Unfortunately, the King refused to appoint Ministers who inspired confidence. With Hardenberg in place of Haugwitz, men would have felt sure that the sword would not again be tamely sheathed; great efforts were made to effect this change, but met with a chilling repulse from the King.[100] It is true that Haugwitz and Beyme now expressed the bitterest hatred of Napoleon, as well they might for a man who had betrayed their confidence. But, none the less, the King"s refusal to change his men along with his policy was fatal. Both at St. Petersburg and London no trust was felt in Prussia as long as Haugwitz was at the helm. The man who had twice steered the ship of state under Napoleon"s guns might do it again; and both England and Russia waited to see some irrevocable step taken before they again risked an army for that prince of waverers.
Grenville rather tardily sent Lord Morpeth to arrange an alliance, but only after he should receive a solemn pledge that Hanover would be restored. That envoy approached the Prussian headquarters just in time to be swept away in the torrent of fugitives from Jena. As for Russia, she had awaited the arrival of a Prussian officer at St. Petersburg to concert a plan of campaign. When he arrived he had no plan; and the Czar, perplexed by the fatuity of his ally, and the hostility of the Turks, refused to march his troops forthwith into Prussia.[101]
Equally disappointing was the conduct of Austria. This Power, bleeding from the wounds of last year and smarting under the jealousy of Russia, refused to move until the allies had won a victory. And so, thanks to the jealousies of the old monarchies, Frederick William had no Russian or Austrian troops at his side, no sinews of war from London to invigorate his preparations, when he staked his all in the high places of Thuringia. He gained, it is true, the support of Saxony and Weimar; but this brought less than 21,000 men to his side.
On the other hand, Napoleon, as Protector of the Rhenish Confederation, secured the aid of 25,000 South Germans, as well as an excellent fortified base at Wurzburg. His troops, holding the citadels of Pa.s.sau and Braunau on the Austrian frontier, kept the Hapsburgs quiet; and 60,000 French and Dutch troops at Wesel menaced the Prussians in Hanover. Above all, his forces already in Germany were strengthened until, in the early days of October, some 200,000 men were marching from the Main towards the Duchy of Weimar. Soult and Ney led 60,000 men from Amberg towards Baireuth and Hof: Bernadotte and Davoust, with 90,000, marched towards Schleitz, while Lannes and Augereau, with 46,000, moved by a road further to the left towards Saalfeld.
The progress of these dense columns near together and through a hilly country presented great difficulties, which only the experience of the officers, the energy and patience of the men, and the genius of their great leader could overcome. Meanwhile Napoleon had quietly left Paris on September 25th. Travelling at his usual rapid rate, he reached Mainz on the 28th: he was at Wurzburg on October 2nd; there he directed the operations, confident that the impact of his immense force would speedily break the Prussians, drive them down the valley of the Saale and thus detach the Elector of Saxony from an alliance that already was irksome.
The French, therefore, had a vast ma.s.s of seasoned fighters, a good base of operations, and a clear plan of attack. The Prussians, on the contrary, could muster barely 128,000 men, including the Saxons, for service in the field; and of these 27,000 with Ruchel were on the frontier of Hesse-Ca.s.sel seeking to a.s.sure the alliance of the Elector. The commander-in-chief was the septuagenarian Duke of Brunswick, well known for his failure at Valmy in 1792 and his recent support to the policy of complaisance to France. His appointment aroused anger and consternation; and General Kalckreuth expressed to Gentz the general opinion when he said that the Duke was quite incompetent for such a command: "His character is not strong enough, his mediocrity, irresolution, and untrustworthiness would ruin the best undertaking." The Duke himself was aware of his incompetence. Why then, we ask, did he accept the command? The answer is startling; but it rests on the evidence of General von m.u.f.fling:
"The Duke of Brunswick had accepted the command _in order to avert war_. I can affirm this with perfect certainty, since I have heard it from his own lips more than once. He was fully aware of the weaknesses of the Prussian army and the incompetence of its officers."[102]
Thus there was seen the strange sight of a diffident, peace-loving King accompanying the army and sharing in all the deliberations; while these were nominally presided over by a despondent old man who still intrigued to preserve peace, and shifted on to the King the responsibility of every important act. And yet there were able generals who could have acted with effect, even if they fell short of the opinion hopefully bruited by General Ruchel, that "several were equal to M. de Bonaparte." Events were to prove that Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Blucher rivalled the best of the French Marshals; but in this war their lights were placed under bushels and only shone forth when the official covers had been shattered. Scharnhorst, already renowned for his strategic and administrative genius, took part in some of the many councils of war where everything was discussed and little was decided; but his opinion had no weight, for on October 7th he wrote: "What we ought to do I know right well, what we _shall_ do only the G.o.ds know."[103] He evidently referred to the need of concentration. At that time the thin Prussian lines were spread out over a front of eighty-five miles, the Saxons being near Gera, the chief army, under Brunswick, at Erfurth, while Ruchel was so far distant on the west that he could only come up at Jena just one hour too late to avert disaster.
And yet with these weak and scattered forces, Prince Hohenlohe proposed a bold move forward to the Main. Brunswick, on the other hand, counselled a prudent defensive; but he could not, or would not, enforce his plan; and the result was an oscillation between the two extremes. Had he ma.s.sed all his forces so as to command the valleys of the Saale and Elster near Jena and Gera, the campaign might possibly have been prolonged until the Russians came up. As it was, the allies dulled the ardour of their troops by marches, counter-marches, and interminable councils-of-war, while Napoleon"s columns were threading their way along those valleys at the average rate of fifteen miles a day, in order to turn the allied left and cut the connection between Prussia and Saxony.[104]
The first serious fighting was on October the 10th at Saalfeld, where Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia with a small force sought to protect Hohenlohe"s flank march westwards on Jena. The task was beyond the strength even of this flower of Prussian chivalry. He was overpowered by the weight and vigour of Lannes" attack, and when already wounded in a cavalry _melee_ was pierced through the body by an officer to whom he proudly refused to surrender. The death of this hero, the "Alcibiades" of Prussia, cast a gloom over the whole army, and mournful faces at headquarters seemed to presage yet worse disasters.
Perhaps it was some inkling of this discouragement, or a laudable desire to stop "an impolitic war," that urged Napoleon two days later to pen a letter to the King of Prussia urging him to make peace before he was crushed, as he a.s.suredly would be. In itself the letter seems admirable--until one remembers the circ.u.mstances of the case. The King had pledged his word to the Czar to make war; if, therefore, he now made peace and sent the Russians back, he would once more stand condemned of preferring dishonourable ease to the n.o.ble hazards of an affair of honour. As Napoleon was aware of the union of the King and Czar, this letter must be regarded as an attempt to dissolve the alliance and tarnish Frederick William"s reputation. It was viewed in that light by that monarch; and there is not a hint in Napoleon"s other letters that he really expected peace.
He was then at Gera, pushing forward his corps towards Naumburg so as to cut off the Prussians from Saxony and the Elbe. Great as was his superiority, these movements occasioned such a dispersion of his forces as to invite attack from enterprising foes; but he despised the Prussian generals as imbeciles, and endeavoured to unsteady their rank and file by seizing and burning their military stores at the latter town. He certainly believed that they were all in retreat northwards, and great was his surprise when he heard from Lannes early on October 13th that his scouts, after scaling the hills behind Jena in a dense mist, had come upon the Prussian army. The news was only partly correct. It was only Hohenlohe"s corps: for the bulk of that army, under Brunswick, was retreating northwards, and nearly stumbled upon the corps of Davoust and Bernadotte behind Naumburg.
Lannes also was in danger on the Landgrafenberg. This is a lofty hill which towers above the town of Jena and the narrow winding vale of the Saale; while its other slopes, to the north and west, rise above and dominate the broken and irregular plateau on which Hohenlohe"s force was encamped. Had the Prussians attacked his weary regiments in force, they might easily have hurled them into the Saale. But Hohenlohe had received orders to retire northwards in the rear of Brunswick, as soon as he had rallied the detachment of Ruchel near Weimar, and was therefore indisposed to venture on the bold offensive which now was his only means of safety. The respite thus granted was used by the French to hurry every available regiment up the slopes north and west of Jena. Late in the afternoon, Napoleon himself ascended the Landgrafenberg to survey the plateau; while a pastor of the town was compelled to show a path further north which leads to the same plateau through a gulley called the Rau-thal.[105]
[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTLE OF JENA]
On the south the heights sink away into a wider valley, the Muhl-thal, along which runs the road to Weimar; and on this side too their wooded brows are broken by gulleys, up one of which runs a winding track known as the Schnecke or Snail. Villages and woods diversified the plateau and hindered the free use of that extended line formation on which the Prussians relied, while favouring the operations of dense columns preceded by clouds of skirmishers by which Napoleon so often hewed his way to victory. His greatest advantage, however, lay in the ignorance of his foes. Hohenlohe, believing that he was confronted only by Lannes" corps, took little thought about what was going on in his front, and judging the Muhl-thal approach alone to be accessible, posted his chief force on this side. So insufficient a guard was therefore kept on the side of the Landgrafenberg that the French, under cover of the darkness, not only crowned the summit densely with troops, but dragged up whole batteries of cannon.
The toil was stupendous: in one of the steep hollow tracks a number of cannon and wagons stuck fast; but the Emperor, making his rounds at midnight, brought the magic of his presence to aid the weary troops and rebuke the officers whose negligence had caused this block.
Lantern in hand, he went up and down the line to direct the work; and Savary, who saw this scene, noted the wonder of the men, as they caught sight of the Emperor, the renewed energy of their blows at the rocks, and their whispers of surprise that _he_ should come in person when their officers were asleep. The night was far spent when, after seeing the first wagon right through the narrow steep, he repaired to his bivouac amidst his Guards on the summit, and issued further orders before s.n.a.t.c.hing a brief repose. By such untiring energy did he a.s.sure victory. Apart from its immense effect on the spirits of his troops, his vigilance reaped a rich reward. Jena was won by a rapid concentration of troops, and the prompt seizure of a commanding position almost under the eyes of an unenterprising enemy. The corps of Soult and Ney spent most of the night and early morning in marching towards Jena and taking up their positions on the right or north wing, while Lannes and the Guard held the central height, and Augereau"s corps in the Muhl-thal threatened the Saxons and Prussians guarding the Schnecke.[106]
A dense fog screened the moves of the a.s.sailants early on the morrow, and, after some confused but obstinate fighting, the French secured their hold on the plateau not only above the town of Jena, where their onset took the Prussians by surprise, but also above the Muhl-thal, where the enemy were in force.
By ten o"clock the fog lifted, and the warm rays of the autumn sun showed the dense ma.s.ses of the French advancing towards the middle of the plateau. Hohenlohe now saw the full extent of his error and despatched an urgent message to Ruchel for aid. It was too late. The French centre, led by Lannes, began to push back the Prussian lines on the village named Vierzehn Heiligen. It was in vain that Hohenlohe"s choice squadrons flung themselves on the serried ma.s.ses in front: the artillery and musketry fire disordered them, while French dragoons were ready to profit by their confusion. The village was lost, then retaken by a rally of the Prussians, then lost again when Ney was reinforced; and when the full vigour of the French attack was developed by the advance of Soult and Augereau on either wing, Napoleon launched his reserves, his Guard, and Murat"s squadrons on the disordered lines. The impact was irresistible, and Hohenlohe"s force was swept away. Then it was that Ruchel"s force drew near, and strove to stem the rout. Advancing steadily, as if on parade, his troops for a brief s.p.a.ce held up the French onset; but neither the dash of the Prussian horse nor the bravery of the foot-soldiers could dam that mighty tide, which laid low the gallant leader and swept his lines away into the general wreck.[107]
In the headlong flight before Murat"s hors.e.m.e.n, the fugitives fell in with another beaten array, that of Brunswick. At Jena the Prussians, if defeated, were not disgraced: before the first shot was fired their defeat was a mathematical certainty. At the crisis of the battle they had but 47,400 men at hand, while Napoleon then disposed of 83,600 combatants.[108] But at Auerstadt they were driven back and disgraced.
There they had a decided superiority in numbers, having more than 35,000 of their choicest troops, while opposite to them stood only the 27,000 men of Davoust"s corps.
Hitherto Davoust had been remarkable rather for his dog-like devotion to Napoleon than for any martial genius; and the brilliant Marmont had openly scoffed at his receiving the t.i.tle of Marshal. But, under his quiet exterior and plodding habits, there lay concealed a variety of gifts which only needed a great occasion to shine forth and astonish the world.[109] The time was now at hand. Frederick William and Brunswick were marching from Auerstadt to make good their retreat on the Elbe, when their foremost hors.e.m.e.n, led by the gallant Blucher, saw a solid wall of French infantry loom through the morning fog. It was part of Davoust"s corps, strongly posted in and around the village of Ha.s.senhausen.
At once Blucher charged, only to be driven back with severe loss.
Again he came on, this time supported by infantry and cannon: again he was repulsed; for Davoust, aided by the fog, had seized the neighbouring heights which commanded the high road, and held them with firm grip. Determined to brush aside or crush this stubborn foe, the Duke of Brunswick now led heavy ma.s.ses along the narrow defile; but the steady fire of the French laid him low, with most of the officers; and as the Prussians fell back, Davoust swung forward his men to threaten their flanks. The King was dismayed at these repeated checks, and though the Prussian reserves under Kalckreuth could have been called up to overwhelm the hard-pressed French by the weight of numbers, yet he judged it better to draw off his men and fall back on Hohenlohe for support.
But what a support! Instead of an army, it was a terrified mob flying before Murat"s sabres, that met them halfway between Auerstadt and Weimar. Threatened also by Bernadotte"s corps on their left flank, the two Prussian armies now melted away in one indistinguishable torrent, that was stemmed only by the sheltering walls of Erfurt, Magdeburg, and of fortresses yet more remote.
Of the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt, the latter was unquestionably the more glorious for the French arms. That Napoleon should have beaten an army of little more than half his numbers is in no way remarkable. What is strange is that so consummate a leader should have been entirely ignorant of the distribution of the enemy"s forces, and should have left Davoust with only 27,000 men exposed to the attack of Brunswick with nearly 40,000.[110] In his bulletins, as in the "Relation Officielle," the Emperor sought to gloze over his error by magnifying Hohenlohe"s corps into a great army and attenuating Davoust"s splendid exploit, which in his private letters he warmly praised. The fact is, he had made all his dispositions in the belief that he had the main body of the Prussians before him at Jena.
That is why, on the afternoon of the 13th, he hastily sent to recall Murat"s horse and Bernadotte"s corps from Naumburg and its vicinity; and in consequence Bernadotte took no very active part in the fighting. For this he has been bitterly blamed, on the strength of an a.s.sertion that Napoleon during the night of the 13th-14th sent him an order to support Davoust. This order has never been produced, and it finds no place in the latest and fullest collection of French official despatches, which, however, contains some that fully exonerate Bernadotte.[111] Unfortunately for Bernadotte"s fame, the tattle of memoir writers is more attractive and gains more currency than the prosaic facts of despatches.
Fortune plays an immense part in warfare; and never did she favour the Emperor more than on October the 14th, 1806. Fortune and the skill and bravery of Davoust and his corps turned what might have been an almost doubtful conflict into an overwhelming victory. Though Napoleon was as ignorant of the movements of Brunswick as he was of the flank march of Blucher at Waterloo, yet the enterprise and tenacity of Davoust and Lannes yielded him, on the Thuringian heights, a triumph scarcely paralleled in the annals of war. It is difficult to overpraise those Marshals for the energy with which they clung to the foe and brought on a battle under conditions highly favourable to the French: without their efforts, the Prussian army could never have been shattered on a single day.
The flood of invasion now roared down the Thuringian valleys and deluged the plains of Saxony and Brandenburg. Rivers and ramparts were alike helpless to stay that all-devouring tide. On October the 16th, 16,000 men surrendered at Erfurt to Murat: then, spurring eastward, _le beau sabreur_ rushed on the wreck of Hohenlohe"s force, and with the aid of Lannes" untiring corps compelled it to surrender at Prenzlau.[112] Blucher meanwhile stubbornly retreated to the north; but, with Murat, Soult, and Bernadotte d.o.g.g.i.ng his steps, he finally threw himself into Lubeck, where, after a last desperate effort, he surrendered to overpowering numbers (November 7th).
Here the gloom of defeat was relieved by gleams of heroism; but before the walls of other Prussian strongholds disaster was blackened by disgrace. Held by timid old men or nerveless pedants, they scarcely waited for a vigorous attack. A few cannon-shots, or even a demonstration of cavalry, generally brought out the white flag. In quick succession, Spandau, Stettin, Kustrin, Magdeburg, and Hameln opened their gates, the governor of the last-named being mainly concerned about securing his future retiring pension from the French as soon as Hanover pa.s.sed into their keeping.
Amidst these shameful surrenders the capital fell into the hands of Davoust (October 25th). Varnhagen von Ense had described his mingled surprise and admiration at seeing those "lively, impudent, mean-looking little fellows," who had beaten the splendid soldiers trained in the school of Frederick the Great. His wonder was natural; but all who looked beneath the surface well knew that Prussia was overthrown before the first shot was fired. She was the victim of a deadening barrack routine, of official apathy or corruption, and of a degrading policy which dulled the enthusiasm of her sons.
Thirteen days after the great battle, Napoleon himself entered Berlin in triumph. It was the first time that he allowed himself a victor"s privilege, and no pains were spared to impress the imagination of mankind by a parade of his choicest troops. First came the foot grenadiers and cha.s.seurs of the Imperial Guard: behind the central group marched other squadrons and battalions of these veterans, already famed as the doughtiest fighters of their age. In their midst came the mind of this military machine--Napoleon, accompanied by three Marshals and a brilliant staff. Among them men noted the plain, soldierlike Berthier, the ever trusty and methodical chief of the staff. At his side rode Davoust, whose round and placid face gave little promise of his rapid rush to the front rank among the French paladins. There too was the tall, handsome, threatening form of Augereau, whose services at Jena, meritorious as they were, scarcely maintained his fame at the high level to which it soared at Castiglione. Then came Napoleon"s favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, a short, stern, war-hardened man, well known in Berlin, where twice he had sought to rivet close the bonds of the French alliance.
Above all, the gaze of the awe-struck crowd was fixed on the figure of the chief, now grown to the roundness of robust health amidst toils that would have worn most men to a shadow; and on the face, no longer thin with the unsatisfied longings of youth, but square and full with toil requited and ambition wellnigh sated--a visage redeemed from the coa.r.s.eness of the epicure"s only by the knitted brows that bespoke ceaseless thought, and by the keen, melancholy, unfathomable eyes.
NOTE ADDED TO THE FOURTH EDITION
Several facts of considerable interest and importance respecting the Anglo-French negotiations of 1806 have been brought to light by M. Coquelle in his recently published work "Napoleon and England, 1803-1813," chapters xi.-xvii. (George Bell and Sons, 1904).
CHAPTER XXVI
THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND
"I know full well that London is a corner of the world, and that Paris is its centre."--_Letter of Napoleon_, August 18th, 1806.
On the 21st of November, 1806, Napoleon issued at Berlin the decree which proclaimed open and unrelenting war on English industry and commerce, a war that was to embroil the whole civilized world and cease only with his overthrow. After reciting his complaints against the English maritime code, he declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade, interdicted all commerce with them, threatened seizure and imprisonment to English goods and subjects wherever found by French or allied troops, forbade all trade in English and colonial wares, and excluded from French and allied ports any ship that had touched at those of Great Britain; while any ship that connived at the infraction of the present decree was to be held a good prize of war.[113] This ukase, which was binding for France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the Rhenish Confederation, formed the foundation of the Continental System, a term applicable to the sum total of the measures that aimed at ruining England by excluding her goods from the Continent.
The plan of strangling Britain by her own wealth was not peculiar to Napoleon. In common with much of his political stock-in-trade he had it from the Jacobins, who stoutly maintained that England"s wealth was fict.i.tious and would collapse as soon as her commerce was attacked in the Indies and excluded from the Rhine and Elbe. At first the fulminations of Parisian legislators fell idly on the stately pile of British industry; but when the young Bonaparte appeared on the scene, the commercial warfare became serious. As soon as his victories in Italy widened the sphere of French influence, the Directory banned the entry of all our products, counting all cotton and woollen goods as English unless the contrary could be proved by certificates of origin.[114] Public opinion in France, which, unless held in by an intelligent monarch, has always swung towards protection or prohibition, welcomed that vigorous measure; and great was the outcry of manufacturers when it was rumoured in 1802 that Napoleon was about to make a commercial treaty with the national enemy. Tradition and custom, therefore, were all on his side, when, after Trafalgar, he concentrated all his energy on his "coast-system."[115]
Ostensibly the Berlin Decree was a retort to our Order in Council of May 16th, 1806, which declared all the coast between Brest and the Elbe in a state of blockade; and French historians have defended it on this ground, a.s.serting that it was a necessary reply to England"s aggressive action.[116] But this plea can scarcely be maintained. The aggressor, surely, was the man who forced Prussia to close the neutral North German coast to British goods (February, 1806). Besides, there is indirect proof that Napoleon looked on our blockade of the northern coasts as not unreasonable. In his subsequent negotiations with us, he raised no protest against it, and made no difficulty about our maritime code: if we would let him seize Sicily, we might, it seems, have re-enacted that code in all its earlier stringency. Far from doing so, Fox and his successors relaxed the blockade of North Germany; and by an order dated September 25th, the coast between the Elbe and the Ems was declared free.
Napoleon"s grievance against us was thereby materially lessened, and his protest against fict.i.tious blockades in the preamble of the Berlin Decree really applied only to our action on the coast between the Helder and Brest, where our cruisers were watching the naval preparations still going on. His retort in the interests of outraged law was certainly curious; he declared our 3,000 miles of coast in a state of blockade--a mere _brutum fulmen_ in point of fact, but designed to give a show of legality to his Continental System. Yet, apart from this thin pretext, he troubled very little about law.
Indeed, blockade is an act of war; and its application to this or that part or coast depends on the will and power of the belligerents.
Napoleon frankly recognized that fact; and, however much his preambles appealed to law, his conduct was decided solely by expediency. When he wanted peace (along with Sicily) he said nothing about our maritime claims: when the war went on, he used them as a pretext for an action that was ten times as stringent.
The gauntlet thrown down by him at Berlin was promptly taken up by Great Britain. An Order in Council of January 7th, 1807, forbade neutrals to trade between the ports of France and her allies, or between ports that observed the Berlin Decree, under pain of seizure and confiscation of the ship and cargo. In return Napoleon issued from Warsaw (January 27th) a decree, ordering the seizure in the Hanse Towns of all English goods and colonial produce. By way of reprisal England reimposed a strict blockade on the North German coast (March 11th); and after the Peace of Tilsit laid the Continent at the feet of Napoleon, he frankly told the diplomatic circle at Fontainebleau that he would no longer allow any commercial or political relations between the Continent and England. "The sea must be subdued by the land." In these words Napoleon pithily summed up his enterprise; and whatever may be thought of the means which he adopted, the design is not without grandeur. Granted that Britannia ruled the waves, yet he ruled the land; and the land, as the active fruitful element, must overpower the barren sea. Such was the notion: it was fallacious, as will appear later on; but it appealed strongly to the French imagination as providing an infallible means of humbling the traditional foe.
Furthermore, it placed in Napoleon"s hands a potent engine of government, not only for a.s.suring his position in France, but for extending his sway over North Germany and all coasts that seemed needful to the success of the experiment.
Indirectly also it seems to have fed, without satisfying, his ever-growing love of power. Here we touch on the difficult question of motive; and it is perhaps impossible, except for dogmatists, to determine whether the enterprises that led to his ruin--the part.i.tion of Portugal, which slid easily into the occupation of Spain, together with his Moscow adventure--were prompted by ambition or by a semi-fatalistic feeling that they were necessary to the complete triumph of his Continental System. He himself, with a flash of almost uncanny insight, once remarked to Roederer that his ambition was different from that of other men: for they were slaves to it, whereas it was so interwoven with the whole texture of his being as to interfere with no single process of thought and will. Whether that is possible is a question for psychologists and casuists; but every open-minded student of Napoleon"s career must at times pause in utter doubt, whether this or that act was prompted by mad ambition, or followed naturally, perhaps inevitably, from that world-embracing postulate, the Continental System.
England also derived some secondary advantages from this war of the elements. In order to stalemate her mighty foe, she pushed on her colonial conquests so as to control the resources of the tropics, and thus prevent that deadly tilting of the balance landwards which Napoleon strove to effect. And fate decreed that the conquests of English seamen and settlers were to be more enduring than those of Napoleon"s legions. While the French were gaining barren victories beyond the Vistula and Ebro, our seamen seized French and Dutch colonies and our pioneers opened up the interior of Australia and South Africa.
We also used our maritime monopoly to depress neutral commerce. We have not s.p.a.ce to discuss the complex question of the rights of neutrals in time of war, which would involve an examination of the "rule of 1756" and the compromises arrived at after the two Armed Neutrality Leagues. Suffice it to say that our merchants had recently been indignant at the comparative immunity enjoyed by neutral ships, and had pressed for more vigorous action against such as traded to French ports.[117] Yet the statement that our Orders in Council were determined by the clamour of the mercantile cla.s.s is an exaggeration: they were reprisals against Napoleon"s acts, following them in almost geometrical gradations. To his domination over the industrial resources of the Continent we had nothing to oppose but our manufacturing skill, our supremacy in the tropics, and our control of the sea. The methods used on both sides were alike brutal, and, when carried to their logical conclusion at the close of the year, crushed the neutrals between the upper and the nether millstone. But it is difficult to see what other alternative was open to an insular State that was all-powerful at sea and weak on land. Our very existence was bound up with maritime commerce; and an abandonment of the carrying trade to neutrals would have been the tamest of surrenders, at a time when surrender meant political extinction.
We turn now to follow the chief steps in Napoleon"s onward march, which enabled him to impose his system on nearly the whole of the Continent. While encamped in the Prussian capital he decreed the deposition of the Elector of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, and French and Dutch troops forthwith occupied that Electorate. Towards Saxony he acted with politic clemency; and on December 11th, 1806, the Elector accepted the French alliance, entered the Confederation of the Rhine, and received the t.i.tle of King.[118]
Meanwhile Frederick William, accompanied by his grief-stricken consort, was striving to draw together an army in his eastern provinces. Some overtures with a view to peace had been made after Jena; but Napoleon finally refused to relax his pursuit unless the Prussians retired beyond the Vistula, and yielded up to him all the western parts of the kingdom, with their fortresses. Besides, he let it be known that Prussia must join him in a close alliance against Russia, with a view to checking her ambitious projects against Turkey; for the Czar, resenting the Sultan"s deposition of the hospodars of the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities, an act suggested by the French, had sent an army across the River Pruth, even when the Porte timidly revoked its objectionable firman.[119] The Eastern Question having been thus reopened, Napoleon suggested a Franco-Prussian alliance so as to avert a Russian conquest of the Balkan Peninsula. But now, as ever, his terms to Prussia were too exacting. The King deigned not to stoop to such humiliation, but resolved to stake his all on the courage of his troops and the fidelity of the Czar.