Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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by Bessières, and peremptorily requested Fouché to stop turning the Empire

upside down in this fashion. When he returned he gave him a sharp dressing

down on 27 October, but did not dismiss him, because he was on Napoleon’s

side in the coming divorce, and had even been promoted to be duke of

Otranto on 15 August.

These harassments in the rear only made the emperor the more anxious

about Alexander’s attitude. At Caulaincourt’s request the tsar had massed

sixty thousand men on the Galician frontier, but had postponed the ques-

tion of hostilities. Naturally enough, he was primarily occupied with his

own affairs, which had taken a favourable turn. In March Baron Adelspare,

in command on the Norwegian frontier, pronounced against Gustavus IV,

and the king had to abdicate on the twenty-ninth in favour of his uncle, the

venerable duke of Sudermania, who took the name of Charles XIII. Sweden

immediately entered into peace negotiations and ceded Finland on 17

September. War with Turkey had begun again in April. In December 1808

Karageorge, who had been proclaimed hereditary prince of the Serbians,

invaded Herzegovina; and in August the Ottomans entered Serbia from their

side, but had to evacuate it in September, when Bagration captured Ismailia.

As Galicia had been left without defending forces, Alexander could – in

spite of these preoccupations – have occupied it very easily, and thus secured

its possession when peace was signed. But his objections to Napoleon got

the better of his own interests, and so became obvious to all. Archduke

Ferdinand was therefore able to invade the grand duchy and occupy Warsaw.

Poniatowski let him proceed without interference, but himself invaded

Austrian territory, occupying Lublin, Zamosc and even Lemberg [Lviv]. At

this point – on 3 June – Alexander made up his mind to enter Galicia in

order to take the province from the Poles. Meanwhile, however, Ferdinand

was hastening to the scene and succeeded in recapturing Sandomir. Galitsin

refused to help Poniatowski to save this place, and entered into a secret

agreement with the enemy, by which he promised not to proceed beyond

the Wisloka, and the archduke withdrew without ﬁ ring a single shot. But

better still, when Poniatowski approached Cracow, he called in the Russians

and handed the town over to them. Alexander was showing increased feeling

against the grand duchy, and Rumiantsev, now that he had got rid of the

Swedes, could think of nothing else. On 26 July Napoleon was invited to

give an assurance that he would never reconstitute Poland. ‘At all costs I

want to be left quietly at peace,’ said Alexander to Caulaincourt on 3 August.

Such a declaration was intended to separate the Poles from France and at

the same time imply a veto against all increase of territory for the grand

duchy – for the name was basically irrelevant. The tsar’s attitude ﬁ lled

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Napoleon with a growing irritation. ‘This is not the behaviour of an ally,’ he

said. He had for some time been straining at the leash, and now he was still

forced to manoeuvre for position.

Austria meanwhile was taking good note of the difﬁ culties that confronted

him on all sides. Francis had sought refuge in the castle at Dotis [Tata], near

Pressburg, where he was surrounded by a war party who were loud in their

protests. The empress, Stadion and Baldacci all blamed the archduke for

having suspended hostilities and abandoned the Tyrol and Saxony. They

reduced his command to that of a single army, which led to his resignation

on 23 July. There was hope of support from Russia, and this was why the

peace negotiations, opened between Metternich and Champagny at

Altenburg in the middle of August, were allowed to drag on. These tactics

suited Napoleon; for on 12 August he had offered the tsar to partition Galicia

between him and the grand duchy, the latter to receive four-ﬁ fths. In return,

he promised to start ofﬁ cial negotiations on Poland; and while waiting for

a reply he claimed the right to keep all the Austrian territory he had occu-

pied. Finally, on 1 September Chernyshev arrived to warn the Austrians that

for the moment Russia would not break with France. And so the vanquished

had to resign themselves to giving up whatever was required in Galicia,

while defending inch by inch all their western provinces. The game was

only too obvious: like Napoleon they now knew that Alexander was laying

claim to almost everything they might give up. Not wishing either to beneﬁ t

the man who had betrayed him or to drive him to extremes, the emperor

now took the line of reducing what there was to be shared. Austria’s last

resistance was broken by an ultimatum, and on 14 October peace was

signed at Schönbrunn. Bavaria was given the Inn district and Salzburg;

Napoleon took maritime Croatia with Fiume, Istria and Trieste, together

with part of Carinthia and Carniola. The grand duchy of Warsaw increased

its population by 1,500,000, including Lublin and Cracow; and Russia,

with Tarnopol, by four hundred thousand. Austria lost 3½ million inhabit-

ants along with all access to the sea; and she had to pay an indemnity of

seventy-ﬁ ve million.

The most outstanding characteristic of the treaty was that Napoleon had

ignored Alexander’s claims by maintaining the proportions ﬁ xed at the

outset for the partition of Galicia. He thus reminded Russia of her vassal

status. She had failed to give her master due and proper service, so her

wages were reduced. Alexander expressed his dissatisfaction to Caulaincourt,

but the emperor was not alarmed. He kept making a parade of his intentions

to satisfy the tsar by giving up all claim to reconstitute Poland. But the

Russian demands were never more than a screen. Alexander had really hoped

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to be offered the grand duchy, not to mention Galicia, as the price of his

help against Austria; but in his disappointment he had tacitly refused his aid,

though he nevertheless clung to his own ambitions. As autumn went on a

rupture with France seemed inevitable to him, and when Czartoryski

returned to St Petersburg he began to talk to him in covert terms about his

1805 plans, and the use that could be made of the Poles against Napoleon.

The emperor, on the other hand, refused to believe the evidence, for in his

eyes the Continental System remained ﬁ rmly based upon the agreement of

Tilsit. The fact is that he had now made up his mind to get rid of Josephine,

and had been thinking since Erfurt of replacing her by Alexander’s sister. As

usual, the plan of the moment held the entire ﬁ eld; and as the Russian alli-

ance might help it, he refused to see that it was no longer more than a name.

The unexpected turn taken in the choice of a new empress was to convert

this alliance into a relationship of avowed hostility.

THE AUSTRIAN MARRIAGE

Napoleon’s second marriage was destined to upset the balance of the

Continental System which had not been fully restored, and hasten the

outbreak of a war in which he himself would perish. It was far less inspired

by external policy than by the development of Napoleon’s personal power.

As soon as there were suggestions of making him a hereditary sovereign in

1800, the possibility of divorce came into the picture because Josephine

was not giving him an heir. Once monarchy had been brought back, this

became a much more urgent question. It is possible, however, that Napoleon

may have doubted for a time whether he could become a father. Although

several illegitimate children have been attributed to him, it would seem that

there was still some uncertainty in the matter until the birth of Count Léon

on 13 December 1806. Nor is it unlikely that the separation from Josephine

caused him a good deal of suffering, for the passionate love she had inspired

– even though unfaithful – was one of his loveliest memories; and even after

he had deserted her, he could never bear to hear that she was unhappy. ‘I

don’t want her to cry,’ he would say. When Hortense had given birth to a son

he had him baptised with great ceremony, and it was thought that Napoleon

might adopt him, but the child died on 5 May 1807. Up till then, moreover,

Napoleon could not see any possible substitute for Josephine. Being an

emperor, he was bound to marry a princess of a reigning royal family. As his

power grew more aristocratic and more despotic, the papal anointing began

* [Napoleon’s ﬁ rst certain illegitimate child.]

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to seem more and more insufﬁ cient to him. It was no good his boasting,

even before kings, that he had built his own fortunes, for he suffered from

a constant itch for legitimacy.

Tilsit, however, had suddenly seemed to make the hope of entering into

a royal family belonging to a traditional dynasty something more than an

idle dream. By the end of the year, the possibility of a divorce became more

deﬁ nite through the efforts of Fouché; and although Napoleon disavowed

his help, he nevertheless made up his mind before going to Erfurt, since he

then made overtures to Alexander for the hand of his sister. Returning to

Paris on 15 November 1809, his only thought was to proceed to action. On

the twenty-second Caulaincourt was ordered to present an ofﬁ cial request.

Since Alexander had insisted that the promise concerning Poland should be

embodied in a treaty, the ambassador was at the same time authorised to

sign the document. But the tsar had reached a point where there could no

longer be any question of this marriage. Nevertheless, this approach was

just as much of a windfall, because it might perhaps make it possible, before

saying no, to get the treaty rectiﬁ ed, which would then be a step towards

winning Poland over to the Russian side. It is strange that Caulaincourt

should have been taken in by this manoeuvre. He began by negotiating the

agreement, which was signed on 4 January 1810, laying down that the

kingdom of Poland should never be reconstituted, and that the very name

of Poland should disappear from all public documents. He waited till 28

December to come on to the subject of the marriage. Yet he knew that the

tsar was likely to put the matter off, since Talleyrand had suggested a pretext

for doing so at Erfurt. He would explain the necessity for consulting the

dowager empress, who wanted to consult her daughter Catherine then

residing at Tver. The daughter had no objection to the marriage, but her

mother, while not making an outright refusal, produced objections

concerning the young girl’s age – she was only sixteen – and the difference

in religion. Inwardly she was deeply opposed to this union. Yet the ﬁ nal

decision rested with Alexander in his autocratic position of head of the

family; and he took good care to delay his answer.

But the matter was urgent. On 30 November, in a celebrated scene with

Josephine, the emperor told her his will. On 15 December she declared her

consent to the divorce before an assembly of princes and high dignitaries,

and it was conﬁ rmed on the sixteenth by a senatus consultum , though this

was not in accordance with the Civil Code, nor with the spirit – if not the

letter – of the statute regulating the imperial family. Josephine kept the title

of empress, and was given Malmaison and a dowry. The annulment of the

religious marriage was rather more difﬁ cult. It was not possible to approach

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the pope, because he was a prisoner; moreover, in Abbé Émery’s opinion,

precedent did not positively indicate that his intervention would be required.

Fesch accordingly held up proceedings, while the ecclesiastical ofﬁ cials in

Paris – at diocesan and at metropolitan level – took the responsibility of

declaring the marriage null. The diocesan authorities alleged that the union

had been celebrated secretly, without the parish priest and witnesses. This

was something that could not be authorised – according to the Gallican

Church – by any dispensation, even from the pope. The metropolitan

authorities preferred the grounds put forward by the emperor, namely that

the ceremony of 1804 had been imposed by circumstances and was

therefore invalid in default of a positively expressed consent.

Once this point had been settled on 12 January 1810, Napoleon waited

impatiently for the tsar’s reply. When he realised that it was being delayed,

although the treaty of 4 January was submitted to him, he suspected a trap

and held up the ratiﬁ cation. Alexander’s refusal, which now seemed prob-

able, was no doubt mortifying, but he could have his revenge, for Austria

offered him an alternative bride.

Since the signing of peace, Metternich had been at the chancery. There

were some obvious resemblances between him and Stadion. Metternich,

too, had been sobered by the French conquest. He was a worldly aristocrat,

and a libertine who was capable of endless infatuations. He too had a double

motive for hating France and the Revolution. Yet he possessed more experi-

ence of diplomacy and especially more cool deliberation, for there was

never any trace of romantic enthusiasm about him. He was a man of the

eighteenth century, a disciple and son-in-law of Kaunitz, and attached to the

old idea of a European balance of power to be restored by bringing down

Napoleon. Moreover, he remained faithful to enlightened despotism, and

certainly felt no hostility in principle to reforms calculated to strengthen the

state, provided that the social preponderance of the aristocracy was more

respected than under Joseph II. Attempts have been made to attribute to him

an original political philosophy inspired by Burke and characterised by an

experimental rationalism. Having made a disciple of Gentz, whom he could

get to justify any thesis, Metternich did in fact possess a whole arsenal of

principles, but to explain his policy as the outcome of disinterested reﬂ ec-

tion gives the man too great a stature.

Delighting in the exercise of power, and determined to keep it, Metternich

was a most able manager of the Habsburgs’ affairs. Though the faults of the

regime did not escape his notice, he took good care not to antagonise the

emperor and the nobility by making efforts to correct them. The European

crusade which Gentz expected the dynasty to undertake only really

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interested him in so far as it could bring advantage to Austria in Italy and

Germany. His unﬂ inching realism was his greatest quality. By 1809 he had

come to the conclusion that Napoleon had done all he could; and this

mistaken opinion was responsible for the extreme caution with which he

acted during the following years. His only thought was to survive till the

moment came when he could safely join in the rush for the spoils. Already

the shock to the Franco-Russian alliance was working in his favour; it was

only a question of helping to turn it into positive antagonism. The safety of

Austria would be better served by coming to terms with the victor, and this

new Tilsit might be turned to positively good account. Napoleon’s desire to

take a wife was thus an unlooked-for opportunity: by marrying Archduchess

Marie-Louise he would bring about a ﬁ nal breach with Alexander, and

would then look upon Austria as a natural ally.

No one knew better than Metternich that the Habsburgs were bound to

regard such a union as a blot on their reputation. But by suggesting that

Napoleon should put forward a request and by presenting it to Francis as an

ultimatum, it would be made clear to him that he must give way for reasons

of state. The chancellor seems to have ﬁ rst alluded to the matter on 29

November in a conversation with Alexandre de Laborde, an auditeur (assistant

to the Conseil d’État) on a mission to Vienna; and chevalier de Floret, chargé

d’affaires in Paris, talking to Sémonville in the course of an ofﬁ cial dinner,

was explicit enough to send his table-partner in haste to report to Maret. On

16 December Napoleon gave orders to make a tentative approach to the

Austrian ambassador, Schwarzenberg, who was then seen by Alexandre de

Laborde when he returned at the end of the month. There is no reason to

believe that from now onwards Napoleon preferred an Austrian bride, but

he must at all events have felt ﬂ attered. When he heard that the tsar was

playing for time, the solution seemed to lie in Austria. There was a division

of opinion among the imperial entourage. The smart counter-revolutionary

circles were in favour of Austria, fondly imagining that the court of Vienna

would demand the disgrace of the regicides, and that this would be a big

step towards reaction. The revolutionaries, led by Fouché, were accordingly

of the opposite opinion. The Beauharnais and Josephine herself were for

Marie-Louise; the Bonapartes – headed by Murat – were for the grand

duchess. Napoleon gave a hearing to both sides in a Privy Council on 29

January 1810, but reserved his decision. Finally, on 5 February a despatch

from Caulaincourt announcing that the tsar was asking for further delay

suggested to Napoleon that there would be a humiliation in store for him,

and made him decide to forestall it. In the evening of the sixth, Eugène

presented the ofﬁ cial request to Schwarzenberg, requiring immediate

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consent to an engagement; and this was agreed to on the following day. It

was the right moment, for on the fourth Alexander had just signiﬁ ed his

refusal to Caulaincourt. He was annoyed to ﬁ nd himself outmanoeuvred

but – diplomatically speaking – he came off best, for he was able to accuse

Napoleon of playing a double game. Metternich had been right in his calcu-

lations: the breach between France and Russia began to widen.

Marie-Louise arrived at Compiègne on 27 March, Napoleon went to

meet her, and with his usual impatience took possession of her in deﬁ ance

of all etiquette; he then led her away to Saint-Cloud. The marriage was cele-

brated at the Louvre on 2 April and was followed at the end of the month by

a journey to the north. On 20 March 1811 a son was born who had been

given as early as 17 February 1810 the name of ‘king of Rome’. His baptism

on 9 June was the last great celebration of the regime.

The Austrian marriage hastened the development that was removing

Napoleon further and further from the Revolution. For her personal

attendant, Marie-Louise was given Madame de Montesquiou, formerly

governess to the Bourbon royal children; Fiévée became master of requests,

and those who had come over to Napoleon took the upper hand in the court

of one who had now become by this new alliance the nephew of Marie-

Antoinette and Louis XVI. Fouché, on the other hand, was dismissed on 3

June and replaced by Savary. The ci-devant were right in reckoning that there

would be other measures to follow. A rumour went round that there was a

secret article in the marriage contract stipulating that the regicides should

be exiled, and that there would be a solemn rehabilitation of the memory of

Louis XVI, who was constantly being whitewashed in the royalist brochures.

Those who had come into possession of nationalised property also began to

receive threatening letters. Institutions, too, moved further in the direction

of the ancien régime . In 1810 the state prisons and arbitrary imprisonment

were ofﬁ cially re-established and the censorship of books was openly

reorganised.

Then again, Napoleon, in starting a new family, offended his own kith and

kin, whom he constantly loaded with honours, but who never seemed satis-

ﬁ ed. Their backbitings, discords and escapades had for some time disturbed

his private life and damaged the new dynasty’s prestige. Marie-Louise, with

all her eighteen-year-old freshness, roused him to a second youth and to

pleasures which she seems fully to have shared, for she was of a rather soft

and sensual nature. But his critical sense did not desert him with respect to

his son. He realised – as we know from his words – that the king of Rome

would only keep the Empire if he too was a man of genius; he had a father’s

pride and did not despair of his son. His lively sense of the family bond,

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which has been attributed to the Latin tradition, but goes back more prob-

ably to Corsican custom, naturally led him from now onwards to show pref-

erence for his own posterity. When arranging the dowry for the new empress

on 30 January 1810, the apanages of his future children and the possible

division of the crown possessions between them, he had made no reference

at all to his brothers. Some have therefore been disposed to attribute to the

Austrian marriage a deep inﬂ uence on the change in the structure of the

Grand Empire that begins to be evident from this time onwards. It has been

said that its federative – if not Carolingian – structure tended now to become

dynastic or Roman, with all conquests reserved for the king of Rome and so

annexed to France. In any case they could only be distributed among his

possible future brothers. In this way the kingdom of Italy was assigned in

advance to his second son, so that Eugène de Beauharnais saw his title of heir

presumptive taken away, and was made instead the heir to Dalberg in the

grand duchy of Frankfurt. Yet there has been some exaggeration of the inﬂ u-

ence which the marriage exercised in this respect, for the emperor had long

been exasperated at the refractoriness or incompetence of the vassal princes,

and had long been threatening to annex their states. When Louis lost his

kingdom, or when Murat and even Joseph and Jérôme thought that a similar

fate was in store for them, they may perhaps have accused Napoleon of sacri-

ﬁ cing them to his new family; but the truth is that the federative Empire was

evolving spontaneously towards a uniﬁ ed structure.

The essential consequence of the Austrian marriage lay elsewhere. In

crowning the triumph of Wagram, it restored the Continental System in

Napoleon’s eyes, and raised his will to power to an even higher level through

his feelings of personal euphoria. In entering into a closer relationship with

Austria, it never occurred to him to treat her as an equal or to make a new

Tilsit with her, as Metternich hoped. In Paris, the Austrian statesman had

expressed his anxiety about the Russian advances in the East, and insinuated

that they might agree to set limits to it. Napoleon admitted that France and

Austria had common interests in this direction, and promised to intervene

if Alexander claimed the right to expand south to the Danube; but he would

not sign any document. Austria was still at his mercy, and imagining prob-

ably that the Habsburg ruler would not be willing to do anything against the

interests of his son-in-law, he continued to treat him as a vassal. His refusal

to contest the Danube principalities with Russia in conformity with the

agreement of Erfurt made him continue to delude himself for several months

that the pact of Tilsit was still in existence.

Once again, then, the only enemy was England. Metternich cherished

the hope of re-establishing peace on the seas so as to avoid the dangerous

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obligation of coming out against her. In March 1810 he drew up an aston-

ishing memoir in which Gentz solemnly proceeded to show the English that

France was invincible, and that in her own interests she should leave her the

whole continent, including Spain. About the same time Fouché was making

efforts in the same direction. He had sent to Marquess Wellesley, then at the

Foreign Ofﬁ ce, a former émigré called Fagan whose father lived in London.

Louis too considered a general reconciliation to be the only way of saving

his kingdom; and it seemed likely that England would like to prevent the

annexation of Holland, which remained an important outlet for her produce

and so was of prime value to the bankers, Labouchère in particular. He also

saw Wellesley in February 1810. Finally Ouvrard was employed by Fouché,

who never ceased to protect him, no doubt in recollection of their common

speculations. This ﬁ nancier was always involved in transactions with

Labouchère, and did not forget the piastres of Mexico. This led him to

suggest a political combination by which Charles IV would be transported

to Mexico, England would hand Sicily over to Napoleon, who would give

her Malta and help her to reconquer the United States! When set free from

prison in Sainte-Pélagie, he came to an agreement with Labouchère, who let

Baring into the secret. After discussing this plan with the latter and with

Canning, Wellesley refused to give up Spain and Naples. At this point Louis,

thinking that his brother was in the secret, spoke to him about it on 27 April

when he was passing through Antwerp. Ouvrard was arrested, and a pretext

found for dismissing Fouché. The talks were broken off. The emperor had no

more intention of giving way than the English.

In the course of this year he set himself to perfect the blockade. On 5

August the famous Trianon decrees were published, and on 18 October the

Fontainebleau decree. In order to keep a close eye on their application,

Napoleon pushed on more vigorously than ever with annexation, so much

so that the blockade could now truly be said to have given a new impetus to

the spirit of conquest. At the beginning of 1810 Holland had had to cede

Zeeland and its southern provinces as far as the Rhine; on 2 July Louis ﬂ ed

to Bohemia; and on the ninth his kingdom was annexed, a step legitimised

by a senatus consultum of 13 December. In order to put a solid padlock on all

the North Sea ports and the frontiers of Holstein, Napoleon called together

on 22 January 1811 all the German countries lying north of a line between

the Lippe and the Trave – namely the Hanseatic ports, a part of the grand

duchy of Berg and the kingdom of Westphalia, the principalities of Arenberg

and Salm, and the grand duchy of Oldenburg. In order to shut off Italy deﬁ -

nitely against Swiss contraband he took possession of the Valais and occu-

pied the canton of the Ticino with troops.

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Meanwhile, however, the Iberian peninsula was still under arms. It

seemed likely then that after Wagram Napoleon would prepare a big expedi-

tion to destroy the English army or force it to re-embark, after which the

surrender of the whole country would only have been a matter of time. He

did to be sure send 140,000 men by way of reinforcement, but this was not

enough to strike a decisive blow, nor did he supply them with the indispen-

sable material support. Most important of all, he did not follow them in

person. Absorbed in his dynastic plans, and giving himself entirely to his

new wife, he let this crucial year slip by, till at the end of 1810 there could

no longer be any question of his being able to go to Spain with all his avail-

able forces, because the attitude of Alexander was giving cause for anxiety.

Thus his dreams of personal grandeur and his new marriage prevented him

from restoring the unity of the Grande Armée and condemned him to a

struggle with Russia in the absence of an important part of his ﬁ ghting

force.

The Austrian marriage was not the root cause of this supreme contest, but

it precipitated the crisis, although Napoleon would not admit it to himself,

by exciting the jealousy of the Russians, who saw the Austrians being given

special favours at Napoleon’s court, and more still by ensuring the failure of

the Polish negotiations. At the same time that he addressed his ofﬁ cial

request to Schwarzenberg the emperor had rejected the treaty signed by

Caulaincourt. He drew up another, which he then sent to Caulaincourt

already endorsed with his ratiﬁ cation, indicating that he would give no one

any help in re-establishing Poland and would agree to removing the very

name from all ofﬁ cial documents. In return, Russia and Saxony would agree

not to take for themselves any of the Polish provinces outside the grand

duchy, and the treaty was to remain secret. This did not suit Alexander at all.

On 13 July Nesselrode refused to make any modiﬁ cations in the January

agreement, and Napoleon at once broke off the negotiations. He refused

moreover to authorise a Russian loan. In the summer of 1810 he did not yet

regard war as inevitable, yet he was well aware that Alexander, cut loose

from France, might make it up with England, in which case he would have

to take up arms.

At the same time events in Sweden served to irritate the tsar. Charles XIII

had signed a peace treaty with France on 6 January 1810, and joined the

blockade. But he did not really possess enough authority to be able to obey

its requirements to the full, especially as Saumarez’s ﬂ eet was in command

of the Baltic. The emperor was soon furious, and threatened to reoccupy

Pomerania. Sweden promised to do all he demanded, all the more

readily because she was in the throes of a crisis about the succession. The