Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European Statesmen

And wisely and grandly did he use it at first. He turned his attention to the internal state of a distracted country, and developed its resources and promoted tranquillity; he appointed the ablest men, without distinction of party, for his ministers and prefects; he restored the credit of the country; he put a stop to forced loans; he released priests from confinement; he rebuked the fanaticism of the ultra-revolutionists, he reorganized the public bodies; he created tribunals of appeal; he ceased to confiscate the property of emigrants, and opened a way for their return; he restored the right of disposing property by will; he instituted the Bank of France on sound financial principles; he checked all disorders; he brought to a close the desolating war of La Vendée; he retained what was of permanent value in the legislation of the Revolution; he made the distribution of the public burdens easy; he paid his army, and rewarded eminent men, whom he enlisted in his service. So stable was the government, and so wise were the laws, and so free were all channels of industry, that prosperity returned to the distracted country. The middle classes were particularly benefited,–the shopkeepers and mechanics,–and they acquiesced in a strong rule, since it seemed beneficent. The capital was enriched and adorned and improved. A treaty with the Pope was made, by which the clergy were restored to their parishes. A new code of laws was made by great jurists, on the principles of the Justinian Code. A magnificent road was constructed over the Alps. Colonial possessions were recovered. Navies were built, fortifications repaired, canals dug, and the beet-root and tobacco cultivated.

But these internal improvements, by which France recovered prosperity, paled before the services which Napoleon rendered as a defender of his country's nationality. He had proposed a peace-policy to England in an autograph letter to the King, which was treated as an insult, and answered by the British government by a declaration of war, to last till the Bourbons were restored,–perhaps what Napoleon wanted and expected; and war was renewed with Austria and England. The consulate was now marked by the brilliant Italian campaign,–the passage over the Alps; the battle of Marengo, gained by only thirty thousand men; the recovery of Italy, and renewed military éclat. The Peace of Amiens, October, 1801, placed Napoleon in the proudest position which any modern sovereign ever enjoyed. He was now thirty-three years of age,–supreme in France, and powerful throughout Europe. The French were proud of a man who was glorious both in peace and war; and his consulate had been sullied by only one crime,–the assassination of the heir of the house of Condé; a blunder, as Talleyrand said, rather than a crime, since it arrayed against him all the friends of Legitimacy in Europe.

Had Napoleon been contented with the power he then enjoyed as First Consul for life, and simply stood on the defensive, he could have made France invincible, and would have left a name comparatively reproachless. But we now see unmistakable evidence of boundless personal ambition, and a policy of unscrupulous aggrandizement. He assumes the imperial title,–greedy for the trappings as well as the reality of power; he openly founds a new dynasty of kings; he abolishes every trace of constitutional rule; he treads liberty under his feet, and mocks the very ideas by which he had inspired enthusiasm in his troops; his watchword is now not Liberty, but Glory; he centres in himself the interests of France; he surrounds himself, at the Tuileries, with the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient kings; and he even induces the Pope himself to crown him at Notre Dame. It was a proud day, December 2, 1804, when, surrounded by all that was brilliant and imposing in France, Napoleon proceeded in solemn procession to the ancient cathedral, where were assembled the magistrates, the bishops, and the titled dignitaries of the realm, and received, in his imperial robes, from the hands of the Pope, the consecrated sceptre and crown of empire, and heard from the lips of the supreme pontiff of Christendom those words which once greeted Charlemagne in the basilica of St. Peter when the Roman clergy proclaimed him Emperor of the West,–Vivat in oeternum semper Augustus. The venerable aisles and pillars and arches of the ancient cathedral resounded to the music of five hundred performers in a solemn Te Deum. The sixty prelates of France saluted the anointed soldier as their monarch, while the inspiring cry from the vast audience of Vive l'Empereur! announced Napoleon's entrance into the circle of European sovereigns.

But this fresh usurpation, although confirmed by a vote of the French people, was the signal for renewed hostilities. A coalition of all governments unfriendly to France was formed. Military preparations assumed a magnitude never seen before in the history of Europe, which now speedily became one vast camp. Napoleon quit his capital to assume the conduct of armies. He had threatened England with invasion, which he knew was impossible, for England then had nearly one thousand ships of war, manned by one hundred and twenty thousand men. But when Napoleon heard of the victories of Nelson, he suddenly and rapidly marched to the Rhine, and precipitated one hundred and eighty thousand troops upon Austria, who was obliged to open her capital. Then, reinforced by Russia, Austria met the invader at Austerlitz with equal forces; but only to suffer crushing defeat. Pitt died of a broken heart when he heard of this decisive French victory, followed shortly after by the disastrous overthrow of the Prussians at Jena, and that, again, by the victory of Eylau over the Russians, which secured the peace of Tilsit, 1807,–making Napoleon supreme on the continent of Europe at the age of thirty-nine. It was deemed idle to resist further this "man of destiny," who in twelve years, from the condition of an unemployed officer of artillery, without friends or family or influence, had subdued in turn all the monarchies of Europe, with the exception of England and Russia, and regulated at his pleasure the affairs of distant courts. To what an eminence had he climbed! Nothing in history or romance approaches the facts of his amazing career.

And even down to this time–to the peace of Tilsit–there are no grave charges against him which history will not extenuate, aside from the egotism of his character. He claims that he fought for French nationality, in danger from the united hostilities of Europe. Certainly his own glory was thus far identified with the glory of his country. He had rescued France by a series of victories more brilliant than had been achieved for centuries. He had won a fame second to that of no conqueror in the world's history.

But these astonishing successes seem to have turned his head. He is dazzled by his own greatness, and intoxicated by the plaudits of his idolaters. He proudly and coldly says that "it is a proof of the weakness of the human understanding for any one to dream of resisting him." He now aims at a universal military monarchy; he seeks to make the kings of the earth his vassals; he places the members of his family, whether worthy or unworthy, on ancient thrones; he would establish on the banks of the Seine that central authority which once emanated from Rome; he apes the imperial Caesars in the arrogance of his tone and the insolence of his demands; he looks upon Europe as belonging to himself; he becomes a tyrant of the race; he centres in the gratification of his passions the interests of humanity; he becomes the angry Nemesis of Europe, indifferent to the sufferings of mankind and the peace of the world.

After the peace of Tilsit his whole character seems to have changed, even in little things. No longer is he affable and courteous, but silent, reserved, and sullen. His temper becomes bad; his brow is usually clouded; his manners are brusque; his egotism is transcendent. "Your first duty," said he to his brother Louis, when he made him king of Holland, "is to me; your second, to France." He becomes intolerably haughty, even to the greatest personages. He insults the ladies of the court, and pinches their ears, so that they feel relieved when he has passed them by. He no longer flatters, but expects incense from everybody. In his bursts of anger he breaks china and throws his coat into the fire. He turns himself into a master of ceremonies; he cheats at cards; he persecutes literary men.

Napoleon's career of crime is now consummated. He divorces Josephine,–the greatest mistake of his life. He invades Spain and Russia, against the expostulations of his wisest counsellors, showing that he has lost his head, that reason has toppled on her throne,–for he fancies himself more powerful than the forces of Nature. All these crimes are utterly inexcusable, except on the plea of madness. Such gigantic crimes, such a recklessness of life, such uncontrollable ambition, such a defiance of justice, such an abrogation of treaties, such a disregard of the interests of humanity, to say nothing of the welfare of France, prostituted, enslaved, down-trodden,–and all to nurse his diabolical egotism,–astonished and shocked the whole civilized world. These things more than balanced all the services he ever rendered, since they directly led to the exhaustion of his country. They were so atrocious that they cried aloud to Heaven for vengeance.

And Heaven heard the agonizing shrieks of misery which ascended from the smoking ruins of Moscow, from the bloody battlefield of Borodino, from the river Berezina, from the homes of the murdered soldiers, from the widows and orphans of more than a million of brave men who had died to advance his glory, from the dismal abodes of twenty-five millions more whom he had cheated out of their liberties and mocked with his ironical proclamations; yea, from the millions in Prussia, Austria, and England who had been taxed to the uttermost to defeat him, and had died martyrs to the cause of nationalities, or what we call the Balance of Power, which European statesmen have ever found it necessary to maintain at any cost, since on this balance hang the interests of feeble and defenceless nations. Ay, Heaven heard,–the God whom he ignored,–and sent a retribution as signal and as prompt and as awful as his victories had been overwhelming.

I need not describe Napoleon's fall,–as clear a destiny as his rise; a lesson to all the future tyrants and conquerors of the world; a moral to be pondered as long as history shall be written. Hear, ye heavens! and give ear, O earth! to the voice of eternal justice, as it appealed to universal consciousness, and pronounced the doom of the greatest sinner of modern times,–to be defeated by the aroused and indignant nations, to lose his military prestige, to incur unexampled and bitter humiliation, to be repudiated by the country he had raised to such a pitch of greatness, to be dethroned, to be imprisoned at Elba, to be confined on the rock of St. Helena, to be at last forced to meditate, and to die with vultures at his heart,–a chained Prometheus, rebellious and defiant to the last, with a world exultant at his fall; a hopeless and impressive fall, since it broke for fifty years the charm of military glory, and showed that imperialism cannot be endured among nations craving for liberties and rights which are the birthright of our humanity.

Did Napoleon, then, live in vain? No great man lives in vain. He is ever, whether good or bad, the instrument of Divine Providence, Gustavus Adolphus was the instrument of God in giving religious liberty to Germany. William the Silent was His instrument in achieving the independence of Holland. Washington was His instrument in giving dignity and freedom to this American nation, this home of the oppressed, this glorious theatre for the expansion of unknown energies and the adoption of unknown experiments. Napoleon was His instrument in freeing France from external enemies, and for vindicating the substantial benefits of an honest but uncontrolled Revolution. He was His instrument in arousing Italy from the sleep of centuries, and taking the first step to secure a united nation and a constitutional government. He was His instrument in overthrowing despotism among the petty kings of Germany, and thus showing the necessity of a national unity,–at length realized by the genius of Bismarck. Even in his crimes Napoleon stands out on the sublime pages of history as the instrument of Providence, since his crimes were overruled in the hatred of despotism among his own subjects, and a still greater hatred of despotism as exercised by those kings who finally subdued him, and who vainly attempted to turn back the progress of liberal sentiments by their representatives at the Congress of Vienna.

The fall of Napoleon taught some awful and impressive lessons to humanity, which would have been unlearned had he continued to be successful to the end. It taught the utter vanity of military glory; that peace with neighbors is the greatest of national blessings, and war the greatest of evils; that no successes on the battlefield can compensate for the miseries of an unjust and unnecessary war; and that avenging justice will sooner or later overtake the wickedness of a heartless egotism. It taught the folly of worshipping mere outward strength, disconnected from goodness; and, finally, it taught that God will protect defenceless nations, and even guilty nations, when they shall have expiated their crimes and follies, and prove Himself the kind Father of all His children, even amid chastisements, gradually leading them, against their will, to that blessed condition when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall learn war no more.

What remains to-day of those grand Napoleonic ideas which intoxicated France for twenty years, and which, revived by Louis Napoleon, led to a brief glory and an infamous fall, and the humiliation and impoverishment of the most powerful state of Europe? They are synonymous with imperialism, personal government, the absolute reign of a single man, without constitutional checks,–a return to Caesarism, to the unenlightened and selfish despotism of Pagan Rome. And hence they are now repudiated by France herself,–as well as by England and America,–as false, as selfish, as fatal to all true national progress, as opposed to every sentiment which gives dignity to struggling States, as irreconcilably hostile to the civilization which binds nations together, and which slowly would establish liberty, and peace, and industry, and equal privileges, and law, and education, and material prosperity, upon this fallen world.

AUTHORITIES

So much has been written on Napoleon, that I can only select some of the standard and accessible works. Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon I.; L. P. Junot's Memoirs of Napoleon, Court, and Family; Las Casas' Napoleon at St. Helena; Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire; Memoirs of Prince Metternich; Segur's History of Expedition to Russia; Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat; Vieusseau's Napoleon, his Sayings and Deeds; Napoleon's Confidential Correspondence with Josephine and with his Brother Joseph; Alison's History of Europe; Lockhart's and Sir Walter Scott's Lives of Napoleon; Court and Camp of Napoleon, in Murray's Family Library; W. Forsyth's Captivity at St. Helena; Dr. Channing's Essay on Napoleon; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Napoleon; J. G. Wilson's Sketch of Napoleon; Life of Napoleon, by A. H. Jomini; Headley's Napoleon and his Marshals; Napier's Peninsular War; Wellington's Despatches; Gilford's Life of Pitt; Botta's History of Italy under Napoleon; Labaume's Russian Campaign; Berthier's Histoire de l'Expédition d'Egypte.

PRINCE METTERNICH

1773-1859CONSERVATISM

In the later years of Napoleon's rule, when he had reached the summit of power, and the various German States lay prostrate at his feet, there arose in Austria a great man, on whom the eyes of Europe were speedily fixed, and who gradually became the central figure of Continental politics. This remarkable man was Count Metternich, who more than any other man set in motion the secret springs which resulted in a general confederation to shake off the degrading fetters imposed by the French conqueror. In this matter he had a powerful ally in Baron von Stein, who reorganized Prussia, and prepared her for successful resistance, when the time came, against the common enemy. In another lecture I shall attempt to show the part taken by Von Stein in the regeneration of Germany; but it is my present purpose to confine attention to the Austrian chancellor and diplomatist, his various labors, and the services he rendered, not to the cause of Freedom and Progress, but to that of Absolutism, of which he was in his day the most noted champion.

Metternich, in his character as diplomatist, is to be contemplated in two aspects: first, as aiming to enlist the great powers in armed combination against Napoleon; and secondly, as attempting to unite them and all the German States to suppress revolutionary ideas and popular insurrections, and even constitutional government itself. Before presenting him in this double light, however, I will briefly sketch the events of his life until he stood out as the leading figure in European politics,–as great a figure as Bismarck later became.

Clemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Count von Metternich, was born at Coblentz, on the Rhine, May 15, 1773. His father was a nobleman of ancient family. I will not go into his pedigree, reaching far back in the Middle Ages,–a matter so important in the eyes of German and even English biographers, but to us in America of no more account than the genealogy of the Dukes of Edom. The count his father was probably of more ability than an ordinary nobleman in a country where nobles are so numerous, since he was then, or soon after, Austrian ambassador to the Netherlands. Young Metternich was first sent to the University of Strasburg, at the age of fifteen, about the time when Napoleon was completing his studies at a military academy. In 1790, a youth of seventeen, he took part in the ceremonies attending the coronation of Emperor Leopold at Frankfort, and made the acquaintance of the archduke, who two years later succeeded to the imperial dignity as Francis II. We next see him a student of law in the University of Mainz, spending his vacations at Brussels, in his father's house.

Even at that time Metternich attracted attention for his elegant manners and lively wit,–a born courtier, a favorite in high society, and so prominent for his intelligence and accomplishments that he was sent to London as an attaché to the Netherlands embassy, where it seems that he became acquainted with the leading statesmen of England. There must have been something remarkable about him to draw, at the age of twenty, the attention of such men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan. What interested him most in England were the sittings of the English Parliament and the trial of Warren Hastings. At the early age of twenty-one he was appointed minister to the Hague, but was prevented going to his post by the war, and retired to Vienna, which he now saw for the first time. Soon after, he married a daughter of Prince Kaunitz, eldest son of the great chancellor who under three reigns had controlled the foreign policy of the empire. He thus entered the circle of the highest nobility of Austria,–the proudest and most exclusive on the face of the whole earth.

At first the young count–living with his bride at the house of her father, and occupying the highest social position, with wealth and ease and every luxury at command, fond equally of books, of music, and of art, but still fonder of the distinguished society of Vienna, and above all, enamored of the charms of his beautiful and brilliant wife–wished to spend his life in elegant leisure. But his remarkable talents and accomplishments were already too well known for the emperor to allow him to remain in his splendid retirement, especially when the empire was beset with dangers of the most critical kind. His services were required by the State, and he was sent as ambassador to Dresden, after the peace of Luneville, 1801, when his diplomatic career in reality began.

Dresden, where were congregated at this time some of the ablest diplomatists of Europe, was not only an important post of observation for watching the movements of Napoleon, but it was itself a capital of great attractions, both for its works of art and for its society. Here Count Metternich resided for two years, learning much of politics, of art, and letters,–the most accomplished gentleman among all the distinguished people that he met; not as yet a man of power, but a man of influence, sending home to Count Stadion, minister of foreign affairs, reports and letters of great ability, displaying a sagacity and tact marvellous for a man of twenty-eight.

Napoleon was then engaged in making great preparations for a war with Austria, and it was important for Austria to secure the alliance of Prussia, her great rival, with whom she had never been on truly friendly terms, since both aimed at ascendency in Germany. Frederick William III. was then on the throne of Prussia, having two great men among his ministers,–Von Stein and Hardenberg; the former at the head of financial affairs, and the latter at the head of the foreign bureau. To the more important post of Berlin, Metternich was therefore sent. He found great difficulty in managing the Prussian king, whose jealousy of Austria balanced his hatred of Napoleon, and who therefore stood aloof and inactive, indisposed for war, in strict alliance with Russia, who also wanted peace.

The Czar Alexander I., who had just succeeded his murdered father Paul, was a great admirer of Napoleon. His empire was too remote to fear French encroachments or French ideas. Indeed, he started with many liberal sentiments. By nature he was kind and affectionate; he was simple in his tastes, truthful in his character, philanthropic in his views, enthusiastic in his friendships, and refined in his intercourse,–a broad and generous sovereign. And yet there was something wanting in Alexander which prevented him from being great. He was vacillating in his policy, and his judgment was easily warped by fanciful ideas. "His life was worn out between devotion to certain systems and disappointment as to their results. He was fitful, uncertain, and unpractical. Hence he made continual mistakes. He meant well, but did evil, and the discovery of his errors broke his heart. He died of weariness of life, deceived in all his calculations," in 1825.

Metternich spent four years in Berlin, ferreting out the schemes of Napoleon, and striving to make alliances against him; but he found his only sincere and efficient ally to be England, then governed by Pitt. The king of Prussia was timid, and leaned on Russia; he feared to offend his powerful neighbor on the north and east. Nor was Prussia then prepared for war. As for the South German States, they all had their various interests to defend, and had not yet grasped the idea of German unity. There was not a great statesman or a great general among them all. They had their petty dynastic prejudices and jealousies, and were absorbed in the routine of court etiquette and pleasures, stagnant and unenlightened. The only brilliant court life was at Weimar, where Goethe reigned in the circle of his idolaters. The great men of Germany at that time were in the universities, interested in politics, like the Humboldts at Berlin, but not taking a prominent part. Generals and diplomatists absorbed the active political field. As for orators, there were none; for there were no popular assemblies,–no scope for their abilities. The able men were in the service of their sovereigns as diplomatists in the various courts of Europe, and generally were nobles. Diplomacy, in fact, was the only field in which great talents were developed and rewarded outside the realm of literature.

In this field Metternich soon became pre-eminently distinguished. He was at once the prompting genius and the agent of an absolute sovereign who ruled over the most powerful State, next to France, on the continent of Europe, and the most august. The emperor of Austria was supposed to be the heir of the Caesars and of Charlemagne. His territories were more extensive than that of France, and his subjects more numerous than those of all the other German States combined, except Prussia. But the emperor himself was a feeble man, sickly in body, weak in mind, and governed by his ministers, the chief of whom was Count Stadion, minister of foreign affairs. In Austria the aristocracy was more powerful and wealthy than the nobility of any other European State. It was also the most exclusive. No one could rise by any talents into their favored circle. They were great feudal landlords; and their ranks were not recruited, as in England, by men of genius and wealth. Hence, they were narrow, bigoted, and arrogant; but they had polished and gracious manners, and shone in the stiff though elegant society of Vienna,–not brilliant as in Paris or London, but exceedingly attractive, and devoted to pleasure, to grand hunting-parties on princely estates, to operas and balls and theatres. Probably Vienna society was dull, if it was elegant, from the etiquette and ceremonies which marked German courts; for what was called society was not that of distinguished men in letters and art, but almost exclusively that of nobles. A learned professor or wealthy merchant could no more get access to it than he could climb to the moon. But as Vienna was a Catholic city, great ecclesiastical dignitaries, not always of noble birth, were on an equality with counts and barons. It was only in the Church that a man of plebeian origin could rise. Indeed, there was no field for genius at all. The musician Haydn was almost the only genius that Austria at that time possessed outside of diplomatic or military ranks.