Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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the world in 1812

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a position to supply her with high-priced goods, local production still

provided for the bulk of the population. Nor did Napoleon refuse her all

opportunities for improving her own industries. True, he would not send

her qualiﬁ ed workers, but he allowed her two hundred thousand francs for

buying spinning machinery. But the country’s industrialists only had cause

to remember this one fact – that a blockade could have been useful to them

if France had not pocketed all the proﬁ ts. And there was a louder chorus of

complaint from those who were the chief sufferers.

Although industry was in favour of the blockade, especially where the

outlook was progressive, this approval was not without serious reservations,

particularly with regard to the hindrances to free trade inside the Continent,

which the emperor was accused of maintaining and even reinforcing in the

sole interests of France. In agriculture, the problem seemed insoluble. It

concerned especially Prussia, Poland and the Russian provinces bordering

on the Baltic, which could ﬁ nd nobody to take the grain surpluses they

formerly exported to England. Norway, with her constant demand for

imports, was the only country that might have provided a market, but she

was inaccessible by land. These countries’ timber would have been accept-

able in the West, but it was hardly possible to export it without ships.

Napoleon himself found it difﬁ cult to dispose of his wines and brandies,

and in good years he also had too much grain on his hands. The peasants

only sold sufﬁ cient to provide for local consumption, so this disadvantage

must not be exaggerated, for it only applied to a small number of big propri-

etors among the nobility and large-scale farmers; yet these were inﬂ uential

people, and the fact remains that the blockade tended to depress agricultural

prices and rural purchasing power, thus injuring the industries that in other

respects beneﬁ ted from it. The imperfections in the continental market, the

poor economic tone and the ﬁ scal deﬁ cit that resulted from them ﬁ nally

decided the emperor to reorganise the blockade and to ease it for the time

being through a system of licences. However urgent his motives, the effect

of this alleviation was nevertheless to revive the centrifugal tendencies that

were undermining the system. By closing his ports to the Continent while

opening them to the Americans, Napoleon gave some justiﬁ cation for the

accusations levelled against France for her selﬁ shness. Her allies and vassals

claimed the right to follow her example, and Russia gave the lead.

To strengthen the European federation by setting up a single market that

was relatively independent would obviously be a long-term policy requiring

years of constraint. The ﬁ rst obstacle to be overcome arose from the frag-

mentation of the lands concerned and the interior customs that went with

it; and it was the business of the Grande Armée to put an end to these condi-

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the continental system

tions. But in face of world opinion, England had the advantage of being able

to show that the Continental System in all its forms was based upon a

military dictatorship.

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM AND NATIONALITY

The continued existence of the Continental System depended on the

campaign against Russia. As a rule, Napoleon would concentrate his atten-

tion on the next victory. The rest would follow of its own accord, and would

largely depend on circumstances. He therefore had no hard and fast plans

for the future of a European federation. All that can be said is that from 1810

onwards he laid more emphasis on the Roman character of the Empire. In

the Eternal City, which had now become his second capital, his successors

would henceforward be anointed before the tenth year of their reign. He

wanted to take Marie-Louise there himself and have her crowned, and prep-

arations for this great event were under way. The pope would live in either

Paris or Rome. Some time or other, Pius VII would be succeeded by a pontiff

who would accept this new Babylonian Captivity. As to what would then

follow we can give free range to our imagination. After Alexander’s army

had been destroyed, we could picture the rebuilding of Poland; the creation

on Russian soil of new principalities intended to protect this resurrected

state; the expulsion of Bernadotte in favour of some reliable successor; the

reorganisation of Germany; the submission of the Iberian peninsula; and

the conquest of Constantinople, to become the third capital of the Empire.

Peace on the Continent would then seem to have been secured, and European

civilisation as Napoleon conceived it would have made a steady advance.

Attempts have been made to reconcile this extrapolation with the nation-

alism that was so characteristic of the century, suggesting that Napoleon had

planned to transform the Continental System into a society of sovereign

nations forming a voluntary association. Certainly the cosmopolitan civilisa-

tion he envisaged was far from being opposed to such an ideal; but the unity

created by conquest was diametrically opposed to the free union of peoples

which the Revolution in its early stages looked forward to as the crowning

of its endeavours. This illusion can, however, be explained if we note that

Napoleon, ever eager to convert to his own use the forces he found at work,

took good care not to neglect national feeling whenever it suited him for

the moment. It was to this force that he owed his power in France; and

although he sacriﬁ ced his country’s interests to an imperial dream,

Frenchmen always looked upon him as a national leader, for their interests

could no longer be separated from his. Moreover, he carried on the work of

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the Revolution in strengthening France’s internal unity by centralisation, by

military service, by the wars that fostered a sense of unity in face of the

foreigner, and by the victories which exalted the feeling of collective pride.

Outside the French Empire, he showed much greater reserve. Though the

Poles could not accuse him of treachery – since he never positively prom-

ised them anything – he took advantage of their patriotism and there were

clearly certain further considerations behind his actions when he ﬁ rst wrote

the name of Italy into political geography, revived the name of Illyria and

gave ofﬁ cial status to the Slovene and Croatian languages.

Moreover, it can be maintained that his system of government and his poli-

cies both tended strongly to advance the cause of nationalism. Although he

did not complete the territorial unity of Italy and Germany, he enormously

simpliﬁ ed the map in both of them; and he brought a part of the Yugoslavs

together – something that had not happened since the fourteenth century.

Nor were his reforms less important. By abolishing provincial autonomy,

privileges and feudalism, and replacing them with a central administration,

civil equality and a uniﬁ ed internal market, he created the essential conditions

for the expansion of political nationalism. In this sense, he must count as one

of the creators of several modern states. But these were consequences he did

not intend: a statesman’s actions always involve repercussions that were not

foreseen by him, and in this respect the emperor was not above his fellows. It

may be replied that he intended Italy to go to his second son, and that it

would have been imperative to set up large territorial units in order to admin-

ister an empire stretching across the whole Continent. All the same, it is clear

that the linking together and the division of its sections among the members

of his house had no necessary connection with independent nationalities.

The fact is that, having no contact with national aspiration in either its

monarchical or its revolutionary form, Napoleon had no love for it, and

even distrusted it. He realised that patriotism in the home country gave the

nation an awareness of its own permanent interests and a certain dignity

over against its leader, however popular he might be, and a certain impa-

tience with self-centred despotism; and he knew these forces might one day

work against his personal power. So he did his best to replace them by

‘honour’, and individual attachment to his own person and dynasty. It was

more important still that this disposition should prevail in external affairs,

and from his point of view he was right: nationalist feelings were still more

incompatible with the imperial concept than with despotism; and it was in

these feelings that despotism encountered its most formidable foe.

THE INDEPENDENT FORCES

There were other forces – social, spiritual and economic – in action along-

side the genius of Napoleon, combining to help or hinder his work. He was

creating a method of government and a society where the revolutionary

effects of setting free the forces of individualism blended with the traditions

of enlightened despotism, the restoration of a social hierarchy inspired by

the ancien régime and the fashioning of a new legitimacy. The former dynasties

and the old aristocracy would not allow themselves to be dispossessed; the

middle classes claimed their freedom; and the nations resisted his attempts

at a universal monarchy. Intellectual life, too, preserved its autonomy. Lastly,

capitalism continued its advance, and tended to hamper Napoleon’s enter-

prises in more than one respect. It is possible that these forces would have

been overthrown or at least kept in check if the Grande Armée had not been

suddenly destroyed; but the historian can only record that after 1812 they

triumphed over the shattered Continental System and continued to

dominate the nineteenth century.

THE CONTINENTAL STATES OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME

Outside the Empire the Napoleonic system came into collision everywhere

with the obstinate resistance of the aristocracy, who saw in it a revival of

revolutionary egalitarianism. Napoleon offended them by abolishing

seigneurial power and reducing the nobleman to the level of the subject

who tilled the soil. In vain did Napoleon spare the nobility in the vassal

states at the expense of the peasants: the nobility merely thought that he was

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waiting for a more favourable moment to strike. In vain did he establish a

hereditary nobility: it only resulted in the parvenu rubbing shoulders with the

ci-devant – and that was intolerable. ‘These people are forcing us down to a

lower level than dirt,’ the comtesse de Voss wrote in 1807; and in the eyes of

Wellington and other noble lords Napoleon was never anything else but

‘Bony’, and the king of Rome was his bastard. The kings too were full of the

same haughty pride. Deep down in their hearts they could not admit the

legitimacy of a man who had unceremoniously unseated so many of royal

line. Moreover, they were afraid of the nobles, and when they felt them-

selves threatened by Napoleon, they were all the more disposed to retain

their services. They also feared that any lowering of the nobility’s status

would encourage a spirit of insubordination. Nevertheless, the power of the

state in France was a constant allurement to them, and persuaded them to

adopt certain modiﬁ cations. Their attitude depended on their intelligence

and more particularly on their entourage. But whatever novelties were

adopted, they had to be consistent with preserving the aristocracy. It was

this feature that distinguished the Prussian reform – the only one that

succeeded – from the Napoleonic system. Thus the gulf created by the

Revolution continued to exist, whatever Napoleon might do: in the eyes of

Europe, he was still the soldier of the Revolution.

In Prussia, after the dismissal of Stein, the work of renewal had been

concentrated particularly on the army. Scharnhorst had far exceeded the

ﬁ ghting forces that had been contracted for, especially in the country; and

additional reserves had been formed with the help of the Krümper , and by

making use of soldiers given six months’ leave, as was customary, in order

to train the young generation in the parishes. In 1811, on the pretext of

improving the fortiﬁ cations, he called up the pioneer corps, who in fact

spent their time in drilling. It became clear that there had been real technical

progress. The army was divided into six corps. Efforts were made – with

only relative success, it is true – to accustom the infantry to ﬁ ghting in skir-

mishing order; baggage was reduced and tents done away with; the artillery

was reconstituted and its equipment renewed, and the necessary requisi-

tioning plans made for the commissariat. All the same, Scharnhorst did not

succeed in creating a really national army. Although exemptions were cut

down, and corporal punishment abolished in order to make the army appeal

to the middle classes, the king refused to decree compulsory service or

to set up a militia. Though would-be ofﬁ cers – the Portepee-Fähnriche – were

obliged to take an examination, and non-commissioned ofﬁ cers were

not barred from rising to lieutenant, the nobles’ monopoly – apart from

certain exceptions made by the king – was in fact conﬁ rmed, because

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ofﬁ cers were authorised to recommend their own candidates for vacancies.

Three schools were opened for training the Fähnriche , but the cadet

schools reserved for noblemen were still kept in being; moreover, the

ofﬁ cers were granted a corporate court of honour, and so remained very

much a closed aristocratic caste. At least, Scharnhorst was able to form at the

General Staff Headquarters, and at the Military Academy, a High Command

that was less notable for its technical ability than for its unity of spirit,

readiness to take the offensive and the subordination of all to the common

good. As for Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was recalled from his post as

ambassador in Rome in December 1808, to take command of education

and the control of the churches, he only held this position for a year and a

half. His main task was to create the University of Berlin, which had been

projected ever since the loss of the University of Halle. He assembled a

famous group of professors – Fichte and Schleiermacher, Wolf, Savigny,

Niebuhr, Bückh – and so gave it a prestige that brought great advantages to

Prussian policy.

The administrative and social reforms were only resumed after

Hardenberg’s recall on 4 June 1810. He had himself appointed chancellor,

thus at last providing a head for the central government. But this dissolute

opportunist did not inspire conﬁ dence in all the patriots; yet though he

mistrusted the hotheads and the secret societies, he was at one with them in

his aims, and had a secret interview with Stein in Silesia. He was much more

sensitive than the latter to Napoleon’s example, and did not have the same

respect for the aristocracy. As early as 1807 he was saying that Prussia too

needed a revolution, but a revolution from above; and he would gladly have

taken the kingdom of Westphalia as his model. And so he aroused much

more indignation than Stein, and his reputation today does not stand as

high. Finance was his ﬁ rst consideration. Although the Trianon tariff and the

seizures that followed procured him twelve million taler , he had to ﬁ nd

further new resources. He did not even dare to keep the Einkommensteuer in

Eastern Prussia, but conﬁ ned himself to increasing the stamp duty on

27 October, as well as the consumption tax on meat, and to extending the

milling tax to the lowlands. But he used the occasion to take away the lords’

feudal milling, brewing and distilling rights. He also planned to carry

through the agrarian reforms, particularly as there were still disturbances in

Silesia. In 1807 it had been necessary to call in the French to restrain the

peasants, and there was a new insurrection in 1811. Hardenberg wanted to

abolish feudal dues and forced labour, proposing in exchange that the lords

should be freed from their obligation to provide aid and protection. The

customary rights and the Bauernschutz would also disappear, and there would

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then be nothing to stop a full redistribution of the land, the suppression of

compulsory rotation, and a sharing out of the commons. In order to arrange

the Regulierung , the peasant’s obligations would be set against those paid by

the lord. If there was a credit balance, the peasant would pay it by giving up

a part of his tenure or by paying rent. It was clear that this system, which

was in force during the nineteenth century not only in Prussia but in the

whole of Eastern Europe, would more or less reduce the peasant to go on

working as a day labourer in the service of his lord, and would keep him in

a state of subjection. Yet in principle, the state would be the one and only

master, and Hardenberg even considered taking the right of policing, if not

the right of meting out justice, away from the Junkers. In 1812 he borrowed

the French gendarmerie system and in each district set up a superintendent of

police nominated by the king.

Foreseeing that there would be vigorous opposition from the aristocracy,

he sought to get support from public opinion. Moreover, like the patriots,

he thought that the nation should have a part in the government. To begin

with, he was satisﬁ ed with an assembly of notables chosen by himself,

sitting from February to September 1811. The Junkers, led by Marwitz,

protested vigorously: they did not want popular representation, and

demanded a return to the Provincial Estates, where they were the sole repre-

sentatives – apart from a few from the middle classes. The king had to

submit, and arrested Marwitz and Finckenstein. It was a straight social

conﬂ ict. The king could certainly create nobles, as Marwitz observed, but he

could not create noble minds and spirits. And as Yorck was to exclaim in

front of Prince William: ‘If your highness robs us of our rights, on what

then will your own be founded?’ The nobles of the Mohrungen district

would protest, in 1814, against ‘the poisonous inﬂ uence of French legisla-

tion’. Nevertheless, in 1812 an Elective Chamber was called together,

comprising two nobles and two deputies representing the towns and the

countryside, chosen by the landowners in a two-stage election. This assembly

asked for a constitution; but as in the previous one, the nobles were predom-

inant, and their recriminations forced the minister to temporise. The

Regulierungsgesetz of 1811 tranformed the Lassits [leaseholders], who only

enjoyed a right of user on the land, into owners, and abolished their dues

and forced labour obligations in return for a relinquishment to the lords of

a third of the land held, if tenure was hereditary, and of half, if the tenure

was for life for a limited period. Seigneurial protection, feudal customs and

the Bauernschutz were of course still in abeyance, without any compensation

for the peasant. The law was so burdensome that it did not affect the obliga-

tions of the hereditary tenant proper who could prove a title – the Erbpachtbauer

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or the Erbzinsbauer (quit-rent tenant). But the Junkers did not like it any the

more; and as early as 1812 they began to discuss possible restrictive amend-

ments. In 1815 the law was suspended, and in 1816 annulled as far as most

of the peasants were concerned.

The attempts at restricting the seigneurial rights of policing were equally

unsuccessful. On 7 September 1811 Hardenberg had already done away

with the milling tax in the countryside, restored their feudal rights to the

nobility and fallen back upon direct taxation, capitation fees, taxes on capital

and income, and ﬁ nally licences. This last, which was taken over from

France, at any rate involved the abolition of the corporation monopolies.

The Junkers’ privileges were left intact. They kept their rights of succession

and trusts, their powers of justice and patronage, their hunting rights and

their ﬁ scal exemptions. Thus Prussia remained very much behind Western

Germany, the unity and centralisation of the state having made only a very

moderate advance. The aristocracy still kept their privileges, and the eman-

cipation of the peasants was little more than nominal. In several respects

there had been more modernisation even in the grand duchy of Warsaw.

Russia, however, had changed still less. After the Peace of Tilsit, Alexander

recovered his liking for reform, the war having shown him that the

machinery of government called for improvement. From the very outset,

the French alliance revived the memories of youth and his taste for liberal

catchwords. Although Speranski had been more deﬁ nite in his plans and

more determined in action than the comité des amis , nothing much was left of

his efforts. This son of an Orthodox priest, who has gone down in history

with the surname given him in the seminary, was a distinguished preacher

and professor. The Kurakins had introduced him into the Chancery, and he

had then become Kochubei’s right-hand man in the Ministry of the Interior,

entering into direct relationship with the tsar in 1806 and going with him

to Erfurt. When they came back Alexander asked him to draw up a constitu-

tion, and in 1809 accepted it in principle. The Empire was to be divided into

gouvernements, arrondissements and cantons . The canton would have a duma elected by

the landowners, which would in its turn nominate a directory and a dele-

gate to the arrondissement duma – and so on in succession, up to an imperial

duma which would vote the laws and the budget. There would be a ministry

responsible to it, with executive power; and each district would have an

elective court supervised by the Senate. The tsar would also appoint a

consultative Imperial Council.

This scheme owed something to British inﬂ uence, for Speranski had

married an English clergyman’s daughter, and showed early signs of great

admiration for British institutions. His plan originally involved setting up a

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parliament with two chambers, one of them representing the landed aris-

tocracy; but he soon realised that the Russian nobility had neither the inde-

pendence nor the ability of the English lords. All the same it would appear

that the territorial divisions he had in mind, the administrative organisation

and the election of judges, together with a Conseil d’État and ministries,

showed that French inﬂ uence was also at work. It is therefore all the more

remarkable that his social reforms were not even honoured with a trial.

There was no question of emancipating the serfs, and although the merchant

class were not given the power to buy land, the landowners with the right

to elect were nearly all nobles. Alexander decided to adopt this plan by

stages. In 1810 he set up the council, and in 1811 the ministries. Speranski

became secretary of state, and required all candidates for public service to

have university degrees and to pass an examination. This completed the ofﬁ -

cial machinery, and the result – which was far more on the Napoleonic than

on the English model, and more in keeping with Russian development –

was all that survived of Speranski’s plan. Although Speranski had done

nothing to impair the nobles’ privileges, they viewed him with suspicion,

knowing that he was preparing a legal code and a new law for the Jews. He

made himself unpopular in his efforts to repair the Empire’s decaying

ﬁ nances by increasing taxation and planning an income tax that would not

have spared the privileged classes. In Prussia, as in France, the aristocrats put

these innovations down to French inﬂ uence; and when there was a threat of

war, he was accused of treason because in obedience to the tsar and in

furtherance of his ‘secret’, he kept up a correspondence with Paris. Alexander

needed his nobles in his stand against Napoleon, and therefore sent his

friend into exile on 29 March 1812.

When Joseph II came to the throne, his complete change of policy won

the admiration of the reactionary aristocracy, for Francis I, who had been

equally limited and obstinate in outlook, had refused to contemplate the

slightest change in anything at all. All that was left of the Napoleonic regime

in Austria was the repression of free thought and speech and indiscriminate

power for the police; but these had not been borrowed from outside, and

Napoleon, who was not riddled with bigotry and obscurantism, seemed in

comparison to be a liberal ruler. The Austrian administration continued to

be wholly occupied with ﬁ nance. In order to pay the war indemnity, it had

been necessary to pledge the crown plate and raise forced loans; and even

then, there were still seventeen million owing in 1811. His son-in-law

granted a further respite, and when the king of Rome was born, he was

satisﬁ ed with undertakings to pay which were not given him till 4 July

1813, and not one penny of which he ever saw. To cover internal expenses,

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paper money was printed. On 20 February 1811 Count Wallis, successor to

O’Donnell who had died in harness, proclaimed a state of bankruptcy. He

exchanged notes for a new issue at a ﬁ fth of their value, but the new ones

soon went down heavily. The Hungarian Diet protested so vigorously that it

had to be dissolved; and – clean contrary to the constitution – a dictatorship

was set up.

The struggle against France thus never lost its social character. With

Napoleon’s so-called allies, the ancien régime aristocracy carefully kept its

dominant position, knowing that it was doomed for certain if the Continental

System was successful; and the emperor’s downfall was celebrated as a

personal triumph. The Holy Alliance was turned into a kind of insurance

against the middle classes and the peasants. From now onwards, Austria was

the obvious country to take the lead in it.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND LIBERALISM

Confronted by a despotic continental regime in Europe, the Anglo-Saxons

held fast to their own traditions. In England, the Tories no longer protested

against the parliamentary system. The suspension of habeas corpus was not

renewed – except in Ireland – and the acts of 1799 were applied with some

degree of moderation. As the disciples of Pitt, the Tories had borrowed

largely from the eighteenth-century Whigs. They took their stand on the

Established Church, but they nonetheless gave short shrift to any dissidents.

They threw open the peerage to upstarts and distinguished soldiers, were

lavish in handing out decorations, and wisely welcomed the upper middle

classes into the ranks of the old aristocracy. Their social policy was in fact not

unlike Napoleon’s, for it aimed at keeping a hierarchy, though without

establishing any position of legal privilege. But they were nonetheless

opposed to the Napoleonic system because they continued to be attached to

their constitutional and liberal ways; and although not unwilling to

open their ranks to a certain number of newcomers, they were intent on

keeping the power in the hands of the great families of ancient descent.

The continental nobility, for their part, both feudal and military, were

jealous of their own privileges, and reckoned their English counterparts as

too unselective, and too inclined to give wealth precedence over birth. There

were not many men with the insight of Speranski or Stein to take them as

their model. The chief aristocrats envied the English aristocracy for their

skill in keeping their political authority; but they nevertheless agreed with

the absolute monarchs and with Napoleon himself that the English were a

clear example of the weakness of party government. The Tory party was