A Short History of Germany Part 10

The Empire was broken beyond repair. On the 6th of August its dissolution was formally announced. Francis II. abdicated the Imperial crown and a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of the "Emperor of Austria."

It was not the people of Prussia who bartered their allegiance to the fatherland for peace and for Hanover. It was their King and princes who brought this stain upon them, and their beautiful Queen Louise, mother of the late Emperor William, had pleaded in vain with the King to pursue a loyal and patriotic course.

The punishment came swiftly. The insatiate conqueror had no thought of leaving a great state like Prussia undisturbed. And soon it developed that his plan was also to create a northern bund under his protectorate, which would be composed of the Prussian states on the northern coast.

Forced in her own defense to take up arms, Prussia suffered a terrible defeat at Jena, 1806. The conqueror for whose friends.h.i.+p Frederick William had sacrificed his country was in Berlin. The beautiful Prussian Queen who, he knew, had used her influence against him, was treated with the grossest insolence, while for the cowed people recently in revolt, and now prostrating themselves, he did not restrain his contempt.

The Peace of Tilsit (1807) determined the full measure of Prussia's retribution. Her Polish acquisitions were made into a "Grand Duchy of Warsaw," under a French protectorate. One half of the rest of her territory was converted into a kingdom of Westphalia, over which Napoleon's brother Jerome was king. To the remainder of Prussia was a.s.signed the burden of an immense indemnity, and the maintenance of a French army in her territory.

But the cup of humiliation was not drained until later when, standing with the Continent under his feet, Napoleon compelled the Prussian King to join the Rheinbund with what was left of his kingdom, to furnish France with troops, and thus to become tributary to his designs upon Europe.

Napoleon in the meantime, in an hour's interview with Alexander of Russia, had by the magic of his influence secured that Emperor's friends.h.i.+p. All this excellent man was fighting for was the peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alexander his plan that they two should be the eternal custodians of that peace; which was to be secured by restraining the arrogance of England; and that was to be done by destroying her commercial prosperity. All of Europe was to be forbidden to trade with that country. There was to be a Continental blockade against a "nation of shopkeepers." Alexander was completely won, and he promised not to molest his new friend in his benevolent task.

The provinces dependent upon France were now divided up into kingdoms and princ.i.p.alities, and to make his own control over them more a.s.sured, Napoleon placed members of his own family and personal friends upon the various thrones.

His brother Louis was created King of Holland. His brother-in-law Murat was made King of Naples; Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son, Viceroy of Italy. Jerome Bonaparte, as we have seen, was King of Westphalia, and his brother Joseph he had already made King of Spain, in the time he could spare from more important matters in Germany.

And what was the real sentiment in Germany concerning this man at such a time? We hear that ninety German authors dedicated books to him and that servile newspapers were praising him; and we know that one of the immortal compositions of Beethoven was inspired by him. But we must recollect that he was too colossal and too dazzling to be accurately measured, except from a distance. Even yet we are almost too near to him for that, and the world is as divided in its estimate of Napoleon as of the true meaning of Shakspeare's "Hamlet." It is an eternal controversy. He was a monstrous creation; colossal in his plans, colossal in his grasp of the forces about him, colossal in ambition, in selfishness, in cruelty, and in intelligence.

Napoleon realized the value of hereditary grandeur. He had been able to climb without it; but the sons who would succeed him as masters of Christendom must have the dignity of ancestry to fortify them. No blood but the Hapsburg was fit for this great office. He swept away Josephine as remorselessly as he had the Pope in Rome, and compelled Francis II. to bestow his daughter Marie Louise upon the man who had stripped him of his Crown and his Empire, and who was steadily absorbing what remained of his dignity.

The marriage took place in 1810, and with his Hapsburg Empress, Napoleon established a temporary court at Dresden.

Then there commenced the process which was intended finally to engulf all the separate German kingdoms in one universal abyss. The Kingdom of Holland was first annexed to the French Empire; then North Germany was swallowed up in the same way; the same fate evidently being intended next for the Rheinbund. The satellites had begun to fall into the sun!

CHAPTER XVII.

To the man guiding these astounding changes it seemed a very small matter then that a handful of Tyrolese peasants were in revolt against the French King in Bavaria; nor that a small group of philosophers, poets, and men of letters, were consulting together in Prussia over the shame of their betrayal by their rulers, and considering plans for guiding a popular movement for the emanc.i.p.ation of Germany.

But these were the first stirrings of a force Napoleon had not before had to contend with. He had fought with kings and princes and proud aristocracies clinging to their ancient splendor and possessions, but his armies had never been face to face with _patriotism_.

He had not met it, because it did not exist in the German Empire until he himself made its existence possible by breaking up the old stifling tyrannies. Now a few patriotic and courageous men all over Germany were combining, and inciting the people to revolt; an a.s.sociation called "The League of Virtue" was created. Then the Tyrolese peasants were subdued and their leader Hofer was shot in cold blood by Napoleon's orders. The King of Prussia was ordered to suppress the "League of Virtue," and French spies supposed they were uprooting patriotism by reporting it as treason to France.

Napoleon was at this moment at the climax of his greatness. He decreed that Rome should be annexed to his empire, and that his infant son should receive the t.i.tle "King of Rome," which t.i.tle should thereafter belong to the oldest son of the French Emperor. What if this did bring curses upon his name? He was now beyond the reach of blessings or curses from men; and probably was rather pleased than otherwise when Alexander I. threw off their sentimental friends.h.i.+p and defied him, by abandoning the plan of a Continental blockade for the ruin of England.

Now he was free to develop his gigantic plan. Does anyone suppose that the conquest of Russia was all of that plan? Far from it! There is every reason to believe that it was his intention, after Russia was subdued, to press on into Asia and to expel the English from their precious India!

Not since the days of Attila had there been seen such an army as was led into Russia--six hundred thousand men, of whom only one out of twenty was ever to return! And was it the lives of Frenchmen that he was spending so lavishly? Not at all. This great host was composed chiefly of Germans, Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, Swiss, who should have been fighting for their own liberation at home.

Lest Prussia should revolt in his absence the wary Napoleon garrisoned that kingdom with sixty thousand French troops, and took the sons of Prussia with him for the great human sacrifice in Russia.

It was the 7th of September when the great army moved. On and on they marched for two months through a silent and deserted land, only to reach at last a mysteriously silent city. Had a whole people fled at his approach? Napoleon took up his quarters in the Kremlin. Suddenly fires broke out in a hundred places. The city became a roaring furnace. In vain did they try to stay the conflagration. In a few hours Moscow, his rich prize, was a ma.s.s of ruin and ashes.

Napoleon waited for a message from Alexander begging for peace; but none came. Then the snowflakes began to fall and fierce winds began to sweep down from the north. At length his stubborn pride had to bend.

He sent his messengers to Alexander--still there was no answer.

Provisions were failing, and there were leagues and leagues of deep and white snow between him and food for his famis.h.i.+ng soldiers.

Then the Russians came. How could this starved, benumbed, frightened wreck of a great army stand before the Cossacks? The story of that "retreat" could never be written. Men, hollow-eyed and gaunt with misery, flung away their arms and fought with each other like wolves for a morsel of bread or a dead horse.

On the 5th of December Napoleon quietly slipped away, leaving the freezing, famis.h.i.+ng victims of his ambition to make their own way back as they could; knowing that for all, save a fragment, of that mighty host the snow must be a winding sheet.

When Frederick William III. accepted that last humiliation and sent a Prussian army in the train of the conqueror to fight his battles, while Frenchmen guarded Prussians at home, the indignation was deep and wide-spread. Three of his best generals, Blucher and two others, resigned.

The Prussian contingent in the great invading army, which was under General York, had escaped many of the horrors of the retreat; and had returned with seventeen thousand out of the sixty thousand which had entered Russia.

This Prussian commander, as soon as he crossed the line with his soldiers, on his own responsibility abandoned the French and arranged a treaty of neutrality with the Russian general. Frederick disavowed the act, but it was received by the people of Prussia with wild enthusiasm.

York called an a.s.sembly together at Konigsberg, and boldly ordered that all men capable of bearing arms should be mustered into the Prussian army.

The force of public sentiment revealed by this was too overwhelming for the King to oppose. It swiftly swelled into a popular uprising in which all cla.s.ses took part. It was the first great patriotic movement in Germany; and to Prussia belongs the glory of having initiated it.

It was the Prussian people who converted their whole male population into an army and their country into an a.r.s.enal, and with one voice, and animated by one heart, refused longer to bear the degradation put upon them by their King. Hitherto the people had been led by their rulers.

Now for a brief time they were going to be leaders, reluctantly followed by kings and princes.

Within five months two hundred and seventy thousand men were under arms and Frederick had been obliged to declare war against the Emperor of the French, in alliance with Russia and Sweden. Austria remained neutral, but the Rheinbund, with only two exceptions, still held to France.

Napoleon by the irresistible magic of his influence a.s.sembled an army nearly as large as the one he had just sacrificed in Russia. The campaign opened in April (1813). By June his star seemed to be waning, and Austria offered to mediate a peace. Napoleon insulted Metternich, who brought the proposals, and Francis II. joined the allies against his son-in-law. In October the end arrived.

The battle of Leipzig was to the people of Germany what Jena and Austerlitz had been to Napoleon. The news of this great victory was electrifying. From the Baltic to the Alps the air resounded with rejoicings.

There are no persuasions needed to make people leave a sinking s.h.i.+p.

Jerome Bonaparte fled from his kingdom of Westphalia--the Rheinbund dissolved--Holland, Switzerland, Italy fell away. Wurtemberg joined the allies and the great movement for emanc.i.p.ation became national, not Prussian.

The allied princes offered to Napoleon that the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea should be the frontiers of France. Still believing in his invincibility, he scorned the proposition. His star had certainly deserted him, for while he was collecting his broken forces in Germany, and while hope was reviving over small victories, the allied armies, unknown to him, were advancing on Paris!

He learned it too late. History holds no picture more powerfully impressive than that of this man waiting at Fontainebleau, twelve leagues from Paris, still believing in his power to retrieve, and unconscious that he is already deposed! And the magic of his influence, the power of the spell he cast over mankind, is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that even now, knowing him to have been a tyrant and a scourge as we do, rejoicing in his defeat as we must, we still cannot look at that picture without a moistened eye and almost a regret at his downfall!

Alexander, and Frederick William, and the allied armies were in Paris, which had capitulated, and at their bidding had consented to the deposition of Napoleon.

On the 6th of April, 1814, Louis XVIII., brother of the murdered Louis, was proclaimed King of France, and to the man who had been master of Europe was a.s.signed--the island of Elba on the coast of Italy.

But in March of the following year, while sovereigns were still wrangling over the disorder he had left, and while Talleyrand was scheming for his new master as faithfully as he had for the old, the startling news came that Napoleon had landed in France. Louis XVIII.

vanished into thin air before the man whom the people were receiving with wild acclamations of delight.

Europe again united, and again Napoleon was seen advancing, as of old, with a great army. Blucher was in command of one division of the allied armies and Wellington of the other.

The battle of Waterloo began on the morning of the 18th of June, 1815.

To England was to belong the glory of Napoleon's final downfall.

Wellington accomplished his defeat, and then Blucher came in time to make that defeat an annihilation.

The mistake of the year before was not to be repeated. From that moment until his death at St. Helena, in 1821, Napoleon was a prisoner and an exile. He had finished the work he had been appointed to do, and Fate had flung him aside!

CHAPTER XVIII.