Napoleon - Napoleon and Europe

Book IV - Napoleon and Europe

With 800,000 men
I can oblige all Europe to do my bidding.
— Napoleon to Fouché

The autumn and winter of 1805 is noteworthy in his­tory as having witnessed possibly the most brilliant and rapid military evolutions to be recorded in the annals of modern warfare. A mighty coalition is stricken down by the death-dealing blow of Austerlitz, that likewise presaged the dis­solution of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire; the proud House of Austria lies prostrate at Napoleon's feet; the arrogant host of the Czar is hurled back discomfited into Russia; and the whole of Germany submits to the dictates of the modern Caesar. This succession of stupendous events was accomplished within the amazingly short space of less than three months! With his magnificent army, that from Boulogne had cast its ominous war cloud upon the coast of Britain, Napoleon marches with incred­ible celerity against the enemy and deals the first staggering blow at Ulm, one day before the disaster of Trafalgar, which, however, is completely eclipsed by his overwhelming triumph in Moravia, he becoming thereby arbiter of Europe, a state of pre-eminence never (at least in modern history) until then attained by mortal. Was ever rise to dizzy heights of power as astounding and bewil­dering as his, or a preponderance of mental vigour equal to that which was concentrated in the mind of this prodigious enigma of the human race? Eleven short years sufficed to raise him from comparative obscurity and indigence to an apotheosis of power and supremacy which is without a parallel throughout the whole course of modern history.

Within this same space of time Napoleon's physical

conformation underwent as remarkable a transition as that which took place in his destiny, whose star now soared resplendent in its ever-ascending course towards its zenith.

From a spareness of build that almost verged upon atrophy - for which he was remarkable in early youth as we know him throughout his glorious Italian campaign, and as he is delineated in our conception of him even after Marengo - his figure had now assumed more ample proportions, which in after-life devel­oped into a state of plethora; but the beauty of the face, Caesarean in semblance, except for a greater fulness, scarcely underwent any change. The clear-cut features, as though chiselled in marble, were the same. To the expression of almost superhuman energy was added one of intense thought. The unreadable grey eyes, yet piercing, were full of the melancholy of insatiable desire, that lent an additional interest to the grandeur of the countenance. The forehead, lofty and smooth as a sphere, seemed the receptacle of the intellectual virility of a world. Such was the aspect (crudely as it is here portrayed), near the meridian of his marvellous career, of the world's greatest human phenomenon.

By the treaty of Presburg, ratified about three weeks after Austerlitz, Napoleon raised the Electors of Bavaria and Wurttemberg to the dignity of kings. To his kingdom of Italy he joined Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia. The Tyrol and Vorarlberg were transferred to Bavaria. Baden, sublimated to a grand duchy, was enriched by a part of Swabia, the remainder being apportioned be­tween Bavaria and Wurtemberg. Finally, by a secret article, Austria was forced to pay a war indemnity of 5,600,000 British Pounds to France. By a separate treaty, signed at Vienna, Prussia gained Hanover as a compensation for the loss of Anspach and Bayreuth. In the ensuing year the Emperor Francis II resigned his sover­eignty over Germany, restricting himself to his Austrian domin­ions. North and South Germany were now erected by Bonaparte into a confederation of states, designated the Confederation of the Rhine, under his suzerainty. Thus vanished forever the crumbling edifice that formerly constituted the Holy Roman Empire, and thus was the power of Fortune's "favourite child" consolidated

over the whole of Germany.

Early in 1806, Naples fell under Napoleon's power. In the autumn of the preceding year an Anglo-Russian force landed at Naples, meeting with a cordial welcome from Ferdinand and Caroline. This breach of neutrality on the part of the king and his consort cost them their crown. To chastise the royal delinquents, Joseph Bonaparte invaded Naples. Ferdinand and Caroline es­caped to Palermo, and the allied troops reembarked for Malta and Corfu. The conquest of Naples was a light matter. Joseph, master of the entire kingdom, was now proclaimed King of Naples by a decree of Napoleon. Thus ceased to reign the Neapolitan house of Bourbon for having incurred the reprobation of the Suzerain Lord of Europe.

High as the star of Napoleon's fortune had soared, and daz­zlingly as it shone, it was yet to mount to a still higher altitude, and scintillate with even greater brilliancy.

On October 14, 1806, he annihilates the Prussian army, the pride of the nation, near Jena, and vanquished Prussia lies crushed and bleeding, seemingly unto death, beneath the wheels of his car of conquest. Erfurt, Spandau, Magdeburg, and every fortress in the hapless kingdom open their gates to the victor.

On October 27th, at the head of his chosen veterans, sur­rounded by a brilliant retinue, Napoleon enters Berlin in triumph. The gaze of the vast multitude that witnessed his entry into the capital was intently fixed upon the mighty conqueror. To it the victor of Jena must have appeared invested in the glory of his in­numerable victories.

What the sentiments of the Great Captain were, as he passed through the spell-bound throng, like the embodiment of Fate, is impossible to conjecture. Was his imperturbable soul elated by his overwhelming triumph over Germanic force, or did he accept it with the equanimity of the fatalist as coinciding with the even march of his destiny?

It was during Napoleon's sojourn at Berlin that he hurled his anathema against Britain in the form of the Berlin Decrees, is­sued at Berlin, November 21, 1806, a prelude to the Continental

System, that eventually enforced the closure of every port on the Continent of Europe from St. Petersburg to Cattaro against English commerce. Was an interdiction throughout the annals of history to be compared to this prodigious erection of formidable hostility? That mortal ever had it in his power to band the ener­gies and resources of the civilised world, and marshal its entire battalions under his banner in the interests of his ambition, seems the hallucination of the wildest fantasy, and makes his greatness appear scarcely human in its illimitable immensity.

Napoleon's campaign in Poland in many instances bears a marked similarity to his Oriental expedition, inasmuch as here he is dealing with a people not merely of Oriental stock, but with na­tional characteristics more consistent with the East than the West, and acted forcibly upon their imagination as previously he oper­ated upon the impressibility of the Egyptians. The Poles received the Overlord of Europe with every evidence of enthusiasm, not devoid, however, of an element of awe, begotten from hopes of independence at his hands, and addressed him in terms of fanat­ical adulation, verging upon veneration, as the restorer of their na­tional enfranchisement, more in keeping with the grandiloquence of Oriental than of Western phraseology.

Despite his ambiguous answers to deputations relative to Polish independence, he kept the hope of ultimate deliverance from a hated bondage alive by counselling the Poles to prove themselves in the interim deserving of independence, that perchance their hopes would be consummated in the near future. Meanwhile he drafted into his ranks numbers of Poland's bravest sons, their valour subsequently being amply displayed in many a well-con­tested battle waged in the interests of his glory. True, they saw, later on, the dim reflection of a resuscitated Poland in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, under the rule, if not of one of their nationality, at least of that of a friendly sovereign (a descendant of one of their former kings), Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony. Beyond this mere shadow of independence their prowess brought them little else. As in Egypt, his addresses and promulgations were de­signed to engage the sympathy of the Poles in his projects and

subsequent enterprises. Whether he entertained restoring Polish independence at some future date is open to conjecture. A pow­erful state beyond the Oder, at the threshold of Russia, imbued with feelings of gratitude for its benefactor would, in all proba­bility, have assured his power in Eastern Europe and later, in 1812, helped to stem the Russian advance and seriously weakened the coalition of the nations.

A tinge of the Orient was cast over this campaign by the inter­change of diplomatic relations between the Conqueror of Europe and the Persian Court. A special embassy from the Shah repaired to the beautiful castle of Finkenstein, contiguous to the Vistula, when, after the stubborn fight of Eylau, the Great Captain spent the spring of 1807 in negotiating upon the momentous question that had now become an idiosyncrasy with him, that ever haunted him, whose baneful influence subsequently lured him on to the holocaust of Moscow - the conquest of India.

Even now, nearly 1,000 miles from Paris, after fighting one of the most murderous battles in modern history against an enemy, although technically beaten, till formidable and full of undimin­ished tenacity. Napoleon's thoughts ranged far from his imme­diate base of action to that remote peninsula of gem-like cities, glittering pagodas and enchanted groves, the Mecca of conquerors - India, whose conquest was the quintessence of his unquench­able ambition.

The projects devised at Finkenstein resulted in paving the way to a prospective alliance between Napoleon and the Shah. General Gardane, accompanied by a number of officers, was despatched to the East to inspect the most direct route from the Levant to Delhi, subsequently to examine the harbours on the Persian sea­board, and further commissioned to betake himself to Teheran to concert with the Persian Court the preliminary conditions for the levying of an army, to be joined later by French contingents, for the vast project, commensurate with his ambition - the invasion of India.

Such an enterprise to one of less genius and self-reliance would have seemed more than quixotic, more like the extravagance of a

madman's dream; but to Napoleon, who had drained the cup of unremitted success, before whose ever victorious march and irre­sistible onslaughts the mightiest empires had swayed to their very base, to him this Utopian dream seemed entirely feasible and of­fered no apparent obstacle to his authoritative and imperious will. These vast designs, however, were never to be consummated, the smoke-soiled walls of Moscow and winter's besetting snows rel­egating them to the region of vain dreams and frustrated hopes.

Napoleon's tenacity is made obvious in this campaign, the completeness of his tremendous victories up to Eylau allowing no exigency for a display of his irrepressible doggedness. At Eylau he defied the grim precursor of defeat and gained the battle by sheer strength of will; he won it by a mere margin, his indomitable de­termination barely saving it from being a drawn battle, or maybe something more calamitous. If his tenacity was unbounded at the battle, it was unrivalled after. Few generals sweltering from the stunning blows of a contest so costly in human blood and so sterile in results, would have had the daring to hold to their positions and maintain an attitude of such bold defiance and self-possession as he after Eylau. When one takes into account the immense distance that severed him from his main supports, France, his tenacity seems the audacity of wanton recklessness, and certainly equals, if it does not surpass, that of Frederick the Great, who, at no time of his fluctuating military career, found himself so far removed from his main resources. True, the great Corsican had to all purposes the whole of Europe at his beck and call, and the manhood of a continent to draw upon to fill up the wide breaches inflicted upon his ranks on the snow-covered plain of Eylau, whereas the resources available to Frederick at the best were, in comparison, paltry and insignificant. Yet, however great be the disparity that exists between these two great sons of Mars with regard to the proportion of their respective resources, the tenacity of the victor of Eylau is not thereby invalidated one iota. From a pinnacle whose footing was still precarious, he, unruffled and adamant, hurled a challenge at the confounded and awestruck world that was not, however, accepted until the ensuing summer,

when Friedland's far-echoing guns and the Alle's brownish wa­ters vindicated his daring attitude after Eylau and a continent re­mained to him as the spoil of victory.

Friedland placed Napoleon on a pinnacle of unbounded power heretofore never reached by mortal since Caesar's time. If his power was stupendous after Austerlitz, it was well-nigh complete after Friedland, for in truth he was now master of the civilised world. Germany, Prussia, Austria, and Italy he had conquered. Spain was but a puppet in his hand, and the Colossus of the East, if not reduced to Prussia's and Austria's low estate, that were sup­pliant at his feet, had now been brought to bay and compelled to accede to his conditions. Few victories have been so fraught with dazzling results or opened such a vista of usurpatory expansive­ness, so replete with allurements for human possibilities. True, its results were but transient, yet it is doubtful if any victory has at any time bequeathed to any one such an excess of individual as­cendancy over the destinies of mankind. Marengo and Austerlitz, if viewed from a strictly ulterior standpoint, were perhaps greater victories, but the immediate results of Friedland were indisput­ably more sweeping and world-embracing; his heel was now firm set on the neck of Europe, and his formidable structure, the Continental System, erected for Britain's commercial ruin, was before long to begird nearly the entire Continent. The comple­tion of this prodigious dam, raised to stem the influx of British trade into the Continent, was made possible by the treaty of Tilsit, the crowning result of Friedland - the main rivet to his prepon­derant power in Europe.

Tilsit! This word alone expresses in its fullest significance victory, aspirations fulfilled, labour's aims attained, and world dominion.

On a raft rocked by the waters of the Niemen, upon whose banks the town of Tilsit stands, the Conqueror and Alexander I, Czar of All the Russias, met, with every outward evidence of amity, to treat upon projects touching the future destiny of Europe. The conferences that ensued were held in a neutralised part of Tilsit. The victor of Friedland, with an imperiousness

Encounter between Napoleon and the Czar at Tilsit (1807) on a raft in the middle of the Niemen river.

begot from an elevation of power hardly conceivable, laid down the law that for five years stupefied the intellect and paralysed the energies of mankind.

Alexander, dazzled and completely overruled by Napoleon's genius, was happy to comply with his terms; an alliance, offen­sive and defensive, between the Empires of the West and East, the recognition by the Czar of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, Jerome of Westphalia, and Louis of Holland, the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and the enforcement of the Continental System throughout the Czar's dominions (in the event of Britain's refusal to accept Russia's mediation), being the fundamental ar­ticles of the treaty, ratified July 7, 1807. England having refused

to negotiate, the Czar on the 8th of November of the same year adopted the Continental System.

The creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, erected as a buffer state between the Empires of the West and East, carved out of the Polish provinces acquired by Prussia in the partitions of 1793-5 and conferred upon Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony, who after Jena had been raised by Bonaparte to the dignity of king, stimulated the chivalric spirit of the Poles in his cause. This modicum of independence, equivocal as it was, being a promise of eventual complete autonomy, no wonder the Poles greeted Tilsit as the luminary of the dawn of a revived independence and viewed Napoleon in the light of a liberator.

Such a power as Napoleon now wielded bewilders the mind. When we consider that fifteen years antecedently the name of him who now dictated to Europe, whose word was law to kings, was unknown to the world, the rapidity of his rise to the topmost pin­nacle of fame and pre-eminence astounds the intellect. Reviewing his career up to Tilsit, we first behold the lean, uncouth, keen-fea­tured youth, in garrison at Valence, becoming General of Artillery, then, at an age when few have as yet obtained their captaincy, General in Chief of the army of Italy. From general and conqueror we see him ruler of France and controller of her destinies, and later Emperor of the West, Suzerain Lord of Europe. The phases of his extraordinary career follow one another in such rapid suc­cession that the mind is perplexed thereby, their undeviating march towards a higher goal reminding us of the laws that regulate the principles of evolution. Had he been born in the purple with a kingdom as a heritage, his rise to such vast power, even then, would have appeared phenomenal, but he had to win his way from the first rung of the ladder, and had he accomplished naught else than dominating France, his genius would have been egregious. But when, in addition, we behold him, who erstwhile had been but a simple lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere, mastering a conti­nent, bestowing kingdoms on his Paladins, and raising his kindred to the level of Europe's proudest dynasties, then his greatness is immeasurable and baffles the understanding. [...]

Napoleon's mental vitality is truly astounding; his activity is ever at par and never flags. One would have thought after a cam­paign of near a year's duration, whose tide had surged from one extremity of Europe to the other, involving the destruction of Prussia and the defeat of Russia, that even his indefatigable spirit would have sought respite, if but for a spell, from the arduous strain of war. But, nay, this restless, overweening soul, urged on by his inexorable resolution to bring about the destruction of Britain through the Continental System, must needs again em­bark in fresh and remote adventures. During his return journey from Tilsit he sends the Prince Regent of Portugal the alternative of joining the Continental System and seizing all British subjects and their property or the consequences of a war with him. To in­timidate that kingdom he assembles an army corps at Bayonne, in readiness for eventualities. Although the Prince Regent acceded to all Napoleon's demands (save that regarding the apprehen­sion of British subjects and the confiscation of their property) he declared war against Portugal and ordered an army, under the command of Junot, to march upon Lisbon. Spain being virtu­ally a vassal of the Conqueror, was eager to join her legions to those of the invaders, which were advancing by forced marches through the northern provinces of Spain upon Portugal. Two days before the entry of the French into Lisbon the Prince Regent, the Queen and Royal Household made good their escape on a British squadron to Brazil, abandoning the kingdom to the French.

Napoleon's attention was next directed to the Pope. Pius VII refusing to break with Britain by adopting the Continental System, he seized the Papal lands bordering upon the Adriatic, joining them to his kingdom of Italy. Napoleon's power in the Italian peninsula now extended from the Alps to the uttermost point of Calabria.

The disorders of Spain and her distracted condition gave Napoleon a motive for interposing in the affairs of that unhappy land and ultimately of arrogating to himself the crown of Spain and the Indies. Already the north and west of the peninsula were in his grasp, large bodies of troops having crossed the Pyrenees,

which, under the pretext of keeping communications open with Junot's forces in Portugal, had introduced themselves into nearly every important fortress of the north and west. The advance of Vlurat upon Madrid, and the report of a contemplated annexation of the northern provinces to France and the deposition of the Spanish Bourbons by Bonaparte, induced the Royal Household to prepare for flight to America, which was, however, frustrated by the sailing of a French squadron to Cadiz, to intercept them, and the coup d'etat of Aranjuez, which terminated in the abdica­tion of the aged king, Charles IV, in favour of his son Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, who, disgusted with the shameful relations of the Queen, Maria Louisa of Naples, his mother, with her minion, the hated Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, had not merely con­nived at, but had been the prime instigator of, the insurrection of Aranjuez. The events that followed - the entry of Murat into Madrid, the wholesale abduction of the Royal Family to Bayonne, their subsequent banishment into ignominious exile, the surrender of the crown of Spain into the Conqueror's hands and his nomi­nation of his brother Joseph, then King of Naples, to the vacant throne - are for sordidness unique in history. Without the firing of a shot the Royal House of Spain and the Indies had ceased to reign. These arbitrary proceedings on Napoleon's part were un­worthy of so rare a genius. As in everything he ever undertook, he here displayed consummate ability, tarnished, alas! by a duplicity and insidiousness hardly consistent with the majesty of his other bewildering exploits, alien to his bold, assertive nature. [...]

The Orient was like an alluring vision ever before Napoleon's eyes. By the conquest of India, conjoined with the Continental System, he hoped eventually to bring Britain to her knees. The subjugation of India meant to him not merely his most cherished hope realised, but, moreover, the death-blow to the only Power that as yet he had failed to conquer or humble, and that still pre­sumed to defy him. The amicable feelings engendered between himself and Alexander I at Tilsit had lost much of their primeval zeal by his emphatic refusal to withdraw his forces from Silesia until Alexander had reciprocally recalled his from the Danubian

Congress of Erfurt, September 1808. Napoleon (1) and Alexander (2) in the midst of the "Court of Kings"

Provinces. The Autocrat of the East, taking umbrage at what he viewed as a menace, Bonaparte, to dispel the cloud that now dimmed their waning friendship, modified his attitude towards him and wrote him a letter full of dazzling allurements, wherein his proposal of a Franco-Russian expedition for an invasion of India was calculated to impress the imaginative susceptibilities of the Muscovite ruler and memorise the concordant note of Tilsit. Despite the terrible wounds sustained at Austerlitz, which nearly three years had scarcely healed, and her crippled condition, Austria had secretly, but steadily, prepared her armaments for a desperate blow for liberty. This intelligence, combined with the miscarriage of his plans in Spain, the stubborn resistance of the Spaniards, who refused to acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte for their king, and which for the nonce demanded his urgent attention, made him desirous for a closer unity with the Czar. For this purpose, and

to gain his assurance of checking Austria in any hostile move she might undertake against him while his hands were full with the Spanish imbroglio, he proposed a meeting between himself and Alexander for the guaranty of the latter's support in his Spanish projects and the holding of Austria in check.

Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, was designated as the meeting­place between the Emperors of the West and East. In this ancient city the destiny of nations was to be decided; there to receive the Suzerain Lord of Europe, to manifest their fealty to him, to lend additional exuberance to the scenic effect were his vassals the kings, princes, and margraves of the Rhenish Confederation in gorgeous galaxy. Of this brilliant constellation of crowned heads Napoleon was the cynosure, the irradiating point, the lu­minary round which they with their followers seemed to rotate, as the planets with their attendant satellites revolve around the sun. There in the blaze of the pageantry of Erfurt, in this parade of kings, where seventy independent princes waited attendance upon him, he was the pivot of the world's political system, its centre of gravity, so to speak, to whom all the pomp, all the intel­lect of humanity seemed irresistibly attracted.

Bonaparte took up his abode in the palace of Count d'Alberg, Prince Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine. The two Emperors, surrounded by a glittering retinue, outwardly mani­fested as at Tilsit every evidence of friendship. Although to the superficial eye the sun of Erfurt shone with a splendour equal to that of Tilsit, although the chase, the theatre and receptions saw the two Emperors apparently united as formerly by the bonds of concord and good-will, yet to the keen observer a speck was discernible upon the luminary's disc which indicated that a dis­cordant note has been struck in the air of Tilsit. Alexander was provoked that the conqueror still retained his hold upon Silesia, and regarded the occupation of the fortresses of Kustrim, Stettin, and Glogau, on the Oder, by French troops as a menace to the security of Russia; moreover, he emphatically refused to coerce Austria. This obdurate attitude towards his ally was emphasised by the prorogation of his Oriental projects, which, ever since the

ecstatic days of Tilsit, had fired his imagination, the golden visions then opened to his gaze having so far proved but idle and illusory dreams, Bonaparte assigning their execution to a future period when events should declare themselves mature for the carrying into effect of his own ambitious designs. In fact, the interviews between the two Emperors were vitiated by cavil and discord. On one occasion Bonaparte lost his temper at the Czar's pertinacious refusal to browbeat Austria, already sufficiently reduced in po­litical estate. A display of anger in any being is an exhibition one would prefer not witness, for then even the most impotent of mortals is at his worst, in the most ominous, not to say formi­dable, phase which physically and mentally the human composi­tion can assume. What, therefore, must have been the impression upon the senses of the most consummate of mental organisations the modern world has ever known, who even in his calmest mo­ments inspired others with awe - the enslaver of Europe, the trampler of thrones, the extirpator of dynasties, the king of kings, mastered by the fury of ungovernable ire? Here Napoleon's im­perious nature is revealed; he could not brook opposition to his inflexible will; his uninterrupted triumphs over man were mainly responsible for this aversion to any but his own views. This ex­hibition of wrath failed to intimidate the inexorable Autocrat of the East or to ruffle his equanimity, and the utmost Bonaparte succeeded in exacting from him was a promise of his support against Austria in the event of his being attacked by that Power, and his recognition of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. On his side, Napoleon unwillingly consented to lower the war indemnity upon Prussia to 4,800,000 Pounds, and allowed the Czar a free hand in Finland and the Danubian Provinces, with the stipula­tion, however, that the integrity of Turkey should remain intact, but, as a reprisal to Alexander for not acquiescing with his hostile designs against Austria, he stubbornly refused to withdraw his forces from the line of the Oder.

Such, in brief, were the results of the interview of Erfurt, which, for metaphysical reasons and dramatic effect, stands con­spicuous in the annals of history. Never before were the destinies

of the human race so dependent upon the whim of a single human being. To the philosopher, psychologist, and alchemist this stage in Bonaparte's wondrous and inexplicable career will ever yield material of all-absorbing interest.

The influence of Napoleon's genius was not merely effica­cious in a political sense, but moreover cast its hypnotic spell over the literary mind of Germany. Both Goethe and Wieland were completely captivated by the magic of mental faculties well-nigh superhuman in their intellectual energy. That Goethe, the most supreme intellect of the age next to Napoleon, should not merely have succumbed to his genius but tacitly believed in his moral, doctrinal, and remedial signification (remedial as far as Germany in particular was concerned) is a psychological coincidence, prob­ably without a simile throughout the history of human nature. It may seem dissonant, nay, inconceivable, that a true patriot, dwelling in the midst of his country's humiliation, who beheld it in the throes of agony and defeat, and witnessed its national spirit trodden down by the weight of exotic oppression, could for an instant contemplate the author thereof with a benign eye and yield irredeemably to his influence; but when in Goethe we behold not merely a prodigious intellect but furthermore one of the world's greatest poets, this inordinate infatuation seems more than paradoxical, so abstruse is it (at least from a superficial standpoint), and for that very reason is it of still more profound interest on account of its apparent inexplicability; for from one point of view this infatuation (after all, by what other appellation can this total submissiveness of mind to Bonaparte be called ?) is undoubtedly inexplicable. It is difficult, nay, well-nigh impossible, to conceive the poetic temperament captivated by the personality of the suppressor of national spirit to the degree that Goethe was. It is not easy to picture a Dante, a Shelley, a Byron, a Keats, or any other poet for that matter, passively accepting the oblitera­tion of his country's national spirit as a philosophical, moral, and political necessity and inclining before the intellectual force of the oppressor; however, from a psychological aspect, the influence that Bonaparte exercised over Goethe is sufficiently intelligible.

Discerning further than most of his contemporaries, the great poet saw, prophet-like, the moral indispensableness to Germany of the Napoleonic regime and was convinced of its seeming ir­resistibility and therefore resigned himself to the inevitable; and later the loud tocsin of the war of liberation, when an embattled world had risen against the erstwhile master of Europe, scarcely roused him from the quiescence of his literary meditations. Besides, there can be little doubt that the magnificence of the pag­eant of Erfurt must have impressed the wild imagination of the creator of "Faust" and strengthened his belief in the infallibility of the mighty Conqueror. However, allowance must be made for Bonaparte's extraordinary personal charm that entirely captivated whoever came in immediate contact with him. Even his bitterest enemies succumbed to the hypnotic power of his individuality. Alexander, at Tilsit (with sword still imbued with the blood of Friedland), was completely overpowered by his genius, and even Englishmen felt its influence, Fox and Lord Holland, among others, yielding to its potent spell. The crew of the Bellerophon, that bore the subverter of empires to the horrors of an exile that has forever sullied the page of England's glorious history, suc­cumbed to the magnetic force of his personality. Would his suf­ferings on that desolate rock, circummured by the billows of the Southern Ocean, have been mollified had some of the wiseacres in the British Government come within the orbit of his strenuous personality?

From the splendour of Erfurt, the sycophancy of kings, the ad­ulation of poets. Napoleon marches southwards for the conquest of Spain, where the talismanic power of his presence alone could restore lustre to his eagles. With the exception of the defence of the Somosierra Pass, his advance through the rugged mountains of Navarre and Castile met with little opposition, the storming of this strong position, which defended the approach to Madrid, and Lannes' victory at Tudela being the only brilliant passage of arms in this campaign. At the storming of the Somosierra the Polish contingent in Napoleon's service contributed largely towards assuring the victory; supported by 'infantry and cavalry of the

Guard, they carried the defile, driving the defenders in utter rout before them. On December 4, 1808, Madrid opened her gates to the Conqueror. The ardour with which the Poles fought and the reckless daring they displayed sufficiently emphasises their devo­tion to Napoleon, stimulated to the highest pitch by the hope that their superb heroism would ere long earn them their country's complete independence. Napoleon's procrastination with regard to the restitution of Polish independence is strangely unintelli­gible. The independence of Poland might have, if not averted, at least greatly mitigated, the disastrous consequences of the Russian campaign of 1812, and perhaps protracted his fall indefinitely.

Decidedly the Fates seem to have been adverse to Napoleon as far as Britain was concerned, for if ever a chance of inflicting a crushing blow to British arms lay within his reach, it was during this campaign. Just when he seemed about overwhelming Sir John Moore (after a hot pursuit through Castile and Leon) at Astorga, serious news of the aggressive attitude of Austria made him relinquish the pursuit and hasten back to France to open the wonderful campaign of 1809, terminating in his second conquest of Austria. A victory over his most persistent and implacable enemy, invulnerable in her ocean realm, would have completed his crown of glory. He who had lorded it over so many nations, over Austrians, Turks, Italians, Prussians, Spaniards, Poles, Swiss, Dutch, Germans, and Russians, was denied ever to triumph over Britons, for a reason obvious enough, forasmuch as (without reckoning the siege of Toulon) since his reverse at Acre he but once found himself face to face with the red coats - on the fatal field of Waterloo. However much Moore's escape must have galled Napoleon, he yet had the satisfaction of beholding for the first and only time a British army in full retreat before his ever victorious eagles.

On April 11, 1809, Bonaparte left Paris to anticipate the Austrian onslaught in the plains of Bavaria. He reached the scene of hostilities in time to extricate his widely separated outposts from imminent peril, the Archduke Charles (his former oppo­nent in Italy) having advanced in superior force and threatened

The battle of Wagram, by Horace Vernet

the French positions extending from Ratisbon to the vicinage of Augsburg. By a series of masterly tactics Bonaparte brought his dispersed divisions together, and after defeating the Archduke in several engagements completely overthrew him at Eckmuhl; three weeks later Napoleon's headquarters were at Schoenbrunn.

These operations, ending in Napoleon's second occupation of Vienna, are among the most sublime in the history of warfare. Never was his genius as a strategist more brilliant or convincing. The celerity with which he executed those intricate evolutions culminating in Eckmuhl is well-nigh incredible. In less than a month from the outbreak of hostilities by his superhuman genius he had cleared Southern Germany of the enemy and virtually re­conquered Austria.

Before Austria's final overthrow at Wagram Napoleon's perti­nacity was put to a severe test, and, but for his iron will, his star might not have set at Waterloo, and Moscow's flame vesture might not have been Europe's beacon of liberty, won over the bones of half a million of men. At Aspern and Essling he met with a check which, but for his indomitable tenacity and Austria's inexplicable inertia, might have involved him in an irretrievable disaster, and maybe hastened the mighty tragedy of his titanic headlong fall.

How severe was the check Napoleon received on the Danube may be judged by the lapse of time intervening between his de­feat (for defeated he unquestionably was) at Aspern and Essling and his mighty triumph on the plain of Wagram - an interval of six weeks - an eternity to this condenser of time, who in 1799 amalgamated, within the space of a month, the overthrow of the Directory and his elevation to the Consulship, who in the fol­lowing year, in even less time, reconquered Italy in one campaign, and in 1806, at Jena, shattered the might of Prussia in a day - achievements each of which would have sufficed to accredit his name to the realm of immortality.

Aspern was Napoleon's first defeat in the open field during thirteen years of triumphs, Caldiero and Acre being eliminated, as the former can scarcely be called a defeat and the latter was not a battle at all. He had not won twenty-five victories over nearly

every nation of the Old World without having come to consider himself invincible, hence it is not surprising he refused to accept Aspern as a defeat or his compact with victory broken. This con­fidence in his "star," in his invulnerability, endued him with the apathy and arrogance, so to speak, of the subverter of empires, which, when confronted (as at Eylau and now at Aspern) by a task that demanded all his superhuman energies and resolution to overcome, evolved itself into undeterred, unflinching tenacity.

Napoleon's strategic genius has never been questioned; by nearly every one he is deemed the greatest exponent of the art of war in the modern world. In the grandeur of his military concep­tions - in the astounding results of his overwhelming victories, in the vastness of the area of his evolutions (with perhaps the exception of Alexander), he is without an equal; yet, because of Leipzig, where he was outnumbered by two to one and, moreover, betrayed - because of Waterloo, where he was in his decline, a foundering ship - his tenacity by some is held in depreciation. In the catastrophic results of these stupendous defeats they seem to ignore his self-control at Marengo, when all seemed lost - his dogged pertinacity at Eylau, where he was an ace from defeat - his undaunted attitude after Aspern, where he was actually defeated - his irrepressible resolution to attain his goal after the butchery of Borodino - his illusory hopes amidst the flames of immolated Moscow - his persistency after such barren victories as Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden - his suicidal obduracy during the negoti­ations of Chatillon - his sisyphean, yet glorious struggle in 1814 against the coalesced armies of embattled Europe. Leipzig, ter­rible as were its consequences, did not deter him from defying the retributive host of the Allies advancing to overwhelm him, and even Waterloo failed to reduce his intrepidity; for on his return to Paris, after the fatal June 18, 1815, he was still full of confidence as to the final issue, and without doubt, had France stood by him at that crucial hour, would have struck a last blow to retrieve his lost supremacy.

Napoleon's position after Aspern was yet more critical than after Eylau; not only was he defeated, but his prestige was at stake.

Aspern revived the hopes of agonising Europe; at last Napoleon was found to be vulnerable like ordinary mortals - any wonder he mustered up the sum total of his resolution for a telling blow, and under the aegis of his "star" felt confident of the final issue? Meanwhile the terrible losses in his ranks, sustained at Aspern, were made good by reinforcements drawn from France, Germany, and Italy, so that before long the Conqueror, with forces numeri­cally superior to those of the enemy, was ready to deal the blow that was to close this memorable campaign. By means of bridges of boats his whole army crossed from the island of Lobau (where he had retired after Aspern) to the left bank of the Danube, out­flanking the Austrian earthworks. The crossing was effected in safety in the early morning of July 5, 1809, despite a storm that forwarned the titanic struggle waged on the following day under the spires of Vienna. On July 6th the fate of the Austrian Empire, of Europe, was confirmed at Wagram, and Napoleon's supremacy over the Continent reasserted. For the ensuing three years Europe endured the incubus of his colossal power. Had Austria taken full advantage of her opportunity, of Napoleon's precarious situation after Aspern, had she evinced some of his indomitable resolution, and had he been imbued with less, the world might have been spared the desolating wars of 1812-13-14-15. This, in many re­spects the most glorious of Napoleon's immortal campaigns, af­fords an admirable opportunity for an analysis of his marvellous endowments in the science of war. Here all the phases consonant with military genius in its most transcendent form - daring initia­tive, mathematical precision, celerity, remorseless tenacity - are saliently displayed, pervaded by a solemn majesty that invests this campaign with an interest that holds the mind enthralled. This in­terest is attributable to two reasons: Firstly, Napoleon was now in his prime, and had all but reached the culminating point, the apex of his power; his military genius was at its solstice. The opera­tions that preceded the battle of Eckmuhl were in his opinion the most dexterous of his incomparable military career (could anyone be more competent to judge of his own achievements than he?). Secondly, this is the last campaign terminating auspiciously for

himself - the last of that succession of world-subduing wars, the last in which Fortune kept true to him. Thenceforth she aban­doned her favourite for ever, and all his succeeding wars, despite his superhuman efforts and unimpaired genius, closed as fatally as his previous ones had proved overwhelmingly successful. [...]

The treaty of Schoenbrunn, that deprived Austria of 45,000 square miles of territory, and nearly four millions of people, closed the war of 1809, and was signed at Schoenbrunn, October 14th of the same year. By this treaty Austria ceded to the Confederation of the Rhine Salzburg and part of Upper Austria; to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Cracow and Western Galicia; to Russia part of Eastern Galicia; to the French Empire Trieste, Carniola, Friuli, and parts of Dalmatia and Croatia, which (subsequently enlarged by the addition of Ragusa, Istria, and Cattaro) together now formed the Illyrian Provinces. The Tyrol was apportioned between Bavaria, the Illyrian Provinces, and the kingdom of Italy; besides she recognised Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, agreed to pay an indemnity of 3,400,000 Pounds, reduced her army to 150,000 men, and guaranteed to exclude all British products. Crushing as these conditions were, those Bonaparte imposed upon Prussia at Tilsit were yet more intolerable. If he tore from Austria some of her fairest provinces, he practically dislimbed Prussia; if he taxed Austria with an indemnity of 3,400,000 Pounds, he ground Prussia down with one of close upon 5,000,000 Pounds; if he cut down Austria's army to 150,000 men, he reduced Frederick's proud legions to 42,000 men. Moreover, every fortress in the Prussian monarchy had been converted into a French garrison. The terms Napoleon meted out to Austria at Schoenbrunn were, short of absolute conquest, as galling as any ever prescribed by victor to vanquished. In the case of Prussia entire conquest would have been immeasurably more merciful, and yet the fact that Napoleon conceded to Prussia and Austria their independence, that he spared them from annihilation - that he granted the Houses of Brandenburg and Hapsburg even a valetudinarian reign - shows that, stupendous as his power was, he yet eschewed exerting it to its utmost limit; for, after Austerlitz, and again after Wagram,

what could have precluded him from dethroning Francis II, or, after Tilsit, from overthrowing the unstable throne of Frederick's successor?

That Napoleon was grasping and unprincipled (what conqueror in the true sense of the word can fail being this?) is undeniably true, but that he might easily have been considerably more so is equally true, and this fact has hardly ever been acknowledged by even unbiased writers, for to nine-tenths of humanity Bonaparte is the acme of unlicensed rapacity and despotism - the very soul of all that is iniquitous. To them the conqueror of Italy, of Germany, of Austria, of Prussia, of Poland, of Spain, of Portugal, the suppressor of Dutch independence, the jailer of the Pope, the master of three-fourths of Europe, had in truth quaffed the cup of success to the very end; what more could he desire? [...]

Although we are not endeavouring to minimise Napoleon's inordinate ambition, yet it is a remarkable fact, and indeed a par­adox, that in none of his wars, with the exception of the Spanish, and perhaps the Russian war of 1812, was he, the mightiest of all conquerors, really the aggressor. Even those who cannot find a single good point in Napoleon's character, who have endeav­oured to sully his memory with the blackest accusations, who have charged him with the turpitudes of a Tiberius, of a Nero, of a Borgia, must own this. In the Austerlitz campaign it was Russia and Austria, bribed by English gold, that were the aggressors. In the Jena campaign it was Prussia that first declared war. Napoleon entered upon the Polish war to repel the advancing Russians, the champions of stricken Prussia. In the campaign of Wagram it was Austria that again was the aggressor by invading Bavaria, a member of the Rhenish Confederation and therefore virtually a part of Napoleon's empire. In 1813-14-15 Napoleon had to fight against the banded world for his very existence.

In his first Italian war of 1796-7 he was only executing the mandates of the Directory. The campaign of Marengo was really a war of restitution, for at Marengo Napoleon merely restored to France his conquests of three years anteriorly and reasserted her supremacy in Italy. Although so rarely the agressor, yet Napoleon

took every advantage of his overwhelming successes, for every war extended the limits of his Empire, as it fired his ambition, until nothing seemed insuperable to him, nothing beyond his possi­bilities. His whole career of conquest, his astounding exploits and superhuman efforts are succinctly summed up in his own words - "Les circonstances en me suscitant des guerres m'ont fourni les moyens d'agrandir mon empire et je ne les ai pas negligees." (By bringing out wars circumstances have given me the means to enlarge my empire and I did not neglect them).

That Napoleon was despotic, that many of his measures were even tyrannical, is undoubtedly true, but at the same time his des­potism was not a legitimate despotism transmitted from a genera­tion of tyrants and sanctioned by all the laws of society and equity. Napoleon's despotism was not that of a Henry VIII, of a Charles V, or of a Louis XIV Whereas Henry, Charles, and Louis wielded a despotism derived exclusively from the divine right of kings, that which Bonaparte exercised was an individual despotism exerted against the old dynastic institutions of Europe and vindicative of the rights of the people; for did he not spring from the people? Napoleon's name, instead of being execrated by the great mass of humanity, should be blessed, for he is the avenger of humanity, the subverter of the arbitrary prerogatives of legitimate kingship. Napoleon is the greatest example of the complete triumph of the rights of the people over kingcraft that the world has yet seen. This man, who rose from nothing - this self-made king, despot that he was, tyrant that he was, stands forth as the champion of the unshackled freedom of the human will. At Marengo, at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Friedland, at Wagram, he fought (although unbeknown to himself) as much for the rights of the people as for his own glory and ambition. Napoleon's career is a testimony that life, even to the humblest of mankind, is not without hope. Bonaparte was not Emperor of France but Emperor of the French, he was the people's Emperor - they made him such; he was the man of their choice. This great king-maker made his kings out of clay. The crowns of Spain, Holland, and Westphalia he bestowed upon his brothers Joseph, Louis, and Jerome. Eugene Beauharnais, his

stepson, he made Viceroy of Italy. Murat, the inn-keeper's son, he seated upon the throne of Naples. He exalted the people, upon them he lavished titles, gifts, and honours. Fame and glory were 'within the reach of the meanest of his subjects; ability and bravery in the humblest subaltern were sufficient credentials to a mar­shal's baton, a dukedom, or a principality - were not his mar­shals sprung from the people? His munificence was not restricted to the lowly but extended to the great, he even exalted the great - his German vassals, the Electors of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony he raised to the dignity of kings. That Napoleon ruled France with a grip of iron is true, but that he was a despot in the sense that Charles V was a despot is false. He who calls the man who instituted the Code, who stamped down the bigotry, who gave all men, even the very humblest, equal rights, who threw open all the avenues of distinction to all men - he, we re­peat, who calls this man who did all this a tyrant is stupid. To call Napoleon a usurper is fatuous; he had no hand in the overthrow of the Bourbons; when he entered the arena of events the crown of France was lying in the mire, the French people picked it out of the mire and placed it upon his brow, upon the head of him whose incomparable exploits had earned it for him. Napoleon was no more a usurper than were William III or Bernadotte usurpers.

Surely since Napoleon's advent the old order of things in Europe had been sufficiently convulsed, the world had been treated to sufficient surprises, and dumfounded, it beheld the work of centuries compressed within the space of little more than a decade. Since first he unsheathed his conquering sword in the plain of Piedmont, what mighty changes had metamorphosed the face of Europe! Venice, the former mistress of the Adriatic, is struck down by the victor of Ancola and Rivoli, never to rise again, and later to be incorporated in his kingdom of Italy - the chrysalis of Italian unity. The Conqueror of Italy and the East becomes ruler of France, Emperor of the West, the Holy Roman Empire crumbles under the shock of Austerlitz, and out of its fragments the arbiter of Europe shapes an assemblage of states under his jurisdiction - the Confederation of the Rhine. Five

states are raised to kingdoms - Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Holland, and Westphalia - the crowns of the last two being conferred upon his brothers Louis and Jerome, that of Holland upon Louis, of Westphalia upon Jerome. The Royal Houses of Spain, Portugal, and Naples are bereft of their thrones, which are assigned, the former to Joseph Bonaparte, the latter to Joachim Murat; the House of Braganza is driven from Portugal. On the Vistula the Grand Duchy of Warsaw suggests the future indepen­dence of Poland, and, to crown all, the Continental System en­circles Europe from the shores of the Baltic to the Adriatic. Yet an event was to follow these that demonstrates how far Napoleon's ambition dare carry him. It was not enough that he had trampled every state in Europe, humbled all her potentates, imprisoned the Royal House of Spain and the Indies, proscribed those of Portugal and Naples. The Holy See, that for centuries had proudly dictated to emperors and kings, was now to bow before his irresistible power. At Vienna, about two months before Wagram, Napoleon issued a decree declaring the temporal power of the Pope at an end, which annexed Rome, with the residue of the Papal States, to his Empire, constituting Rome the second city of France. In the following year Plus VII was conveyed a prisoner to Savona, and later ostracised to Fontainebleau, where he spent the remaining two years of his captivity. Thus at one blow was the temporal power of the Pope expunged, to remain virtually in abeyance for the next five years, during which time one might well affirm that the Papacy had ceased to be. Never had the Court of Rome sunk so low. [...]

It seems anomalous that he who had re-established the Church in France, the author of the Concordat, should have brought such detriment upon the head of him by whose hands he had been anointed Emperor of the West. Harsh though Napoleon's treat­ment of the Pope may have been, we must bear in mind that in no wise can he ever have felt beholden to Pius VII, or to the Vatican for that matter, for at Paris the Pontiff officiated at his coronation more or less under duress, and it is very much to be doubted, had circumstances been otherwise than what they were, had the Pope

Pius VII. On the right, he sits powerless while Napoleon crowns his wife. Below a portrait of him by French painter David

been a free agent, if such acquiescence to Napoleon's mandates would have been manifested by the head of the Catholic world, if even the Concordat, with its stringent " Organic Articles," would have been accepted by Rome. Indeed, it was Pius' refusal to adopt the Continental System that led to Napoleon's seizure of his Adriatic provinces in 1808, to the ultimate annexation of Rome to the French Empire, and to his confinement at Fontainebleau.

The seizure of the Papal States and of Rome, the Pope's deten­tion in France, were, after all, procedures not a jot more arbitrary than the invasion of Portugal, the conquest of Naples and Spain,

the deposition of the House of Braganza and of the Neapolitan Bourbons, or the guileful subversion of the Royal House of Spain. Napoleon's contempt for legitimate rights was supreme; he wished to be paramount throughout the length and breadth of Italy and in Rome above all; being master of so many realms, why should he not likewise be master of the cradle of dominion - the city of the Caesars? Had the Grand Seignior ruled in Rome, he would have dethroned him with as little compunction as he did the Pope. The annexation of Rome to his Empire, therefore, was an event that indubitably would have come to pass irrespective of all. the Popes that ever were. [...]

After the treaty of Schoenbrunn (with the exception of the Spanish Peninsula) the Continent lay inert at the feet of Napoleon; surely now was the time to quash the Spanish resistance and drive the red-coats into the sea! Had Napoleon marched into Spain at the head of his seasoned troops, the veterans of Eckmul and Wagram, had he in person consummated the work interrupted by the war of 1809, in lieu of entrusting the military operations in Spain to his disunited generals, the roll of British glory would not have been swelled by many victories.

It seems incredible that two years - two years of incessant warfare - should have elapsed without Napoleon once setting foot upon Spanish soil. This abstention from the scene of op­erations is all the more extraordinary as his armies, commanded by some of his most competent generals, Massena being of the number, had suffered a succession of crushing defeats. There is little doubt that Napoleon underrated both the national move­ment in Spain and the generalship of the British commanders, Wellington not excepted, which accounts for his optimism as re­garded the final result of the war, and his inordinate reliance on the efficiency of his subordinates to cope with the situation. He can hardly be blamed for his poor opinion of the military capacity of his enemies when compared with his unrivalled mastery of the science of war. Whoever had ventured so far to cross swords with him had, all in turn, succumbed to his superior genius; hence his contempt for the Sepoy General (as he disdainfully dubbed

Wellington) is not to be wondered at; yet, however much he may have despised the military skill of the "Iron Duke," his blind confidence in his marshals to eventually succeed in clearing the Peninsula of the British was, in the face of events, both misplaced and unwarranted. He must have seen that where such a strategist as Massena had failed, his presence was indispensable. Had he, in­stead of recalling Massena, joined him on the Portuguese frontier, after the latter's defeat at Fuentes d'Onoro, the operations in the Peninsula would have assumed a very different character.

The events that transpired from the treaty of Schoenbrunn to the close of 1810, Napoleon's divorce of Josephine and marriage with Marie-Louise, his annexation of Holland, the Hans Towns, Oldenburg, and Hanoverian sea-board, and the consolidation of the Continental System, were certainly of sufficient weight to detain him in France; but therefrom to the close of 1811 there was naught to justify his non-appearance beyond the Pyrenees. During this time no events occurred outside Spain that deserved as much of his attention as did those that were then transpiring on the border of Spain and Portugal, although it is true that his relations with Russia during 1811 were anything but amicable, and indeed in the summer of that year they well-nigh reached a climax. Yet, despite even the ominous clouds that then loomed darkly on his Eastern horizon, he can hardly be exonerated for his apparent laxity with respect to the state of affairs south of the Ebro. Indeed, the storm that was fast brewing beyond the Niemen should have been, if anything, an incitement to him to bring affairs in the Peninsula to a prompt conclusion.

Undoubtedly, the Russian war of 1812 was a fatal mistake, nay, an act of sheer folly. To enter upon a war whose goal lay 1,500 miles away on the confines of civilisation, and that synchronised with the severe defeats of his marshals in the Peninsula by the Anglo-Spanish armies under Wellington, was, to say the least, sui­cidal policy on Napoleon's part. But to Napoleon was this war a mistake, whose disastrous results he certainly could never have foreseen? If ever mortal felt fully assured of success, or was justly entitled in feeling so, it was Napoleon when he embarked upon

this war with nearly the whole of Europe marching in his train. Such a display of military might as he was now prepared to hurl upon Russia had never yet been seen by the modern world. The mighty army, numbering over half a million of men, which he was about to lead into Russia, represented well-nigh the sum total of the embattled might of Christendom. In the summer of 1812 every legion between the Pyrenees, the Straits of Messina, and the Niemen was ranged under his banner in the grandest mili­tary pageant history has ever seen. Is it therefore surprising if, at the head of such a host, he felt invincible, felt himself, fatalist that he was, the controller of his own destiny? Moscow taken meant to him the destruction of Russia, Russia destroyed meant the conquest of Asia. To drive the British into the sea, to reduce Spain and Portugal to submission, would then be but child's play; and from Moscow he would march upon India, like a second Alexander, there to effect the ruin of England. This may seem hyperbolic, but to Napoleon, who as yet (with the exception of his Syrian campaign) had never failed in any venture he had ever undertaken, all this seemed well within the purview of possibility. To him who in the course of nine short years had brought the greater part of Europe under his sway, who held all her kings in leash, the conquest of Russia must have seemed assured, her fate decreed - how could he fail to succeed - he, the lord of all the cohorts of Western, Southern, and Central Europe? There is no doubt that Napoleon reckoned upon bringing the Russian war to a triumphant conclusion by the autumn of 1812. The over­throw of Russia would have enabled him in the beginning of 1813 to consummate the conquest of Spain and Portugal, begun nearly four years anteriorly. And then he could turn to the East, whose golden portals would be open to him, beyond which would stretch the road that would lead him to the conquest of India, to the conquest of England, for through India would he achieve her fall. But Bonaparte and the Fates were now no longer in accord - they ordained otherwise. Had Moscow not been sacrificed, unquestionably these dreams, bewildering in their extravagance, might have been fulfilled; a city's ruin sufficed to shatter them

and overthrow the dreamer - her doom was essential to the de­liverance of a world.

To assert that Napoleon's conquests, that his stupendous wars, were inspired mainly on account of England, on account of his firm resolution to achieve her downfall through the Continent, is an erroneous assumption, but this does not imply that his conquests were not to a considerable extent provoked by his animosity towards Britain. Was not his Egyptian expedition in a measure a hit point blank at England? Once master of Egypt, was he not in possession of the key to India? Were not the treaties of Tilsit and Schoenbrunn followed by the enforcement of his "System" throughout Europe? Was not Britain's very existence menaced, her doom promulgated to the world by the Berlin and Milan Decrees? It is certain, therefore, that his rancour towards his great enemy spurred him on his quite infernal course of con­quest, and doubtless his dream of ruining England through the Continental System tended to accelerate the ardour of his de­vouring ambition.

Indirectly the Russian war of 1812 originated really on account of England. Without the Continental System this disastrous war might never have been, Napoleon's "System" being mainly the cause of his breach with the Czar. However much Napoleon's wars may have been incited by his hatred of "perfidious Albion," it would be puerile to assert that he subjugated the Continent solely because of her. To affirm this would that he conquered Europe, enslaved her, to achieve the ruin of one nation - a ridicu­lous hypothesis. Is it conceivable that but for England Napoleon would never have been numbered among the world's mightiest conquerors? Is it easy to conceive him, whose ambition perhaps even surpassed Alexander's, with aspirations limited to those of Hannibal? ... Napoleon's views embraced a prospect infinitely vaster, by far more dazzling and seducing than the mere conquest of England, mighty and invincible as England was. From earliest manhood the realm of dominion stretched alluringly before him. The shades of his antecessors in glory, the heroes of past ages, were ever before his vision. The spirit to govern, to command to

others, even in boyhood, was deeply radicated in his strenuous nature. He was born to rule, to prevail over mankind, to dictate to the world was his birthright. Long before he hurled his gage of combat at the feet of Britain this had been made manifest. We see him in Italy, in the glory of his first conquests, winning his bril­liant victories, creating states, ratifying treaties, organising Italy, not as the amenable lieutenant of France, but at his own initia­tive, as conqueror, as dictator of Italy. At Tolentino he humbles the Pope; at Campo Formio he brings Austria to terms, at a blow he overthrows Venice. Behold him, during the negotiations of Campo Formio, at the beautiful palace of Montebello, near Milan, surrounded by almost regal pomp! All the prerogatives of sover­eignty are his. The festivities, the throng of obeisant courtiers and officials there portend the splendour of the pageants of Tilsit, of Erfurt, and Dresden. Then in the East he figures not merely as conqueror, but as Sultan, as supreme master of Egypt. The mas­tery of the East was of much greater moment to him than the ruin of England. To conquer India so as to dominate the East was to him an infinitely more alluring dream than the conquest of India for the mere destruction of Britain. The suzerainty of the East he rated far above the conquest of Europe. Arbela, in his opinion, was an infinitely greater victory than Austerlitz. Had he taken Acre, he said, the whole face of the East, perhaps of the world, would have been changed. From Acre he would have followed Alexander's steps and founded an empire rivalling that of the Macedonian hero. Not till he had subjugated the East would he march upon the West, he would bring Europe under the tutelage of the East. This shows how infinite his views were and what an extraordinary hold the Orient had upon his imagination.

It is therefore clear that the motives that urged Napoleon into subjugating the Continent emanated, not so much by reason of feelings of enmity towards any one nation more than another, as from the desire that grew in proportion as his power expanded, of attaining to universal dominion, for there is little doubt that ever since the dazzling days of Tilsit he aspired to the dictatorship of the world. Any one but Napoleon entertaining such a scheme

— a project so utterly impossible, so extravagant and chimerical, would be looked upon as nothing less than a raving madman. But to Napoleon, to whom, so far, nothing had seemed insuperable, who probably of all mortals has attained the nearest to omnipo­tence, the mastery of the world cannot have seemed such an impos­sible achievement, for only two nations lay between himself and universal dominion - Russia and England. With the conquest of the former Asia would be at his feet, the destruction of the latter would ensure him the empire of the seas, and then would not the world be his? That Napoleon aspired to universal dominion is at­tested by his own words when he declared to Fouche, on the eve of the Russian war of 1812, "The great power I have already at­tained forces me to assume a universal dictatorship ... There must be one code, one court of appeal, and one coinage for all Europe. Europe must form one great nation and Paris must be the capital of the world!" These words were not the vapourings of an idle vi­sionary or of a besotted braggart, but revealed Napoleon's whole

Triumphant entry into Berlin

ulterior policy and the goal to which his unbridled ambition was impelling him. Can there be a scintilla of doubt as to the bent of his designs after such an utterance? It is well, perhaps, for man­kind that Napoleon met his Nemesis at Moscow, for as it was, the weight of this one man upon the world was more than it could well bear - was contrary to the laws of nature, and to the age he lived in. More power than he already possessed would have been monstrous, fatal to the intellectual progress of the human race.