A.D. 1807.] REIGN OF GEORGE III. 819 MEETING OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE AND THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER OF RUSSIA AT TILSIT. As at Eylau, so at Friedland, Napoleon made no attempt to follow the Russians. The dreadful carnage of these battles, so different to that with the Austrians and Prussians, seems to have daunted him to a considerable degree. It was difficult to call them victories, for they resulted in nothing but in a slaughter of his men, which he saw began greatly to disgust his troops. At Eylau, twelve thousand of the French had quitted the ranks as soon as it grew dusk, on pretence of looking after the wounded. Here they did not appear at all elated by the retreat of the enemy. But the battle, nevertheless, produced important consequences. The king of Prussia did not think himself safe at Köningsberg, and he evacuated it; and the unhappy queen prepared, with her children, to fly to Riga. The Russians retreated to Tilsit, and there Alexander made up his mind to negotiate with Napoleon. He was far from being in a condition to despair: Gustavus, the king of Sweden, was at the head of a considerable army at Stralsund; an English expedition was daily expected in the Baltic; the spirit of resistance was reawakening in Prussia; Schill, the gallant partisan leader, was again on horseback, with a numerous body of men, gathered in various quarters; and Hesse, Hanover, Brunswick, and other German provinces were prompt for revolt on the least occasion of encouragement. Buonaparte felt the danger of crossing the Niemen, and advancing into the vast deserts of Russia, with these dangerous elements in his rear. Besides, the presence of Buonaparte was necessary in France. He had been absent from it nearly a year; he had drawn heavily on its resources, and a too long-continued strain without his presence might produce fatal consequences. To leave his army in the north was to leave it to certain defeat, and with the danger of having all Germany again in arms. These circumstances, well weighed by a man of genius and determination, would have induced him to make a resolute stand, and to draw his enemy into those wilds where he afterwards ruined himself, or to wear him out by delay. Alexander, however, had not the necessary qualities for such a policy of procrastination; we shall see it was afterwards Bernadotte who planned for him the final Russian campaign, and enabled him to carry it into effect. He was now depressed by the sufferings of his army; he was indignant against England; he made overtures to Napoleon, and they were gladly responded to, for Buonaparte had great need of them. Talleyrand, who had arrived at Köningsberg, said to Savary, who had received orders to prepare bridges to cross the Niemen :-"Do not hurry yourself. Where is the utility of going beyond the Niemen? What are we to find beyond that river? The emperor must renounce his views respecting Poland: that country is good for nothing; we can only organise disorder there; we have now a favourable opportunity of making an end of this business, and we must not let it escape." Accordingly, Benningsen communicated Alexander's willingness for peace, on the 21st of June, and the armistice was ratified on the 23rd. Buonaparte determined then, as on most occasions, to settle the treaty, not by diplomatists, but personally, with the czar- a particular which his nephew and copyist, Louis Napoleon, imitated at Villafranca. A raft was prepared and anchored in the middle of the Niemen, and, on the morning of the 25th of June, 1807, the two emperors met on that raft, and embraced, amid the shouts of the two armies arranged on each bank. Buonaparte was attended by Murat, Berthier, Bessières, Duroc, and Caulaincourt; Alexander by his brother, the archduke Constantine, the count de Lieven, and generals Benningsen and Ouwarrow. The two emperors retired to a seat placed for them on the raft, and remained in conversation two hours, during which time their attendants remained at a distance. When the emperors cam forth, they introduced their followers to each other, and there was an immediate show of great mutual cordiality. The town of Tilsit was declared neutral ground, and became a scene of festivities, in which the Russian, French, an even Prussian officers, who had been so long drenching th northern snows with each other's blood, vied in courtesin towards each other. Amongst them the two emperor appeared as sworn brothers, relaxing into gaiety and ar of gallantry, like two young fashionables. On the 28th the king of Prussia arrived, and was treated with a markdifference. He was bluntly informed, that whatever part his territories were restored would be solely at the solicit tion of the emperor of Russia. The queen did not arrive a Tilsit for some days after the king. She had seen Alexan at Köningsberg, and was so overcome by emotion, th amid her tears, she could only say, "Dear cousin!" It be supposed what must have been her trial in having thus: meet the haughty and unmanly conqueror, who had 1 only deprived her and her husband of their kingdom, i had endeavoured, in coarse and insulting terms, to depriv her of her character. Yet she did her best to conceal 1feelings, and to ingratiate herself with the man who held much of the world's destinies in his hands. She said him :-"Forgive us this fatal war; the memory of the gr Frederick deceived us. We thought ourselves his equa because we are his descendants-alas! we have not prov such." Buonaparte appeared to be favourably impresse! the beauty and sorrow of the queen; but, in his letters Josephine, he boasted that he was proof against all her artand though he seemed, while present with her, to grant requests, he was sure to send her afterwards a wr refusal. On one occasion he offered her a very magniñ· · rose. The queen appeared at first disinclined to receive i the present of a full-blown red rose, in the flower-langa of Germany, is tantamount to a declaration of love; but, re lecting herself, she took it, with a smile, saying:-" At ': with Magdeburg!" "Your majesty will be pleased to reme ber," said Buonaparte, with more of his native hauteur: of French politeness, "that it is I who offer, and that y majesty has only the task of accepting." The loss of the ki dom, its dismemberment by the conqueror-a mere frag only being awarded to the king-and the insults that had received from Buonaparte through all these misforter were too much for her. Her health gave way irretrieva! and she died on the 19th of July, 1810, having often s that, as Mary Tudor of England said of Calais, if her 1 was examined after death, the word Magdeburg won found inscribed on it. By the terms of the treaty of Tilsit, Prussian Poland taken away, but not to incorporate it with a restored Pos A.D. 1807.] THE TREATY OF TILSIT. 321 this programme of future robberies, the two emperors broke up the conference on the twentieth day, the treaty betwixt Russia and France having been signed on the 7th, and that between France and Prussia on the 9th of July. Frederick William published an address to the provinces which were rent from him, expressive of his deep grief, but also expressive of an undeclared but not abandoned hope. He said, in conclusion, neither force nor fate should ever efface the remembrance of them from his heart. Buonaparte returned to France the triumphant master of nearly the whole continent. He might be said, indeed, to rule the whole of it, by direct domination, or by the terror of his arms. His passage through Germany was distinguished by the flocking round of almost all that had rank or distinction to do him a slavish homage. The picture drawn of the mind and condition of Germany at this moment, by Wolfgang Menzel, one of their best and most impartial historians, is most humiliating : as Buonaparte had delusively allowed the Poles to hope. No; a restored Poland was incompatible with a treaty of peace with Russia, or the continuance of it with Austria. It was handed over to the duke of Saxony, now elevated to the title of king of Saxony and duke of the grand duchy of Warsaw-the name which Prussian Poland assumed. The Polish patriots, who had put faith in the hollow words of Buonaparte, now loudly lamented the discovery of how he had duped them, or cursed him bitterly in secret. Alexander, with all his assumed sympathy for his fallen cousins of Prussia, came in for a slice of the spoil, having the province of Bialystok made over to him, and ceding the lordship of Jever to Holland as an ostensible equivalent. Dantzic, with a certain surrounding district, was recognised as a free city, under the protection of Prussia and Saxony; but Buonaparte took care to stipulate for the retention of a garrison there till the conclusion of a general peace, so as to stop out any British armament or influence. To oblige the emperor of Russia, he allowed the dukes of Saxe-Coburg, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who were the czar's relations, to retain possession of their territories; but he returned to Prussia only about one-half of the provinces which he had seized, reducing her very much to the limits in which Frederick, called the Great, had found her before his usurpations. In the articles of the treaty, which were made public, Alexander paid a nominal courtesy to his ally, Great Britain, by offering to mediate betwixt her and France, if the offer were accepted within a month; but amongst the secret articles of the treaty was one binding the czar to shut his ports against all British vessels, if this offer were rejected, This was a sacrifice demanded of Alexander, as Great Britain was Russia's best customer, taking nearly all her raw or exported produce. But this sacrifice had ample compensation in other secret articles. In return for this, and for Alexander's connivance at, or assistance in, Buonaparte's intention of seizing on Spain and Portugal, for the taking of Malta and Gibraltar, and the expulsion of the English from the Mediterranean, Alexander was allowed to invade and annex Finland, the territory of Sweden, and, giving up his designs on Moldavia and Wallachia, for which he was now waging an unprovoked war, he was to be allowed to conquer the rest of Turkey, if he could, and establish himself in the long-coveted Constantinople. Thus these two robbers shared kingdoms at their pleasure. Turkey and Finland were regarded by them as properly Russian provinces, and Spain, Portugal, Malta, Gibraltar, and, eventually, England, as natural provinces of France. In this cool appropriation of their neighbours' lands, the selfish, though professedly pious, Alexander had the advantage, for he could readily annex Finland, and could do the same by Turkey, with far more ease than Buonaparte could conquer Malta and Gibraltar, defended by the invincible fleets of England. As for the conquest of England, that was hopeless, so long as these fleets existed, and that of Spain www extremely doubtful. Buonaparte had cause, both in the results of his treaty, and in Alexander's subsequent conduct, to confess that he had outwitted him, and to cause him to nickname him the Greek-that is, in his meaning, a rickster. Having, however, to their present satisfaction, arranged whom he says— "The whole of western Europe bowed in lowly submission before the genius of Napoleon. Russia was bound by the silken chains of flattery; England, Turkey, Sweden, and Portugal alone bade him defiance. England, whose fleets ruled the European seas, who lent her aid to his enemies, and instigated their opposition, was his most dangerous foe. By a gigantic measure, known as the continental system, he sought to undermine her power; but his attempt to ruin the commerce of England recoiled ruinously on himself. But the continent, meantime, paid him a base homage. Napoleon returned to Germany in the autumn of 1808, to make more determinate arrangements with Alexander of Russia and his German satellites for the movement on Spain. For this purpose, he held a personal conference, in October, at Erfurth, whither the princes of Germany hastened to pay their homage, humbly as their ancestors of yore to the conquering Attila. The company of actors, brought in Napoleon's train from Paris, boasted of gaining the plaudits of a royal parterre, and a French sentinel, happening to call to the watch to present arms to one of the kings there dancing attendance, was reproved by his officer with the observation, Ce n'est qu'un roi!' Both emperors, for the purpose of offering a marked insult to Prussia, attended a great hare hunt on the battle-field of Jena. The kings of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Westphalia, Saxony, the prince primate, the hereditary prince of Baden and of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the duke of Weimar, the princes of Hohenzollern, Hesse-Rotenburg, and HessePhilipsthal, were present. No one belonging to the house of Austria was there; of that of Prussia, there was prince William, the king's brother. The Allgemeine Zeitung of that day noted, as a high honour paid to Goethe, the one hour's conversation held with him by Napoleon. Yet Wieland, oppressed by age, was allowed to stand an hour in Napoleon's presence, and his asking leave to retire from exhaustion was considered by Buonaparte as an unwarrantable liberty. The literary heroes of Weimar took no interest in the country from which they had received so deep a tribute of admiration; not a patriot sentiment escaped their lips. At the time that the deepest wound was inflicted on the Tyrol, Goethe gave to the world his frivolous Wohlverwandschaften,' followed by a poem in praise of Napoleon, of 'Doubts that have baffled thousands, he has solved; Ideas o'er which centuries have brooded, His giant mind intuitively compassed.' "The period immediately subsequent to the fall of the ancient empire forms the blackest page in the history of Germany. The whole of the left bank of the Rhine was annexed to France; the people groaned beneath exorbitant taxes and the conscription. The commerce on the Rhine had almost entirely ceased. The great and dangerous robber bands of Damian Hessel and of Schinderhannes afford abundant proof of the demoralised condition of the country. In Würtemberg, the new aristocracy, modelled on that of France, was unbearable. The conscription and taxes were crushing, and the peasants were ruined by the great hunts which Matthisson, the court poet, celebrated as festivals of Diana. Personal freedom was restricted by innumerable decrees; freedom of speech was strictly repressed. A swarm of informers ensnared those whom the secret police were unable to entrap. The secrecy of letters was violated. Trials in criminal cases were no longer allowed to be public; sentences were passed in political cases, not by the judges, but at the despots' caprice. The people were disarmed, and not even the inhabitants of solitary farms and hamlets were allowed to possess arms to defend themselves against wolves and robbers. The members of the higher aristocracy were compelled, under pain of being deprived of a third of their income, to spend three months in the year at court. The citizens were oppressed by a variety of new taxes, and by newly-created monopolies of tobacco, salt, &c., and by the tenfold rise of the excise and customs duties. "In Bavaria, patriotism was more unknown than in any other part of Germany. Christopher von Aretin, in 1810, published a work against the few German patriots still remaining, whom he denounced as preachers of Germanism, criminals, and traitors, by whom the Rhenish confederation was polluted. Charles von Dalberg, the prince-primate, and grand duke of Frankfurt, flattered the foreign tyrant to an extent unsurpassed by the other base sycophants abounding at the time. He would fold his hands, and invoke blessings from the Most High on the almighty ruler of the earth, and celebrate his victories with hymns of joy, whilst his ministers tyrannised over the people. In Würtzburg, Saxe-Coburg, but perhaps above all in Saxe-Weimar, the same base adulation reigned. There the great poets assembled by the deceased duchess Amalia, scattered unceasing incense around Napoleon; but no one came near John Müller, the historian. In an address to the estates of Westphalia he said :—' It is a marked peculiarity of the nations of Germany, that whenever God, in His wisdom, resolved to bestow upon them a new kind, or a higher degree, of civilisation, the impulse has ever been given from without. This impulse was given to us by Napoleon-by him, before whom the earth is silent, God having given the whole world into his hands; nor can Germany, at the present period, have a wish ungratified, Napoleon having recognised her as the nursery of European civilisation. Too sublime to condescend to every-day polity, he has given durability to Germany. Happy nation! what an interminable vista of glory opens to thy view!' We might name a host of similar writers crawling at the feet of Buonaparte. Crome and Zschokke, a native of Magdeburg, naturalised in Switzerland, who declared that Napoleon had done more for Swiss independence than William Tell; Murhard, Schütz, Kosegarten, Benturini, who declared Buonaparte to be a second incarnation of the Deity-a second saviour of the world; and Posselt, who, in his 'European Annals,' exclaimed, 'Let us raise to Napoleon a national monument worthy of the first and only benefactor of the nations of Germany. Let his name be engraved, in gigantic letters of shining gold, on Germany's highest and steepest pinnacles, whence, lighted by the effulgent rays of morn, is may be visible far over the plains on which he has bestowed a happy futurity!' "Such was the deplorable condition into which Germany had now fallen; but the unprincipled address of Müller formed, as it were, the turning-point of German affairs. Self-degradation could go no further. The spirit of the sons of Germany began to rise; and with manly courage they sought, by their future actions, to wipe off the deep stain of their former guilt and dishonour. Amongst the unbending few, Blucher, at that time governor of Pomerania, restrained his fiery nature, and endured in patience, silently brooding over deep and implacable revenge." But the Swiss were not at all behind the Germans in the race of servility. The same historian says:-"The Swis testified the greatest zeal on every occasion for the emperor Napoleon, celebrated his fête-day, and boasted of his protec tion, and of the freedom they were still permitted to enjoy. Freedom of thought was expressly prohibited. Sycophants in the pay of the foreign ruler-as, for instance, Zschokke alone guided public opinion. The Swiss shed their blood in each and all of Napoleon's campaigns, and aided him t reduce their kindred nations to abject slavery. They de nounced any one as an enemy to his country who condemned the service of the Swiss soldiers in the French army. And such was the frightful prostitution of language introduce that the Landamann, on the opening of the Federal Diet.." 1806, lauded 'the omnipotent benevolence of the graciou mediator, the emperor Napoleon!'" On the 29th of July Napoleon arrived at his palace f St. Cloud, and received the homage of the senate and other constituted bodies. The language of literary men ther too, vied with that of Germany. Lacepède, the celebrate naturalist, as speaker of the senate, declared that Napoles. had done, in the course of a few months, what it w seemingly have required ages to effect. He arrayed him. both omnipotence and omnipresence; and added—“We ca not offer your majesty praises worthy of you. Your gir is too much raised above us. It will be the task of poster fully to estimate it." "So," says Sir Walter Scott, p the president of the French senate; and who that wished retain the name of a rational being, dared have said tha within the period of seven years, the same senate would is carrying to the downfallen and dejected king of Prus..... their congratulations on his share in the overthrow of very man whom they were now adoring as a demi-god?" The restless spirit of Buonaparte did not allow him avự repose, even after his subjugation of the greater part of t north of Europe. Whilst he had been contending with the A.D. 1807.] THE ROYAL FAMILY QUIT LISBON. 323 Russians, he had been planning fresh campaigns-fresh this infamous treaty, Spain agreed to assist France in conquests at the opposite extremity of the continent. seizing Portugal, which should be divided into three parts. Godoy, the favourite of the king of Spain, and the The province of Entre Minho y Douro, with the town of paramour of his dissolute queen, who had professed great Oporto, was to be given to the king of Etruria, the grandadmiration of Buonaparte, seeing him so deeply engaged in son of the king of Spain, instead of Etruria itself, which Germany, had suddenly called out a considerable army, and Buonaparte wanted to annex to France, and this was to be addressed it in a vaunting but mysterious way. The news called the kingdom of Northern Lusitania. The next part, of this reached Buonaparte on the field of Jena, and, to consist of Alentejo and the Algarves, was to be given to discovering by this means the real sentiments of the Godoy, the queen of Spain's paramour, who was to take the Spanish favourite towards him, he vowed vengeance on title of prince of the Algarves. The third, including the Spain. It was by no means the first time that he had provinces of Tras-os-Montes, Beira, and Estremadura, was contemplated the conquest of Spain and Portugal, but to remain in the hands of the French till the end of the war, this circumstance inspired him with a new impulse in that who would thus be at hand to protect the whole. In fact, direction, and a plausible excuse. In his interviews with it never was the intention of Buonaparte that either Godoy Alexander of Russia, these views had been avowed; and or the king of Etruria should ever be more than temporary now, no sooner had he returned to Paris than he commenced puppets; but that the whole of Spain and Portugal should his operations for that purpose. He blended this scheme, become provinces of France under a nominal French king. at the same time, with his great one of shutting out the English trade from the whole continent. Russia had, by the treaty of Tilsit, entered into a compact to enforce this system in her ports. Holland was compelled to submit to it. The kingdom of Westphalia was now in the hands of his brother Jerome, who had been compelled to separate from his American wife, Elizabeth Paterson, and had been married to a daughter of the king of Würtemberg, so that the territories now comprised in the new kingdom of Westphalia were under the same law of exclusion. He bad extended it to the Prussian ports since his conquest of that country, and to the Hanseatic towns. Denmark was ready to comply, and the treaty with Russia extended his embargo ostensibly to the whole western shores of the Paltic. But Alexander was as little faithful in this part of the treaty as in some others. In fact, he dared not strictly aforce the exclusion of British trade, were he so disposed. Nearly the whole heavy produce of Russia-hemp, iron, timber, wax, pitch, and naval stores, which constituted the chief revenues of the Russian boyards—was taken by the English, and paid for in their manufactures. To have cut off this trade would have made the life of Alexander as little ecure as that of his father, Paul, had been. The Russian and English trade therefore continued, under certain devices, and notwithstanding the ukases of the czar to the contrary. Buonaparte knew it, but was not prepared to open up a new war with Russia on that account-at east, at present. He was now turning his attention to the ath. Spain and Portugal — still nominally existing under ir native princes, but very much under the influence of Bonaparte-admitted British goods to a great extent. Buonaparte himself had winked at the introduction of them to Portugal, because that country had paid him large sums permit it. But now he determined to enforce a rigid clusion, and to make the breach of his dictated orders a for seizure of the country. In fact, he had long solved to seize both Spain and Portugal, but to employ Spain first in reducing her neighbour, and by that very act introduce his troops into Spain herself. He complained, herefore, that Portugal had refused to enforce the Berlin ree; and he entered into a treaty with Spain at Fonainebleau, which was signed on the 27th of October. By No sooner was this treaty signed than Junot was ordered to cross the Bidasoa with thirty thousand men, and march through Spain for the Portuguese frontier. Two additional armies, partly of French and partly of Spaniards, supported him, and another army of forty thousand was stationed at Bayonne, intended, it was said, to act as an army of reserve, in case the English should land and attempt to defend Portugal, but in reality it was intended for the subjugation of Spain itself. Junot, who had formerly been Buonaparte's ambassador at the court of Lisbon, and who had shown himself one of the most rapacious and unprincipled of men, so much so that Buonaparte himself had stigmatised him as a monster, made rapid marches through Spain. The prince regent of Portugal, knowing that resistance was vain, sent the marquis of Marialva to state to the courts of France and Spain that he had complied with the whole of their demands, as regarded the admission of British goods, and demanded the arrest of the march of the invading army. But no notice was taken of this, and Junot pushed on with such speed as to exhaust his troops with fatigue. He was anxious to seize the persons of the royal family, and therefore this haste, accompanied by the most solemn professions of his coming as the friend and ally of Portugal-as the protector of the people from the yoke of the English, the maritime tyrants of Europe. But the royal family put no faith in these professions; they resolved not to wait the arrival of the French, but to muster all the money and valuables that they could, and escape to their South American possessions. Whilst these preparations were making in all haste, the British traders collected their property, and conveyed it on board British vessels. The inhabitants of the British factory, so long established in Lisbon, had quitted it on the 18th of October, amid the universal regret of the people. The ambassador, lord Strangford, took down the British arms, and went on board the squadron of Sir Sidney Smith, lying in the Tagus. On the 27th of November the royal family, amid the cries and tears of the people, went on board their fleet, attended by a great number of Portuguese nobility; in all, about one thousand eight hundred Portuguese thus emigrating. The prince regent accompanied them, sensible that his presence could be of no service any longer. The weather was as gloomy as the occasion, and a more affecting scene could not well be |