CHAP. hibited all communication by sea, the decree declared it became necessary to supply it by a canal between the Baltic and the Seine. The Senatus Consultum of the 13th of December (1810) rendered the whole coast of north-western Europe from the Elbe to the Scheldt French property, curtailing one-fourth of the new kingdom of Westphalia, as well as of the Grand Duchy of Berg. Napoleon's own kindred were under as much alarm and as much incensed at his ever-changing and arbitrary resolves, as were foreign dynasties. "I will have no more petty kings," exclaimed Napoleon; "four of this rank are quite enough."* Murat thus feared ejection from Naples, as Jerome did from Cassel, and Bernadotte from Stockholm. His extension of frontier did not even terminate at the Elbe; the Hanse towns, and consequently Lubeck on the Baltic, being also declared a portion of the French empire. The rapacity of Napoleon in the north was as fatal to him as his policy founded on the same greediness in the south. One of the princes dispossessed was the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, brother-in-law to the Emperor of Russia. He, as well as the King of Prussia, was not a little alarmed to find the French eagles permanently established on the shores of the Baltic, and worrying them to accomplish the fiscal and commercial death of those regions by the proscription of the vessels of all countries from the ocean. Trade on the Baltic and in Holland was indeed briskly carried on by vessels under the American flag, which, under one subterfuge or another, contrived to introduce English goods, and export the produce of Russia or of Sweden. Napoleon stormed at these interlopers. Nothing less than a seizure and confiscation of all ships showing the American flag would satisfy him; a demand to which Alexander demurred, but in which Holland and afterwards Sweden acquiesced with impatience and remonstrance; the King of Denmark * Diary of Queen Catherine. Memoirs of Jerome. did the same at Altona. To some of these countries the injunction of the French Emperor was of the utmost detriment. Holland might be considered as annihilated by them. Sweden and the Baltic countries had no salt, which was an absolute necessity for them in curing their winter provisions: to shut them out from the sea was to condemn them to famine. The result appeared soon after in a general revolt of the Baltic provinces or population against France, analogous to the insurrection of the Spaniards against usurpation and exactions. Whilst compelling other sovereigns to adopt the enactments of his spite against England, he himself relaxed them for his own especial advantage, by the issuing of licences to trade, to those who would export French manufactures, and import in return such commodities as France stood most in need of, naval stores amongst others. It is astonishing that one so sagacious as Napoleon should have persisted in his course of dictation, aggression, and aggrandisement, offending and provoking princes, whilst grinding and oppressing the populations, and should have had no misgiving as to the dangers which he thus accumulated before him. Neither the finances nor the population of France sufficed to carry out his aims. Each year the numbers of his soldiers were made up more and more of foreign levies, not to be counted upon in case of reverse. Yet he did not stoop to make a friend. Prince Metternich came to Paris after the Austrian marriage, in the hope that he would find Napoleon inclined to make such concessions to his fatherin-law as would render Austria a cordial ally. But no; the conqueror was not prepared to abate of his advantages, or provoke Russian resentment by a decided leaning to Vienna. The friendship and alliance of Russia were indeed indispensable to the maintenance of the rest of the continent in its state of acquiescence or subjection; and yet Napoleon, however anxious for the preservation of СНАР. XLIII. CHAP. that friendship, would not make the requisite concessions, or show the necessary forbearance. He had won the Emperor Alexander's alliance at Tilsit by the promise of dividing the East with him. Towards this he had given Finland and the Danubian Principalities in prompt payment. He thought, not without reason, that Russia ought to be satisfied with such palpable and immediate gains. But Russia was not satisfied. The Czar could not but see that the conquest of the East was a dream, adjourned to the far future, and that whilst Napoleon undisguisedly proceeded towards the subjugation of all Europe that was non-Russian, he forbade that empire to pass the Niemen on the west, or the Danube on the south. The Russians thought such a partition of Europe to be unfair. If the French were to have all Germany in a greater or less degree of property or dependence, surely they might have left Poland to the Russians. But Napoleon showed unmistakably that he would no more give them Warsaw than Constantinople. The Duchy of Warsaw, which then included Posen, ruled over nominally by the King of Saxony, but really by the French, had, after the battle of Wagram, been augmented and strengthened by a portion of Gallicia, which betrayed an evident purpose in Napoleon's mind of one day restoring Poland. This intention was probably formed and acted upon in consequence of the hostility, if not lukewarmness, shown by Russia in the campaign of Wagram. But it was not less a provocation. Alexander was aware how uncertain were all Napoleon's arrangements with respect to kingdoms and frontiers, which he set up and put down, effaced or extended, according to the caprice of the hour. He therefore demanded to have his fears respecting Poland tranquillised, and he requested the signature of a formal treaty by Napoleon, declaring that the kingdom of Poland should never be re-established, and that the very name of Pole and Poland should disappear. The Duke of Vicenza, French ambassador at St. Petersburg, signed the treaty to that effect, for which he considered he had powers; and the envoy forwarded the document to Paris at the same time that he sent the demurs of the Russian court respecting the marriage. Napoleon refused to ratify it without sensible modifications. In the course of the same year, 1810, the seizure of Holland, of the Hanse towns, and German provinces of the north, ensued, with the absorption of Oldenburg. On the last day of the year, Russia replied by a Ukase, modifying the Russian tariff in such a way as to exclude all French products, wines and brandies, silks and ribbons, whilst the Russian ports were declared open to neutral vessels, whether they carried English or colonial commodities. This was tearing asunder Napoleon's favourite scheme of continental blockade, and it was accompanied by a decree raising 80,000 customhouse soldiers to enforce the new regulations; a formidable army, to be arrayed less against English trade than against the power which pretended to proscribe it. After such a decree war was inevitable. Mixed governments, accustomed to yield to pressure and undergo changes at home, and old dynasties, which have experienced and survived vicissitudes of fortune, may either give way to exigencies, or be moderate in enforcing them. But two autocrats, whose thrones were based on the idea of their almightiness, could not bend. Alexander could not submit to a brother sovereign, who dictated to him the regulations of trade, prescribed his friendships and his enmities, and looked suspiciously into all his acts.* Napoleon could as little bear a rival and could still less afford to show signs of weakness or concession. Europe was at his feet, but it was a The recall of some regiments from the Danube, and the erection of some fortifications on the Beresina, were sufficient to cause angry re- CHAP. XLIII. XLIII. CHAP. murmuring and discontented Europe, ready to look up and rally to any independent banner. The position and prospects of England in 1811 had improved. Not only had it reduced one by one all the colonial possessions of France and its allies, but it stood its ground in Portugal. Cadiz repulsed Soult. Wellington worsted Massena, and his troops won the victories of Albuera and Fuentes. When the emperors had met at Tilsit, it appeared that Napoleon's apophthegm was true, of the conquering power on land being always in the end the conquering power at sea. He supported his view by instancing Rome and Carthage. And France, the modern Rome, must finally reduce the modern Carthage, England. This, however accepted by Alexander in 1807, was far from showing speedy accomplishment in 1811. The war of blockade and prohibition, which the Northern powers and Russia had consented to, had lasted four years, without fulfilling Napoleon's promise of compelling England to peace. On the contrary, the commercial classes there were as eager for the continuance of war as the aristocratic; and instead of punishing England, the prohibitive decrees had inflicted the greatest loss and privation on the countries which had adopted it. What more than all else prompted Russia to break from Napoleon's prohibitive system and onerous alliance, was the belief that it would fail of its ends. In the spring of 1811 the birth of a prince to Napoleon, whom he baptized King of Rome, came to promise continuance to his empire, and at the same time to secure it the support of Austria. The outward appearance of this could indeed be commanded. And Austria as well as Prussia were constrained to sign a secret and offensive alliance with France for their aid in the invasion of Russia. It was characteristic of the epoch, and its events, that whilst the Prussian treaty guaranteed the maintenance of its present frontier, the |