Spaniard, in all his torpor and impoverishment, retained the
impulse of honour, the spirited self-respect, which periods of national
greatness leave behind them among a race capable of cherishing their
memory. Nor had those influences of a common European culture, which
directly opposed themselves to patriotism in Germany, affected the
home-bred energy of Spain. The temper of mind which could find satisfaction
in the revival of a form of Greek art when Napoleon's cavalry were scouring
Germany, or which could inquire whether mankind would not profit by the
removal of the barriers between nations, was unknown among the Spanish
people. Their feeling towards a foreign invader was less distant from that
of African savages than from that of the civilised and literary nations
which had fallen so easy a prey to the French. Government, if it had
degenerated into everything that was contemptible, had at least failed to
reduce the people to the passive helplessness which resulted from the
perfection of uniformity in Prussia. Provincial institutions, though
corrupted, were not extinguished; provincial attachments and prejudices
existed in unbounded strength. Like the passion of the Spaniard for his
native district, his passion for Spain was of a blind and furious
character. Enlightened conviction, though not altogether absent, had small
place in the Spanish war of defence. Religious fanaticism, hatred of the
foreigner, delight in physical barbarity, played their full part by the
side of nobler elements in the struggle for national independence.

[Rising of Spain, May, 1808.]

The captivity of Ferdinand, and the conflict of Murat's troops with the
inhabitants of Madrid, had become known in the Spanish cities before the
middle of May. On the 20th of the same month the _Gaceta_ announced
the abdication of the Bourbon family. Nothing more was wanting to throw
Spain into tumult. The same irresistible impulse seized provinces and
cities separated by the whole breadth of the Peninsula. Without
communication, and without the guidance of any central authority, the
Spanish people in every part of the kingdom armed themselves against the
usurper. Carthagena rose on the 22nd. Valencia forced its magistrates to
proclaim King Ferdinand on the 23rd. Two days later the mountain-district
of Asturias, with a population of half a million, formally declared war on
Napoleon, and despatched envoys to Great Britain to ask for assistance. On
the 26th, Santander and Seville, on opposite sides of the Peninsula, joined
the national movement. Corunna, Badajoz, and Granada declared themselves on
the Feast of St. Ferdinand, the 30th of May. Thus within a week the entire
country was in arms, except in those districts where the presence of French
troops rendered revolt impossible. The action of the insurgents was
everywhere the same. They seized upon the arms and munitions of war
collected in the magazines, and forced the magistrates or commanders of
towns to place themselves at their head. Where the latter resisted, or were
suspected of treachery to the national cause, they were in many cases put
to death. Committees of Government were formed in the principal cities, and
as many armies came into being as there were independent centres of the
insurrection.

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