All those who for one reason or another hated French rule or Napoleon looked to Spain, where the outbreak of variously motivated violence provoked by French intervention coalesced around the symbols of God and Ferdinand. Wishful thinking turned the ‘little war’, guerrilla, waged by small regular units and armed bands against the French into an archetype; in the popular imagination all over Europe as far as Russia, the figure of the heroic guerrillero assumed mythical proportions, arousing the enthusiasm of conservative Catholics and revolutionaries alike, who dreamed of emulating him. In Prussia many young men joined the Tugendbund, the ‘League of Virtue’, to prepare themselves and Prussian society for the struggle to liberate Germany from the Napoleonic stranglehold. The extent to which Napoleon’s credibility as a liberator had fallen can be gauged from the failure of Augereau’s attempt to play the anti-Spanish card in Catalonia, usually open to suggestions of separatism.
The situation in Spain had actually shifted in favour of the French. Joseph had re-entered Madrid on 22 January, and ignoring his brother’s advice to act with firmness, he played to Spanish national feelings by attending mass every day, appointing Spaniards to key posts and indulging local customs. He created a functioning administration and gradually built up a body of adherents among Spaniards who wished to modernise their country. He even managed to raise Spanish regiments which demonstrated a modicum of loyalty to him. The area under his control expanded, and the first burst of insurgency subsided. Saragossa had fallen to the French on 20 February, and Soult had taken Oporto on 27 March. Victor defeated a Spanish army at Medellín on the following day, and Suchet managed to pacify Aragon.
But there was no unity of command, as none of the commanders in the field paid any attention to orders issued by Joseph or his commander-in-chief General Jourdan. Napoleon had encouraged a spirit of emulation among his marshals which had turned into rivalry, and they were not disposed to cooperate, as each tried to wrongfoot the other. The situation was particularly bad between Ney and Soult, whose mutual animosity dated back to their service on the Rhine in the 1790s. General Wellesley outmanoeuvred Soult and Victor, broke out of Portugal and marched into Spain. He scored a minor success at Talavera at the end of July before being forced to retreat back into Portugal. After a French victory at Almonacid two weeks later, things began to look good for the French. A victory by Soult at Ocaña in November would open up Andalucia, and by the following spring the French were in control of most of the country.
Wellesley showed himself to be the equal of Napoleon in terms of propaganda, sending home a report of Talavera representing it as a great victory which was printed in the British press. This came to Napoleon’s notice in Vienna, and he fumed at the incompetence of his brother and the commanders in the field. An officer sent by Joseph explained that the report in the British press was exaggerated, listing as regimental colours and eagles what were only guidons, and pointed out that all the eagles were still in French hands, but Napoleon would have none of it. He had little faith in his brother’s capabilities. His ambassador in Madrid, Antoine de Laforêt, disliked Joseph and retailed what he knew his imperial master would like to hear. Each of the commanders also criticised Joseph, as well as each other, in their reports. Joseph’s attempts to explain the realities of the situation and justify his policy make painful reading. Napoleon dismissed his arguments, ignored his request to be allowed to abdicate, and stopped answering his letters altogether.12
This silence should have been caused by a period of reflection. Cambacérès had written after Essling informing Napoleon, with all the emollient tact that had kept him in office so long, that public opinion in Paris did not reflect his triumphs, and that people did not feel they were worth the cost in blood. He added that there was anxiety at the possibility of his being killed, but made it clear that there was much discontent at the continuing war, the dispiriting news from Spain and a deteriorating economic climate. He received in reply what he described as ‘a rather dry letter’ demanding more specific information. In his next report Cambacérès could not hide that there was also much criticism of his treatment of the Pope.13
It had long been Napoleon’s conviction that France’s security rested on denying other powers influence in Italy and the Mediterranean, and that the Papal States represented a strategic security risk for the kingdoms of Naples and Italy. As all subsequent rulers of Italy would accept, logic demanded they be liquidated. Logic was reinforced in Napoleon’s view by the fact that the College of Cardinals was mostly made up of aristocrats sympathetic to every anti-Napoleonic coalition, and that Rome had become a refuge for many of his enemies.
He also believed that the clergy should be loyal citizens of the state and politically neutral. Since most of them were his subjects they should obey him, yet the Pope exercised a rival authority over them, inspiring them to resist some of his arrangements, which he found intolerable. He could not or would not see that there were some measures which the Pope could not sanction on theological grounds, which is why he opposed the introduction of the Code into the Papal States. As Napoleon saw it, the Pope was using spiritual weapons in defence of his temporal interests, which justified disarming him by confiscating these.14
Shortly after reaching Vienna, on 17 May, Napoleon ordered the Papal States’ incorporation into the French Empire. He justified this by arguing that the Pope had only acquired temporal power through the generosity of Napoleon’s ‘august predecessor’ Charlemagne, and that he now no longer required it.15
In response, on 10 June the Pope issued a bull excommunicating all the despoilers of the Holy See. Just in case he might be in any doubt, two days later he wrote to Napoleon informing him that he had been excommunicated and anathemised. Napoleon made light of this, but sent orders to the commander on the spot, General Miollis, to deal severely with the pontiff, without specifying what he meant. On the night of 6 July Miollis sent General Radet to Rome. Radet entered the Castel Sant’Angelo, seized the Pope, bundled him and Cardinal Pacca into a travelling coach and drove them off under escort of gendarmes to Genoa and thence to Grenoble, where they were held incommunicado. Napoleon was annoyed when he heard of this, saying the Pope should have been left in peace in Rome, but concluded that ‘what is done is done’; he was not going to back down. On the pages of Le Moniteur he lectured that Christ had preached poverty and rejected temporal power, quoting His saying that His kingdom was not of this world, and the passage about rendering unto Caesar. But the good work of the Concordat had been undone, and royalist sentiment revived in France. His actions also alienated public opinion throughout Catholic southern Germany, which included his allies Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and Saxony, in Poland and Italy, and inflamed the situation further in Spain.16
Many of Napoleon’s oldest supporters were growing anxious at the turn events were taking, and some of his closest collaborators, even among the military, were beginning to have their doubts. There was criticism of his conduct of the last campaign, and particularly of Wagram, as well as anxiety at the cost in life. Napoleon relied more and more on brute force and artillery – an estimated 96,000 shots were fired by the French at Wagram.17
As he relied for his successes on tactics and movement, Napoleon saw little reason to innovate equipment. While other armies perfected theirs – the Prussians brought in a slicer on their muskets which saved the time taken biting off the top of the cartridge with one’s teeth and increased firepower, the British brought in rifles which increased accuracy – the French stuck with the musket model of 1777. While the British developed rockets and the Russians sophisticated gunsights, the French stuck with the Gribeauval cannon designed in 1765. Although Napoleon founded officers’ schools at Fontainebleau, La Flèche and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, promotion still operated on the revolutionary principle of peer selection, with Napoleon nominating officers after a battle on the recommendation of their comrades, which often yielded poor results. And, as the commander of one light infantry regiment noted, awarding the Legion of Hono
ur was often counterproductive, as it gave the recipient a pension to protect, an incentive to avoid danger.18
While his enemies learned from him, Napoleon failed to learn from them. After the battle of Heilsberg in 1807, Lannes commented that the Russians were beginning to fight better, and Napoleon agreed, allegedly adding that he was teaching them lessons that would one day make them his masters. It was not just a question of weapons and tactics. Many on the French side were astonished as they surveyed the battlefield of Eylau to see Russian dead lying in ranks as they had stood and fought, and at Friedland Russian soldiers were seen to throw themselves in the river and risk drowning rather than surrender. Napoleon paid no attention to this, nor to the other lessons of the campaign of 1806–07.19
He failed to take into account that the tactics he had used in his Italian and south German campaigns, where the theatre was relatively small, densely populated, rich in provender and easily crossed on relatively good roads, were entirely inappropriate to the open spaces and quagmires that passed for roads in Poland and Russia. More important, he had failed to take stock of another factor which he had not encountered before.
Until then he had commanded troops motivated by national feeling or local loyalties against imperial or royal armies of drafted peasants or professional soldiers who differed little from mercenaries. This had gradually been reversed. By 1807 the Grande Armée contained contingents of Poles, Germans and Italians, and even the French soldiers were beginning to question what they were doing so far from home, while the Russian army he faced was composed of determined Russian peasants doggedly defending theirs. This reversal became more pronounced over the next two years, in the fighting against a more nationally conscious Austrian army, and above all against the Spanish regulars, not to mention the guerrileros. Just as he had mutated from liberator into oppressor, so his troops had become agents of imperial power while their adversaries had changed roles from being the upholders of feudalism to that of defenders of the people.
According to one member of the Council of State, Achille de Broglie, at Vienna after Wagram all the generals and marshals longed for peace, ‘cursing their master’ and contemplating the future with ‘great apprehension’. Many were astonishingly outspoken. ‘He’s a coward, a cheat, a liar,’ General Vandamme burst out in front of his comrades. Admiral Decrès did not mince his words either. ‘The Emperor is mad, completely mad, and he’ll send us all, every one of us head over heels and it’ll all end in an appalling catastrophe,’ he said to Marmont. There were plenty more who shared such views.20
Napoleon ignored them, resorting as he increasingly did to cynicism. During the Wagram campaign he turned to General Mathieu Dumas, who had fought for the American as well as the French Revolution, and asked him whether he was ‘one of those idiots who still believed in liberty’. When Dumas affirmed that he was, Napoleon told him he was deceiving himself, and that he must be driven by personal ambition like everyone else. ‘Look at Masséna,’ he went on. ‘He has acquired enough glory and honours, but he’s not content: he wants to be a prince like Murat and Bernadotte, he’s ready to go out tomorrow and get himself killed just to be made a prince.’ Masséna did accept the title of prince of Essling, but he and his fellow marshals were appalled when Napoleon floated the idea of instituting a new military order of the Three Golden Fleeces.21
Napoleon spent the next two months at Schönbrunn, where he made himself at home, even erecting a couple of obelisks capped with imperial eagles at the entrance. He held parades which people would drive out of Vienna to watch, as they were both splendid and theatrical. Napoleon would speak to the soldiers, inspect their knapsacks and question them about their experiences. While reviewing a pontoon company he went up to one caisson, asked what was inside, and after having its contents listed in detail, had it opened and personally counted the axes, saws, bolts, nails and other equipment, even climbing up onto the wheel to inspect the inside, to the delight of soldiers and onlookers. He would make regiments execute various manoeuvres and adopt battle formation, praising or criticising, and personally correcting. When the splendidly uniformed Polish chevau-légers of the Guard broke ranks around a pile of building materials blocking the entrance to the parade ground, he flew into a rage and ordered them off, snapping, to the delight of onlookers, ‘That lot are good for nothing except fighting!’22
In the evenings there were theatrical performances, usually Italian opera, which Napoleon found ‘rather mediocre’. There was also more intimate entertainment. Soon after reaching Schönbrunn, before Essling, he had written to Maria Walewska inviting her to join him. While he waited, he distracted himself with what was noted down in the accounts of his cassette as ‘Viennese adventures’. When Walewska arrived, Duroc installed her in a cottage in the village of Mödling a short distance from Schönbrunn, and Napoleon’s valet Constant would come to collect her at night. In mid-August he developed a persistent rash on his neck, so he summoned Corvisart from Paris. The rash had largely cleared up by the time he arrived, and it may be that the reason for the summons was not the rash, but to check whether, as Maria thought, she was pregnant, which Corvisart confirmed. Yet in his letters to Josephine, Napoleon made out that he was bored and looked forward to getting back to Paris, and to her, expressing himself with his usual hints of intimacy.23
During one of the parades at Schönbrunn, on 12 October, a young man approached him and managed to get quite close before Rapp, noticing that he had a hand in his pocket, ordered a gendarme to arrest him. He was found to be clutching a kitchen knife with which he meant to murder Napoleon. When questioned, he said he would only talk to the emperor himself. Intrigued, Napoleon interviewed him. Friedrich Staps, the seventeen-year-old son of a pastor, had decided to assassinate Napoleon for the harm he was doing to Germany. Napoleon could not understand him, and concluded that he was mad. He passed him to Corvisart, who examined him and declared him to be quite sane. Napoleon told him that if he apologised he would be forgiven and allowed to go free, but the young man said that would be a mistake, as he would only try again. Napoleon was nonplussed, and had him shot.24
On 16 August Cambacérès wrote reporting that Napoleon’s birthday had been celebrated in Paris with ‘prodigious’ attendance. But his letter crossed one from Vienna with a stricture on his behaviour over something he had viewed as no more than a local difficulty, but which had caused alarm in his unquiet master.25
While Britain had only contributed a modest subsidy to Austria’s war effort, it did attempt to take advantage of Napoleon’s absence, and on 7 July, just as the battle of Wagram was drawing to a close, a British force of 1,000 men landed at Cuxhaven at the mouth of the river Weser. It was quickly contained and forced to re-embark by Westphalian troops, but on 30 July a larger force landed on the island of Walcheren in the Scheldt estuary, took the port of Flushing and threatened Antwerp.
As the minister of the interior Emmanuel Crétet was ill and Cambacérès dithered, it fell to Fouché to deal with the threat. He called out the National Guard and delegated the only marshal of France at hand, Bernadotte, to take command of the troops in the area, which he did, arriving at Antwerp on 13 August. Bernadotte had left the battlefield of Wagram in disgrace, and on hearing of the nomination a furious Napoleon despatched Bessières to take over from him. The British, incompetently led and suffering from swamp fever, re-embarked a few days after his arrival and sailed away.
As minister of police, Fouché was aware of the discontent simmering in various quarters, and worried by the continuous landings in France of royalist agents from England. There were also occasional raids by the British on coastal forts, possibly rehearsals for an invasion to coincide with a royalist rising. News of the substantial landing on Walcheren may have caused him to overreact in calling out the National Guard. To Napoleon in Vienna it looked as though he was providing himself with the necessary force to take over Paris, and the connection with Bernadotte conjured sinister thoughts, but what seems to have particularly annoyed him
was the ineffectual role of Cambacérès in the crisis.26
The Treaty of Vienna was signed on 14 October. The terms were harsh, but not as drastic as Napoleon had originally intended. His first thought had been to force Francis to abdicate in favour of his brother Ferdinand, and to break up the empire by creating an independent kingdom of Hungary and using other provinces to cement his failing alliance with Russia. The negotiations, conducted by Metternich and Champagny, resulted in Austria losing access to the sea by the cession of Trieste, Ragusa, Istria, Fiume and Carniola, which were added to French possessions along the Dalmatian coast to make up the new department of Illyria. Austria also lost Salzburg, which went to Bavaria, and Galicia, which was divided between the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Russia. In all, Austria lost about three and a half million subjects. She also had to reduce her army to 150,000 and pay a heavy indemnity. Two days after the signature of the treaty, Napoleon left Schönbrunn for Paris.
He travelled by easy stages, pausing for two days at Nymphenburg to go hunting with a grateful King of Bavaria and flirt with his wife, to whom he had taken a fancy. He also stopped at Stuttgart to visit the King of Württemberg, though his visit there was more Napoleonic – he arrived at seven o’clock in the morning and left at ten the same evening, after having attended a play in the court theatre. On the evening of 26 October he was back at Fontainebleau, where the following morning he gave Fouché a dressing-down. He spent the best part of the next three weeks there, stag-hunting on horseback and shooting, and enjoying a dalliance with a plump little blonde lady-in-waiting to Pauline, Christine Ghilini. She had only recently been married to a Piedmontese nobleman, so she resisted his advances at first, but Pauline wore her down, and although she could be difficult and moody, the affair would go on for a couple of months. Never ungenerous, Napoleon granted her father a title.27
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