Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

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have veered for the Channel or could have effected a juncture with other

squadrons in the West Indies, and thus gained sufﬁ cient strength to defeat

Nelson. The Admiralty, swayed by the public’s alarm over Jamaica’s safety,

approved the audacious action. But however much Nelson may have been

admired for his boldness, the fact remains that the outcome might have

been disastrous. He gambled and won. In the Antilles, Villeneuve awaited the

arrival of other French ships, but nothing came. He did however receive a

despatch from Napoleon in which the emperor at last revealed the grand

design and which instructed him to wait yet a month before proceeding

back to rally the Ferrol and Rochefort squadrons in a concerted effort to

break the blockade at Brest.

Arriving in Barbados on 4 June, Nelson began searching for the French.

Upon being apprised of this, Villeneuve decided to return to Ferrol imme-

diately, hoping in vain to throw Nelson off his track. Nelson steered for

Europe on 13 June, after having sent off a fast brig to warn the Admiralty.

But he was still obsessed by the danger to Egypt, and so went to Gibraltar;

since Barham had ordered Admiral Calder to bar Villeneuve’s passage off

Cape Finisterre, the British once again found themselves dispersed. On

22 July Villeneuve met Calder’s ﬂ eet. A battle ensued in which Calder

captured two ships and then retreated, permitting the French to make port

at Ferrol. In another quarter, Allemand, who had replaced Missiessy, put to

sea from Rochefort and cruised for several months without encountering

either friend or foe. From 12 to 15 August the English once again concen-

trated their forces near the isle of Ushant, but were immediately dispersed

by Admiral Cornwallis who feared for the Convoy of the Indies and for

General Craig, holed up in Lisbon with troops destined for Naples. Calder

was sent back to Ferrol, and Nelson returned to England. Villeneuve knew

nothing of this favourable opportunity, and so was unable to derive any

proﬁ t from it. Sailing from Ferrol and Corunna on 14 August, Villeneuve let

himself be disheartened by the condition of his ships and by a false report

that the enemy was coming up in full force. His instructions, dated 16 July,

were to head for Cadiz in the event that he encountered insurmountable

difﬁ culties; this he did, anchoring there on 18 August. Had he broken the

blockade at Brest and beaten Cornwallis, he would still have arrived too late.

On 24 August Napoleon set the Grande Armée on its march towards

Germany and ordered the ﬂ otilla demobilised.

Villeneuve committed the mistake of not sailing immediately for Toulon

and of allowing himself to be blockaded by Cornwallis and Calder, who

were reinforced successively by other squadrons. On 28 September Nelson

ﬁ nally took command of the ﬂ eet off Cadiz. Nevertheless, the Franco-

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Spanish ﬂ eet was safe enough, sheltered in the harbour, and it was holding

down thirty-three English vessels. Napoleon, however, played right into

Nelson’s hands by ordering the ﬂ eet to sail at all costs for an attack on

Naples. Learning on 19 October that six enemy ships had departed for

Tetuan to revictual, Villeneuve set sail with thirty-three vessels. On the

twenty-ﬁ rst, off Cape Trafalgar, as they were sailing in a line six kilometres

long, Nelson arrived to attack them. In a memorandum of 9 October he had

indicated that he would take on the enemy perpendicularly, not side to side

as was the custom. This was to be done by forming two columns which

were to sever the enemy line in two places and break his centre, one column

cutting off the van, the other destroying the rear. In actuality, the English

ships did not preserve the intended formation. The attack was carried out

rather confusedly since Nelson thought the allies were headed back to Cadiz.

Nevertheless, his plan succeeded: the centre and rear were annihilated. Rear-

Admiral Dumanoir le Pelley, commanding the van with ten ships, was late

in coming into the fray; four of his ships managed to elude the British, but

were captured several days later. During the night, a storm crowned the

disaster. Only nine ships of the line returned to port. The allies lost 4,398

killed, as against the British 449. Nelson, however, was mortally wounded.

Villeneuve, taken prisoner and heaped with insults by the emperor,

committed suicide on his return to France.

England could breathe at last! True, the Coalition had made a landing

impossible; but a victorious Napoleon could always return to his grand

design. Nelson’s triumph, however, postponed this indeﬁ nitely. It also put

an end to the naval war. Eventually, this victory would make it possible for

the English to carry the war on to the Continent with the help of the Spanish

rebellion. But, for the time being, they were less inclined than ever to inter-

vene on the Continent, so that the only positive effect of Trafalgar was to

save Naples. Thus it seemed that the battle merely conﬁ rmed England’s

dominance of the seas, and one can readily understand Napoleon’s view of

Trafalgar as no more than a painful incident: as long as he remained victo-

rious on land, England would never beat him.

THE CONTINENTAL BLOCKADE

The least that can be said of Napoleon’s enterprises is that they guaranteed

him the initiative. England, forced to defend herself, could no longer under-

take fresh colonial conquests. The sole exception was Wellesley, the governor-

general in India. He had annexed part of Oudh, taken control of the Carnatic,

and had established a protectorate over Surat and Tanjore. Taking advantage

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166

of civil strife among the Marathas, he undertook action there, too. Jaswant

Rao Holkar, a Marathan prince, had expelled the peshwa Baji Rao from

Poona; Wellesley restored the latter to Poona in May 1803, thus making him

a puppet of the East India Company. He then began to wage war against

Daulat Rao Sindhia whose father, Madhoji Rao, had been on the verge of

creating a vast empire when he conquered Delhi in 1788. He also attacked

Raghuji Bhonsla, the raja of Berar. He defeated Daulat Sindhia at the Battle of

Assaye on 23 September 1803, and Raghuji Bhonsla at Argaon, as a result of

which both rulers surrendered a part of their territories. In 1804 Holkar

took up the sword and succeeded in cutting Colonel Monson’s column to

pieces, but he in turn ended by being defeated. The following year, the

grand moghul Shah Alam submitted to a British protectorate. These gains

notwithstanding, Wellesley’s independence and audacity irritated the East

India Company and alarmed the English government, which had enough

headaches without this one. Faced with dismissal, Wellesley resigned and

sailed home on 15 August 1805.

Britain’s main concern, as always, was to proﬁ t commercially from her

maritime supremacy by laying claim to a monopoly of trade. She restored

the terms of the blockade in full vigour. From 1803 to 1805 a sham blockade

was enforced even against French-occupied Hanover. At the same time

England began reissuing licences on 18 May 1803, and granted them even

for the importation of enemy goods on neutral vessels. The ‘Rule of 1756’

was applied once again to the enemy’s colonial trade, but it was not strictly

enforced against favoured neutrals. In Europe, circumstances created a

certain amount of ﬂ exibility, but in the case of the United States, difﬁ culties

quickly came to the fore. The progress of American shipping was looked

upon with increasing jealousy by England; James Stephen, in his book War

in Disguise (1805), argued that the ‘circuit’

†

lent itself to fraud and that

so-called ‘neutralised’ enemy goods were not even unloaded or subjected to

American tariffs. Since the British Admiralty never precisely deﬁ ned the

conditions under which neutralisation would become effective, prize courts

began to conﬁ scate without restraint. On 18 April 1806 the United States

Congress retaliated by declaring that the importation of British articles

* This regulation of the British Admiralty Courts declared, in effect, that colonial trade illegal

in time of peace would also be illegal in time of war. The continental powers whose ports

were blockaded, viz., France, Spain, Holland, sought to relieve their situation by authorising

neutrals to trade in the exclusive ﬁ elds to which these mother countries otherwise claimed a

monopoly of trade in time of peace. The ‘Rule of 1756’ was simply designed to thwart neutrals,

e.g., the United States, from doing this, by declaring such cargoes lawful prize. TRANSLATOR .

† For an explanation of this term, see p. 37.

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france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

would be prohibited after 15 November. But Napoleon launched his conti-

nental blockade at this time, and the entire situation was changed.

Since the Baltic and the Adriatic remained open, England was able to reor-

ganise her commerce as she had in the previous war and she suffered little.

Her exports fell from £25,500,000 to £20,400,000 in 1803, but rose to

£23,300,000 in 1805. Re-exports suffered more, falling from £12,700,000

in 1802 to £7,600,000 in 1805. The production of sugar continued to

increase in the English Antilles, the world’s chief supplier, and the price

continued to fall, for the market was glutted despite rising English consump-

tion. The price of sugar declined from ﬁ fty-ﬁ ve shillings a quintal in 1805 to

thirty-two in 1807. A series of good harvests, and the opening of new lands,

made possible by the Enclosure Act of 1801, resulted in a decline in the price

of bread to twopence a pound, which led to the landed proprietors demanding

and receiving in 1804 a strengthening of the Corn Laws. Thus, England,

relieved from the nightmare of a French invasion, fell into a state of apathy,

and, until Tilsit, showed only a ﬁ tful interest in the affairs of the Continent.

Napoleon’s economic policy during this period did not cause the British

much concern. On 20 June 1803 he resumed the prohibitions on English

goods; but hoping ﬁ rst to invade England and then absorbed by his conti-

nental campaigns, he never considered the prohibition as of more than

secondary importance, despite what historians have often maintained. He did

not even take the regulation very seriously. He remained faithful, in fact, to

the moderate policy which he had substituted for that of the Directory ever

since his rise to power. He did not put any restraint on neutral trade, which

consequently continued to carry goods between the belligerents behind a

façade of perfunctory neutralisations of cargoes. The continental blockade fell

right in with the protectionism which formed part of Napoleon’s mercantil-

istic thought. Moreover, the blockade was conceived to meet the desires

of the industrialists; it excluded foreign competition without, however,

excluding indispensable raw materials or hampering exports. The customs

tariff indicates that England was not the sole target of this policy. In Year XI

reﬁ ned sugar and molasses were prohibited without distinction of origin. On

13 March 1804 and on 6 February 1805 the rates on cotton fabrics and colo-

nial goods were raised. The latter were again surtaxed on 4 March 1806. Since

these items were primarily of English origin, the very existence of a duty on

them was an implicit admission that the continental blockade was not being

strictly enforced and that Napoleon’s policy was not basically military in

intent but mercantilistic and protectionist.

As always, the most rabid protectionists were to be found in the cotton

industries, especially the spinners, since imports of English yarn rose from

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

168

310,000 kilograms in 1804 to 1,368,000 in 1806. Likewise, the manufac-

turers of Lyon pressed desperately for the exclusion of Italian competition,

and they demanded that Piedmontese silk be supplied to them exclusively. It

can be concluded from the constantly rising tariff rates that the inﬂ uence of

manufacturers was decisive, and that they gradually extracted measures from

Napoleon which he had not originally intended to grant. Chaptal disap-

proved, and so did the Paris merchants who, speaking through the Chamber

of Commerce in 1803, condemned all prohibitions on trade and all meas-

ures directed against neutrals. Finally, on 22 February 1806, Napoleon

banned the importation of bleached or printed calico, muslin, wick cotton

and hardware. But he continued to permit the importation of other yarns,

notions and ribbons, while surtaxing them. Cotton-spinning, which had

already surpassed a million spindles by 1805, made yet greater progress, and

the production of spindles rose from two million kilograms in 1806 to more

than 4½ million in 1808. The manufacturers of Lyon also were given conces-

sions. Although the laws of 1803 and 1806 authorised the exportation of

Piedmontese silks from Genoa and Nice, as well as from Lyon itself, the

closing of the sea assured the Lyonnais a monopoly. They also sought advan-

tages in the kingdom of Italy, and in 1808 imposed a commercial treaty

which lowered the duty on imported French goods and which, by a prefer-

ential adjustment of tariff rates, guaranteed Lyon the trade in Italian silks.

There were certain indications, however, that Napoleon, sliding down the

same path as the Directory, was annoyed by the feeling that the blockade

was not working as it should. On 13 March 1804 he prohibited the impor-

tation of goods ‘coming directly from England’, and decreed that neutrals

should produce certiﬁ cates of origin. His martial spirit blended perfectly

with his instinct for economic nationalism: witness the sudden appearance

of a tax on bale cotton on 22 February 1806 – a measure which no doubt

greatly displeased industrialists and which led to the increased use of ﬂ ax

and hemp. Finally, the anti-English policy was gradually imposed on the

allies – on Holland, Spain, Italy and even, in 1806, on Switzerland, where

only yarn was excepted from the ban. As for British trade with Germany, it

was impeded by the French occupation of Hanover and Cuxhaven, some-

thing the Directory had not been able to accomplish. The belief continued

to be widely held that England could be defeated by stiﬂ ing her export

trade, and the writings of Montgaillard only served to express it once again.

All in all, however, no measures were taken against the English blockade,

which overstepped the bounds of traditional mercantilist practice and the

restrictive policies usually adopted in time of war. Napoleon patiently toler-

ated the authority which England claimed over neutrals. It can even be

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france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

shown from his speech delivered to the Conseil d’État on 4 March 1806

that, surprisingly enough, far from wishing to tighten the blockade at this

time, he was waiting until peace was concluded before bringing his system

of embargoes to perfection. ‘Forty-eight hours after peace with England, I

shall ban all foreign goods, and I shall promulgate a navigation act which

will close our ports to all but French ships.’ But all this was to change

abruptly when Napoleon’s continental successes, with his lightning victo-

ries and with the foundation of the Grand Empire, impassioned his lust for

power.

THE ORIGINS OF THE THIRD COALITION

It cannot therefore be said that Napoleon’s continental policy was the conse-

quence of his war against England, and that ﬁ nding it impossible to defeat

England on the sea or by invasion he undertook to ruin her economically by

shutting off her European market. He could not, of course, have been

unaware of this possibility, but when it took shape it was because prior

conquests had made such a policy workable. Nor can it explain the rash acts

and encroachments which excited the hostility of the continental powers. It

would be closer to the truth to say that although the European monarchs, no

less than England, were aroused by Bonaparte’s aggrandisements, and

although they were still infused with an inner hatred for the leader of the

revolutionary nation – whom they habitually referred to as ‘the Corsican’

and ‘the usurper’ or, like Maria Carolina, ‘the successor of Robespierre’, not

to mention other sobriquets – they were unable to take arms, disunited and

impoverished as they were, without the assistance of Great Britain. The

rupture of the Peace of Amiens opened the possibility of obtaining that

assistance, since England could ﬁ nance a coalition and had the greatest

reasons for doing so. In 1803, however, a spirit of belligerency was mark-

edly lacking, at least in the Germanies, and Austria had even recognised on

26 December 1802 the changes which had taken place in Italy since the

Treaty of Lunéville. If a coalition was possible, or even probable, it was not

inevitable. To work to delay it, to wait patiently until England should be

beset (as in 1801) by difﬁ culties which were bound to come, and not just

from France – this was what the national interest dictated. But such an

inglorious and prosaic policy never even crossed Napoleon’s mind. To spurn

diplomacy for brute force was to precipitate a coalition and to run terri-

fying risks. It meant a commitment to hostilities whose end could only be

the conquest of all Europe. No prospect could better have suited Napoleon’s

temperament.

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

170

Until 1803 the accord with Russia had been the keystone of Napoleon’s

foreign policy. It had been broken by the tsar, so that he might take the

initiative in the formation of a coalition. Alexander I, aged twenty-six, the

grandson of a proﬂ igate queen and the son of a madman, carried within

himself the seeds of a morbid instability which the circumstances of his

upbringing and a premature marriage had accentuated even more. Entrusted

by Catherine to the care of the Swiss La Harpe, who ranted of liberalism

without imparting the spirit of it to his pupil, drilled by Paul in the tradition

of Prussian authoritarianism, and exposed to the pitfalls of a heinous court

– Alexander had become a tissue of contradictions: plain, yet reﬁ ned; timid,

yet obstinate; excitable, yet indolent; moralising, yet corrupt; the ‘Talma of

the North’, a seducer, a Byzantine to whom treachery was second nature.

Once in power, he acquired the reputation of a liberal without doing much

to deserve it. After promptly disgracing his father’s murderers, Pahlen and

Panin, he surrounded himself with men who had developed a certain taste

for Western civilisation, either at Geneva and London like Kochubei and

Novosiltsev, or at Paris like Stroganov, the pupil of the French mathematician

and revolutionary Gilbert Romme. To these he added his companion in

pleasure, Adam Czartoryski, a Polish turncoat, clever and without character.

These men constituted the ‘committee of friends’ or ‘unofﬁ cial committee’

( neglasnyi komitet ) in which were bruited projects of constitutional reform,

while the senatorial aristocracy clamoured for an important place in the

government.

At the same time, Alexander counselled closely with partisans of the ancien

régime – his aide-de-camp Prince Dolgoruki, Arakcheev, the director of artil-

lery, and Prince Galitsin, the procurator of the Holy Synod who gradually

won him over to mysticism. Since the liberal ‘friends’ did not deem Russia

ripe for liberty, and had good reasons not to insist on the emancipation of

the serfs, Alexander could with impunity shift his favour from one to the

other group during the course of his reign, depending upon whether he

leaned towards France or the Coalition, without ever ceasing to be an auto-

crat. On 20 September 1802 the Russian Senate saw itself established as the

highest organ of judicial control, and it acquired in legislative matters a

power of remonstrance which no sooner used was overridden. Eight minis-

tries were instituted, but the ministers simply took their place at the head of

the already existing administrative colleges. Nothing of consequence was

done for the serfs, except in Livonia where Sievers granted them certain

reforms by the ukase of 21 February 1804. The only real step forward was the

creation by the new Ministry of Public Education of universities in Dorpat

[Tartu], Kharkov and Kazan.

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france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

Conceited, not ambitious so much as vain, Alexander injected into his

foreign policy a preference for liberal and humanitarian verbiage, and above

all, a desire for showy popularity. He therefore regarded Bonaparte as a rival

from the very beginning. He early surrounded himself with Germans who

idolised him as the protector of their country and the future liberator of

Europe. These were usually former admirers of the Revolution, who had

been disillusioned by Bonaparte’s restoration of monarchy. Notable among

them was Klinger, author of Sturm und Drang , who had gone to Russia and

been appointed to the staff of Paul I. ‘The protector of humanity, justice and

enlightenment against the threats of impudent obscurantists and tyrants

shall be none other than a prince arising from brutalised Europe . . . and it

shall be he!’ wrote Klinger. To the extent that he fell under the spell of mysti-

cism, Alexander was persuaded that he was the new Messiah. He had no

trouble reconciling this divine calling with the desire to preserve and to

expand the Russian Empire. By the terms of the Treaty of Teschen, and as the

guarantor of the Imperial Recess of 1803, he saw himself as the protector of

the German states, with whose rulers he had many family ties. Czartoryski,

following a family tradition of Russophilism, advised the tsar to restore

Poland and proclaim himself king. But Alexander’s ambitions coincided

with Russia’s historic mission against the Turks, and so Czartoryski, when he

became foreign minister in 1804, drew up a plan to partition the Ottoman

Empire. This he combined with a project for restoring Poland which would

have involved a complete redrawing of the map of Europe. For the time

being, Alexander compelled the sultan to recognise a kind of Russian protec-

torate in the Danubian principalities: in 1802 a firman excluded all Turks

except garrisons from these territories; it was stipulated that all public ofﬁ -

cials would be Greek or Romanian and that the hospodars could not be

removed from ofﬁ ce except with Russian consent. After the death of

Heraclius in 1803, Georgia, whose prince had been under Russian protec-

tion for twenty years, was annexed outright, and so Russian rule bridged

the Caucasus. Alexander’s aggressive ambitions thus turned him against

Bonaparte, conqueror of Egypt. He reasoned that Constantinople might well

be endangered if Bonaparte were allowed to establish himself in Germany. If

Alexander envisaged a partition of Europe with Napoleon, it was only with

the intention of eventually taking it away from him.

The tsar, worried by Bonaparte’s Eastern policy, made overtures to England

and indirectly encouraged her to break the peace. But when France requested

Russia’s mediation, he cooled towards Britain: the offer was more than he

could have wished for; not only could he play Solomon, but here was a

chance to acquire Malta. Despite the fact that his ambassadors to Paris and

imperial conquest to the treaty of tilsit (1802–1807)

172

London, Markov and Vorontsov, were pursuing a pro-English policy, he ofﬁ -

cially accepted the French offer on 5 June 1803. On 19 July he made his

recommendations: Malta would receive a Russian garrison; England would

occupy the small neighbouring island of Lampedusa; France would keep

Piedmont on condition that its king were indemniﬁ ed; and the neutrality of

the Italian states, Holland, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey would be guar-

anteed by the European powers. In short, he presumed to arbitrate for the

whole Continent under colour of mediating between France and England.

France had nothing to lose, since her natural frontiers were not being jeop-

ardised, nor even her domination of Northern Italy. From the standpoint of

Bonaparte, who did not want to have his hands tied by such conditions,

agreement to these terms would have cost him nothing, for on 27 June

England had announced that she would not surrender Malta. But Bonaparte

had already occupied Hanover and the Neapolitan ports, a move which the

tsar took as an affront, and on 29 August Bonaparte ﬁ nally rejected the

Russian proposal as being outrageously partial to England. He treated

Markov very badly and demanded his recall. Alexander complied on

28 October, leaving only Oubril in Paris as chargé d’affaires. Now that he

realised that Bonaparte would never recognise him as the sovereign judge of

Europe, he was profoundly irritated. The abduction of the duc d’Enghien

completed the rupture. As Germany’s guardian, Alexander protested in the

Diet against this violation of German neutrality. Bonaparte withdrew his

ambassador from St Petersburg and asked with insulting sarcasm whether

Alexander, supposing that the English-paid assassins of his father had settled

near the Russian frontier, ‘would not have hastened to have them seized’.

Oubril in turn requested his passport, and left for Russia at the end of

September 1804.

At loggerheads with Bonaparte, Alexander turned of necessity to England.

But since he still held a grudge against Addington, he did not make a ﬁ rm

approach until Pitt’s return to power. And still it was not easy to come to an

agreement. Consistent with the role he had assumed, the tsar wished to form

a general alliance which would impose peace and completely redraw the map

of Europe; he even suggested restoring freedom of the seas! On

29 June 1804 Pitt proposed simply an Anglo-Russian coalition for the

purpose of taking Belgium and the Rhineland away from France. On

11 September Novosiltsev was sent to London with instructions for the nego-

tiation of an alliance which were modelled on a memorandum of his assistant,

Abbot Piatoli. The proposals were still ambitious, but in order to make them

palatable to Pitt they provided for a France reduced to her former frontiers.

Leveson-Gower was despatched to St Petersburg in November, and the terms

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france and england: the struggle renewed (1802–1805)

of the alliance began to take shape. Gustav IV of Sweden signed a secret

convention with England on 3 December, and a treaty of alliance with Russia

in January 1805. Alexander demanded that England, in co-operation with the

Russian troops at Corfu, rescue Naples, and in April 1805 General Craig

embarked for the Mediterranean. The treaty was not signed until 11 April,

however. England promised to pay Russia an annual subsidy of £1,250,000

for every hundred thousand men contributed by the continental powers to

the struggle against France. The division of conquests was to be settled at a

later time, but it was understood that Holland would acquire Belgium and

Prussia would get the northern stretch of the left bank of the Rhine. An effort

would be made, short of outright imposition, to restore the French monarchy.

Immediately Alexander sought to alter the agreement. Through Novosiltsev he

made one last attempt to come to terms with Napoleon at the expense of the

English, who totally failed to see the necessity for it.

And so negotiations went on while hostilities were being prepared. It

was agreed that Russia and England would reinforce Gustavus’s army in

Pomerania, which was to invade Hanover and Holland. In Naples an under-

standing was reached with Maria Carolina, who had taken control of the

government after Napoleon had demanded the dismissal of her prime

minister, Sir John Acton, in May 1804. An agreement was signed in

November, and an émigré, Baron Damas, took command of the Neapolitan

army; meanwhile, Nelson was in control of Sicily. Pressure was also applied

at Constantinople, where the Turkish sultan refused to recognise Napoleon

as emperor. However, it was not enough to threaten France from the north

and the south: to secure victory, Russia had to have an assured route either

through Germany or through Austria.

In Germany, the allies made no progress. The working out of the Imperial

Recess of 1803 continued to align the German princes against Austria,

which was attempting to redress the balance between Catholics and

Protestants in the Diet. Austria defended the interests of the Imperial Knights;

these comprised 350 seigneurs, many of them counts and barons, who

ruled over ﬁ fteen hundred estates, a total area of over 110,000 hectares.

Grouped into three circles – the Swabian, Franconian and Rhenish – they

owed their allegiance directly to the Holy Roman emperor and were self-

governing. Usually impoverished, their sons entered the Church or state

service, preferably in Austria. This in fact was the origin of the Metternichs,

Stadions, Dalbergs and Steins. Already hurt by the secularisations, they now

saw themselves the target of the greedy princes who were attempting to

‘mediatise’ them, that is to say, make subjects of them. Prussia set the

example in Franconia, and the other princes followed; on 13 January 1804