The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

There remained two resources. One was economy; and the correspondence of Napoleon at this period teems with exhortations to his lieutenants, with denials of money, and with precepts to get all they can out of the annexed territories, and ask as little as possible from him. 456 The emperor held in reserve, subject only to his own orders, a great military treasure which had begun with war contributions, and into which poured the results of the extraordinary transactions just mentioned. Five wars had brought into this chest 805,000,000 francs; but in 1810 there remained but 354,000,000, and he was unwilling to trench further upon it, unless some grave emergency arose. He hoped to spare, if not to add to it, by the confiscation of the property of Spanish nobles who had resisted his change of dynasty, as well as by the seizure of "false neutrals." Evidently, however, such resources are precarious, and cannot be compared to those of a commercial state. Contrasted with Great Britain, the financial expedients of Napoleon resembled those of a mediæval prince or an Oriental potentate; and in a strain of endurance, in a question of time, the very artificial, not to say unnatural, framework of power which he had built could not hope to outlast the highly organized, essentially modern, and above all consistently developed society which confronted him. A state of long standing and fixed traditions may endure the evils of a bad system, disadvantaged by it, but not ruined; but when the system is new and rests upon a single man, it asks in vain for the confidence inspired by a closely knit, yet wide-spreading, body politic whose established character guarantees the future.

This was clearly shown in the ability of either government to use the other resource—borrowing—as a means to supplement its deficient income. Napoleon steadfastly refused to resort to this, alleging that it was an unjustifiable draft upon the future, and could have but one result—bankruptcy. He proved easily that Great Britain could not go on borrowing indefinitely at her present rate. A better reason for his own abstinence was to be found in the condition of his credit. The public debt of France under his rule was small, and, as he did not add to it, it stood at a good figure in the market. 457 His military genius, the wide flight of his arms, the war contributions, the iniquitous plan by which he quartered his troops on foreign countries, not merely in war but in peace, and made them responsible for their maintenance,—measures such as these, facilitated by frequently recurrent wars and combined with exactions like those narrated in this chapter, enabled him to meet his expenditures, accumulate the large reserve fund mentioned, and at the same time distribute in France an amount of coin which greatly aided the circulation. But his success imposed upon no one. Everybody understood that such expedients were essentially transient, that to renew them meant renewed wars, invasions growing ever wider and wider, and results dependent always upon military prestige, which a single lost battle might overthrow. Compared with insecurity such as this, the fast growing debt of Great Britain possessed a relative solidity; which even exceeded the absolute confidence felt that the interest would be regularly paid. Behind her stood the history and the prestige of a Sea Power which men knew had met many a heavy reverse, yet had never failed; and which stood before Napoleon more mighty than ever. Far and wide, through many a sea and in many a land, stretched the roots of her strength; never more glorious, because never more sorely tried than by the great emperor. She had credit, he had none.

Savary, one of the most devoted of Napoleon's followers, quotes with conviction the following words to him of a Parisian banker, in the early part of 1811: "A humiliating fact, and one which gives the key to many others, is the state of credit in France and in England. The English debt amounts to about $3,500,000,000, ours only to $250,000,000; and yet the English could borrow at need sums much more considerable than we ourselves could, and above all at an infinitely more favorable rate. Why this difference? Why is the credit of the State, in France, lower than the credit of the leading merchants and bankers; while the reverse is the permanent condition in England? A word suffices to explain it: To restore one's credit in England, you have only to work with the government; while to lose one's credit in France it is only necessary not to keep out of government transactions. All England is, so to say, a single commercial house, of which ministers are the directors, the laws the contract, which power itself cannot infringe. Here the Council of State usurps the powers of the tribunals, and I could almost say that nothing useful is done, because nothing is really guaranteed." 458 A competent American witness, before quoted, who had spent two years in France, wrote, in 1809: "The French rulers, whatever may be their power, are unable to obtain supplies at home except by sacrifices equivalent to the risk which is incurred by contracting with them. Their credit abroad may be estimated by the fact, which is so well known to us all, that no intelligent merchant in this country can be induced, by any consideration, to make advances in their favor, or to accept a bill on their treasury, from their highest accredited agent." 459

While the public credit, that touchstone of prosperity, stood thus in the two states, the same eye-witness thus describes the relative condition of the two peoples: "In France the extinction of all public spirit and of the influence of public opinion, the depopulation and decay of the great towns, the stern dominion of a military police, incessantly checked the exultation, natural to the mind, on viewing the profusion of the bounties bestowed by nature. The pressure of the taxes was aggravated by the most oppressive rigor in the collection. The condition of the peasantry as to their food, clothing, and habitations bore no comparison with the state of the same class in England.... In England, whatever may be the representations of those who, with little knowledge of the facts, affect to deplore her condition, it is nevertheless true that there does not exist, and never has existed elsewhere, so beautiful and perfect a model of public and private prosperity.... I pay this just tribute of admiration with the more pleasure, as it is to me in the light of an atonement for the errors and prejudices under which I labored on this subject, before I enjoyed the advantage of a personal experience. A residence of nearly two years in that country—during which period I visited and studied nearly every part of it, with no other view or purpose than that of obtaining correct information, and I may add, with previous studies well fitted to promote my object—convinced me I had been egregiously deceived." 460

The writer saw England before her sorest trial came. Since 1807, and especially after 1809, the condition of both nations had grown sensibly worse. The commercial embarrassments of Great Britain under the dislocation of her trade and the loss of her markets, occasioned partly by the Continental System and partly by the American Non-Intercourse Act, and aggravated by the wild speculations that followed the year 1808, resulted in 1811 in wide-spread disaster,—merchants failing, manufactories closing, workmen out of employment and starving. In France the commercial crisis of the same year, extending over the Continent, soon became a chaos of firms crashing one upon the other and dragging down, each the other, in its fall. 461 Soon great numbers of workmen in all the provinces found themselves, like their English brethren, deprived of occupation. Council upon council was held by the emperor to ascertain how, by government interference, to remedy the ills for which governmental interference was immediately responsible. But, underneath the apparently similar conditions of distress in the two countries, lay the real difference between a nation shut in, and thrown back upon itself, and one that kept open its communications with the world at large. In 1811 Great Britain had already begun to react through her natural channels; the energies of her people under the load upon them had been like a strong spring, whose tension remains, though compressed. The South American trade revived; the Spanish Main took off the accumulations in the West India Islands, and the latter in turn began to call for supplies from home; Russia was visibly relenting; in the Peninsula, Masséna, whose progress had been stopped at the lines of Torres Vedras, was forced to retreat into Spain in the month of March, and through a liberated Portugal were found new openings for British commerce. For France there could be no return of prosperity until the sea was again free to her, either through her own or through neutral ships; but the latter could not safely repair to her ports until her rival revoked the still existing Order in Council, blockading the whole French and Dutch coast, and this she would not do before the emperor recalled the decrees upon which rested his Continental System. And while Great Britain was making appalling drafts upon the future in her ever-mounting debt, France was exhausting a capital which no forcing power could replace, by her anticipated conscriptions, which led to a revolt far more menacing than the riots of English workmen. Sixty thousand "refractory" conscripts were scattered through the departments, and among the forests of western, central, and southern France, refusing to join their regiments and defying the authorities. They were pursued by flying columns of old soldiers; who, often long strangers to their own countrymen, took with their property the same liberties they had practised in foreign parts. In January, 1811, the whole conscription for the year was called out, and in midsummer that for 1812; but no legal measures could make men of the boys sent to die before the virile age, 462 more often of exposure than by the hands of the enemy, in the gloomy mountains and parched plains of Spain.

The great struggle of endurance, "of the highest individual genius against the resources and institutions of a great nation" 463 who stayed its power on the sea, was now drawing near its close; the battle between the sea and the land was about to terminate in one of the most impressive and gigantic military catastrophes recorded by history. But the inevitable end was already clearly indicated before Napoleon started for Russia, although the dim vision of weary eyes in England, strained by long watching, saw not that which the apprehensions of Frenchmen, troubled with the anguish of France, tremblingly felt. The credit of France was gone; nor could her people bear any added burdens, until the sea, over which Great Britain still moved unresisted, was open to them. The people of the Continent had become bitterly hostile through the sufferings caused by the blockade, and the imperial power could only be maintained by an army which was itself filled by borrowing upon the future; its capital, its reserve, was fast being exhausted. 464 The question of physical endurance was settled; the only point really left in doubt was that of moral endurance. Would Great Britain and the British government have the nerve to hold out till the emperor was exhausted?" 465 Already the agitation for the repeal of the Orders in Council, with which the existing ministry was identified, was becoming ominous. The leaders of the Opposition were opposed to the Peninsular war; and Napier has vividly shown the doubts and hesitations of the ministry as to sustaining that great enterprise which compelled Napoleon to such waste of life, to such a fatal division of his force. Time was not allowed to test to the utmost British tenacity; the darkest hour was fast passing away, the clouds began to break and the day to dawn.

Three weeks after Napoleon's annexation of the Hanse towns and of the Duchy of Oldenburg, on the last day of the year 1810, Alexander put forth a commercial ukase which under all the circumstances had the appearance of retaliatory action; and at the least drew a sharp line between his commercial policy and the Continental System as inculcated by Napoleon. The decree expressly permitted the entrance of colonial produce under neutral flags; and many articles of French manufacture were virtually denied admission, by not being included in a list of goods which could be introduced on payment of duty. In vain did the czar assert that his object was to develop, by protection, Russian manufactures of the excluded articles. Napoleon rejected the explanation. "The last ukase," he wrote in a personal letter to Alexander, "is at bottom, but yet more in form, specially directed against France." 466 But while the exclusion of French products was the most open, the admission of neutral ships with colonial produce was the most significant, feature of the edict. This was the point upon which the emperor had been most importunate; here was the leak which, in his judgment, was sinking the ship. "Six hundred English merchant ships," he had written in a previous letter, October 23, 1810, 467 "wandering in the Baltic, have been refused admission to Prussian ports and those of Mecklenburg, and have steered for your Majesty's states. If you admit them the war still lasts.... Your Majesty knows that if you confiscate them we shall have peace. Whatever their papers, under whatever names they are masked, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Russian, your Majesty may be sure they are English."

Later, on the 4th of November, 468 Napoleon wrote through the ordinary ministerial channels: "There are no neutrals. Whatever the papers produced, they are false. Not a single ship enters Russia with so-called American papers but comes really from England.469 Peace or war is in the hands of Russia. Let her confiscate all ships brought in by the English, and join France in demanding of Sweden the seizure of the immense quantity of merchandise the English have landed at Gottenburg under various flags. If Russia wishes peace with England, she has here the means. But Russia has followed opposite principles, and of this but one proof need be given: that is, that the colonial merchandise which appeared at the last Leipzig fair was brought there by seven hundred wagons coming from Russia; that to-day all the traffic in that merchandise is done through Russia; finally, that the twelve hundred ships which the English have convoyed by twenty ships of war, disguised under Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, American flags, have in part landed their cargoes in Russia." To these complaints Alexander had replied that he had adhered, and would adhere, to his engagements and exclude British ships; but that he would not, and could not, go beyond them and forbid neutrals. The ukase of December 31 took the matter out of diplomatic discussion, and, coming so immediately upon the annexation of Oldenburg, had the appearance of defiance. As such Napoleon accepted it. "This seems," he wrote in the personal letter of February 28 above quoted, "a change of system. All Europe so regards it; and already our alliance no longer exists, in the opinion of England and of Europe.... If your Majesty abandons the alliance and burns the conventions of Tilsit, it would be evident that war would follow a few months sooner or later. The result must be, on either side, to strain the resources of our empires in preparations.... If your Majesty has not the purpose of reconciliation with England, you will see the necessity, for yourself and for me, of dissipating all these clouds." From that time both sovereigns prepared for war.

The turn of affairs in the North at this time, and during the succeeding critical twelvemonth, was powerfully influenced by the presence of a great British fleet in the Baltic and by the extreme discretion of its admiral. Napoleon had compelled Sweden to follow up her exclusion of British ships by a formal declaration of war, which was issued November 17, 1810. The British minister had to leave Stockholm; and, after his departure, the political as well as military direction of affairs on the spot was under the conduct of Sir James Saumarez. That most distinguished and admirable officer had thoroughly appreciated, during his three summers in the Baltic, the feelings of the Swedish rulers and people; and it was chiefly owing to his representations to his own government, and to his steadily conciliatory action, that the formal war never became actual. He resisted with dignity and firmness every attempt on the part of the Swedish authorities to carry out Napoleon's orders to confiscate; but he did not allow himself to be moved, by such occasional yielding on their part, to any act of retaliation. Good feeling between the two nations centred around his attractive personality, and facilitated the essential, but difficult, conciliation between Sweden and Russia. The entire license trade was under the protection of his fleet, which had charge also of the suppression of privateering, of the police of the hostile coasts, and of the interruption of communications between Denmark and Norway.470 Its presence virtually insured the independence of Sweden against France and Russia, except during the winter months, when compelled to leave the Baltic; and its numbers and character gave the Swedish government a sufficient excuse for not proceeding to the extremities demanded by Napoleon. During the summer of 1811 the flag-ship was the centre of the secret consultations which went on between the two states, to which Russia also, having finally rejected Napoleon's terms, soon became a party; and towards the end of the season the negotiation, practically completed by the admiral, was formally concluded with a British plenipotentiary. It was determined to keep up the appearance of war, but with the understanding that Sweden would join the alliance of Great Britain and Russia. The czar had then no cause to fear that, in the approaching contest with the great conqueror, he should find a hostile Sweden on his flank and rear.471

The preparations of Napoleon for the great Russian campaign occupied the year 1811. It was his intention to carry on a vigorous warfare in the Spanish peninsula, while collecting the immense forces of every kind needed in the north of Germany. But the unsatisfactory character of many of the soldiers gathering on the Elbe, among them being tens of thousands of refractory conscripts and foreign nationalities, compelled him to withdraw from Spain in the latter part of 1811 some forty thousand veterans, whose place was to be filled by levies of an inferior character, which, moreover, did not at once appear. The fortune of war in the Peninsula during the year had varied in different quarters. On the east coast General Suchet had brought Tortosa to capitulate on the 1st of January. Thence advancing to the south he reduced Tarragona by siege and assault on the 28th of June,—an exploit which obtained for him his grade of Marshal of France. Still moving forward, according to Napoleon's general plan and instructions to him, the end of the year found him before the city of Valencia, which surrendered on the 9th of January, 1812. But to obtain these later successes, at the time that so many hardened warriors were removed from the Peninsula, it had been necessary to support Suchet with divisions taken from the centre and west, to abandon the hope entertained of combining another great attempt against Lisbon, and also to withdraw Marmont's corps from the valley of the Tagus to a more northern position, around Salamanca and Valladolid. At this time Wellington occupied a line on the frontiers of Portugal, north of the Tagus, resting on the city of Almeida and facing Ciudad Rodrigo. The latter, with Badajoz, on the Guadiana, constituted the two supports to the strong barrier by which the emperor proposed to check any offensive movements of the enemy upon Spain.

The year had been passed by the British general in patient contention with the innumerable difficulties, political and military, of his situation. Masséna had indeed been forced to withdraw from Portugal in April, but since that time Wellington had been balked, in every attempt, by superior numbers and by the strength of the positions opposed to him. His reward was now near at hand. On the 8th of January, 1812, he suddenly appeared before Ciudad Rodrigo, favored in his movements by the pre-occupation of Marmont, who was engaged in the reorganization and arrangements necessitated by the withdrawal of so many troops for the Russian war, and also deceived by the apparent inactivity in the British lines. The siege was pushed with a vigor that disregarded the ordinary rules of war, and the place was successfully stormed on the 19th of January. As rapidly as the nature of the country, the season, and other difficulties would permit, Wellington moved to the south, intending to attack Badajoz. On the 16th of March the place was invested, and though most ably defended by a governor of unusual ability, it was snatched out of the hands of Marshal Soult by the same audacity and disregard of ordinary methods that had bereft Marmont of the sister fortress. Badajoz was stormed on the night of the 6th of April; and the Spanish frontier then lay open to the British, to be crossed as soon as their numbers, or the mistakes of the enemy, should justify the attempt.

Thus opened the fatal year 1812. The clouds breaking away, though scarce yet perceptibly, for Great Britain, were gathering in threatening masses on the horizon of Napoleon. A painful picture is drawn by his eulogist, M. Thiers, of the internal state of the empire at this time. An excessively dry season had caused very short crops throughout Europe, and want had produced bread riots in England, as well as in France and elsewhere. But such demonstrations of popular fury were far more dangerous and significant, in a country where all expression of opinion had been so rigorously controlled as in the empire, and in a capital which concentrates and leads, as only Paris does, the feelings of a nation. The discontent was heightened and deepened by the miseries of the conscription, which ate ever deeper and deeper, wringing the heart of every family, and becoming more and more extreme as each succeeding enterprise became vaster than those before it, and as the excessive demands, by reducing the quality of the individual victims, required ever growing numbers. Six hundred thousand men had been poured into Spain, three hundred thousand of whom had died there. 472 Besides the immense masses carried forward to the confines of Poland, and those destined for the Peninsula, there was to be a powerful reserve between the Elbe and the Rhine, another behind the Rhine in France itself, and to these Napoleon now proposed to add yet a third, of one hundred and twenty thousand so-called national guards, taken from the conscription of the four last years and legally not liable to the call. Throughout the great cities there was growing irritation, rising frequently to mutiny, with loud popular outcries, and again the number of refractory conscripts, of whom forty thousand had been arrested the year before, rose to fifty thousand; again flying columns pursued them through all the departments. Caught, shut up in the islands off the coasts, whence they could not escape, and, when drilled, marched under strong guard to the ends of Europe, they none the less contrived often to desert; and everywhere the people, hating the emperor, received them with open arms and passed them back, from hand to hand, to their homes. Thus amid starvation, misery, weeping, and violence, the time drew near for Napoleon to complete his great military undertaking of conquering the sea by the land.

In the North the situation had finally developed according to the wishes of Great Britain. The secret understanding of 1811 had resulted in January, 1812, in another commercial ukase, allowing many British manufactures to be introduced into Russia. On the 5th of April a secret treaty was concluded with Sweden, ceding Finland to Russia, but assuring to the former power Norway, of which Denmark was to be deprived. Relieved now on her northern flank, Russia soon after made peace with Turkey under the mediation of Great Britain. Thus with both hands freed she awaited the oncoming of Napoleon.

On the 9th of May, 1812, the emperor left Paris to take command of his forces in Poland; and on the 24th of June the imperial army, to the number of four hundred thousand men, crossed the Niemen and entered Russia. Two hundred thousand more followed close behind. The preceding day, June 23, the British Orders in Council of 1807 and 1809 were revoked, as to the United States of America. It was too late. War had been declared by Congress, and the declaration approved by the President, five days before, on the 18th of June, 1812.