Part 10 (1/2)

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.