[1807 A.D.] prepared and began his victories, he summoned his generals around him. He spoke to each such words as reward and redouble heroism. Three great generals, Soult, Davout, and Murat, were on the Königsberg road. Napoleon had, in the first instance, intended to order them to rejoin him, but it meant postponing a battle whose success appeared to him assured. It would mean the loss of a marvellous opportunity given by fortune, or rather by Bennigsen's imprudence. The victory would be more sudden and more glorious, if perhaps less decisive. At five in the evening, Ney opened the battle with an impetuosity which remained unabated throughout. He reached the gates of Friedland; his vigorous attack was seconded by Lannes, Oudinot, and Victor. The Russian imperial guard hastened to defend Friedland; for a moment they forced two of Marshal Ney's divisions to give way, but Dupont's division sustained the shock without wavering and soon drove them back into Friedland, where the Russians were crowded together, obstructed the ways, and were unable to manœuvre. They allowed themselves to be exterminated with their usual patience, whilst continuing their vigorous fire. Bennigsen recognised that it was now time to make use of the three bridges he had thrown across the Alle to save his artillery, which was in danger. He succeeded to a certain extent; but the troops who were fighting in front of that river, which proved so fatal to them, remained exposed to all the fire and steel of the French army. Some had the good fortune to find a ford which facilitated their retreat; others, rather than surrender, threw themselves into the water. A great number were drowned. Ney at last reaped the reward of his stubborn exertions; he entered Friedland with Dupont and ended the battle he had so gloriously begun. Nightfall, fatigue, and great losses prevented a vigorous pursuit. However, the Russian army, weakened, it was said, by the loss of twenty thousand men, met with other obstacles in its retreat on the Niemen. Murat, guided by the roar of the cannon, had set out to harass the retreat of that army, whilst Soult captured another spoil of the battle at Königsberg where the enemy had left valuable stores. To expect further battles after such butcheries would have been inhuman. If this slaughter went on the two empires were threatened with the prospect of leaving all their population fit for war on these awful battle-fields and in these relentless climates. Friedland, without doubt, was a victory in every way, but one of those victories which tell the victor to proceed no farther. Prussia, abandoned by her defenders, seemed to be blotted from the political map of Europe. H. W.- VOL. XII. 2 O [1807 A.D.] At the earliest opportunity Napoleon issued a proclamation to his army. "In ten days' campaign," said he, "you have taken 120 pieces of cannon, killed, wounded, or taken prisoners 60,000 Russians, and Königsberg has surrendered. From the bank of the Vistula you have flown to the Niemen with the rapidity of the eagles. Soldiers, you are worthy of yourselves and of me. The battle of Friedland closed the campaign.a THE PEACE OF TILSIT As soon as Alexander beheld the French upon the Niemen, and Russian Poland about to be invaded, he determined to ask for peace, "in order," says Buturlin; the historian, "to gain the time necessary for preparing to maintain the struggle, which, as was well known, would one day be renewed." The two emperors agreed to meet and the first interview took place upon a raft built in the middle of the river (June 25th). "I detest the English," said Alexander, embracing Napoleon, "as much as you do, and I will uphold you in anything you attempt against them."1 "In that case," Napoleon replied, "peace is concluded." The two sovereigns took up their abode in Tilsit, admitted the king of Prussia to their conferences, and treated each other with marks of the liveliest affection for twenty days. Napoleon felt flattered at being acknowledged by the most powerful monarch in Europe. Alexander, who to great duplicity added a chivalrous exaltation carried to the extreme of mysticism, believed he was participating in the glory of the "man of the century, and of history." As for the king of Prussia, he was disregarded by the two newly made friends, and already saw himself sacrificed; in vain did the queen come in person to beseech the conqueror, who had insulted her in his bulletins, and to soften him used all the charms of her beauty and wit; Napoleon was insensible to the point of harshness. The war with Prussia had been a war of passion, and the treaty which ended it was a passionate one. There is much inexplicable in the French emperor's severe treatment of Prussia, contrasted as it is with his lenience and respect towards Austria. The latter had been at the head of three coalitions against France; the former, after one brief expedition, had remained neutral, and by so doing had procured the ascendency of France; yet, when at last driven to resist, she is punished more than the inveterate and unflinching enemy. Bignon,' as we have seen, attributes this to Napoleon's having at first set his heart on an intimate alliance with Prussia, and to his having been disappointed in this view. The reason is not sufficient. Bonaparte had warred as a general against Austria; in that inferior grade he could not but respect an illustrious enemy; and this early impression he never altogether shook off. But Prussia was the enemy of Napoleon, of the emperor, who had condescended to personal vituperation, and who scribbled against Frederick, his queen, and court, in the Moniteur. The reason given by Bignon was, however, to a certain degree influential. The French sovereign had need of one ally amongst the three great powers of the north and east; he could afford to be friendly and merciful to that one. He first looked to Austria, which, having no seaports, could [1 The English ministry then in power, the successors of Fox, had departed from the Pitt system of subsidising largely, and the Russian monarch thought it fit and just to execrate Great Britain for not paying him to defend himself. The sentiment, however, was eminently calculated to conciliate the conqueror. Of Fox, the Baron de Norvins d said, "Fox has carried to the tomb with him every hope of the world's peace."] [1807 A.D.] not support him against England, and indeed would not. He then turned towards Prussia, whose mean and vacillating policy disgusted and alienated both him and Great Britain. Now he flung himself into the arms of Russia; anon we shall find him recurring to Austria again. The terms now granted to the king of Prussia were stated publicly to be concessions made to Alexander, rather than to Frederick. They deprived him of all his territories westward of the Elbe, Magdeburg included; whilst on the east, he was curtailed of his acquisitions from Poland, which were erected into an independent state, to be called the duchy of Warsaw. Dantzic was also declared a free town; free, however, after Napoleon's fashion, with a garrison of French troops. The king of Prussia by this treaty lost upwards of four millions of subjects, preserving not more than five millions. Yet even what was preserved was not generously ceded. By an unworthy chicane, Bonaparte refused to evacuate the country till the arrear of contributions was paid; and this he estimated at an extravagant sum, triple of what his own intendants reckoned. Under colour of this, French garrisons were kept in the towns of Küstrin, Stettin, and Glogau. The duchy of Warsaw, with the shadow of a constitution, was given to the new king of Saxony, and Prussia was to allow their monarch communication between his two states by a military road across Silesia. Moreover, Prussia was bound to adopt the continental system, and shut her ports against the English. This, indeed, Bonaparte enforced, commanding the course of the Oder by Stettin, that of the Elbe by Hamburg. The queen of Prussia begged in vain for Magdeburg. Prussia, as well as Russia, acknowledged the right and titles of Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples and Sicily-Alexander thus abandoning the Italian Bourbons, whom he had so long protected. At the same time Louis Bonaparte was recognised king of Holland, and Jerome king of Westphalia. This last sovereign was to hold his court at Cassel, the old capital of Hesse, and was to include in his dominions the old territories of Brunswick, part of Prussia west of the Elbe, and part of Hanover. The principal stipulations at Tilsit were between Napoleon and Alexander, lords of the Old World, the one from the Atlantic to the Niemen, the other from the Niemen to the Pacific. They had enormous interests to discuss. Alexander had not hitherto raised himself above the moderate and traditional ideas of European courts. Coming in contact with Napoleon, whose mind embraced the globe, and teemed with gigantic projects, the Russian emperor was infected and caught with the high ambition which he found so eloquent, and saw so successful, in his great rival. Napoleon was to subdue the west of Europe, of which Spain alone remained to subdue, and Austria, perhaps, to humble somewhat more; whilst Alexander was to crush Sweden on one side of her, Turkey on the other. Sweden deserved, indeed, the enmity of France; but to plot against Spain, which had sacrificed its navy to Napoleon, and whose army was at this very moment in his service in the north, was atrocious. We must defer notice of this perfidy. That towards Turkey was equally unjustifiable. That court had every cause of resentment against France. Nevertheless, on the instance of Sébastiani, she quarrelled with her allies, England and Russia, and exposed herself to the peril of their hostilities. It was at this moment, in this critical situation, that France abandoned her to Russia. These stipulations, avowed or secret, of the Treaty of Tilsit, were nothing less than a league to enchain the world. They actually annihilated Prussia, Alexander's late ally; they menaced Spain and Sweden with the same [1807 A.D.] imminent fate, Turkey and Austria prospectively. England was of course devoted to ruin. History may add the striking moral that it was here, in this very league of perfidy, that Bonaparte laid the trap into which he himself inextricably fell.g THIERS' COMMENT ON THE PEACE OF TILSIT Napoleon now returned into France, where he was impatiently awaited and which had been deprived of his presence for nearly a year. Never had such matchless splendour surrounded the person and name of Napoleon, never such apparent omnipotence been acquired to his imperial sceptre. From the straits of Gibraltar to the Vistula, from the mountains of Bohemia to the German Ocean, from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea, he ruled either directly or indirectly, either by himself or by princes who were, some his creatures, others his dependants. Beyond this vast circuit were allies or subjugated enemies, England alone excepted. Thus almost the entire continent was held by him; for Russia, after having resisted him a moment, had adopted all his designs with eager warmth, and Austria found herself constrained to allow their accomplishment and was threatened with compulsory co-operation in them. England, in fine, protected by the sea from this universal domination, was to be placed between the alternative of peace or war with the world. Such were the outward aspects of this colossal power-well calculated in truth to dazzle the universe, as it effectually did; but the reality was less solid than corresponded to its brilliancy. In the intoxication produced by the prodigious campaign of 1805 to change arbitrarily the face of Europe; and instead of being content to modify the past, which is the greatest triumph accorded to the manipulation of man, resolving to destroy it; instead of continuing the old and beneficial rivalry between Prussia and Austria by advantages granted to one over the other, to tear the German sceptre from Austria without giving it to Prussia; to convert their mutual antagonism into a common hatred against France; to create under the title of "confederation of the Rhine" a pretended FrenchGermany, composed of French princes, objects of antipathy to their subjects, and German princes ungrateful for all the benefits they received; and after rendering, by this inequitable displacement of the limit of the Rhine, war with Prussia inevitable, a war as impolitic as it was glorious, to give way to the torrent of victory and be carried to the banks of the Vistula there attempting the reconstruction of Poland with Prussia in the rear vanquished but quivering with anger and Austria sternly implacable- all this, admirable as a military exploit, was in its political bearings imprudent, excessive, and chimerical! By the aid of his surpassing genius Napoleon maintained himself in these perilous extremities, triumphed over all the obstacles of distance, climate, mud, and cold, and consummated on the Niemen the subjugation of the continental powers. But at bottom he was solicitous to bring his audacious march to an end, and all his conduct at Tilsit bore the impress of this exigency. Having forever alienated the good will of Prussia, which he had not the fortunate inspiration to retrieve forever by a striking act of generosity, enlightened touching the sentiments of Austria, and experiencing, all-victorious as he was, the necessity of forming an alliance, he accepted that of Russia which offered at the moment and devised a new political system founded on a single principle- the concurrence of the Russian and French ambitions to do what they liked in the world: a fatal understand [1807 A.D.] ing, for it behoved France to keep a curb on Russia and much more to keep a curb on herself. After aggravating through this Treaty of Tilsit the rankling animosity of Germany by creating within it a French royalty, destined to cost France in the waste of men and money, in invincible hatreds to surmount and in unheeded counsels, all that hitherto those of Naples and Holland had cost her; after reconstituting Prussia fractionally instead of restoring or demolishing her bodily; after in like manner reconstituting Poland by a half creation—and all finished in an incomplete manner because at so great a distance time pressed and strength began to dwindle, Napoleon gave himself irreconcilable enemies and powerless or doubtful friends; in a word, reared an immense edifice, an edifice in which all was new from the base to the summit, an edifice constructed so rapidly that the foundations had not time to settle nor the cement to harden. But if so much censure may be heaped in our opinion upon the political work of Tilsit, however brilliant it may appear, all is found admirable on the contrary in the retrospect of military operations. This army of the camp of Boulogne- which moving from the shore of the Channel to the sources of the Danube with an incredible rapidity enveloped the Austrians at Ulm, repulsed the Russians on Vienna, accomplished the annihilation of both at Austerlitz, and after reposing a few months in Franconia soon recommenced its victorious march, entered Saxony, surprised the Prussian army in retreat, crushed it by a single blow at Jena, pursued it without intermission, outflanked it, outstripped it, and took it to the last man on the extreme edge of the Baltic-this army turning from the north to the east hastened to encounter the Russians, hurled them back on the Pregel, paused only because impracticable quagmires impeded its movements, and then presented the wondrous spectacle of a French army tranquilly encamped on the Vistula. Being suddenly disturbed amidst its quarters it subsequently emerged from them to punish the Russians, reached them at Eylau, waged with them, although perishing of hunger and cold, a sanguinary battle, returned after that battle into its quarters, and there again encamped on the snow, in such a manner that its repose alone covered a great siege, being supported and recruited during a long winter at distances in which all the efforts of administration usually fail; resumed its arms in the spring; and now nature seconding genius interposed between the Russians and their base of operation, reduced them with the view of regaining Königsberg to cross a river before it, precipitated them into it at Friedland and thus terminated by an immortal victory on the banks of the Niemen its far protracted and audacious course not across a defenceless Persia or India like the army of Alexander of Macedon, but across Europe covered with soldiers as disciplined as brave. Behold what is unexampled in the history of ages, worthy the eternal admiration of mankind, showing in combination all qualities of human mind, promptitude and procrastination, audacity and prudence, the science of battle and the art of marches, the genius of war and the tact of administration, and these virtues so various, so rarely united, always appropriately developed and at the moment when they were needed to insure success! The reader will ask how it came to pass that so much prudence was manifested in war and so little in policy. And the reply will be easy; it is that Napoleon directed war with his genius and policy with his passions.m |