Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/377

 NAPOLEON, FIRST CONSUL AND EMPEROR 365 was being spread and welcomed almost throughout Germany, not by the government but by the peoples themselves. If Napoleon had concentrated his energies upon personally crushing Wellington, matters would probably have taken a different course. The British could hardly have poured enough troops into Portugal to make head against the emperor's armies, though the lines of Torres Vedras which baffled Massena might well have baffled Massena's master. But Napoleon The never realised how difficult the task was which he Wagram left to his marshals, or how serious a strain on his om P ai & n - resources the Peninsula was to be. Moreover, in 1809 he was engaged in another bout with Austria, which was decided by the battle of Wagram. Before the end of the year Austria had humiliated herself by bestowing a princess on the Corsican as a wife in place of his divorced Empress Josephine. The King of Sweden, who had remained almost alone in obstinate defiance, was deposed and replaced by Charles xiii., who nominated Berna- dotte, one of Napoleon's marshals, as his heir ; and Bernadotte remained in Sweden as its effective ruler. Louis Bonaparte was not a sufficiently subservient ruler in Holland, Napoleon's so he was removed and his kingdom annexed to Supremacy, France, as the papal states in Italy had also been 1810# annexed. The princes of the Confederation of the Rhine were Napoleon's humble servants, Prussia was under his heel, and Austria dared not move against him. In Europe there remained only one power, Russia, which would not take orders from him ; Alexander was growing distinctly hostile, and refusing to carry out the Continental System. To drive the British out of the Peninsula would not annihilate Britain; but Napoleon clung to his belief that the perfected Continental System would have that effect, though 4. Napoleon's she was the one country where commerce and FaU * manufactures continued to thrive in spite of war. Her exclusion from the Continent was more ruinous to the Continent than to her. Still, Napoleon counted that the one means of crushing this persistent enemy was to bend Russia to his will j and to this end he made vast preparations for a grand Russian campaign. The army with which Napoleon entered Russia in June 181 2