Despite this blatant propaganda, the opening of the victory bulletin spoke nothing but the truth: “Soldats! Je suis content de vous.” The Emperor could afford to be generous to the men who had made his triumph possible. Two million golden francs were distributed among the higher officers; and Napoleon provided generous pensions for the widows of the fallen. Orphaned children were formally adopted by the Emperor in person, and they were permitted to add “Napoleon” to their baptismal names. The memory of Austerlitz was to be kept green forever.
PART EIGHT
Rossbach Avenged
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1806 AGAINST PRUSSIA
39
HOHENZOLLERN HYPOCRITE
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OU WILL TELL M. de Haugwitz to wait for me at Vienna,”1 wrote Napoleon to his Foreign Minister Talleyrand, shortly after the battle of Austerlitz. The abrupt sentence was full of significance. Of the many statesmen stunned by the abrupt and unanticipated destruction of the Third Coalition on December 2, none was placed in a less enviable situation than the envoy of Prussia. Sent by his master to Vienna at the end of November, Haugwitz had originally been the bearer of a virtual ultimatum, only thinly disguised as an offer of mediation between the warring parties. Frederick William III had at last made up his mind to share in the liquidation of the French Empire, even if it did entail entering the war by the back door at the moment of Napoleon’s impending collapse, and in Berlin the young braves of the Royal Guard ostentatiously sharpened their sabers on the steps of the French Embassy. In the event, however, Haugwitz never succeeded in delivering his message to Napoleon. Although he was granted a long audience at Brünn on November 28, the Emperor was careful to do most of the talking, and Haugwitz found himself dismissed and referred to the charming but even more elusive attentions of Talleyrand at Vienna before the main point of his mission had been mentioned. Secretly the Prussian plenipotentiary was rather relieved at this, for in his own personal view he believed a policy of strict neutrality would further his country’s interests far better than indulgence in war, even though it appeared, at that moment in November, as if Napoleon was faced by certain and catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Russian and Austrian armies.
The cataclysmic events of December 2, 1805, completely reversed the international and strategical situation. With Austria defeated and suing for peace and the Tsar’s armies reeling back into Poland, it was clearly not an opportune moment for Prussia to declare war on France, and a chastened Haugwitz hastened to tender his master’s compliments to the victor. Napoleon was not deceived by this bluster for one instant; he had long known through his own sources the real content of Prussia’s original message, and, as he wryly remarked, the fulsome congratulations had recently been readdressed. So as to emphasize his scorn for the vacillating Frederick William, the Emperor deliberately refused to see Haugwitz again until December 15, keeping the envoy lingering in the anterooms of Imperial Headquarters at Vienna day after day. When at last an audience was granted, he flatly rejected Prussia’s sinuous offer of mediation in the peace negotiations then proceeding with Austria, brutally substituting a demand for an immediate and exclusive treaty of alliance against Prussia’s erstwhile ally—England. Napoleon knew that he had Frederick William at a disadvantage, and he was in no mood to relinquish an iota of his negotiating position; Prussia would pay in land, men and infamy for her intended participation in the former war. The jackal, deserted by the beasts of prey, appeared to be at his mercy.
Napoleon’s attitude toward the land of the Black Eagle was a curious mixture of admiration and contempt. On the one hand, he professed the greatest regard for the military talents of Frederick the Great, whose campaigns he had closely studied, and he still retained some respect for the army that Frederick’s genius had created. At the same time, he had no opinion at all of Prussia’s present government, and believed that he could bully Frederick’s heirs with impunity. Napoleon regarded Frederick William as a man devoid of moral fiber, and yet, notwithstanding this, a pawn that might still serve a useful purpose as a counterpoise to what remained of Austrian influence in Germany. In the early months of 1806 the Emperor felt particularly confident that Prussia would never dare to resort to war, however exorbitant French demands might become. The lack of positive action the previous year when Bernadotte’s corps had marched impudently and destructively through Prussian Ansbach en route for the Danube, and Haugwitz’s transparent diplomatic volte face in December, appeared to support this conviction. Napoleon also knew that the unworthy scion of the House of Hohenzollern would do much to gain possession of coveted Hanover, and this possibility had been dangled before the monarch’s nose throughout 1805 with great diplomatic success.
After Austerlitz, however, the “stick” was far more in evidence than the “carrot.” In a ruthless interview with Haugwitz—who was reduced to a state of mental exhaustion by Napoleon’s constant vituperations—he forced the Prussian minister toward accepting a treaty of “friendship” with France. But it was friendship at a price. Prussia was required to disgorge several pieces of choice territory to provide suitable enclaves for the Emperor’s favorite servants. The principality of Cleves was to be joined to that of Berg and awarded to Murat as a grand duchy. The Gascon did not really deserve such favors after his misconduct in October and early November along the Danube, but he was, after all, the Emperor’s brother-in-law, and his wife, Napoleon’s sister Caroline, was uncomfortably persistent in her demands for social advancement. Similarly, Ansbach was to go to that loyal German ally, the ruler of Bavaria, in return for a few insignificant boundary alterations near Bayreuth; Neuchâtel was to be bestowed upon hard-working Berthier, while Wesel was annexed to France. In addition to these territorial surrenders, all existing Prussian diplomatic alliances were to be declared void and replaced by a unilateral and exclusive treaty with France. Prussia was to adopt any economic measures against England that Napoleon might care to suggest, and Frederick William was instantly to dismiss his present Chief Minister, the Francophobic von Hardenberg. In return for these enforced concessions, Prussia was to receive possession of Hanover—the Emperor shrewdly calculating that this apparent liberality on his part would finally divide London and Berlin and complete the diplomatic isolation and humiliation of Prussia.
Frederick William III, 1770-1840, King of Prussia
These were hard terms, but the hapless Haugwitz could offer no effective defense. With the victorious Grande Armée poised on the southern frontiers of Prussia and the greater part of his master’s forces still demobilized, he could not afford to bluster. And Napoleon made no secret of the fact that he knew all about the “perfidious” agreement concluded with Russia at Potsdam the previous autumn, and that he was also cognizant of the negotiations at present continuing with the British Government. French sabers rattled ominously in their scabbards, and there was no way out for Haugwitz; on December 15, the Convention of Vienna was duly initialed and immediately sent off to Berlin for Frederick William’s ratification. A covering letter from Napoleon accompanied this fateful missive. “Sir, My Brother,” it ran, “I have seen M. de Haugwitz. I spoke with him for a long time concerning my sentiments and my plans. He read my heart; he saw it laid bare…. I sincerely hope that he will conceal nothing from your Majesty, and if you have anything to complain of I flatter myself that you will understand that had I been dealing with simply a political personage, my heart would not have been so deeply affected.”2 This was one way of explaining the veritable “brainwashing” to which the hapless Haugwitz had been subjected.
As might have been expected, the Prussian Government tried to temporize and stave off the moment of irrevocable decision. Frederick William never enjoyed making up his mind, and he now requested a reopening of negotiations. Berlin wriggled unbecomingly this way and that for several weeks, pathetically asserting at one point that King George III of England would have to approve the intended transfer of Hanover before Prussia could accept Napoleon’s generous gift. The Emperor, however, wa
s inflexible. To embroil England and Prussia still deeper, he insisted on the immediate closure of the North German ports and rivers to British commerce and the seizure of British goods. An aghast Prussia again hesitated, and the Emperor’s patience began to wear thin. Writing to Joseph on February 7, Napoleon complained: “We have not yet settled matters. The Prussian Court is very false and stupid.”3 At length, Haugwitz could evade the issue no longer; faced with the stark alternatives of signature or an immediate declaration of war, he approved the draft of the main treaty on February 15, and nine days later a cowed Berlin notified its formal approval of the terms. Napoleon had achieved a brilliant diplomatic triumph, at one stroke defaming one potential foe and increasing the isolation of another. Never had Prussian prestige been brought so low. In telling words, the historian Petre describes the effect of the agreement:
Nothing could have been more pusillanimous than the conduct of Prussia in this affair. As Fox, then Foreign Minister of England, remarked, other nations had been forced to make concessions to France, but none had, like Prussia, been degraded to the point of becoming the ministers of the injustice and the rapacity of a master. The whole policy of Prussia at this period was characterized by a duplicity which was manifest to the rest of Europe…. Napoleon had completely succeeded in outwitting Prussia and rendering her the object of contempt to her late allies.4
The Prussian eagle had assumed many of the characteristics of the vulture.
To appreciate the full import of Napoleon’s policy toward Prussia, it is here necessary to examine his intentions toward Europe as a whole. Although some historians imply that Napoleon was driven on from war to war by insatiable ambition, it can be more fairly argued that immediately after Austerlitz at least his greatest preoccupation was with attempts to arrive at some sort of reconciliation with his remaining foes. As always, there were pressing internal reasons why the Emperor wanted to end the war. Although the French populace hailed the Grande Armée’s achievements in 1805 with joy, and service with the forces had not yet become widely regarded as a passport to an early death, the war was having grave effects on the French economy. It will be remembered how Napoleon had experienced difficulty in securing funds to underwrite the campaign of 1805; since then, during his absence at the front, financial affairs had passed from bad to worse. His brother Joseph, left as Regent, failed to maintain a strict eye on public finance, and in consequence the Government was facing bankruptcy by December. One detail will suffice to show the reigning confusion. Large numbers of bonds were found to have disappeared from the Treasury, and when this news leaked out a rush on the banks followed, ruining several thousand people. Although Napoleon remained in Germany until the end of January 1806, much of his time was spent dictating voluminous correspondence in an effort to restore order to French affairs. It was no light task; even the Minister of the Treasury, Barbé-Marbois, had to be suspended on suspicion of embezzlement. There was also, of course, a great deal of work left outstanding on the various Codes, and so there is little wonder that Napoleon was eager to secure an immediate, albeit a favorable, peace. But there lay the rub, for the terms he considered of basic importance appeared impossible to his opponents, actual and potential. Once he did return to Paris in March 1806, he never stirred from the vicinity of the capital until September, so hot was the press of internal affairs.
These preoccupations notwithstanding, Napoleon lost no time in organizing and adding to his recent territorial acquisitions. With the greater part of North Italy already at his disposal, the Emperor soon dispatched Joseph and Massena with an army to conquer Naples, and in due course had his brother crowned its King. French rule was not welcome everywhere however; severe riots in Parma had to be crushingly repressed and martial law was imposed in several more regions. One outcome of the increase in French power in the Italian peninsula was a marked deterioration in relations with the Papacy. The cooperative spirit of the Concordat period was rapidly wearing thin, and Napoleon’s views on the Pope’s position is revealed in this extract from a letter to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, French representative at the Vatican: “For the Pope, I am Charlemagne…. I therefore expect to be treated from this point of view. I shall change nothing in appearance if they behave well; otherwise I shall reduce the Pope to be merely Bishop of Rome.”5
If he cared to brandish the big stick in Italy, in his post-Austerlitz relations with Russia Napoleon was only too eager to come to terms with the Tsar. General Savary had interviewed Alexander after the battle and according to the 31st Bulletin of the Army, the Tsar of all the Russians had reputedly spoken in very flattering terms of the victor: “Tell your master that I am going away,” Alexander was credited with saying; “Tell him that he performed miracles yesterday; that the battle has increased my admiration for him; that he is a man predestined by Heaven; that it will require a hundred years for my army to equal his.”6 This was language that Napoleon could appreciate (and possibly also fabricate), and he became increasingly convinced that a genuine settlement would be made with Holy Russia. In this deduction he was at marked variance with Talleyrand, who was equally certain that Russia was potentially France’s most dangerous rival in Europe. Napoleon ignored his minister’s advice and followed his own impressions and a form of preliminary agreement was eventually initialed in Paris by the Russian envoy, Count d’Oubril. It came as a rude shock to Napoleon when, in September, the Tsar refused to ratify the tentative convention, and commenced to redeploy his forces in support of Prussia. Indeed, the history of the next years was to prove that Talleyrand’s apprehensions were only too correct, and his master’s calculations sadly at fault in their basic assumptions.
Most of Napoleon’s diplomatic activity, however, was presently taken up with the reorganization of Germany. Once again Talleyrand’s proffered advice that the wisest course would be to court Austria as a counterpoise to both Prussia and Russia was brushed aside. The terms of the Treaty of Pressburg had already reduced Austria to the status of a second-class power, and in the first half of 1806 the French Emperor proceeded to wrest still further concessions from Vienna. The Holy Roman Empire had long been merely an anachronistic formality, and by 1806 Austria’s leadership of the German Princes was only nominal, but in the supposed interests of French security the last vestiges of its ancient authority were soon to be destroyed. On July 12, 1806, the Holy Roman Empire formally ceased to exist, and a month later Francis II meekly changed his style to read simply “Emperor of Austria.” To fill the power vacuum, Napoleon called into being the Confederation of the Rhine (July 25), consisting of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt and several smaller principalities along the Rhine. All acknowledged the leadership of Imperial France.
This was by no means a new concept, and indeed was not wholly designed to compensate for the deposition of Austria. More than 150 years earlier Cardinal Mazarin had formed the short-lived League of the Rhine, and in more recent times the Directory had experimented, albeit unsuccessfully, along broadly similar lines. Most of the underlying aims behind the political organization of 1806 were practically identical with those of the earlier attempts—namely, to consolidate French influence over German affairs, to provide a source of men and money for future struggles, to secure a useful bridgehead east of the Rhine from which armies could be launched if need arose, but above all to build a defensive buffer between France and the central and eastern powers of Europe. To these traditional aims, one more was added in 1806: Napoleon undoubtedly was concerned with spreading the blessings (real and anticipated) of Napoleonic administration and law to “lesser breeds without the pale” of the Rhennish frontier. The policy found immediate opposition from Prussia, however.
It has been accurately stated that from 1805 Napoleon ceased to be a French and became increasingly a European statesman. Very soon the French people would begin to wonder whether their best national interests were being served as Napoleon led their armies ever further away from the confines of France, and as his demands for conscripts to fill
the gaps in the ranks became ever more strident and exacting. In his pursuit of a chimeric “new order for Europe,” Napoleon was also already laying up a store of deep resentment in the hearts of Austrians; this hatred was destined to smolder without producing an active flame for several years to come, but the future would see the need for more expensive French campaigns along the banks of the grey Danube as a direct consequence of Napoleon’s Germanic ambitions.
In 1806, however, it appeared that nothing could stand in Napoleon’s way, and his plans for laying the foundations of his new Europe proceeded apace. Diplomacy and marriage treaties were employed to continue the work that the “hounds of war” had begun. In typical Corsican fashion, Napoleon was convinced that he could trust few men outside the “clan” or family; he also apparently deemed it his fraternal duty to share his prosperity with his brothers and sisters, his brothers-in-law, and the chosen elect of the Marshalate. Consequently, during the early months of 1806, considerable changes took place in the Almanac de Gotha. Elder brother Joseph, as already mentioned, was awarded the throne of Naples; he was soon followed up the steps of a throne by Louis, made King of Holland. The faithful Elector of Bavaria found his state elevated to a kingdom, and his daughter Augusta was married to Napoleon’s trusted stepson, Eugène Beauharnais, the new Viceroy of Italy. Jerome Bonaparte was quickly married to Catherine of Württemberg, against both his own inclinations and the dictates of canon law, for he was already the husband of an American lady. Murat and Berthier received the principalities already mentioned. Italian duchies were showered on selected marshals and ministers. Europe, in fact, was rapidly assuming a decidedly Napoleonic appearance. Three members of the family were already monarchs, and in the near future two more kingdoms would accrue to the family (Spain and Westphalia), while Murat and Bernadotte would each receive crowns of their own in the fullness of time. Naturally there was considerable opposition to the foundation of the new dynasties from the old established families of Europe, but Napoleon’s sharpest critics were the womenfolk of his own family; his sisters became the plague of his life with their jealousies and wrangles about precedence, while Madame Mère, the Dowager Empress, staunchly refused to be dominated by her offspring. Family relationships were never the least of the Emperor’s anxieties.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 56