CHAPTER XXIX

ERFURT

"At bottom the great question is who shall have Constantinople?" NAPOLEON, May 31st, 1808.

THE Spanish Rising made an immense rent in Napoleon's plans. It opened valuable markets for British goods both in the Peninsula and in South and Central America, and that too at the very time when the Continental System was about to enfold us in its deadly grip. And finally it disarranged schemes that reached far beyond Europe. To these we must now briefly recur.

Even amidst his greatest military triumphs Napoleon's gaze turned longingly towards the East; and no sooner did he force peace on the conquered than his thoughts centred once more on his navy and colonies, on Egypt and India. The Treaty of Tilsit gave him leisure to renew these designs. The publication in 1807 of his official Atlas of Australia, in which he claimed nearly half that continent for France, proves that he never accepted Trafalgar as a death-blow to his maritime and colonial aspirations. And the ardour of his desire for the conquest of India is seen in the letter which he wrote to the Czar on February 2nd, 1808. After expressing his desire for the glory and expansion of Russia, and advising the Czar to conquer Finland, he proceeds:

"An army of 50,000 men, Russians, French, and perhaps a few Austrians, that penetrated by way of Constantinople into Asia, would not reach the Euphrates before England would tremble and bow the knee before the Continent. I am ready in Dalmatia. Your Majesty is ready on the Danube. A month after we came to an agreement the

1 See the letter of an Englishman from Buenos Ayres of September 27th, 1809, in "Cobbett's Register" for 1810 (p. 256), stating that the new popular Government there was driven by want of funds, "not from their good wishes to England," to open their ports to all foreign commerce on moderate duties.

army could be on the Bosporus. . . . By the 1st of May our troops can be in Asia, and at the same time those of Your Majesty, at Stockholm. Then the English, threatened in the Indies, and chased from the Levant, will be crushed under the weight of events with which the atmosphere will be charged."1

There were several reasons why Napoleon should urge on this scheme. He was irritated by the continued resistance of Great Britain, and thought to terrify us into surrender by means of those oriental enterprises which convinced our statesmen that we must fight on for dear life. He also desired to restore the harmony of his relations with Alexander. For, in truth, the rapturous harmonies of Tilsit had soon been marred by discord. Alexander did not withdraw his troops from the Danubian provinces; whereupon Napoleon declined to evacuate Silesia; and the friction resulting from this wary balancing of interests was increased, when, at the close of 1807, a formal proposal was sent from Paris that, if Russia retained those provinces, Silesia should be at the disposal of France. The dazzling vistas opened up to Alexander's gaze at Tilsit were thus shrouded by a sordid and distasteful bargain, which he hotly repelled. To repair this false step, Napoleon now wrote the alluring letter quoted above; and the Czar exclaimed on perusing it: "Ah, this is the language of Tilsit."

Yet, it may be questioned whether Napoleon desired to press on an immediate partition of the Ottoman Power. His letter invited the Czar to two great enterprises, the conquest of Finland and the invasion of Persia and India. The former by itself was destined to tax Russia's strength. Despite Alexander's offer of a perpetual guarantee for the Finnish constitution and customs, that interesting people opposed a stubborn resistance. Napoleon must also have known that Russia's forces were then wholly unequal to the invasion of India; and his invitation to Alexander to engage in two serious enterprises certainly had the effect of postponing the partition of Turkey. Delay was all in his favour, if he was to gain the lion's share of the spoils.

1 Vandal, "Napoléon et Alexandre," ch. vii. It is not published in the "Correspondence or in the New Letters."

2 Vandal,

Napoléon et Alexandre,” vol. i., ch. iv., and App. II.

VOL. II-M

Russian troops were ready on the banks of the Danube; but he was not as yet fully prepared. His hold on Dalmatia, Ragusa, and Corfu was not wholly assured. Sicily and Malta still defied him; and not until he seized Sicily could he gain the control of the Mediterranean - "the constant aim of my policy." Only when that great sea had become a French lake could he hope to plant himself firmly in Albania, Thessaly, Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Syria.

For the present, then, the Czar was beguiled with the prospect of an eastern expedition; and, while Russian troops were overrunning Finland, Napoleon sought to conquer Sicily and reduce Spain to the rank of a feudatory State. From this wider point of view, he looked on the Iberian Peninsula merely as a serviceable base for a greater enterprise, the conquest of the East. This is proved by a letter that he wrote to Decrès, Minister of Marine and of the Colonies, from Bayonne on May 17th, 1808, when the Spanish affair seemed settled: "There is not much news. from India. England is in great penury there, and the arrival of an expedition [from France] would ruin that colony from top to bottom. The more I reflect on this step, the less inconvenience I see in taking it." Two days later he wrote to Murat that money must be found for naval preparations at the Spanish ports: "I must have ships, for I intend striking a heavy blow towards the end of the season." But at the close of June he warned Decrès that as Spanish affairs were going badly, he must postpone his design of despatching a fleet far from European waters.1

Spain having proved to be, not a meek purveyor of fleets, but a devourer of French armies, there was the more need of a close accord with the Czar. Napoleon desired, not only to assure a further postponement of the Turkish enterprise, but also to hold Austria and Germany in check.

1 In the conversations which Metternich had with Napoleon and Talleyrand on and after January 22nd, 1808, he was convinced that the French Emperor intended to partition Turkey as soon as it suited him to do so, which would be after he had subjected Spain. Napoleon said to him: "When the Russians are at Constantinople you will need France to help you against them.”—“ Metternich Memoirs,” vol. ii., p. 188.

The former Power, seeing Napoleon in difficulties, pushed on apace her military organization; and Germany heaved with suppressed excitement at the news of the Spanish Rising. The dormant instinct of German nationality had already shown signs of awakening. In the early days of 1808 the once cosmopolitan philosopher, Fichte, delivered at Berlin within sound of the French drums his "Addresses to the German Nation," in which he dwelt on the unquenchable strength of a people that determined at all costs to live free.

On the philosopher's theme the Spaniards now furnished a commentary written with their life-blood. Thinkers and soldiers were alike moved by the stories of Baylen and Saragossa. Varnhagen von Ense relates how deep was the excitement of the quaint sage, Jean Paul Richter, who "doubted not that the Germans would one day rise against the French as the Spaniards had done, and that Prussia would revenge its insults and give freedom to Germany. . . . I proved to him how hollow and weak was Napoleon's power: how deeply rooted was the opposition to it. The Spaniards were the refrain to everything, and we always returned to them."

The beginnings of a new civic life were then being laid in Prussia by Stein. Called by the King to be virtually a civic dictator, this great statesman carried out the most drastic reforms. In October, 1807, there appeared at Memel the decrees of emancipation which declared the abolition of serfdom with all its compulsory and menial services. The old feudal society was further invigorated by the admission of all classes to the holding of land or to any employment, while trade monopolies were similarly swept away. Municipal self-government gave new zest and energy to civic life; and the principle that the army "ought to be the union of all the moral and physical energies of the nation" was carried out by the military organizer Scharnhorst, who conceived and partly realized the idea that all able-bodied men should serve their time with the colours and then be drafted into a reserve. This military reform excited Napoleon's distrust, and he forced the King to agree by treaty (September, 1808) that the Prussian army should never exceed 42,000 men, a measure

which did not hinder the formation of an effective reserve, and was therefore complied with to the letter, if not in spirit.

In fact, in the previous month a plan of a popular insurrection had been secretly discussed by Stein, Scharnhorst, and other patriotic Ministers. The example of the Spaniards was everywhere to be followed, and, if Austria sent forth her legions on the Danube and England helped in Hanover, there seemed some prospect of shaking off the Napoleonic yoke. The scheme miscarried, and largely owing to the interception of a letter in which Stein imprudently referred to the exasperation of public feeling in Germany and the lively hope excited by the events in Spain and the preparations of Austria. Napoleon caused the letter to be printed in the "Moniteur" of September 8th, and sequestered Stein's property in Westphalia. He also kept his grip on Prussia; for while withdrawing most of his troops from that exhausted land, he retained French garrisons in Stettin, Glogau, and Küstrin. Holding these fortresses on the strong defensive line of the Oder, he might smile at the puny efforts of Prussian patriots and hope speedily to crush the Spanish rebels, provided he could count on the loyal support of Alexander in holding Austria in check.

To gain this support and to clear away the clouds that bulked on their oriental horizon, Napoleon urgently desired an interview with his ally. For some months it had been proposed; but the Spanish Rising and the armaments of Austria made it essential.

The meeting took place at Erfurt (September 27th). The Thuringian city was ablaze with uniforms, and the cannon thundered salvoes of welcome as the two potentates and their suites entered the ancient walls and filed through narrow streets redolent of old German calm, an abode more suited to the speculations of a Luther than to the world-embracing schemes of the Emperors of the West and East. With them were their chief warriors and Ministers, personages who now threw into the shade the new German kings. There, too, were the lesser German princes, some of them to grace the Court of the man who had showered lands and titles on them, others to hint a