Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/215

 relative to the Sebastiani report. Napoleon’s refusal to give this, and his complaint that Great Britain had neglected to comply with some of the provisions of the treaty of Amiens, brought Anglo-French relations to an acute phase. By great dexterity he succeeded in turning public attention almost solely to the fact that Britain had not evacuated Malta. This is probably the sense in which we may interpret his tirade against Lord Whitworth at the diplomatic circle on the 13th of March. While not using threats of personal violence, as was generally reported at the time, his language was threatening and offensive. Annoyed by Whitworth’s imperturbable demeanour, he ended with these words: “You must respect treaties, then: woe to those who do not respect treaties. They shall answer for it to all Europe.” The news of the strengthening of the British army and navy lately announced in the king’s speech had perhaps annoyed him; but seeing that his outbursts of passion were nearly always the result of calculation—he once stated, pointing to his chin, that temper only mounted that high with him—his design, doubtless, was to set men everywhere talking about the perfidy of Albion. If so, he succeeded. His own violations of the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens were overlooked; and in particular men forgot that the weakening of the Knights of St John by the recent confiscation of their lands in France and Spain, and the protracted delay of Russia and Prussia to guarantee their tenure of power in Malta, furnished England with good reasons for keeping her hold on that island. On the 4th of April the Addington cabinet made proposals with a view to compensation. In return for the great accessions of power to France since the treaty of Amiens (Elba, it may be noted, was annexed in August 1802) Great Britain was to retain Malta for ten years and to acquire the small island of Lampedusa in perpetuity. French troops were also required to withdraw from Holland and Switzerland, and thus fulfil the terms of the treaty of Lunéville. Despite the urgent efforts of Joseph Bonaparte and Talleyrand to bend the First Consul, he refused to listen to these proposals. Finally, on the 7th of May, the British government sent a secret offer to withdraw from Malta as soon as the French evacuated Holland. To this also Napoleon demurred. The rupture, therefore, took place in the middle of May; and on a flimsy pretext the First Consul ordered the detention in France of all English persons.

The reasons for his annoyance are now well known. It is certain that he was preparing to renew the struggle for the mastery of the seas and of the Orient, which must break out if he held to his present resolve to found a great colonial empire. But he needed time in order to build a navy and to prepare for the execution of the schemes for the overthrow of the British power in India, which he had lately outlined to General Decaen, the new governor of the French possessions in that land. The sailing of Decaen’s squadron early in March 1803 had alarmed the British ministers and doubtless confirmed. their resolve to have the question of peace or war settled speedily. Whitworth also warned them on the 20th of April that “the chief motives for delay are that they (the French) are totally unprepared for a naval war.” This was quite correct. Napoleon wished to postpone the rupture for fully eighteen months, as is shown by his secret instructions to Decaen. The British government did not know the whole truth; but, knowing the character of Napoleon, it saw that peace was as dangerous as war. In any case, it sent the proposals of the 4th of April in order to test the sincerity of his recent offer of compensation to England. He refused them, mainly, it would seem, because he could not believe that the Addington ministry could be firm; and in his rage at the discovery of his error he revenged himself ignobly on British tourists and traders in France.

He now threw all his energies into the task of marshalling the forces of France and his vassal states for the overthrow of “perfidious Albion.” Naval preparations went on apace at all the dockyards, and numbers of flat-bottomed boats were built or repaired at the northern harbours. Disregarding the neutrality of the Germanic System, Napoleon sent a strong French corps to overrun Hanover, while he despatched General Gouvion St Cyr to occupy Taranto and other dominating

positions in the south-east of the kingdom of Naples. Exactions at the expense of Hanover and Naples helped to lighten the burdens of French finance; Napoleon’s sale of Louisiana to the United States early in 1803 for 60,000,000 francs brought further relief to the French treasury; and by pressing hard on his ally, Spain, he compelled her to exchange the armed help which he had a right to claim, for an annual subsidy of £2,880,000. Through Spain he then threatened Portugal with extinction unless she too paid a heavy subsidy, a demand with which the court of Lisbon was fain to comply.

Thus the first months of the war served to differentiate the two belligerents. England made short work of the French squadrons and colonies, particularly in the West Indies, while Napoleon became more than ever the master of central and southern Europe. The whole course of the war was to emphasize this distinction between the Sea Power and the Land Power; and in this fact lay the source of Napoleon’s ascendancy in France and neighbouring lands, as also of his final overthrow.

Napoleon’s utter disregard of the neutrality of neighbouring states was soon to be revealed in the course of a royalist plot which helped him to the imperial title. Georges Cadoudal, General Pichegru and other devoted royalists had concocted with the comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X. of France) in London a scheme for the kidnapping (or more probably the murder) of the First Consul. The French police certainly knew of the plot, allowed the conspirators to come to Paris, arrested them there, and also on the 16th of February 1804 General Moreau, with whom Pichegru had two or three secret conferences. This was much; for Moreau, though indolent and incapable in political affairs, was still immensely popular in the army (always more republican than the civilians) and might conceivably head a republican movement against the autocrat. But far more was to follow. Failing through his police to lure the comte d’Artois to land in Normandy, Napoleon pounced on a scion of the House of Bourbon who was within his reach. The young duc d’Enghien was then residing at Ettenheim in Baden near the bank of the Rhine. He had served in the army of his grandfather, the prince of Condé, during the recent war; and Bonaparte believed for a time that he was an accomplice to the Cadoudal-Pichegru plot. He therefore sent orders to have him seized by French soldiers and brought to Vincennes near Paris. The order was skilfully obeyed, and the prince was hurried before a court-martial hastily summoned at that castle. Before they passed the verdict, Napoleon came to see that his victim was innocent of any participation in the plot. Nevertheless he was executed (21st of March 1804). It is noteworthy that though Napoleon at times sought to shift the responsibility for this deed on Talleyrand or Savary, yet during his voyage to St Helena, as also in his will, he frankly avowed his responsibility for it and asserted that in the like circumstances he would do the same again.

The horror aroused by this crime did not long deaden the feeling, at least in official circles, that something must be done to introduce the principle of heredity, as the surest means of counteracting the aims of conspirators. The senate, as usual, took the lead in suggesting some such change in the constitution; and it besought Napoleon “to complete his work by rendering it, like his glory, immortal.” Other official addresses of the same general tenour flowed in; and even the tribunate showed its docility by proposing that the imperial dignity should be declared hereditary in the family of Bonaparte (3rd of May). Napoleon thereupon invited the senate to “make known to him its thoughts completely.” The senate and the tribunate each appointed a commission to deal with the matter, with the result which every one foresaw. Carnot alone in the tribunate protested against the measure. The other councils adopted it almost unanimously. The Senatus Consultum of the 18th of May 1804 awarded to Napoleon the title of emperor, the succession (in case he had no heir) devolving in turn upon the descendants of Joseph and Louis Bonaparte (Lucien and Jerome were for the present excluded from the succession owing to their having contracted marriages displeasing to Napoleon). In a plébiscite taken on the subject of the imperial title and the law of succession, there were