Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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positively turn down the possibility of mediation, reckoning that the tsar

had only entered into alliance with France to get himself out of an awkward

position. In fact, Alexander wanted to seek shelter for Senyavin’s squadron

which had remained in the Mediterranean, and was afraid of exposing

Kronstadt to a sudden attack. The bombardment of Copenhagen cut the

knot: Budberg was replaced by Rumiantsev and on 31 October Russia

declared war. Prussia was forced to follow her example on 1 December,

while privately making excuses and getting her ambassador Jacobi to agree

with Canning to maintain communications through Francois d’Ivernois. As

far as Austria was concerned, Napoleon did just condescend to express his

satisfaction at her behaviour during the recent war, but he no longer offered

her an alliance, and on 16 October put her under an obligation to range

herself against England. Starhemberg in London and Merfeldt in St Petersburg

protested in vain. The swift dénouement of Tilsit had terriﬁ ed the authorities in

Vienna, and there were suspicions of a projected partitioning of Turkey in

which the Austrians wanted to have a share. In Paris, Metternich expressed

agreement with Stadion and sketched out the line of action he was to follow

later on when chancellor. The only possible course was to wait for ‘the great

day when Europe will be able to put an end to a state of affairs that is essen-

tially precarious, because it is contrary to nature and to civilisation’. On

1 January 1808 Starhemberg, acting under peremptory orders, was forced

to hand Canning a note that was badly received, and Austria duly declared

war, though privately expressing her regrets. Denmark had signed an alli-

ance with France on 30 October, but Sweden proved obstinate till Stralsund

and Rügen fell. On 16 January 1808 Alexander sent her an ultimatum and

on 21 February invaded Finland, while Denmark also opened hostilities.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had gone to Milan and Venice on 16 November in

order to arrange his Italian affairs. He was displeased with the behaviour of

the queen of Etruria, who had been regent since Louis I’s death in 1803.

She, like her husband, had shown entire submission to the Church, to which

she had given complete liberty, declaring the property of the clergy inalien-

able, and handing over the censorship to the bishops. In addition she had

turned a blind eye to English dealings in contraband. By agreement with

Spain she was dethroned, and given the northern part of Portugal. Napoleon

annexed Tuscany to the Empire and on 24 May 1808 turned it into a grand

duchy, as a gouvernement général , for the beneﬁ t of Elisa. At the same time he

annexed Parma and Piacenza. With Eugène as his intermediary, he tried in

vain to force the pope to submit. In November 1807 he occupied the

Marches and on 2 April 1808 joined them to the kingdom of Italy. Miollis

had entered Rome on 2 February. As Turkey was still friendly and Junot had

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taken Lisbon on 30 November 1807, the continental federation seemed on

the point of complete success.

As it progressed, the blockade became more and more of a real threat. Up

to the end of the war, the Berlin decree had scarcely modiﬁ ed its range in

any way. There had previously been conﬁ scations of English merchandise in

Germany and in the Hanseatic cities, but when he was short of money

Napoleon would give it back for an appropriate payment and it would

return to circulation, so that the act of seizure became a kind of ﬁ scal expe-

dient. As the troops advanced in Poland contraband dealings had grown, and

Holstein – and in particular the port of Tönning – provided English depots

instead of Hamburg. It soon became known that a little money would

procure the connivance of a good many French ofﬁ cers, consuls and even

customs ofﬁ cials since Bourrienne and Brune had set a bad example in

Hamburg. Moreover, French businessmen were alarmed to see the blockade

turning into a weapon of war to the extent of closing Germany, Poland and

Russia to trade and provoking a severe industrial crisis. In order to be able

to import and export at their convenience, they would have liked to go on

leaving neutral ships completely free. The Berlin decree declared that they

would no longer be received if they came directly from England or her colo-

nies. But they could always claim that they had merely called in there, and

as there was no threat of conﬁ scation, they ran no risk in continuing to

come to France as before. In that case, the Berlin decree would lose all

meaning. Its ambiguous terms proved that Napoleon, when he made it, was

still hesitating between the needs of national production and the require-

ments of war. The uncertainty continued for more than a year. In order to

spare the Americans, he assured them that the blockade did not apply to the

high seas, and as late as 26 August 1807 the Danes were dispensed from

observing it. In July he had considered whether there might not be a case

for granting neutrals a licence to trade with French ports as previously, on

condition that they re-exported an amount equivalent in value to their

imports. This solution – which was to be taken up again in 1809 – would

once more have emphasised the mercantile character of the blockade.

Although the alliance of Tilsit had some effect, the course of events proved

contrary. The plan was abandoned. The decree of Fontainebleau (13 October

1807) and the ﬁ rst decree of Milan which renewed its terms on 23

November, reinforced the Berlin decree. They declared that colonial goods

and a number of products were to be considered by their nature English,

unless they could show a certiﬁ cate of origin, and in particular that any

ships having touched in at England must be conﬁ scated, together with the

entire cargo. The Orders in Council, which had increased the subservience

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of the neutrals for the beneﬁ t of England, decided the emperor to take this

decisive step. The second decree of Milan (17 December 1807) laid down

that any neutral vessel submitting to the English requirements would be

considered denationalised, and would be deemed British property. It would

therefore be a lawful prize, not only in the ports, but also on the high seas.

There was thus a reversion to the position in 1798. As the neutrals could not

escape the English, the Empire became closed to them, and the blockade

changed from a mercantile device to an instrument of war. Since the

Continent rallied to the French cause, the blockade had a considerable effect.

The troops had been sent back to Germany and the seizure of ships had

been handed over to the customs ofﬁ cers who could call for armed assist-

ance when necessary. Austria moreover was closing the Adriatic.

Although the Baltic remained open, it could only be for contraband

trafﬁ c, except in Sweden. English exports underwent a serious decline. Their

customs value fell from £33.5 million in 1806 to £30.4 in 1808, and the

declared value from £40.8 to £35.2. This success had a tonic effect on

Napoleon’s spirits. From this moment onwards his desire to perfect the

blockade began to urge him to further annexations, until it ﬁ nally became

merged with the spirit of conquest in 1811.

Peace on the Continent being now assured, Napoleon was thinking of

resuming the war at sea. In Italy, he directed Joseph to prepare to attack Sicily,

and told Ganteaume to leave Toulon and join this operation, after having

replenished the food supplies of the Ionian Islands, which the French had

seized together with Cattaro in August 1807. Reynier drove out the English

from Reggio, but Ganteaume was only able to carry out the second part of

his assignment. More and more orders went out to Decrès. Naval construc-

tion forged ahead on every hand, and on 28 May 1808 Napoleon calculated

that he would soon be at the head of seventy-seven French ships, ﬁ fty-four

foreign ones and three hundred thousand men grouped at various places

along the coast, from Texel to Taranto. ‘It seems to me’, he wrote, ‘that this

represents a chessboard which, without asking too much of fortune or too

great skill from our sailors, ought to lead to great results.’ But he did not have

time enough to threaten England at sea or at home, for the continental feder-

ation began to crumble before it had even received the ﬁ nishing touches.

The ﬁ rst miscalculations came from the East. Napoleon’s policy was bound

to go wrong from the moment of his alliance with Russia, since Turkey and

Persia had only made advances to him in order to keep in line with her.

Mustapha IV having agreed to French mediation, Guilleminot arranged an

armistice at Slobodzie on 24 August 1807; on 21 October Alexander rejected

it on a variety of pretexts, but in reality he wanted to keep the principalities,

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and the sultan thought that Napoleon was in agreement. For the present,

however, war did not break out again in Europe, but ﬁ ghting continued in

Asia, where the Russians defeated the pasha of Erzerum. The English used

this to increase their inﬂ uence in Constantinople to such good effect that

Napoleon ﬁ nally recalled Sébastiani in April 1808. Before long, new revolu-

tions in Turkey completed the estrangement from France. The Bairakdar

undertook to restore Sultan Selim to power, but Mustapha IV just had time

to put the latter to death before he himself was overthrown on 28 July 1808

in favour of his brother, Mahmud II. In November the Janissaries rose once

again and massacred the Bairakdar. Mahmud, who had caused Mustapha to

be strangled, was the last representative of the dynasty, and, as such, his life

was spared. On 5 January 1809 he made peace with England.

Events followed much the same course in Persia. Gardane contrived an

armistice, while Colonel Fabvier set about organising an army. But here too

Alexander refused to relinquish his conquests and was soon besieging

Erevan. The shah deserted France and Malcolm reappeared in Teheran. The

tsar’s attitude, moreover, showed that he intended to be left a free hand in

the East, and this was a serious symptom, for Napoleon had already deter-

mined to allow nothing of the kind. All the same, there was worse to follow.

He had taken it into his head to annex the Iberian peninsula to the Grand

Empire, and it proceeded to put up an unexpected resistance whose endless

repercussions brought disaster to the achievement of Tilsit.

AFFAIRS IN PORTUGAL AND SPAIN (1807–1808)

Napoleon had been watching Portugal since the establishment of the

Consulate. Almost all its trading was done with England, which had pre-

dominant business interests and large capital investments in it, especially in

the vineyards. Portugal was one of the chief bases for contraband and an

outpost for the British ﬂ eet and she could not break with London without

being completely ruined, for more than a third of her income was from the

customs, and her corn had to come to her by sea. In short, she was in effect

an English colony – as British imperialism fully appreciated – which brought

in a great deal and cost nothing. Even at Tilsit, Napoleon had decided to

conquer her, and on 29 July, as soon as he got back to Paris, he took steps to

form an expeditionary corps at Bordeaux. Aranjo refused to stop the English

ships and conﬁ scate their goods; the most he would do was to close his

ports and declare war, reckoning no doubt that he would only have to make

a pretence of hostilities. But Canning refused to join in this farce, and the

rupture took place. On 12 October Napoleon set Junot’s forces in motion.

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But to reach Portugal, it was necessary to cross Spain. So from the very

beginning the schemes concerning this country had been dovetailed with

Napoleon’s Spanish policy. In 1805 Godoy had insinuated that he would

gladly carve out a principality for himself in Portugal, and on 24 May 1806

he put his request into writing. But on each occasion war broke off negotia-

tions, and he became so disillusioned that he turned against the French alli-

ance. The loss of Buenos Aires on 27 June 1806 seemed to be a prelude to

the loss of the whole of South America, and roused strong feelings in Spain.

It induced Godoy to offer to make peace with England, but the English

required him to join the coalition, as the Russians and Prussians also advised.

Godoy hesitated. If he did not enter into a tacit agreement with Prussia (as

he has been accused of doing), he at any rate addressed a proclamation to

Spaniards on 5 October 1806 announcing that they would arm. The state-

ment was ambiguously worded, and Napoleon pretended to believe that it

was a question of coming to his help; but it was certainly something he did

not forget. After Jena, Godoy hastened to break with Russia, joined the

blockade on 19 February 1807 and sent the marquis de La Romana to

Germany with eight thousand men, who reached Hamburg at the begin-

ning of August. And now at last he was eager to join in the plan for a war

against Portugal. By the Treaty of Fontainebleau, 27 October 1807, this

country was to be divided into three parts: the north for the queen of

Etruria, the south for Godoy, the centre – with Lisbon – being reserved by

Napoleon, either because he wanted to hold this port until the peace, or

because it formed part of his Spanish schemes.

Spain appeared to Napoleon to be badly governed, and did not provide

him with all he considered she should be able to supply. For a long time he

had thought Spain needed ‘regeneration’ – an opinion widely held in his

entourage where, with Murat in the fore, there was no lack of candidates for

this task, who hoped to ﬁ nd Spain a land even more richly ‘ﬂ owing with

milk and honey’ than Portugal. Talleyrand, for his part, was strongly in

favour of extreme measures. There was, however, no urgency about acquiring

Spain, since it was already part of the Continental System; and there can be

little doubt that it was his recent triumphs that impelled Napoleon to action

and stimulated still further his urge for power. Nevertheless we can only

conjecture how his mind worked, and it is only possible to suggest in

a tentative manner the two solutions between which he seems to have

hesitated.

It was in fact the divisions in the royal family that came to his assistance.

Even as he was signing the Treaty of Fontainebleau he already held in

his hands the threads of an intrigue that gave a glimpse of one possible

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solution. The prince of Asturias was a persistent enemy of Godoy, for he

suspected him of intending to usurp the crown on the death of Charles IV.

His friends, the duke del Infantado and Canon Escoïquiz, his former tutor,

conceived the plan of marrying him to a French princess and so making

certain of the emperor’s support. Napoleon’s ambassador, who was a

Beauharnais, probably saw the chance of advancing the family fortunes by

putting forward a cousin of Josephine’s as a suitor for the Spanish throne,

and took it upon himself to get in touch with Escoïquiz. Champagny,

learning of this possibility, and clearly acting on his master’s orders, asked

for a letter from Ferdinand, who produced it on 11 October. As Napoleon’s

protégé, he could be used as a tool, and would perhaps have had to cede

Spanish provinces as far as the Ebro in exchange for Lisbon. At all events, a

scheme put forward by the Spanish agent Izquierdo on 29 February 1808

mentioned the possibility of this annexation.

Meanwhile, Junot was advancing by forced marches over appalling roads,

in terrible weather. As usual, he had set out with no provisions or transport.

Spain was expected to provide everything, but in fact provided very little,

and the army soon began to straggle. Fortunately Portugal offered no resist-

ance, and three Spanish columns joined in the invasion along the Douro,

south of the Tagus and in the Algarve. On 22 October the regent made an

agreement with the English authorising them to occupy Madeira and

arranging for the transport of the royal family to Brazil. The vast contents of

the British depots were shipped to safety; Senyavin’s ﬂ eet, which had put in

to Lisbon, was escorted to England; and on 29 November the Portuguese

court sailed overseas. On the thirtieth Junot entered Lisbon. He imposed on

the country an indemnity of one hundred million francs, and despatched to

France the remnants of the Portuguese army, some eight to nine thousand

men. The peculiarly risky situation occupied by Junot had given Napoleon

an excuse for his progressive occupation of Spain. On 12 October he had

ordered a new corps to be formed, and in November Dupont brought it

along to occupy Old Castile. In January it was followed by another under

Moncey at Burgos, and eventually by a third, organised by Mouton.

At this point a second solution of the Spanish question had become

possible. At the end of October Godoy had discovered and denounced

Ferdinand’s intrigue, and had put him in prison. The prince complained to

Napoleon, who swore vociferously and barefacedly denied all complicity.

Charles IV and Godoy were appalled, and hastened to withdraw. They

released Ferdinand, his friends being acquitted and sent into exile; but from

that point onwards the emperor seems to have admitted that the heir

presumptive might be declared incapable of coming to the throne. On

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2 December he spoke to Joseph at Venice, and though he asked Lucien to

send his daughter Charlotte to Paris, there is nothing to prove that it was to

marry her to Ferdinand. On 12 January he ordered some leaﬂ ets to be drawn

up on the subject of the Escurial plot and the indignity suffered by Ferdinand,

but they were never distributed. Meanwhile the French troops were steadily

advancing. In February they seized Pamplona and San Sebastian. Duhesme

was now bringing up a corps from the eastern Pyrenees to enter Catalonia

and take possession of Barcelona and Figueras. At the beginning of March

Bessières came and took command at Burgos, and Murat, now put in

command of the army of Spain, proceeded to march upon Madrid, which

he entered on the twenty-third.

It would seem that in March Napoleon was again inclining towards the

ﬁ rst solution. But once more events in Spain cut short the debate. Godoy was

uneasy, and had recalled to Andalusia the corps operating in Portugal south

of the Tagus. There was widespread alarm at the progress of the French

armies, and it was suggested that the king’s favourite meant to escape to

Cadiz with the royal family and there embark with them to America. In the

night of 17 March 1808 an insurrection broke out at Aranjuez. The troops

deserted; Godoy was thrown into prison; and on the nineteenth the

king abdicated. Napoleon learned of the rising on the twenty-sixth and

decided at once to leave for Bayonne. On the twenty-seventh he heard that

Charles IV had abdicated, and he mentally saw the throne as good as vacant.

That same day he offered it to Louis, which is the ﬁ rst positive indication we

have about his views. He left Paris on 2 April and reached Bayonne by the

ﬁ fteenth.

Charles IV, however, had complained to Murat of the violence done to

him, and Napoleon had invited him to come and see him. He also gave

directions that Ferdinand should be sent to him, and the latter did not dare

resist. On 2 May Madrid, stirred up by these departures, rose against

the French. Murat suppressed the rebellion harshly, and Napoleon paid no

heed to this ominous sign for the future. ‘The Spaniards are just like the

other nations,’ he said; ‘they will be only too pleased to accept the imperial

constitutions.’

Charles IV claimed the throne for his son, and then on 5 May handed it

over to the emperor. The prince of Asturias was thoroughly frightened, and

capitulated; and the whole royal family were sent to Talleyrand’s château at

Valençay. When Louis and Jérôme refused the offer of this crown, Napoleon

conferred it authoritatively on Joseph, while the kingdom of Naples went to

Murat, who was thoroughly disappointed. He had passed on to the emperor

the desire expressed by some liberals for a constitution, but it seems that

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Napoleon showed no interest, being preoccupied particularly with admin-

istrative reforms; all the same, he complied with the request. A junta elected

by three groups of electors sorted into three classes sat at Bayonne from

15 June to 7 July – though only ninety-one members out of 150 had

responded to the appeal. Spain was given a constitution like that of the

vassal states, except that all attempts to secularise the state were abandoned.

Roman Catholicism remained the only lawful faith, and the Inquisition was

not abolished. In deference to the susceptibilities of public opinion, there

was nothing to indicate that Spain was becoming a vassal state, and her

ﬁ nancial contributions were not increased. On 20 July Joseph made his

solemn entry into Madrid. But he only resided there for eleven days, for his

kingdom was already in revolt.

THE SPANISH INSURRECTION (1808)

Certain elements of the Neapolitan insurrection crop up again in the affairs

of Spain. Yet the subjects of Charles IV had a more dynamic loyalty to the

dynasty, and although the particularist spirit had a different kind of strength

from its counterpart in France, there was no lack of a strong national spirit

as well. Among the common people, however, there was as yet nothing to

distinguish it from hatred of the foreigner and religious fanaticism, which

had such strong roots in the struggle against the Moors. This spirit was

encouraged by the physical nature of the country and by the backwardness

of its economy, and was deliberately fostered by the clergy who had

prevented the minds of Spaniards from making contact with European

thought. Hatred of foreigners was at this time particularly directed against

the heretical English and against the French – so long enemies and now

oppressive allies – denounced ever since 1789 as instruments of the devil.

But in order to provide a popular incentive to insurrection, foreigners must

be sufﬁ ciently numerous to be an obvious menace to everyone; and it is

clearly in this sense that the French invasion proved decisive. Yet the revolt

began more especially in the provinces untouched by French inﬂ uence –

Asturias, Galicia and Andalusia. There was thus a need to explain to the

people what was happening elsewhere, and call them to arms; and this was

done, not by the authorities, who generally adopted a submissive or

hesitant attitude, but by the nobles and the clergy.

The nobles displayed a more reﬁ ned and passionate national sentiment

than the common people. As a class, they were cut off from power, and

despised Godoy as a mannerless parvenu. They were therefore only too

delighted to seize the chance of resuming authority. Distrustful of any

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reforms the French might suggest, some of them dreamed of a monarchy

after the English pattern, while others had no intention of renouncing their

social supremacy. If the middle classes had been powerful and imbued with

the new ideas, the movement might perhaps have been opposed, for except

in Cadiz it had little strength and was ill informed. Apart from the maritime

provinces and Catalonia, where the economic and social structure was

democratic, Spain remained a country of large properties where the great

ones had only to lift a ﬁ nger in order to call out the peasants who were in

bondage to them. Moreover, the Spanish ascribed all their country’s misfor-

tunes to Godoy. This was the reason for Ferdinand’s brief moment of popu-

larity, and if only Napoleon had used him as a screen in order to get rid of

the favourite, he would have met with little resistance. But when it was

possible to represent the invader as in league with the hated minister, it was

not difﬁ cult to carry the common folk in the towns along with the peasants.

It is only surprising that the revolt should have been directed in the ﬁ rst

place against the representatives of the central power, several of whom were

massacred.

In Napoleon’s eyes, the clergy was responsible for playing a leading part

in the uprising – ‘an insurrection of monks’, he called it. This verdict has

been disputed because a certain number of bishops and priests ﬁ gured

among the junta at Bayonne, men like Cardinal de Bourbon, archbishop of

Toledo. Yet a few exceptions among the higher clergy prove nothing: for

there were sixty thousand secular and one hundred thousand regular clergy

in Spain, and it was they, in close touch with the people, and not their

leaders, who instilled the spirit of revolt. As in the Vendée and elsewhere,

preaching and the confessional served to produce a mood of overwrought

fanaticism which showed itself in miracles; and it is not hard to understand

the exasperation of the clergy at the thought of a secularised state and at

Napoleon’s rupture with the pope. There are, however, certain indications

that some at least of the leaders directed the propaganda and were not slow

to work out a plan of organised resistance. Cardinal Desping y Dasseto,

formerly archbishop of Seville, wrote from Rome on 30 June 1808 to the

archbishop of Granada: ‘You must be well aware that we cannot recognise as

our king someone who is a Freemason, a heretic and a Lutheran, as are all

the Bonapartes and all the French nation.’ Foreseeing that he might be forced

to leave the Holy City, he added: ‘I shall try to come to Spain, so as to carry

out our plan.’ What was this plan? We can get some inkling of it when we

see the same archbishop of Granada, the assistant bishop of Seville and the

bishop of Santander taking a leading part in the insurrectionary juntas, and

when we note that circulars were sent to the bishops with a request to

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distribute them as widely as possible. Some of them were intercepted, such

as the following:

Once they have mastered our country, they will introduce all kinds of

strange cults and abolish the true one . . . They will force you all to become

soldiers in order to carry out their plan of conquering Europe and the whole

world . . . To arms, then! Go forward in the name of God, his Immaculate

Mother and St Joseph her blessed spouse, and you will certainly win the

victory.

The insurrection did not break out at once: there was almost a month

between the departure of Charles IV and the ﬁ rst rising. It began at Oviedo,

where the Asturias Estates, urged on by the marquis of Santa Cruz, declared

war against Napoleon. On 6 June the Seville junta did likewise. The move-

ment then spread like a train of gunpowder. Often enough the risings were

accompanied by murder and pillage. At Valencia, for example, Canon Calvo

directed the massacre of 338 French subjects. Soon there were seventeen

revolutionary juntas in existence, principally in the north-west, the south

and Aragon. These were completely inexperienced committees, consumed

by personal rivalries, and jealous of their independence. The bands of men

were without any military value, and in the provinces possessing militias –

such as Asturias and Catalonia – there was nothing like a unanimous

response to the appeal or willingness to ﬁ ght a regular war. But the insur-

rection was nonetheless formidable on two particular counts. First, because

Spain, unlike Portugal, had an army of some importance, concentrated more

especially in Galicia and Andalusia, so that these two provinces naturally

took the lead. The Galician junta assumed command over its counterparts in

Asturias, and more still in León and Old Castile; the Seville junta claimed

central power as ‘the supreme junta of Spain and the Indies’ and as early as

15 June laid hands upon the French ﬂ eet in Cadiz. In the second place,

Canning avoided the mistake made by Pitt in the Vendée. By 30 May the

Asturian representatives were in London, and by 12 June he had promised

them help. True, he gave a less warm welcome to the other juntas who

immediately ﬂ ocked to see him, because he was mistrustful of their sectional

interests and wanted to unite them into one single authority. He knew that

the Spanish would not welcome an English army, but, having a free hand in

Portugal, and knowing that Junot was cut off from France by the insurrec-

tion, he decided to make the most of these advantages. An expedition was

sent to Spain, and there was nothing to stop them in the last resort from

marching on Madrid. It was then that the command of the seas secured by