by Will Durant
His Majesty, therefore, feels it to be impossible to reply more decisively to the question which has been put to him, until he has had time to communicate with those Continental Powers with whom he is allied, and particularly with the Emperor of Russia, who has given the strongest proofs of his wisdom and good feeling, and of the deep interest which he takes in the security and independence of Europe.11
William Pitt the Younger was currently prime minister of England (May, 1804—January, 1806). He represented, as the new financial bastion of Britain, the commercial interests that were almost the only British gainers from the war. They had borne substantial losses from French control of the mouths and course of the Rhine; but they were profiting from British control of the seas. This not only stifled most French maritime competition, it enabled Britain to seize French and Dutch colonies at will, and French vessels wherever found. On October 5, 1804, English ships seized several Spanish galleons bound for Spain with silver that would have enabled her to pay much of her debt to France. In December, 1804, England declared war upon Spain, and Spain placed her fleet at the disposal of France. With this exception, Britain, with superior diplomats and judicious subsidies, slowly won to her side Continental Powers richer in men than in gold.
Alexander I could not make up his mind whether he was a liberal reformer and benevolent despot or a martial conqueror called by destiny to dominate Europe. However, he was clear on several points: he wanted to round out his western boundaries by absorbing Wallachia and Moldavia, which belonged to Turkey; consequently he aspired, like the absorbing Catherine, to overcome Turkey, bestride the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and, in due time, control the Mediterranean; already he held the Ionian Isles. But Napoleon had once captured those islands, and now longed for them; he still hungered for Egypt, and thirsted for the Mediterranean; he had talked of swallowing Turkey and half of the Orient. Here was a rival gourmand; one or the other must yield. For these and other reasons Alexander had no wish to see England make peace with France. In January, 1805, he signed an alliance with Sweden, which was already allied with England. On July 11 he completed with England a treaty which stipulated that Britain would pay Russia an annual subsidy of £ 1,250,000 for every 100,000 men contributed to the campaigns against France.12
Frederick William III of Prussia parleyed with Napoleon for a year in the hope of adding to his realm the province of Hanover, which the French had taken in 1803. Napoleon offered it on condition of an alliance which would pledge Prussia to support France in maintaining the new status; Frederick did not relish the thought of angry British warships along his coast. On May 24, 1804, he signed an alliance with Russia for united action against any French advance east of the Weser.
Austria too hesitated. If she joined the new coalition she would bear the first brunt of French attack. But Austria, even more closely than England, had felt the successive pushes of Napoleon’s expanding power: the presidency of the Italian Republic, January, 1802; the French annexation of Piedmont, September, 1802; the Swiss submission to a French protectorate, February, 1803; the assumption of the imperial title, May, 1804. And the pushes continued: on May 26, 1805, Napoleon received at Milan the Iron Crown of Lombardy; and on June 6 he accepted the request of the Doge of Genoa that the Ligurian Republic be incorporated into France. When, asked the Austrians, would this new Charlemagne stop? Could he not—unless most of Europe should unite to stop him—easily absorb first the Papal States and then the kingdom of Naples? What then would keep him from appropriating Venice and all of that luscious Venezia which was contributing so indispensably to Austrian revenues? Such was the mood of Austria when Britain offered her fresh subsidies, and Russia promised her 100,000 hardy troops in case France should attack. On June 17, 1805, Austria allied herself with England, Russia, Sweden, and Prussia, and the Third Coalition was complete.
III. AUSTERLITZ: DECEMBER 2, 1805
Against this quintuple alliance France had the hesitant support of Hesse, Nassau, Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, and the cooperation of the Dutch and Spanish fleets. From all quarters of his realm Napoleon drew money and conscripts, and organized three armies: (1) the Army of the Rhine, under Davout, Murat, Soult, and Ney, to challenge the main Austrian force under General Mack; (2) the Army of Italy, under Masséna, to meet the westward thrust of an Austrian army under the Archduke Karl Ludwig; and (3) the Grande Armée of Napoleon, presently gathered about Boulogne, but capable of being suddenly turned upon Austria. His hope was that a quick capture of Vienna would compel Austria to sign a separate peace, immobilizing her Continental allies, and leaving England unaided and besieged.
The young Emperor had come to hate England as the bane of his life and the chief obstacle to his dreams; he called her “perfide Albion” and denounced British gold as the main source of France’s woes. Night and day, amid a hundred other projects, he planned the building of a navy that would end Britannia’s lordship of the seas. He poured funds and workers into naval arsenals like Toulon and Brest, and he tested a dozen captains to find an admiral who could lead the growing French Navy to victory. He thought he had found such a man in Louis de La Touche-Tréville, and strove to inspire him with the vision of a Britain invaded and overcome. “If we can be masters of the Channel for six hours we shall be masters of the world.”13 But La Touche-Tréville died in 1804, and Napoleon made the mistake of giving command of the French Navy to Pierre de Villeneuve.
Villeneuve had bungled his share in the Egyptian fiasco, and had given signs of both insubordination and timidity. He had no faith in the possibility of capturing control of the Channel for six hours, and he lingered in Paris until Napoleon ordered him to his post at Toulon. His instructions were subtle and complex: to lead his fleet out to sea, let Nelson pursue him with the main British flotilla, draw him on across the Atlantic to the West Indies, elude him among those islands, and return as swiftly as possible to the English Channel, where French, Dutch, and Spanish squadrons would join him in engaging the British vessels there long enough to let the French army, in its thousand boats, cross to England before Nelson could come back from the Caribbean. Villeneuve accomplished the first part of his task well: he lured Nelson to America, escaped him, and hurried back to Europe. But on reaching Spain he judged his ships and men to be in no condition to overcome the British guardians of the Channel; instead he sought the protection of a friendly harbor at Cádiz. Napoleon, frustrated in his plan, sent orders to Villeneuve to seek out Nelson’s fleet and risk everything in a desperate challenge to British control of the seas.
Then, in a flurry of decision, the Emperor turned away from the Channel, and wheeled a hundred thousand men around to march south and east to the Rhine and beyond. All France followed in anxious hope the course of this Grande Armée, now so named by Napoleon, and every town on its itinerary bade it Godspeed on its enterprise. In nearly every church the clergy called upon the youth of the nation to obey the call to the colors; they proved from Scripture that Napoleon was now under the direct guidance and protection of God;14 so soon had the Concordat come to fruit. Napoleon cooperated by arranging that twenty thousand carriages should be provided along the route to hurry and relieve the soldiers on their passage through France.15 He himself rode to Strasbourg with Josephine, who was now all anxiety and devotion; her fortunes too hung on every throw of the dice. He promised that within a few weeks he would be master of Vienna.16 At Strasbourg he left her in the care of Rémusat, and hurried on to the front.
His strategy, as usual, was to divide and conquer: to keep the Austrian armies from uniting; to destroy or immobilize the armed forces of Austria before the Russian horde whose aid they were expecting could arrive; and then to overwhelm the Russians in a victory that would compel his Continental enemies to at least a temporary peace. Despite gloomy days and dark nights of rain, mud, and snow, the Army of the Rhine carried out its share of the campaign with a thoroughness and dispatch that may serve as an illustration of how much Napoleon owed to his marshals. After a week of maneuvers Gen
eral Mack’s 50,000 men found themselves, at Ulm, hemmed in on three sides by the artillery, cavalry, and infantry of Davout, Soult, Murat, and Ney, and denied retreat by the width of the Danube behind them. Starved for food, and short of ammunition, the besieged Austrians threatened mutiny unless they were allowed to surrender. Mack did so at last (October 17, 1805); 30,000 of his troops were taken prisoner and sent to France. It was one of the least costly and most thorough and effective victories in the history of war. Emperor Francis II, and some Austrian survivors from Ulm, fled north to join the oncoming Russians, while Napoleon entered Vienna (November 12) without resistance and without display.
His triumph was soon soured by news that Villeneuve, pursuant to instructions, had gone out to meet Nelson in what proved for both of them a duel to the death. Nelson won at Trafalgar (October 21, 1805), but was mortally wounded; Villeneuve lost, and killed himself. Napoleon somberly put aside all hope of contesting British control of the seas; no course to victory seemed open but to win so many battles on land that the Continental Powers would be forced to follow France in closing their markets to British goods until the merchants of England should compel their government to sue for peace.
Leaving General Mortier and fifteen thousand men to hold Vienna, he set out on November 17 to join his troops and prepare them to meet two Russian armies marching south, one under the resolute Kutuzov, the other under Czar Alexander himself. The Russian Bear met the French Eagle at Austerlitz, a village in Moravia, on December 2, 1805. Before the battle Napoleon issued a proclamation to his legions:
SOLDIERS:
The Russian army appears before you to avenge the Austrian army of Ulm. … The positions which we occupy are formidable; while they are marching to turn my right, they will present their flank to me….
I shall myself direct your battalions. I shall keep out of the fire if, with your usual bravery, you throw disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks. But if the victory should be for a moment uncertain, you will see your emperor the foremost to expose himself to danger. For victory must not hang doubtful on this day most particularly, when the honor of the French infantry, which so deeply concerns the honor of the whole nation, is at stake…. It behooves us to conquer these hirelings of England, who are animated with such bitter hatred of our nation.….
This victory will put an end to the campaign, and we shall then be able to turn to our winter quarters, where we shall be joined by the new armies which are forming in France; and then the peace which I shall make will be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.17
His first tactic was to capture a hill that would allow his artillery to rake the Russian infantry moving to flank his right. That hill was held by some of Kutuzov’s bravest men; they gave way, re-formed, fought again, and were finally overcome by Napoleon’s reserves. Soon the French artillery was decimating the Russians as they marched on the plain below; their center broke in terror and flight, dividing their army into disorganized halves faced at the one end by the infantry of Davout and Soult, at the other by the battalions of Lannes, Murat, and Bernadotte; and into the shattered center Napoleon sent his reserves to complete the rout. The 87,000 Russians and Austrians surrendered 20,000 prisoners and nearly all their artillery, and left 15,000 dead. Alexander and Francis fled with the remnants into Hungary, while their frightened ally, Frederick William III, humbly sued for peace.
In that holocaust the 73,000 French and their allies lost 8,000 dead or wounded. The exhausted survivors, long hardened to the sight of death, cheered their leader with wild enthusiasm. In a bulletin of December 3 he answered them with a promise that he would soon keep: “When all that is necessary for securing the happiness and prosperity of our country has been accomplished, I will lead you back to France. There you will be the object of my most tender solicitude. My people will welcome you with joy, and you will only have to say ‘I was at the battle of Austerlitz’ for people to exclaim, ‘Behold a hero.’ “18
IV. THE MAPMAKER: 1806–07
When William Pitt received the news of Austerlitz, he was nearing death. Seeing a map of Europe on a wall, he asked that it be removed. “Roll up that map,” he said; “it will not be wanted these ten years.”19 Napoleon agreed, and remade the map.
He began by remaking Prussia and Austria. Talleyrand, whom he summoned to Vienna to phrase the imperial will in diplomatic language, advised him to give Austria moderate terms on condition of signing with France an alliance that might end the connection of English subsidies with Austrian policies, and might give France some support, even if only geographical, in conflict with Prussia and Russia. Napoleon, suspecting the fragility of alliances, thought rather to weaken Austria beyond possibility of challenging France again, and to win Prussia from Russia by an easy peace. Meanwhile he allowed Alexander to lead his surviving Russians back to Russia unpursued.
By a treaty signed in Maria Theresa’s cabinet in the Austrian royal palace of Schönbrunn (December 5, 1805), Napoleon required Prussia to disband its Army, cede the margravate of Ansbach to Bavaria, and the principality of Neuchâtel to France, and to accept a binding alliance with its conqueror. Frederick William III expected to get in return the province of Hanover, which Napoleon was glad to promise him as a deterrent to any pro-English sentiment in Prussia.
The Treaty of Pressburg with Austria (completed in Napoleon’s absence, December 26, 1805) was merciless. She had begun hostilities by invading Bavaria; she was now required to give up to Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg all her lands in the Tirol, Vorarlberg, and south Germany. So enlarged, Bavaria and Württemberg became kingdoms, and Baden became a grand duchy allied with France. To recompense France for her outlay of men, money, and matériel in the war, Austria transferred to a French protectorate all her possessions in Italy, including Venice and its hinterlands; and she agreed to pay France an indemnity of forty million francs—part of which, Napoleon was happy to learn, had recently arrived from England.20 In addition he ordered his art connoisseurs to send to Paris some choice pictures and statues from Austrian palaces and galleries. All this tribute of land and money and art the victor, in his Roman way, considered to be rightful spoils of war. Finally he ordered that a triumphal column be erected in the Place Vendôme in Paris, and be coated with metal taken from enemy cannon captured at Austerlitz.
Talleyrand signed these treaties, but, disappointed by the rejection of his advice, he began to use his influence—not always this side of treason—against the further extension of Napoleon’s power. He later excused himself as having served France by his disservices to his employer, but he made both of them pay.
On December 15, 1805, Napoleon left Vienna to join Josephine in Munich. There they assisted at the marriage of Eugène (who had been made viceroy of Italy) to the Princess Augusta, eldest daughter of Bavaria’s King. Before the wedding Napoleon formally adopted Eugène as his son, and promised him the crown of Italy as his inheritance. It was a marriage of political convenience, to cement the alliance of Bavaria with France; but Augusta learned to love her husband, and helped to save him after his adoptive father’s fall.
Emperor and Empress went on to Paris, where he was met with such official celebrations and public acclaim that Mme. de Rémusat wondered “if it be possible that a human head should not be turned by such excess of praise.”21 Facts helped to sober him. He found that during his absence mismanagement had brought the Treasury near to bankruptcy; the Austrian indemnity came to its rescue. He still had to contend with attempts upon his life, for on February 20, 1806, he received word from Charles James Fox, then prime minister of England, that he should be on his guard, since a would-be assassin had offered to kill Napoleon for a reasonable sum.22 Fox had had the man kept under detention, but there were probably other such patriots for a price. As England was then at war with France, the Prime Minister’s act lived up to both the Christian and the chivalric code. Amid homicide individual and collective, France, on January 1, 1806, returned to the Christian Gregorian calendar.
On May 2, after four months of administrative recuperation, the Emperor read to the Corps Législatif his “Report on the Condition of the Empire in 1806.” It recounted briefly the victories of the Army, and the acquisition of allies and terrain; it described the flourishing condition of French agriculture and industry; it announced the Industrial Exhibition—something new in French history—that was to open at the Louvre in the fall; it noted the building or repair of harbors, canals, bridges, and 33,500 miles of roads—several of these across the Alps; it told of great structures in progress—the Temple de la Victoire (now La Madeleine), the Bourse or Stock Exchange, which lifted money into art, and the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile that was beginning to crown the Champs-Élysées; and it ended with the assurance which France was beginning to seek: “It is not conquests that the Emperor has in mind; he has exhausted the sphere of military glory. … To perfect the administration, and make it a source of lasting happiness and ever-increasing prosperity for his people, … such is the glory at which he aims.”23
The mapmaking continued. On July 12, 1806, the incredible Emperor accepted, as a gift, another empire, composed of the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, and Westphalia, the grand duchies of Baden, Berg, Frankfurt, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Würzburg, the duchies of Anhalt, Arenberg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Nassau, Oldenburg, Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Weimar, and half a dozen petty principalities. The initiative in this remarkable marriage of friend and foe had been taken (according to Méneval)24 by the “Prince Primate” Karl Theodor von Dalberg, formerly archbishop of Mainz. Under his lead the heads of the various states asked Napoleon to take them under his protection, pledged him contingents (totaling 63,000 men) for his armies, announced their separation from the Holy Roman Empire (which Charlemagne had established in A.D. 800), and formed the Confederation of the Rhine. Probably this new orientation of Teutonic regions was eased by the spread, among them, of the French language and literature. The intellectual community was almost international. Prussia naturally protested against the immense strengthening of France, but Austria, helpless in defeat, accepted the change. Since the withdrawal of sixteen princes and their states reduced the Holy Roman Empire to an inconsiderable fraction of its original extent, Francis II (August 6, 1806) renounced his title and prerogatives as head of the once spacious structure that Voltaire had called “not holy, not Roman, and not an empire,” and henceforth he contented himself with the title of Francis I, Emperor of Austria.