A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 14

The treaty, however, required the King's ratification. Frederick William, timorous as he was, hesitated to confirm an agreement which ousted him from his dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone into captivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour of the country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete its work of ruin. a.s.surances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The King determined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the last extremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated a political career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For a moment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length to be recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three princ.i.p.al offices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity of unity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused to hold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of the peace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was ill calculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad.

Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and the Governments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] His dismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of Frederick William's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remained of saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, the patriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government at home.

[Napoleon at Berlin.]

[The Berlin decree against English commerce, Nov. 21, 1806.]

Throughout the month of November French armies overran Northern Germany: Napoleon himself remained at Berlin, and laid the foundations of a political system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon Southern Germany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick and Hesse-Ca.s.sel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom of Westphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered the Confederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continent of Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at the Prussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting any merchandise that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies.

[135] The line of coast thus closed to the s.h.i.+pping and the produce of the British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern point of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrian port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was permitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose of Napoleon to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy its navies, or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent.

All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree fell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain.

The exclusion of British s.h.i.+ps from the harbours of the allies of France was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore at least an a.n.a.logy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it had lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The merchants who possessed a large quant.i.ty of English or colonial wares were the heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public found the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the s.h.i.+ps of neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels were excluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the full consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of Great Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree itself marked on the part of Napoleon the a.s.sumption of a power in conflict with the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of practical statesmans.h.i.+p, and displayed an ambition no longer raised above mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the better tendencies of the age.

[Napoleon and the Poles.]

Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussian capital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The Prussian State was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercy of the invader; its King was a fugitive at Konigsberg, at the eastern extremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with the rejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and with the entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene of hostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Province lying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon entered Poland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence of restoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulently attached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; and although Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer of Venice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, or antic.i.p.ated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachments scattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polish independence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Poland was the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrifice of the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. To have attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been to make permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weaker than either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertained by Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty as the creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race in Europe. He was glad to enrol the Polish n.o.bles among his soldiers; he knew the value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when the battle was over, it was with Russia, not Poland, that France had to settle; and no better fate remained, even for the Prussian provinces of Poland, than in part to be formed into a client-state, in part to be surrendered as a means of accommodation with the Czar.

[Campaign in Poland against Russia, Dec., 1806.]

The armies of Russia were at some distance from the Vistula when, in November, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements were slow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of the Empire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were being sent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commanders anxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disasters of Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805, excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar's generals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their own country than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despised ally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon the Vistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and to move eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and by the middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to one another in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. The first encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in the retreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked the pursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate; and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along the Vistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either side before the spring.

[Eylau, Feb. 8, 1807.]

[Napoleon and Bennigsen in East Prussia.]

But the command of the Russian forces was now transferred from the aged and half-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general better qualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, was an active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiers.h.i.+p was of that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russian troops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistula such an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsen conceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line, where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to the north-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movement of the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escaped destruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched in great force against Bennigsen in the district between Konigsberg and the mouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troops clamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited for the attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst of snowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleon had ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russian infantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of the battle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood; and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned the scale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stopped by the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13,000 Prussians. At the close of the engagement 30,000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions of the armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen's lieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but the confusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of their losses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in a second battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall back towards Konigsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and given Napoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who had announced his intention of entering Konigsberg in triumph, fell back upon the river Pa.s.sarge, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sieges of Dantzig and Colberg, March, 1807.]

[Inaction of England.]

[Fall of Grenville's Ministry, March 24, 1807.]

[Treaty of Barrenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden.

April, 1807.]

The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of the Prussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French.

Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town of Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to its inhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularly different character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in coming years, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau, a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Blucher's victorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer of adventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, and hara.s.sed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his military superiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threw themselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast to the general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the war Colberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might have given a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listened to the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to the Baltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not a difficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, to send to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but military judgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died at the beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, though they possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunate in its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help to their allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministers upon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them from office (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came into power, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception of Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which concealed its total lack of all other statesmans.h.i.+p, returned to the lines laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe had never been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King of Prussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the two should stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April 1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a joint prosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britain joined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon the Baltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry had dispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined upon the Baltic expedition in April, two months pa.s.sed before the fleet was ready to sail.

[Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807.]

[Battle of Friedland.]

In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, from France, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortresses of the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had become his base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command, that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at the beginning of June to bring 140,000 men into the field beyond the Vistula.

The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army was still weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, who began the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted to surprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement of the French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumbered by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining a b.l.o.o.d.y repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen from his lair by marching straight upon Konigsberg. Bennigsen supposed himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle, and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June 14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Konigsberg. Bennigsen retired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed the operations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]

The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men had not been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt no fear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of his defeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt no sympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the common cause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him to withdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. The Emperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutrality of Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; and he determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russia might be reconciled to the master of half the Continent.

[Interview of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, June 25.]

On the 25th of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself from Great Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrendered himself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing and to offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of the two monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the struggle for life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonic conquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for its share of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejected Napoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagements towards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to the winds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; the friend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half of his dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at his expense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was described as a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles of the Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the first week of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of his dominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia had gained in the three part.i.tions of Poland, with the exception of a district upon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out of the ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia was created for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia, with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's va.s.sal, the King of Saxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland, and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflict between France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in the event of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st of December, Prussia should declare war against Great Britain.

[Secret Treaty of Alliance.]

[Conspiracy of the two Emperors.]

Such were the stipulations contained in the formal Treaties of Peace between the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of the terms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west.

A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was also signed by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over the Czar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoils of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces were not too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyse Austria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of his Empire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing terms of peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, and to force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part in the struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia to the Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation.

In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook to a.s.sist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke of the Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A part.i.tion of the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as the establishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subject rather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]

Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose whole career had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, accepted by the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown the greatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself in a cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the national forces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted, there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were not prospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce of Great Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now to be shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought under British subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which had preserved their existence by neutrality or by friends.h.i.+p with England, were soon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even at this moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement of Tilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it was not from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. The fleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail against English seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as secure from foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not from any vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. Where Alexander's action was of decisive importance, in his mediation between France and Prussia, he threw himself without scruple on to the side of oppression. It lay within his power to gain terms of peace for Prussia as lenient as those which Austria had gained at Campo Formio and at Luneville: he sacrificed Prussia, as he allied himself against the last upholders of national independence in Europe, in order that he might himself receive Finland and the Danubian Provinces.

[English expedition against Denmark, July, 1807.]

Two days before the signature of the Treaty of Tilsit the British troops which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island of Rugen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun, when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the British Government. [141] It became known in London that the fleet of Denmark was to be seized by Napoleon, and forced to fight against Great Britain.

Canning and his colleagues acted with the prompt.i.tude that seldom failed the British Government when it could effect its object by the fleet alone.

They determined to antic.i.p.ate Napoleon's violation of Danish neutrality, and to seize upon the navy which would otherwise be seized by France and Russia.

[Bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 2.]

On the 28th of July a fleet with 20,000 men on board set sail from the British coast. The troops landed in Denmark in the middle of August, and united with the corps which had already been despatched to Rugen. The Danish Government was summoned to place its navy in the hands of Great Britain, in order that it might remain as a deposit in some British port until the conclusion of peace. While demanding this sacrifice of Danish neutrality, England undertook to protect the Danish nation and colonies from the hostility of Napoleon, and to place at the disposal of its Government every means of naval and military defence. Failing the surrender of the fleet, the English declared that they would bombard Copenhagen. The reply given to this summons was such as might be expected from a courageous nation exasperated against Great Britain by its harsh treatment of neutral s.h.i.+ps of commerce, and inclined to submit to the despot of the Continent rather than to the tyrants of the seas. Negotiations proved fruitless, and on the 2nd of September the English opened fire on Copenhagen. For three days and nights the city underwent a bombardment of cruel efficiency.

Eighteen hundred houses were levelled, the town was set on fire in several places, and a large number of the inhabitants lost their lives. At length the commander found himself compelled to capitulate. The fleet was handed over to Great Britain, with all the stores in the a.r.s.enal of Copenhagen. It was brought to England, no longer under the terms of a friendly neutrality, but as a prize of war.

The captors themselves were ashamed of their spoil. England received an armament which had been taken from a people who were not our enemies, and by an attack which was not war, with more misgiving than applause. In Europe the seemingly unprovoked a.s.sault upon a weak neutral State excited the utmost indignation. The British Ministry, who were prevented from making public the evidence which they had received of the intention of the two Emperors, were believed to have invented the story of the Secret Treaty. The Danish Government denied that Napoleon had demanded their co-operation; Napoleon and Alexander themselves a.s.sumed the air of indignant astonishment. But the facts alleged by Canning and his colleagues were correct. The conspiracy of the two Emperors was no fiction. The only question still remaining open--and this is indeed an essential one--relates to the engagements entered into by the Danish Government itself. Napoleon in his correspondence of this date alludes to certain promises made to him by the Court of Denmark, but he also complains that these promises had not been fulfilled; and the context of the letter renders it almost certain that, whatever may have been demanded by Napoleon, nothing more was promised by Denmark than that its ports should be closed to English vessels. [142] Had the British Cabinet possessed evidence of the determination of the Danish Government to transfer its fleet to Napoleon without resistance, the attack upon Denmark, considered as virtually an act of war, would not have been unjust. But beyond an alleged expression of Napoleon at Tilsit, no such evidence was even stated to have reached London; and the undoubted conspiracy of the Emperors against Danish neutrality was no sufficient ground for an action on the part of Great Britain which went so far beyond the mere frustration of their designs. The surrender of the Danish fleet demanded by England would have been an unqualified act of war on the part of Denmark against Napoleon; it was no mere guarantee for a continued neutrality. Nor had the British Government the last excuse of an urgent and overwhelming necessity. Nineteen Danish men-of-war would not have turned the scale against England. The memory of Trafalgar might well have given a British Ministry courage to meet its enemies by the ordinary methods of war. Had the forces of Denmark been far larger than they actually were, the peril of Great Britain was not so extreme as to excuse the wrong done to mankind by an example encouraging all future belligerents to antic.i.p.ate one another in forcing each neutral state to take part with themselves.

[Napoleon's demands upon Portugal.]

The fleet which Napoleon had meant to turn against this country now lay safe within Portsmouth harbour. Denmark, in bitter resentment, declared war against Great Britain, and rendered some service to the Continental League by the attacks of its privateers upon British merchant-vessels in the Baltic. The second neutral Power whose fate had been decided by the two Emperors at Tilsit received the summons of Napoleon a few days before the attack on Copenhagen. The Regent of Portugal himself informed the British Government that he had been required by Napoleon to close his ports to British vessels, to declare war on England, and to confiscate all British property within his dominions. Placed between a Power which could strip him of his dominions on land, and one which could despoil him of everything he possessed beyond the sea, the Regent determined to maintain his ancient friends.h.i.+p with Great Britain, and to submit to Napoleon only in so far as the English Government would excuse him, as acting under coercion. Although a nominal state of war arose between Portugal and England, the Regent really acted in the interest of England, and followed the advice of the British Cabinet up to the end.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau between France and Spain for the part.i.tion of Portugal, Oct. 27.]

The end was soon to come. The demands of Napoleon, arbitrary and oppressive as they were, by no means expressed his full intentions towards Portugal.

He had determined to seize upon this country, and to employ it as a means for extending his own dominion over the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. An army-corps, under the command of Junot, had been already placed in the Pyrenees. On the 12th of October Napoleon received the answer of the Regent of Portugal, consenting to declare war upon England, and only rejecting the dishonourable order to confiscate all English property. This single act of resistance was sufficient for Napoleon's purpose. He immediately recalled his amba.s.sador from Lisbon, and gave orders to Junot to cross the frontier, and march upon Portugal. The King of Spain, who was to be Napoleon's next victim, was for the moment employed as his accomplice. A treaty was concluded at Fontainebleau between Napoleon and King Charles IV. for the part.i.tion of Portugal (Oct. 27). [143] In return for the cession of the kingdom of Etruria, which was still nominally governed by a member of the Spanish house, the King of Spain was promised half the Portuguese colonies, along with the t.i.tle of Emperor of the Indies; the northern provinces of Portugal were reserved for the infant King of Etruria, its southern provinces for G.o.doy, Minister of Charles IV.; the central districts were to remain in the hands of France, and to be employed as a means of regaining the Spanish colonies from England upon the conclusion of a general peace.

[Junot invades Portugal, Nov., 1807.]

[Flight of the House of Braganza.]

Not one of these provisions was intended to be carried into effect. The conquest of Portugal was but a part of the conquest of the whole peninsula.

But neither the Spanish Court nor the Spanish people suspected Napoleon's design. Junot advanced without resistance through the intervening Spanish territory, and pushed forward upon Lisbon with the utmost haste. The speed at which Napoleon's orders forced him to march reduced his army to utter prostration, and the least resistance would have resulted in its ruin. But the Court of Lisbon had determined to quit a country which they could not hope to defend against the master of the Continent. Already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the House of Braganza had been familiar with the project of transferring the seat of their Government to Brazil; and now, with the approval of Great Britain, the Regent resolved to maintain the independence of his family by flight across the Atlantic. As Junot's troops approached the capital, the servants of the palace hastily stowed the royal property on s.h.i.+p-board. On the 29th of November, when the French were now close at hand, the squadron which bore the House of Braganza to its colonial home dropped down the Tagus, saluted by the cannon of the English fleet that lay in the same river. Junot entered the capital a few hours later, and placed himself at the head of the Government without encountering any opposition. The occupation of Portugal was described by Napoleon as a reprisal for the bombardment of Copenhagen. It excited but little attention in Europe; and even at the Spanish Court the only feeling was one of satisfaction at the approaching aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of the Bourbon monarchy. The full significance of Napoleon's intervention in the affairs of the Peninsula was not discovered until some months were pa.s.sed.

[Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit.]

[Stein Minister, Oct. 5, 1807.]

Portugal and Denmark had felt the consequences of the peace made at Tilsit.

Less, however, depended upon the fate of the Danish fleet and the Portuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruelly wronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. The unfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army, found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life.

Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's honourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due.

Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as a partisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted upon Hardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summon Stein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likely to succeed in raising the money which the French intended to extort.

[Edict of Emanc.i.p.ation, Oct. 9, 1807.]