Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Soult conquers Spain as far as Cadiz.]

[Wellington's campaign of 1811.]

Other French armies, in spite of a most destructive guerilla warfare, were
in the meantime completing the conquest of the south and the east of Spain.
Soult captured Seville, and began to lay siege to Cadiz. Here, at the end
of 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support of
Massena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards,
routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding the
southern road into Portugal. Massena, however, was already in retreat, and
Soult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the English
general in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavy
defeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thus
freed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Massena to be
thoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forward
movement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses of
Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his own
communications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. He
left a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to make
arrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before the
English commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Massena had
restored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Massena and Soult
were now ready to assail the English on the north and the south. Massena
marched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back to
meet him, and fought a battle at Fuentes d'Onoro. The French were defeated;
Almeida passed into the hands of the English. In the south, Soult advanced
to the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the bloody
engagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of the
north, which was now transferred from Massena to Marmont, forced the
English to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offering
battle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguese
frontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to Ciudad
Rodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire to
cantonments on the Coa.

[Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Jan. 19, 1812.]

[Capture of Badajoz, April 6.]

Throughout the autumn months, which were spent in forced inaction,
Wellington held patiently to his belief that the French would be unable to
keep their armies long united, on account of the scarcity of food. His
calculations were correct, and at the close of the year 1811 the English
were again superior in the field. Wellington moved against Ciudad Rodrigo,
and took it by storm on the 19th of January, 1812. The road into Spain was
opened; it only remained to secure Portugal itself by the capture of
Badajoz. Wellington crossed the Tagus on the 8th of March, and completed
the investment of Badajoz ten days later. It was necessary to gain
possession of the city, at whatever cost, before Soult could advance to its
relief. On the night of the 6th of April Wellington gave orders for the
assault. The fury of the attack, the ferocity of the English soldiers in
the moment of their victory, have made the storm of Badajoz conspicuous
amongst the most terrible events of war. But the purpose of Wellington was
effected; the base of the English army in Portugal was secured from all
possibility of attack; and at the moment when Napoleon was summoning his
veteran regiments from beyond the Pyrenees for the invasion of Russia, the
English commander, master of the frontier fortresses of Spain, was
preparing to overwhelm the weakened armies in the Peninsula, and to drive
the French from Madrid.

[Wellington invades Spain, June 1812.]

[Salamanca, July 22.]

[Wellington retires to Portugal.]

It was in the summer of 1812, when Napoleon was now upon the point of
opening the Russian campaign, that Wellington advanced against Marmont's
positions in the north of Spain and the French lines of communication with
the capital. Marmont fell back and allowed Wellington to pass Salamanca;
but on reaching the Douro he turned upon his adversary, and by a succession
of swift and skilful marches brought the English into some danger of losing
their communications with Portugal. Wellington himself now retreated as far
as Salamanca, and there gave battle (July 22). A decisive victory freed the
English army from its peril, and annihilated all the advantages gained by
Marmont's strategy and speed. The French were so heavily defeated that they
had to fall back on Burgos. Wellington marched upon Madrid. At his approach
King Joseph fled from the capital, and ordered Soult to evacuate Andalusia,
and to meet him at Valencia, on the eastern coast. Wellington entered
Madrid amidst the wild rejoicing of the Spaniards, and then turned
northwards to complete the destruction of the army which he had beaten at
Salamanca. But the hour of his final success was not yet come. His advance
upon Madrid, though wise as a political measure, had given the French
northern army time to rally. He was checked by the obstinate defence of
Burgos; and finding the French strengthened by the very abandonment of
territory which his victory had forced upon them, he retired to Portugal,
giving to King Joseph a few months' more precarious enjoyment of his
vassal-sovereignty before his final and irrevocable overthrow.

[The war excites a constitutional movement in Spain.]

In Spain itself the struggle of the nation for its independence had
produced a political revolution as little foreseen by the Spaniards as by
Napoleon himself when the conflict began. When, in 1808, the people had
taken up arms for its native dynasty, the voices of those who demanded a
reform in the abuses of the Bourbon government had scarcely been heard amid
the tumult of loyal enthusiasm for Ferdinand. There existed, however, a
group of liberally-minded men in Spain; and as soon as the invasion of the
French and the subsequent successes of the Spaniards had overthrown both
the old repressive system of the Bourbons and that which Napoleon attempted
to put in its place, the opinions of these men, hitherto scarcely known
outside the circle of their own acquaintances, suddenly became a power in
the country through the liberation of the press. Jovellanos, an upright and
large-minded statesman, who had suffered a long imprisonment in the last
reign in consequence of his labours in the cause of progress, now
represented in the Central Junta the party of constitutional reform. The
Junta itself acted with but little insight or sincerity. A majority of its
members neither desired nor understood the great changes in government
which Jovellanos advocated; yet the Junta itself was an irregular and
revolutionary body, and was forced to appeal to the nation in order to hold
its ground against the old legal Councils of the monarchy, which possessed
not only a better formal right, but all the habits of authority. The
victories of Napoleon at the end of 1808, and the threatening attitude both
of the old official bodies and of the new provincial governments which had
sprung up in every part of the kingdom, extorted from the Junta in the
spring of 1809 a declaration in favour of the assembling of the Cortes, or
National Parliament, in the following year. Once made, the declaration
could not be nullified or withdrawn. It was in vain that the Junta, alarmed
at the progress of popular opinions, restored the censorship of the press,
and attempted to suppress the liberal journals. The current of political
agitation swept steadily on; and before the end of the year 1809 the
conflict of parties, which Spain was henceforward to experience in common
with the other Mediterranean States, had fairly begun. [168]

[Spanish Liberals in 1809 and 1810.]

The Spanish Liberals of 1809 made the same attack upon despotic power, and
upheld the same theories of popular right, as the leaders of the French
nation twenty years before. Against them was ranged the whole force of
Spanish officialism, soon to be supported by the overwhelming power of the
clergy. In the outset, however, the Liberals carefully avoided infringing
on the prerogatives of the Church. Thus accommodating its policy to the
Catholic spirit of the nation, the party of reform gathered strength
throughout the year 1809, as disaster after disaster excited the wrath of
the people against both the past and the present holders of power. It was
determined by the Junta that the Cortes should assemble on the 1st of
March, 1810. According to the ancient usage of Spain, each of the Three
Estates, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the Commons, would have been
represented in the Cortes by a separate assembly. The opponents of reform
pressed for the maintenance of this mediaeval order, the Liberals declared
for a single Chamber; the Junta, guided by Jovellanos, adopted a middle
course, and decided that the higher clergy and nobles should be jointly
represented by one Chamber, the Commons by a second. Writs of election had
already been issued, when the Junta, driven to Cadiz by the advance of the
French armies, and assailed alike by Liberals, by reactionists, and by city
mobs, ended its ineffective career, and resigned its powers into the hands
of a Regency composed of five persons (Jan. 30, 1810). Had the Regency
immediately taken steps to assemble the Cortes, Spain would probably have
been content with the moderate reforms which two Chambers, formed according
to the plans of Jovellanos, would have been likely to sanction. The
Regency, however, preferred to keep power in its own hands and ignored the
promise which the Junta had given to the nation. Its policy of obstruction,
which was continued for months after the time when the Cortes ought to have
assembled, threw the Liberal party into the hands of men of extremes, and
prepared the way for revolution instead of reform. It was only when the
report reached Spain that Ferdinand was about to marry the daughter of King
Joseph, and to accept the succession to the Spanish crown from the usurper
himself, that the Regency consented to convoke the Cortes. But it was now
no longer possible to create an Upper House to serve as a check upon the
popular Assembly. A single Chamber was elected, and elected in great part
within the walls of Cadiz itself; for the representatives of districts
where the presence of French soldiery rendered election impossible were
chosen by refugees from those districts within Cadiz, amid the tumults of
political passion which stir a great city in time of war and revolution.

[Constitution made by the Cortes, 1812.]

On the 24th of September, 1810, the Cortes opened. Its first act was to
declare the sovereignty of the people, its next act to declare the freedom
of the Press. In every debate a spirit of bitter hatred towards the old
system of government and of deep distrust towards Ferdinand himself
revealed itself in the speeches of the Liberal deputies, although no one in
the Assembly dared to avow the least want of loyalty towards the exiled
House. The Liberals knew how passionate was the love of the Spanish people
for their Prince; but they resolved that, if Ferdinand returned to his
throne, he should return without the power to revive the old abuses of
Bourbon rule. In this spirit the Assembly proceeded to frame a Constitution
for Spain. The Crown was treated as the antagonist and corrupter of the
people; its administrative powers were jealously reduced; it was confronted
by an Assembly to be elected every two years, and the members of this
Assembly were prohibited both from holding office under the Crown, and from
presenting themselves for re-election at the end of their two years'
service. To a Representative Body thus excluded from all possibility of
gaining any practical acquaintance with public affairs was entrusted not
only the right of making laws, but the control of every branch of
government. The executive was reduced to a mere cypher.

[The Clergy against the Constitution.]

Such was the Constitution which, under the fire of the French artillery now
encompassing Cadiz, the Cortes of Spain proclaimed in the spring of the
year 1812. Its principles had excited the most vehement opposition within
the Assembly itself; by the nation, or at least that part of it which was
in communication with Cadiz, it appeared to be received with enthusiasm.
The Liberals, who had triumphed over their opponents in the debates in the
Assembly, believed that their own victory was the victory of the Spanish
people over the forces of despotism. But before the first rejoicings were
over, ominous signs appeared of the strength of the opposite party, and of
the incapacity of the Liberals themselves to form any effective Government.
The fanaticism of the clergy was excited by a law partly ratifying the
suppression of monasteries begun by Joseph Bonaparte; the enactments of the
Cortes regarding the censorship of religious writings threw the Church into
open revolt. In declaring the freedom of the Press, the Cortes had
expressly guarded themselves against extending this freedom to religious
discussion; the clergy now demanded the restoration of the powers of the
Inquisition, which had been in abeyance since the beginning of the war. The
Cortes were willing to grant to the Bishops the right of condemning any
writing as heretical, and they were willing to enforce by means of the
ordinary tribunals the law which declared the Catholic religion to be the
only one permitted in Spain; but they declined to restore the jurisdiction
of the Holy Office (Feb., 1813). Without this engine for the suppression of
all mental independence the priesthood of Spain conceived its cause to be
lost. The anathema of the Church went out against the new order. Uniting
with the partisans of absolutism, whom Wellington, provoked by the
extravagances of the Liberals, now took under his protection, the clergy
excited an ignorant people against its own emancipators, and awaited the
time when the return of Ferdinand, and a combination of all the interests
hostile to reform, should overthrow the Constitution which the Liberals
fondly imagined to have given freedom to Spain.




CHAPTER X.


War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg's
Ministry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--
Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Plan
of the Russians to fight a Battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat on
Witepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle of
Borodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--The
French at Smolensko--Advance of Russian Armies from North and South--
Battle of Krasnoi--Passage of the Beresina--The French reach the Niemen--
York's Convention with the Russians--The Czar and Stein--Russian Army
enters Prussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussia
declares War--Enthusiasm of the Nation--Idea of German Unity--The Landwehr.


[Austria and Prussia in 1811.]

[Hardenberg's Ministry.]

War between France and Russia was known to be imminent as early as the
spring of 1811. The approach of the conflict was watched with the deepest
anxiety by the two States of central Europe which still retained some
degree of independence. The Governments of Berlin and Vienna had been drawn
together by misfortune. The same ultimate deliverance formed the secret
hope of both; but their danger was too great to permit them to combine in
open resistance to Napoleon's will. In spite of a tacit understanding
between the two powers, each was compelled for the present to accept the
conditions necessary to secure its own existence. The situation of Prussia
in especial was one of the utmost danger. Its territory lay directly
between the French Empire and Russia; its fortresses were in the hands of
Napoleon, its resources were certain to be seized by one or other of the
hostile armies. Neutrality was impossible, however much desired by Prussia
itself; and the only question to be decided by the Government was whether
Prussia should enter the war as the ally of France or of Russia. Had the
party of Stein been in power, Prussia would have taken arms against
Napoleon at every risk. Stein, however, was in exile his friends, though
strong in the army, were not masters of the Government; the foreign policy
of the country was directed by a statesman who trusted more to time and
prudent management than to desperate resolves. Hardenberg had been recalled
to office in 1810, and permitted to resume the great measures of civil
reform which had been broken off two years before. The machinery of
Government was reconstructed upon principles that had been laid down by
Stein; agrarian reform was carried still farther by the abolition of
peasant's service, and the partition of peasant's land between the occupant
and his lord; an experiment, though a very ill-managed one, was made in the
forms of constitutional Government by the convocation of three successive
assemblies of the Notables. On the part of the privileged orders Hardenberg
encountered the most bitter opposition; his own love of absolute power
prevented him from winning popular confidence by any real approach towards
a Representative System. Nor was the foreign policy of the Minister of a
character to excite enthusiasm. A true patriot at heart, he seemed at times
to be destitute of patriotism, when he was in fact only destitute of the
power to reveal his real motives.

[Hardenburg's foreign policy, 1811.]

Convinced that Prussia could not remain neutral in the coming war, and
believing some relief from its present burdens to be absolutely necessary,
Hardenberg determined in the first instance to offer Prussia's support to
Napoleon, demanding in return for it a reduction of the payments still due
to France, and the removal of the limits imposed upon the Prussian army.
[169] The offer of the Prussian alliance reached Napoleon in the spring of
1811: he maintained an obstinate silence. While the Prussian envoy at Paris
vainly waited for an audience, masses of troops advanced from the Rhine
towards the Prussian frontier, and the French garrisons on the Oder were
raised far beyond their stipulated strength. In July the envoy returned
from Paris, announcing that Napoleon declined even to enter upon a
discussion of the terms proposed by Hardenberg. King Frederick William
now wrote to the Czar, proposing an alliance between Prussia and Russia.
It was not long before the report of Hardenberg's military preparations
reached Paris. Napoleon announced that if they were not immediately
suspended he should order Davoust to march on Berlin; and he presented a
counter-proposition for a Prussian alliance, which was in fact one of
unqualified submission. The Government had to decide between accepting a
treaty which placed Prussia among Napoleon's vassals, or certain war.
Hardenberg, expecting favourable news from St. Petersburg, pronounced in
favour of war; but the Czar, though anxious for the support of Prussia,
had determined on a defensive plan of operations, and declared that he
could send no troops beyond the Russian frontier.

[Prussia accepts alliance with Napoleon Feb, 1812.]

Prussia was thus left to face Napoleon alone. Hardenberg shrank from the
responsibility of proclaiming a war for life or death, and a treaty was
signed which added the people of Frederick the Great to that inglorious
crowd which fought at Napoleon's orders against whatever remained of
independence and nationality in Europe. [170] (Feb. 24th, 1812.) Prussia
undertook to supply Napoleon with 20,000 men for the impending campaign,
and to raise no levies and to give no orders to its troops without
Napoleon's consent. Such was the bitter termination of all those patriotic
hopes and efforts which had carried Prussia through its darkest days.
Hardenberg himself might make a merit of bending before the storm, and of
preserving for Prussia the means of striking when the time should come; but
the simpler instincts of the patriotic party felt his submission to be the
very surrender of national existence. Stein in his exile denounced the
Minister with unsparing bitterness. Scharnhorst resigned his post; many of
the best officers in the Prussian army quitted the service of King
Frederick William in order to join the Russians in the last struggle for
European liberty.

[Alliance of Austria with Napoleon.]

The alliance which Napoleon pressed upon Austria was not of the same
humiliating character as that which Prussia was forced to accept. Both
Metternich and the Emperor Francis would have preferred to remain neutral,
for the country was suffering from a fearful State-bankruptcy, and the
Government had been compelled to reduce its paper money, in which all debts
and salaries were payable, to a fifth of its nominal value. Napoleon,
however, insisted on Austria's co-operation. The family-relations of the
two Emperors pointed to a close alliance, and the reward which Napoleon
held out to Austria, the restoration of the Illyrian provinces, was one of
the utmost value. Nor was the Austrian contingent to be treated, like the
Prussian, as a mere French army-corps. Its operations were to be separate
from those of the French, and its command was to be held by an Austrian
general, subordinate only to Napoleon himself. On these terms Metternich
was not unwilling to enter the campaign. He satisfied his scruples by
inventing a strange diplomatic form in which Austria was still described as
a neutral, although she took part in the war, [171] and felt as little
compunction in uniting with France as in explaining to the Courts of St.
Petersburg and Berlin that the union was a hypocritical one. The Sovereign
who was about to be attacked by Napoleon, and the Sovereigns who sent their
troops to Napoleon's support, perfectly well understood one another's
position. The Prussian corps, watched and outnumbered by the French, might
have to fight the Russians because they could not help it; the Austrians,
directed by their own commander, would do no serious harm to the Russians
so long as the Russians did no harm to them. Should the Czar succeed in
giving a good account of his adversary, he would have no difficulty in
coming to a settlement with his adversary's forced allies.

[Preparations of Napoleon for invasion of Russia.]

The Treaties which gave to Napoleon the hollow support of Austria and
Prussia were signed early in the year 1812. During the next three months
all Northern Germany was covered with enormous masses of troops and
waggon-trains, on their way from the Rhine to the Vistula. No expedition
had ever been organised on anything approaching to the scale of the
invasion of Russia. In all the wars of the French since 1793 the enemy's
country had furnished their armies with supplies, and the generals had
trusted to their own exertions for everything but guns and ammunition. Such
a method could not, however, be followed in an invasion of Russia. The
country beyond the Niemen was no well-stocked garden, like Lornbardy or
Bavaria. Provisions for a mass of 450,000 men, with all the means of
transport for carrying them far into Russia, had to be collected at Dantzig
and the fortresses of the Vistula. No mercy was shown to the unfortunate
countries whose position now made them Napoleon's harvest-field and
storehouse. Prussia was forced to supplement its military assistance with
colossal grants of supplies. The whole of Napoleon's troops upon the march
through Germany lived at the expense of the towns and villages through
which they passed; in Westphalia such was the ruin caused by military
requisitions that King Jerome wrote to Napoleon, warning him to fear the
despair of men who had nothing more to lose. [172]

[Napoleon crosses Russian frontier, June, 1812.]

[Alexander and Bernadotte.]

At length the vast stores were collected, and the invading army reached the
Vistula. Napoleon himself quitted Paris on the 9th of May, and received the
homage of the Austrian and Prussian Sovereigns at Dresden. The eastward
movement of the army continued. The Polish and East Prussian districts
which had been the scene of the combats of 1807 were again traversed by
French columns. On the 23rd of June the order was given to cross the Niemen
and enter Russian territory. Out of 600,000 troops whom Napoleon had
organised for this campaign, 450,000 were actually upon the frontier. Of
these, 380,000 formed the central army, under Napoleon's own command, at
Kowno, on the Niemen; to the north, at Tilsit, there was formed a corps of
32,000, which included the contingent furnished by Prussia; the Austrians,
under Schwarzenburg, with a small French division, lay to the south, on the
borders of Galicia. Against the main army of Napoleon, the real invading
force, the Russians could only bring up 150,000 men. These were formed into
the First and Second Armies of the West. The First, or Northern Army, with
which the Czar himself was present, numbered about 100,000, under the
command of Barclay de Tolly; the Second Army, half that strength, was led
by Prince Bagration. In Southern Poland and on the Lower Niemen the French
auxiliary corps were faced by weak divisions. In all, the Russians had only
220,000 men to oppose to more than double that number of the enemy. The
principal reinforcements which they had to expect were from the armies
hitherto engaged with the Turks upon the Danube. Alexander found it
necessary to make peace with the Porte at the cost of a part of the spoils
of Tilsit. The Danubian provinces, with the exception of Bessarabia, were
restored to the Sultan, in order that Russia might withdraw its forces from
the south. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, who was threatened with the
loss of his own dominions in the event of Napoleon's victory, concluded an
alliance with the Czar. In return for the co-operation of a Swedish army,
Alexander undertook, with an indifference to national right worthy of
Napoleon himself, to wrest Norway from Denmark, and to annex it to the
Swedish crown.

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