Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/219

Rh 1804.] NAPOLEON 207 Rupture again. What he wants is to complete his military success with by humbling England. He had failed in 1798, when he England, j^ contro n e( j but a small part of the power of France, a single army shut up in Egypt, when the French Govern ment had been feeble and unintelligent, when England had been able to rally a European Coalition to her side. But surely he would succeed now, when the whole power of France, drawing after it Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and North Italy, was in his single hand, and when he could add the fleets of the other maritime powers to that of France; especially as coalitions against France seemed out of date, since Kussia and Prussia had been united against England in 1801, and Germany was now suffering internal transformation under the united influence of France and Russia. But after so many years of war could he call on France for another effort 1 In the first place all the new institutions of France, having grown up in war, were adapted for war rather than for anything else; in the second place he hoped to spare the French all war-taxation by making the expense fall upon the allies. From this memorable rupture flowed all the terrible events of the Napoleonic age. It is in one respect difficult to understand, because in the eleven years of the war with England Bonaparte was never able to strike a single blow at his enemy, while that enemy destroyed his fleets, con quered his colonies, and by arming all Europe against him at length brought down his power. Why did Bonaparte engage in a war in which he was condemned to be so purely passive 1 ? It seems that, as in 1798, he totally miscalcu lated the English maritime power, and that in 1803, though to Lord Whitworth he spoke of the invasion of England as almost impossible, yet in reality he expected to achieve that impossibility, as he had achieved so many others. Thus the angry negotiation with Lord Whitworth, the stormy scene at the Tuileries, the violent detention of the English residents in France at the moment of the rupture, are to be regarded as studied contrivances by which he concealed the wantonness of his breach of the European peace and tried to throw the blame of it upon the English. That he was really bent upon forcing a war appears from his allowing Sebastiani s report of his mission in the East, full of hints of the intention of France to re- occupy Egypt at the first opportunity, to appear in the Jfoniteur. This report, besides offending England, caused her to keep resolute possession of Malta, and, when Bonaparte appealed to the treaty of Amiens, England replied by pointing to the new annexations of France, which had just divided Piedmont into departments. &quot;Ce sont des bagatelles,&quot; Lord Whitworth reports Bona parte to have answered, but he adds in a parenthesis which has never been printed, &quot; The expression he made use of was too trivial and vulgar to find a place in a despatch or anywhere but in the mouth of a hackney coachman ! &quot; By this rupture Europe relapsed into the fearful dis order from which Brumaire seemed to have rescued it ; only in place of revolutionary fanaticism the disturbing cause was now the deliberate calculating ambition of a great general and crafty politician, who already commanded the resources of a large part of Europe. This same year 1803 saw the first steps taken towards the subjugation of Germany. The annexation to France of the left bank of the Rhine led to a revolution in the Germanic system and to a complete transformation of the Diet, by which Austria lost the greater part of her influence over the minor German states ; this influence passed to France. As soon as the rupture with England took place Bonaparte took up a position in the heart of Germany by seizing Hanover. All this was done while Bonaparte was still nominally only consul in the French republic. But the rupture with England furnished him with the occasion of throwing off the last disguise and openly restoring monarchy. It was a step which required all his audacity and cunning. He had crushed Jacobinism, but two great parties remained. There was first the more moderate republicanism, which might be called Girondism, and was widely spread among all classes and particularly in the army Secondly, there was the old royalism, which after many years of helpless weakness had revived since Brumaire. These two parties, though hostile to each other, were forced into a sort of alliance by the new attitude of Bonaparte, who was hurry ing France at once into a new revolution at home and into an abyss of war abroad. England too, after the rupture, favoured the efforts of these parties. Royalism from England began to open communications with moderate republicanism in France. Pichegru acted for the former, and the great representative of the latter was Moreau, who had helped to make Brumaire in the tacit expectation prob ably of rising to the consulate in due course when Bonaparte s term should have expired, and was therefore hurt in his personal claims as well as in his republican principles. Bonaparte watched the movement through his ubiquitous police, and with characteristic strategy deter mined not merely to defeat it but to make it his stepping stone to monarchy. He would ruin Moreau by fastening on him the stigma of royalism ; he would persuade France to make him emperor in order to keep out the Bourbons. He achieved this with the peculiar mastery which he always showed in villainous intrigue. Moreau had in 1797 incurred blame by concealing his knowledge of Pichegru s dealings with the royalists. That he should now meet and hold conversation with Pichegru at a moment when Pichegru was engaged in contriving a royalist rebellion associated his name still more closely with royalism, and Pichegru brought with him wilder partisans such as Georges the Chouan. That Moreau would gladly have seen and gladly have helped an insurrection against Bonaparte is certain ; any republican, and what is more any patriot, would at that moment have risked much to save France from the ruin that Bonaparte was bringing on her. But Bonaparte succeeded in associating him with royalist schemes and with schemes of assassination. Controlling the Senate, he was able to suppress the jury; controlling every avenue of publicity, he was able to suppress opinion ; and the army, Moreau s fortress, was won through its hatred of royalism. In this way Bonaparte s last personal rival was removed. There remained the royalists, and Bonaparte hoped to seize their leader, the Comte d Artois, who was expected, as the police knew, soon to join Pichegru and Georges at Paris. What Bonaparte would have done with him we may judge from the course he took when the Comte did not come. On March 15, 1804, the Due d Enghien, grandson of the Prince de Conde, residing at Ettenheim in Baden, was seized at midnight by a party of dragoons, brought to Paris, where he arrived on the 20th, confined in the castle of Vincennes, brought before a military commission at 2 o clock the next morning, asked whether he had not borne arms against the republic, which he acknowledged himself to have done, conducted to a staircase above the moat and there shot, and buried in the moat. This deed was perfectly consistent with Bonaparte s pro fessed principles, so that no misunderstanding or passing fit of passion is required to explain it. He had made, shortly before, a formal offer to the pretender through the king of Prussia, by which he had undertaken to pay him a handsome pension in return for the formal abdication of his rights. This had been refused, and Bonaparte felt free. That the best course was to strike at the heads of the family was a shrewd conclusion. Neither Louis nor Charles were precisely heroes ; and then the whole re- Execu- tion of