Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Talks did not start in earnest until December, after the French victory at Hohenlinden. Vienna now found itself fighting virtually alone; Russia had to all intents and purposes left the Second Coalition and no further help (financial or otherwise) could be expected from Britain. Paul I of Russia was so keen for Austria to make peace with France that he took the extraordinary step of moving a Russian army to the Austrian border as a threat.46 The court of Vienna, on the other hand, was divided about what to do and what kind of peace it wanted.47

  The diplomats nevertheless reached an agreement on 9 February 1801, based on the Treaty of Campo Formio.48 Austria recognized France’s annexation of the left bank of the Rhine, the annexation of Belgium and the ‘independence’ of Holland, Helvetia and the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics (which were reconstituted and expanded).49 The former Grand Duke of Tuscany was to be compensated in Germany. France retained Venice and the Venetian possessions in the Adriatic. A new kingdom was established – Etruria – and given to a member of the Spanish House of Bourbon, Luis, whose capital was Florence.

  Germany also underwent some dramatic modifications, although not for the last time. Francis II acted in his capacity as ruler of the Habsburg monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. An Imperial Diet was convened to look at the question of compensating the German princes affected by the French annexations, but it was understood (although never put in writing) that compensation would be achieved through the secularization of the German ecclesiastical states. The German Diet, which sat at Regensburg, would be the scene of two years of negotiating, bribing, persuading and general diplomacy that kept the smaller German princes and some of the more powerful European courts extremely busy. The Holy Roman Empire became to all intents and purposes defunct, central Europe fell under French rather than Austrian influence, while northern Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the territories on the left bank of the Rhine now fell firmly within the French orbit.

  Austrian politicians complained from the start of the harshness of the terms of Lunéville. ‘Here is this wretched treaty that I have been sadly obliged to sign. It is dreadful,’ wrote Cobenzl, ‘both in its form and in its substance.’50 Historians since have reiterated how severe were the clauses of the treaty, and argue that the seeds of future conflict were to be found within them.51 This is to take the complaints of Austrian diplomats at face value when Austria really had nothing to complain about. It had gone to war and lost. The treaty signed at Lunéville was not all that different to Campo Formio. In fact, the court of Vienna, much like other European courts at the time, was not acting in good faith. Vienna had dragged its feet at the negotiating table and, when it realized it had to come to terms, did so grudgingly, bitterly resenting having to give up territory in Italy. Bonaparte and the French did not understand the depth of Austria’s resentment and hatred at having lost the war and at having its great-power status damaged as a result.

  No matter how conciliatory the French may have been, resentment would have festered until the Austrians found an excuse to go to war against France at some time in the future, in the hope of clawing back whatever territories they had lost. However, the treaty and the annexations did not diverge in any way from the policies of other revolutionary governments. All Bonaparte did was adopt and carry through somewhat more successfully policies that had been the mainstay of French governments, royalist or republican, for many decades. It was the culmination of a Continental policy that France had striven after ever since the government of Richelieu in the seventeenth century – that is, the diminution of Austrian power, the French domination of northern Italy, an alliance with Spain, and the exclusion of Britain from Continental affairs. At this stage of his rule, then, Bonaparte’s policies did not differ from traditional French foreign political interests.

  The reaction among the French people on hearing the news of the signing of peace with Austria in February 1801 was elation. ‘What a magnificent peace! What a start to the century,’ wrote the Journal des Débats.52 Many years later, an artillery officer, Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noël, reminisced that ‘The Peace [of Lunéville] was welcomed everywhere with rapture, and everywhere, I can assert, the name of Bonaparte was blessed.’53 A telling sign of Bonaparte’s popularity is that the price of his image in popular engravings doubled, tripled in the space of a few days.54 Celebrations in Paris were orchestrated by the regime for 21 March, when the peace treaty was published and made officially public: entry to theatres was free of charge; the palace and the Tuileries gardens were illuminated; the prefect of police, Dubois, ordered the façades of all households to be illuminated.55

  Letters of congratulation came pouring in from all over the country, mostly written by officials. Their declamations of joy – ‘Oh, immortal glory to the illustrious and beneficent genius who gave the land peace and France happiness’56 – may therefore be a little suspect, but this should not devalue the outbursts of authentic jubilation with which the news was greeted around the country. The curé of Saint-Colombe, in Castillon, a village in Provence, wrote to say, ‘It is through you, O Bonaparte, that the heavens fill today with joy, the Church and the state of France. What joy in the hearts of all faithful Christians and good French citizens! Europe and the whole universe admire you.’57 A few letters even came from countries outside France, such as Holland, Italy and Prussia. A certain Pieter Pypers from Amsterdam wrote, ‘All the inhabitants of the earth owe you their respect: You are their liberator . . . their father.’58

  The months leading up to the signing of the treaty had built up expectations that there would be a general European peace, expectations that continued for some time. The festivities celebrating the declaration of peace with Austria lasted a whole month, in both Paris and the provinces, and regained momentum when the treaty was ratified by Austria in March 1801. In Germany, the poet Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin wrote the ‘Friedensfeier’ (Peace celebration) and what was in hindsight a somewhat rash letter to his friend Christian Lanauer asserting that with Bonaparte’s proclamation of the end of the Revolution and the signing of peace the spirit of conquest in Europe would be eclipsed.59 Hölderlin reflected a certain optimism among most texts published on Lunéville.60 In southern Germany in particular, the theatre of war for the last decade, the peace of Lunéville was enthusiastically welcomed and was attributed to the genius of Bonaparte.61

  ‘The August Pacifier of the World’

  Over the coming months, Bonaparte consolidated his position on the international scene, and attempted to isolate Britain, France’s only remaining enemy. First, he carried off a diplomatic coup by persuading Spain, as an ally, to invade Portugal.62 The treaty that resulted from the short-lived War of the Oranges, a non-event in military terms, saw Portugal close its ports to British trade. Although the treaty was not entirely to Bonaparte’s liking – his brother Lucien signed an agreement, the Treaty of Badajoz, which sent Bonaparte into a rage and which he at first refused to ratify63 – France’s only remaining enemy was isolated even further with the formation of a League of Armed Neutrality in northern Europe. Made up of neutral Russia, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden, the league was exasperated by British incursions on shipping and the interference with trade that resulted. The British maintained their right to search and confiscate any ship carrying what they loosely termed contraband – that is, any goods that might assist the French in their war effort. Between 1796 and February 1801, the British navy captured over 600 fishing boats and merchant ships.64 Although France played no direct role in the formation of the league, Bonaparte certainly encouraged it, and it helped bring about a rapprochement with Paul I of Russia. Paul sent Stepan A. Kolychev to Paris, the first ambassador since Catherine the Great withdrew her representative in 1792. Kolychev was welcomed by a detachment of troops at the French border and escorted all the way to Paris.65 It was a strange choice by a tsar who purportedly wanted to heal relations between the two countries. Kolychev was staunchly Francophobe, and behaved in such a way that both Bonaparte and Talleyrand soon came t
o the conclusion that he did not represent the views of the Tsar.66 Finally, France brought the Quasi-War – an undeclared war with the United States (1798–1800) fought mostly at sea – to an end (the Treaty of Mortefontaine), thereby eliminating the possibility of another ally for the British.67

  Britain was now the only power left at war with France. After peace had been signed with Austria, Bonaparte, giving in to Talleyrand’s repeated urgings, once again made peace overtures to Britain in March 1801. In fact, Talleyrand had not waited for Bonaparte to come around to his way of thinking and had already put out feelers by sending an envoy, Casimir, Comte de Montrond, to London in January 1801. Montrond, who spoke English well after having spent time in London as an émigré and was a popular figure there, was to discover whether public opinion in England would be favourable to negotiations with the new regime. He learnt that the new prime minister, Henry Addington, and the new secretary of state for foreign affairs, Lord Hawkesbury, were both eager to begin discussions. With Bonaparte’s permission, negotiations were formally begun and continued over a period of six months.

  This was possible largely because the man who most opposed revolutionary France in Britain, at least in the government, William Pitt, had fallen from grace after seventeen years in power. The sore point had, ostensibly, been Catholic Emancipation – Pitt had promised it to the Irish as the price for union with Britain, but George III had rejected the notion and refused to compromise – but really a combination of factors led to Pitt resigning in February 1801, including disagreements over how and whether to pursue the war, and his own ill-health.68 Addington, the speaker of the House of Commons, replaced Pitt. The ‘Ministry of All Talents’, as the new British government became known, felt the need for peace.69 Addington did not see much point in continuing, alone, a war that had been going on since 1793. Apart from the fact that there was trouble brewing in Ireland,70 Britain had incurred a vast national debt – of the order of £537 million – and did not have the means to attack the French. Furthermore, poor harvests and the disruption to overseas trade had led to dramatic rises in the price of food within Britain and to enough social unrest to justify fears of revolution.71 The new foreign secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, a man so nervous he was referred to as the ‘grand figitatis’, decided that talks with Bonaparte were called for, and wrote to the French ambassador in London, Louis-Guillaume Otto, to say he was ready to parley.72

  It was the beginning of a long, tortuous and complicated negotiation, full of tricks, deceit, complaints, prevarication and what the French call mauvais foi (bad faith), in which each side tried to gain a territorial advantage before finally signing preliminaries on 1 October 1801. It was easier to agree on the principles than to spell out the details.73 Paris exploded with joy; shops and boutiques closed while crowds gathered in the streets and gardens; others ran through the Tuileries garden shouting ‘Vive la République! Vive le Premier Consul!’74 The same reaction occurred in England the day the preliminaries were announced in the London Gazette; the people of London celebrated for days.75 ‘The world are delighted with the Peace being heartily tired of the War,’ wrote Lord Braybrooke, ‘and none of the people have as yet thought a moment of the terms.’76 A crowd gathered at Otto’s house where he had the word ‘Concord’ illuminated, but it was mistaken by an illiterate mob for the word ‘Conquered’ and caused a disturbance. Otto replaced it with the word ‘Amity’.77 Mail coaches were decorated with laurels and signs reading ‘Peace with France’. The windows on the house of the English pamphleteer and journalist William Cobbett were broken by the crowd because he refused to illuminate them. Similar reactions occurred in other parts of the country. In Durham, a statue of Britannia was crowned with a Phrygian bonnet and a placard announcing ‘No Income Tax’. That, in effect, is how most people interpreted the positive benefits of peace – no troops, no taxes, lower prices.78 When the French envoy, General Lauriston, arrived in London ten days later with his government’s ratification of the preliminaries, and the crowd mistook him for Bonaparte’s brother, they unhitched the horses from his carriage and pulled him along in triumph through the streets from Oxford Road, down the Mall, a street that was exclusively reserved for the royal family, to the residence of the French ambassador in Hertford Street.79

  The preliminaries were meant to serve as a guideline and were to be consolidated by talks involving most of the countries that had taken part in the War of the Second Coalition (France, England, Spain, Holland, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire). Both sides expected the details to be worked out quickly, but they dragged on for another six months, during which time the British would be pushed to the brink of war. Indeed, what little goodwill there was among the British public appears to have been exhausted by January 1802 in the face of prolonged negotiations. By that stage, the Cabinet had decided that, if they were not concluded soon, Britain would have to resume war.80

  The city of Amiens, a provincial capital of around 40,000 inhabitants, was chosen as the town in which the negotiations were to take place because it was reasonably close to both London and Paris (about 320 kilometres from London and 130 kilometres from Paris). Lord Cornwallis, the same defeated at Yorktown during the American Revolution in 1781, represented the British at Amiens. Halfway through the negotiations, Bonaparte started to interfere, as he had done with Lunéville, sending Joseph to negotiate on his behalf. Cornwallis described Joseph as ‘a well meaning, although not a very able, man’.81 Joseph’s relative inexperience, and Bonaparte’s meddling, probably dragged things on longer than necessary. Cornwallis, on the other hand, sixty-four years of age and therefore Joseph’s senior by three decades, had years of administration, as well as his service in the military, behind him.82 Even so, he was not helped in this task by a number of people in the British delegation who come across as insufferable snobs. Colonel Nightingall, for example, considered all Frenchmen he came into contact with to be ‘rogues’. He described Joseph, although ‘rather the best among them’, as not at all having the ‘manners of a gentleman’, even if he meant well and was civil. Joseph’s wife, Julie, was described as a ‘very short, very thin, very ugly, and very vulgar little woman’.83 The prefect of the department, whom the colonel’s servant insisted on calling the ‘Perfect’, was described as a ‘very ill-looking scoundrel’. Joseph and the French were much more discreet. We don’t really know what Joseph thought of the English, although he was at pains to portray Cornwallis in his memoirs as a hale and hearty fellow who wanted to do away with etiquette and negotiate frankly and in good faith.84 The negotiations nevertheless progressed in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and some disdain, and in conditions that were less than ideal.

  We can forgo the tedious details surrounding the prolonged negotiations.85 Of more interest is the final treaty as well as the reaction to the announcement of the peace preliminaries. By the Peace of Amiens the British government was, effectively, recognizing French hegemony on the Continent, and this did not sit well with a largely Francophobe English political elite. The peace terms were thus universally condemned in Britain. Much of the venom was directed at Henry Addington, and British historians since then have attacked the government as largely weak and ineffective, often citing as proof the fact that the French capitulation in Egypt arrived in London one day after the signing of the preliminaries. There was, in fact, a general willingness on the part of many members of parliament to continue the war and the capitulation in Egypt would have given them the excuse needed to do so. Hawkesbury was relieved that the news arrived when it did, too late to influence the outcome of the negotiations.86 Some, such as Lord Auckland, claimed to have been ashamed of the terms, while former government ministers like William Windham exaggeratedly called the preliminaries ‘the death-blow to the country’.87 Lord Grenville disapproved on the grounds that the government of France ‘knew no bounds, either moral or civil’, and was ‘ruled by no principles’, and that under the circumstances to argue that Bonaparte’s ambition had been circumscribed was ‘criminal nons
ense’.88 Lord Malmesbury ‘disapproved’ of the treaty and thought that it would not last long.89 Lord Minto wrote that, among the educated, ‘dissatisfaction with the peace is the prevailing sentiment’.90 George III referred to it as an ‘experimental peace’.91 Admittedly, most of these men were ‘ultra’ royalists who hated Addington and who saw the clash with France in terms of ideology.92 But even members of the Whig opposition, in favour of peace with France, found the terms unacceptable. Politicians, however, do not always represent the views of the people.

  If Britain had given up everything, nothing it gave up had belonged to it in the first place. Besides, Britain was, realistically, in no position to continue the struggle alone. Its only allies – Portugal, Naples and the Ottoman Empire – were ineffectual. Bonaparte had ordered Spanish troops into Portugal to block the ports there to British shipping, a foretaste of his Iberian policy in years to come. An added impetus to concluding peace was given by the condition of the British economy (exacerbated by crop failures in 1799 and 1800, and the ban on British exports imposed by the League of Armed Neutrality), the state of the country’s finances and the rioting that was taking place at home as a result of high food prices. To some, this looked like the French Revolution all over again.93

  As with Lunéville, news of peace with Britain resulted in an outpouring of affection for Bonaparte. The populations of Paris and the northern departments, not to mention the large commercial ports that had suffered considerably during the war, were elated.94 Celebrations took place in Bordeaux and Rouen.95 This time, however, the affection was not merely official. People from all walks of life felt the need to write to Bonaparte to express their gratitude and admiration.96 Admittedly, some of these letters were self-interested, like that from an octogenarian officer, former general of a division. He wrote to add his congratulations ‘to those of all good Frenchmen on the occasion of the definitive peace, due to your great spirit, and that is the greatest achievement of your immortal glory’, but then he went on to ask Bonaparte to help his family.97 Most, however, were completely altruistic, such as the letter from a commissary in Bordeaux, who wrote, ‘To the well deserved title of victor and magnanimous conqueror is joined that of universal peacemaker. Blessed be the titulary God of France who in his goodness gave us in your person such a rare gift.’98 One gets the impression reading these letters that people expected peace to be permanent, which is why they were so ecstatic. One cannot underestimate the impact Amiens made on the people of France.