Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/224

Rh 212 NAPOLEON [1807- foundation in 1806 the Confederation had twelve mem bers, but in the end it came to include almost all the states of Germany except Austria and Prussia. A change seems to take place at the same time in Napoleon s personal relations. In 1804, though the divorce of Josephine was debated, yet it appears to be Napoleon s fixed intention to bequeath his crown by the method of adoption to the eldest son of Louis by Hortense Beauharnais. But this child died suddenly of croup in the spring of 1807, while Napoleon was absent in Germany, and the event occurring at the moment when he attained his position of king of kings probably decided him in his own mind to proceed to the divorce. It was impossible to give crowns and principalities to the Bonaparte family without allowing a share of similar distinctions to the leading politicians and generals of France. He was therefore driven to revive titles of nobility. To do this was to abandon the revolutionary principle of equality, but Napoleon always bore in mind the necessity of bribing in the most splendid manner the party upon whose support ever since Brumaire he had depended, and which may be described shortly as the Senate. When in 1802 he received the life-consulate, he had proceeded instantly to create new dotations for the senators ; now he feels that he must devise for them still more splendid bribes. His first plan is to give them feudal lordships outside France. Thus Berthier, his most indis pensable minister, becomes sovereign prince of Neufchatel, Bernadotte sovereign prince of Pontecorvo, Talleyrand sovereign prince of Benevento. Especially out of the Venetian territory, given to France at Pressburg, are taken fiefs (not less than twelve in all), to which are attached the title of duke. These innovations fall in 1806, that is, in the middle of the period of transformation. But after Tilsit, when Napoleon felt more strongly both the power and the necessity of rewarding his servants, he created formally a new noblesse and revived the majorat in defiance of the revolutionary code. In the end, besides the three sovereign princes just mentioned, he created four hereditary princes (Berthier is in both lists) and thirty-one hereditary dukes. There were also many counts and barons. The system was prodigiously wasteful. Of public money Berthier received more than 50,000 a year, Davoust about 30,000, nine other officials more than 10,000, and twenty -three others more than 4000. After Marengo he had seen the importance of reconciling Europe to his greatness by making peace. After Tilsit it was still more urgently necessary that he should dispel the alarm which his conquests had now excited everywhere. But this time he made no attempt to do so ; this time he can think of nothing but pushing his success to the de struction of England ; and Europe gradually became aware that the evil so long dreaded of a destruction of the balance of power had come in the very worst form conceivable, and that her destiny was in the hands of a man whose headlong ambition was as unprecedented as his energy and good fortune. As in 1805 he had been drawn into the conquest of Germany in the course of a war with England, so now he assails all the neutral powers, and shortly afterwards violently annexes Spain, not so much from abstract love of conquest as in order to turn against England the forces of all the Continent at once. As he had left Boulogne for Germany, he now, as it were, returns to Boulogne. His successes had put into his hands two new instruments of war against England, instruments none the less welcome because the very act of using them made him master of the whole Continent. He had hinted at the first of these when the war with England began in 1803, by saying that in this war he did not intend that there should be any neutrality; what he meant was explained in 1806 by the edict issued from Berlin. In addition to that limited right which the belligerent has by international law to prevent by blockade the trade of a neutral with the enemy and to punish the individual trader by confis cation of ship and goods, Napoleon now assumed the right of preventing such commerce without blockade by controlling the neutral Governments. English goods were to be seized everywhere, and the harbours of neutrals to be closed against English ships under penalty of war with France. Such a threat, involving a claim to criticize and judge the acts of neutral Governments and to inflict on them an enormous pecuniary fine, was almost equivalent to the annexation at one stroke of all the neutral states. The other instrument had a similar character. The French fleet having been crippled at Trafalgar, he pro posed now to reinforce it by all the other fleets in Europe, and to get possession of all the resources of all the maritime states. His eyes therefore become now fixed on Denmark, Portugal, and Spain. Such is Napoleon as king of kings, and such are his views. This unique phase of European history lasted five years, reckoning from the treaty of Tilsit to the breach with Russia. Europe consists now of a confederacy of monarchical states looking up to a paramount power (like India at the present day). The confederacy is held together by the war with England, which it puts under an ineffective commercial blockade, suffering itself in return a more effective one. But Napoleon feels that Spain and Portugal must be brought under his immediate administration, in order that their maritime resources may be properly turned against England. Austria also has by no means been sufficiently humbled, and Prussia is humbled so intolerably that she is forced into plans of insurrection. Throughout these five years a European party of insurrection is gradually forming. It has two great divisions, one scattered through Germany, at the head of which Austria places herself in 1809, the other in Spain and Portugal, which is aided by England. In Germany this movement is successfully repressed until 1813, but in the Peninsula it gains ground steadily from 1809. After 1812 both movements swell the great Anti- Napoleonic Revolution which then sets in. Immediately after Tilsit Napoleon entered on his new course, which had been arranged with Russia in secret articles. In August he required the king of Denmark to declare war with England; but here England, seeing herself threatened by a coalition of all Europe at once, interfered with desperate resolution. She required Denmark to sur render her fleet (consisting of twenty ships of the line and a number of frigates) in deposit, promising to restore it at the peace, and when she received a refusal took possession of it by force. At the same time an army is formed under Junot for the invasion of Portugal, with which state, as the old ally of England, Napoleon used no ceremony. The feeble state consented to almost all his demands, agreed to enter the Continental system and to declare war against England ; only the regent had a scruple which restrained him from confiscating the property of private Englishmen. From this moment Portugal is doomed, and negotiations are opened with Spain concerning the parti tion of it. But out of these negotiations grew unexpected events. For more than ten years Spain had been drawn in the wake of revolutionary France ; to Napoleon from the beginning of his reign she had been as subservient as Holland or Switzerland ; she had made war and peace at his bidding, had surrendered Trinidad to make the treaty of Amiens, had given her fleet to destruction at Trafalgar. In other states equally subservient, such as Holland and