So much, then, for Austria. What, though, of Prussia? Once
again, not much could be expected. Still wedded to the principle of neutrality,
Prussia was regarded with great scorn by the Addington government. As
Malmesbury confided to his diary on 14 June 1803, ‘Lord Hawkesbury with me by
his own appointment at seven . . . Speaking of Prussia, he said nothing could
be more feeble and pusillanimous than the king and his ministers.’ In a general
sense, Hawkesbury was not far wrong: Prussian policy in respect of Napoleon at
this point could not have been more pacific. However, it was not a question of
cowardice. When absolutely pushed to it, Frederick William was not afraid to
act: deeply convinced of his duty to protect Prussia’s foreign trade, he had
been anything but backward with regard to joining the League of Armed
Neutrality in 1801. But all the arguments that had kept the king out of the War
of the Second Coalition had greatly intensified since 1800: Prussia had done
extremely well out of the reform of the Holy Roman Empire, while the debate on
the need for military reform was now raging more loudly than ever. And to these
points had been added new ones. In the first place, there was much admiration
of Napoleon, who it was assumed was putting all to rights in France. And, in
the second, though fearful of France in the long term – as he told the Swedish
ambassador, ‘We will be the last to be eaten: that is the limit of Prussia’s
advantage’ – Haugwitz was at the moment more concerned with Vienna than Paris.
The Austrians having shown a strong desire to challenge certain aspects of the
new territorial dispensation in Germany – in August 1802 Austrian troops had
gone so far as temporarily to occupy the district of Passau in an attempt to
deny it to Bavaria – his current goal was an alliance with France and Russia
that would cow Francis and his advisers into complete submission and at the
same time contain Napoleon. Nor was the army any more committed to a war
against France. A few generals, including, not least, the future hero of
Waterloo, Gebhard von Blücher, were increasingly concerned at the growth in
French power, while plenty of officers were spoiling for a fight. To quote the
general staff officer, Carl von Muffling, ‘There were at that time in the
Prussian army from the generals to the ensigns, hotheads without number, and
those who were not so by nature assumed a passionate, coarse manner, fancying
that it belonged to the military profession.’ But, again, these ‘hotheads
without number’ had other targets than Napoleon: while some looked to a war
with Austria, others, like the founder of the newly formed general staff, Christian
von Massenbach, wanted to expand Prussia’s gains in Poland at the expense of
Russia. And, precisely because they had other targets, no strong party emerged
in favour of war with France, the result being that nothing stood in the way of
continued Prussian neutrality. More than that, indeed, Frederick William was positively
fawning in his attempts to ensure Napoleon’s continued favour, and the only
action that he took to protect Prussia’s interests as hostilities approached
was to beg the First Consul not to invade Hanover.
All this left just Russia as a possible ally for the
British, but in reality she, too, was not much of a staff to lean upon. As Lord
Malmesbury wrote, ‘On Wednesday 27 April [1803], with Vorontzov [i.e. the
Russian ambassador] for two hours; he communicated to me several dispatches . .
. The result of them struck me that Russia was now what she has ever been since
she had held . . . a place among the greater powers of Europe – cajoling them
all and courting flattery from them all, but certainly never meaning to take an
active part on behalf of any of them . . . I fear we here rely too much on
Russia: she will give us advice, but not assistance.’ This seemed true enough
at the time that it was written: although the new Foreign Minister, Count
Alexander Vorontzov – the elder brother, it will be recalled, of the ambassador
to London, who was Semyon Vorontzov – was friendlier to Britain than any of his
predecessors, he was little inclined to become involved in the troubles of
central Europe and anxious to avoid a breach between Britain and France. It did
not help that as the winter of 1802-3 drew to a close Napoleon made a
determined attempt to calm Russian feelings. His hints at a partition of the
Ottoman Empire were dropped, for example, while for the first time mention was
made of compensation for the King of Piedmont. Far from backing the British, on
the very eve of war the Russian government suddenly announced that it would
instead mediate between the combatants and provide a garrison for Malta.
Meanwhile the desperate attempts of Addington and Hawkesbury to secure an
alliance were met by the not very helpful response that Russia could not move
unless Austria did so first, the fact being that there was otherwise no way
that a Russian army could actually get to grips with the French. In any case,
this was hardly an enticing appeal. The reign of Paul I had badly disrupted the
military, which had been torn apart by a purge of the ‘easterners’ who had
dominated it in the reign of Catherine II, and it would be some time before a
happy medium was restored to its ranks. And, finally, setting aside the issue
of what might happen if it came to a fight, there were plenty of Russians who
hated Britain: in Paris, for example, the diehard republican Bertrand Barère,
found that the new newspaper he had established to stir up popular feelings
against Britain – it was called The Anti-British Journal – was eagerly snapped
up by officials of the Russian embassy.
The end to Britain’s isolation was therefore going to be
some time coming. Come it did, but before we examine how this occurred, we must
turn to an episode in the Mediterranean that is of some significance for the
wider march of international relations. European affairs were suddenly invaded
by a new player in the form of the United States. By 1800 Britain’s old colonies
ranked second only to Britain in terms of international trade, and their
substantial merchant fleet operated from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope. In
the Mediterranean, however, the Americans, like many other small powers, had a
major problem in the shape of the so-called ‘barbary corsairs’. Crewing fast
galleys and operating with the sanction of the rulers of such cities as
Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli (all of whom were theoretically vassals of the
Ottoman Empire), these pirates were an ever-present danger in the sea lanes of
the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean alike. The French Wars had made
matters significantly worse, for the British, French and Spaniards, alike had
more pressing things to do than chase the corsairs. Much affected by this, the
Americans at first attempted to negotiate free passage for their ships by a
series of bribes: in 1795, for example, it was agreed that Algiers should
receive a lump sum of $642,500, a sloop and an annual tribute of $21,600.
However, outrages of various sorts continued, and in February 1801 President
Jefferson responded by declaring war on Tripoli and sending a small naval force
to the Mediterranean. For over two years little happened: the American squadron
was too small to achieve much and cutbacks in the naval budget meant that it
could not easily be reinforced. Not until September did the fighting hot up,
and even then it was a sporadic affair of raids and coastal bombardments that
eventually petered out with a compromise peace that was signed on 4 June 1805 .
In most respects, then, the American war against Tripoli was little more than a
sideshow. Yet for all that, it was not unimportant. Setting aside the
inconvenience it caused to Britain – Tripoli was an important source of food
and drinking water for British ships operating in the Mediterranean – the war
put Europe on notice that the United States would not just adopt a policy of
passive defence, but if necessary reach out across the Atlantic. For the time
being the priority was defence, such naval construction that took place
therefore revolving around the launch of a number of gunboats that could only
be used with any safety in the bays and estuaries of the southern and eastern
coast. But just as Britain could hope that Napoleon would sooner or later drive
one or other of the powers into an alliance with London, so the French ruler
could hope that Britain would sooner or later drive the United States into a
fresh war in the defence of her commerce.
Keeping in mind these non-European factors, let us now
return to events in Europe. From the very beginning Napoleon had followed a
course of action that could not but destabilize the neutrality that reigned
east of the Rhine. Thus, practically his first move in the conflict had been to
defy convention by accompanying the outbreak of war with the seizure not just
of all those British merchantmen and British cargoes caught in French ports,
but also some 10,000 British nationals who found themselves on French soil.
More importantly, determined to hit Britain wherever he could, within a matter
of days Napoleon had sent his troops into Hanover (which capitulated without
resistance, though much of its army escaped by sea to Britain where it became
the nucleus of the so-called ‘King’s German Legion’). And, finally, in order to
cut off British trade, and, in the latter case, to further his designs in the
Mediterranean, the north German coast and the Neapolitan ports of Taranto,
Otranto and Brindisi – all of them situated in the hugely sensitive region of
Apulia – were also occupied by French soldiers. All this unsettled the powers
of Europe. With French troops lining the North Sea from Holland to Denmark,
Austria, Prussia and Russia alike had good reason to fear for their commercial
interests, while Napoleon had contrived simultaneously to trample Prussian
pretensions in northern Germany underfoot; revive the threat posed by the
invasion of Egypt to Russia’s interests in the eastern Mediterranean and the
Balkans; and mount a head-on challenge to Alexander I’s dynastic diplomacy in
Germany. As even Napoleon’s Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, admitted, ‘There
had never been, till then, an example of such violence against the rights of
nations.’
Yet it was not just Napoleon who was inflaming the
situation: another figure that is of particular interest here is Prince Adam
Czartoryski. Born in 1770, Czartoryski was a Polish nobleman who stemmed from a
family associated with the reform movement that had in the 1780s and early
1790s striven desperately to reconstitute the power of the Polish state. In
1795 he was sent to the Russian court by his parents as a pledge of their
submission and good faith, and there he soon made the acquaintance of the
future Alexander I. Fuelled by a common interest in many of the ideas of the
Enlightenment and a shared sense of romantic benevolence, a warm friendship
grew up between the two young men, and when Alexander came to the throne it was
only natural that Czartoryski should have become a member of the so-called
‘unofficial committee’. In this body the prince played a major role, but far
more important here are his views on foreign affairs. Appointed Deputy Foreign
Minister under Vorontzov in September 1802, he was for the next three years the
dominant influence on Alexander. The cause closest to Czartoryski’s heart was
that of Polish independence: for him the eclipse of Poland was a disaster of
the first order, and one made even worse by his having taken no part in the
desperate and unavailing last stand of 1794-5. As he recalled of himself and
his younger brother, ‘Love of the fatherland, its glory, its institutions and
its liberties, had been instilled in us by our studies, and by everything we
had seen or heard around us. As can be imagined, that sentiment, to which we
aspired with our whole being, was accompanied by an invincible aversion towards
all those who had contributed to the ruin of our beloved country.’ Next to this
he loathed Napoleon as a social upstart, a despot and a danger to peace and
order. As he wrote in his memoirs:
All those who had let themselves be carried away by
enthusiasm in the first moments of the French Revolution had seen Bonaparte as
the hero of liberalism: he seemed to them to be destined by providence to
secure the triumph of the cause of justice, and to overthrow by great actions
and immense victories the obstacles without number that reality presented to
the desires of the oppressed nations . . . Any hope, any belief, that this
would be the case was swept away as soon as Bonaparte was placed at the head of
affairs in France. His every word, his every action, showed that he only
understood the power of the bayonet . . . He ceased to be the champion of
justice and the hope of oppressed peoples. By abandoning these claims – the
central pillar of the Republic, for all its vice and insanity – Bonaparte
rejoined the ranks of the ambitious and of the ordinary sovereigns of Europe,
showing himself to be a man of immense talent, but one who had no respect for
the rights of the person and who wished only to subordinate everything to his
caprice . . . It was as if Hercules had quitted the path of duty in favour of
using his strength to subjugate the world for his own profit . . . Thus, with
him in power, such was his ambition and his injustice that they overshadowed all
the other ambitions, all the other injustices, that assailed humanity: viewed
in the light of the sinister and devouring flames that blazed around his head,
they paled into insignificance.
Yet Czartoryski was no mere beau sabreur committed to
nothing more than some desperate Polish revolt, or, for that matter, some
romantic counter-revolutionary crusade. If Poland was to be free, he realized,
it would have to be with the sanction of Russia, and what better way was there
for him to win this sanction than by playing on Alexander’s naïve idealism and
interest in political reform? Poland, then, would be restored as a sovereign
kingdom and given a liberal constitution, but she would remain tied to Russia
through the provision of a Russian monarch in the person of Alexander’s
brother, Constantine. But Czartoryski did not stop with Poland. Sincerely
devoted to his version of the cause of freedom, he also saw that Alexander
would be more likely to back his ideas if they were broadened out from Poland
alone (though he took care to represent a free Poland as a state that would out
of gratitude and self-interest alike for ever after rally to the defence of
Russia). In addition to restoring Poland, he believed that Russia should also
press for the establishment of free states elsewhere. There should be a Greek
state, a South Slav state, and a Danubian (i.e. Romanian) state – all of them,
of course, under the protection of Russia – while Italy, Germany, the Low
Countries and Switzerland were all to be organized as national federations. All
this was linked in with a general plan for order and stability. According to
Czartoryski’s grand design, even under Napoleon France was not an irrevocable
enemy, nor still less a country whose form of government was to be decided by the
force of foreign arms. On the contrary, she was to enjoy her natural frontiers
and be allowed to govern herself as she chose. That said, she was to be allowed
to cause no more trouble: headed by Russia and Britain (whom Czartoryski saw as
natural partners), the Polish prince’s ‘Europe of the peoples’ would stand firm
against French aggression. But it was not just France that would be stopped
from going to war: as all the historic nationalities of Europe would be
satisfied with their lot, none would wish to fight each other. By the same
token, as all the peoples of Europe would be free, political strife, too, would
disappear, leaving international Jacobinism with no scope for its machinations.
So bizarre was this scheme that it is difficult to know what to say about it,
not the least of its many problems being that it took no account whatsoever of
the enormous difficulties presented by Austria (a kingdom of Hungary was no
problem, but what of the rest of the empire?). At the same time, the Polish
grandee’s plans meant war with Prussia whom he wanted at all costs to drive
from her acquisitions in Pomerania. Reduced to practicalities, in exchange for
granting a semi-independent Poland, what Alexander was being offered was
hegemony in Eastern Europe, the destruction of Russia’s chief great-power
rivals, control of the European elements of the Ottoman Empire (which
Czartoryski clearly believed was doomed), and the chance to play the benevolent
reformer which had proved so elusive in his own dominions. And for all this the
war of 1803 provided the perfect opportunity: join with Britain against France,
Czartoryski was saying, and Alexander would find the world at his feet.
However, Czartoryski or no Czartoryski, neither Russia nor
anyone else responded to Napoleon’s aggressive demeanour by taking up arms. On
the contrary, though the Russian ambassador to Paris, Morkov, had, in Lady
Holland’s words, for months been ‘scurvily treated by Bonaparte, who seems to
make a point of saying offensive things to him’, Alexander responded to the
conflict in a manner that was pacific in the extreme, the peace terms that he
put forward in response to Napoleon’s last-minute request for mediation
actually representing a slight advance on Amiens. As for Austria and Prussia,
the former kept quiet, and the latter did no more than dispatch a special envoy
to Paris with a very polite request for an explanation of the occupation of
Hanover. The diplomat concerned, Johann von Lombard, was both an admirer of
Napoleon and a long-term proponent of an alliance with France, so a sustained
‘charm offensive’ was more than sufficient to reassure him, while the pill was
further sweetened by proposals for an alliance that seemed to offer the hope of
guarantees against both Austria and Russia. However, though welcomed in Berlin,
these friendly overtures were not good enough for Frederick William. Good
relations with France were all very well in themselves, but an alliance with
Paris alone carried with it the risk that Prussia might be forced to take sides
in a general European war, and this the Prussian king did not want at all.
There then emerged a plan whereby Prussia would ally herself with both France
and Russia, but this proved to be a non-starter: Alexander might not have
wanted war with France at this stage, but he no longer saw her as a trustworthy
partner either, while Napoleon was unwilling to come to terms with a state that
had sufficient independence to have attempted to force a compromise peace upon
him. At risk of standing alone, Prussia now did the only thing possible and
turned back to France; the winter of 1803-4 was then taken up with intensive
attempts to secure an agreement with Napoleon even though doing so implied the
acceptance of French intervention in Prussia’s hitherto sacrosanct sphere of influence
in northern Germany.
Not even the most aggressive action on the part of Napoleon
was enough to push the eastern powers into war with France, then: indeed, the
potential crisis arising from the occupation of Hanover and Apulia had seemingly
fizzled out. But this seems only to have encouraged Napoleon to push his luck
still further. First of all, we have his reaction to the arrival of the Russian
peace proposals in July 1803. Shortly after the outbreak of war, the French
ruler had assured Morkov that he would respond favourably to Russian mediation:
providing that Britain evacuated Malta and that Malta then received a Russian
garrison, he would let the British have Lampedusa, evacuate the Batavian
Republic, Switzerland and Naples, and give the King of Piedmont the territory
Russia wanted him to have in Italy. These terms, in fact, were not very
different from those which eventually arrived from St Petersburg, but by the
time they came in, the situation had changed: Napoleon had defied the courts of
Europe with impunity over Hanover and Apulia and now felt little need to be
conciliatory. Nor, indeed, could he be conciliatory, for to do so would have
been a blow to the image on which he was so dependent. The Russian peace terms
were in consequence rejected out of hand as being even worse than those that
had been proposed by Britain, while, to cover his tracks the First Consul fell
upon Morkov at a state dinner at the Tuileries, and accused him in the most
violent of language of both spying and being in league with emigré
conspirators. Not surprisingly, there followed a sharp exchange of
correspondence, and the end result was that the ambassador left Paris for home:
he claimed, indeed, that he was in fear of being poisoned. Much angered,
Alexander responded by trying to pressurize both Prussia and Austria into a
defensive alliance and raising the possibility of an alliance with Britain.
With rumours circulating of either an impending French invasion of the Greek
mainland or a French-inspired revolt in the Peloponnese, the Russians also
strengthened their position in the eastern Mediterranean by reinforcing the
small Russian garrison that had been left in the Ionian islands and restoring
friendly relations with the independent Christian principality of Montenegro,
which had been disrupted for the past two years by intrigues in the court of
its prince-bishop ruler, Peter Negos. As Czartoryski observed, ‘For once the
laughs were not on the side of the First Consul.’
By the end of 1803, then, relations between Napoleon and the
central figure in any future coalition had started to unravel. As yet, however,
there was little sign that Russia was willing actively to take up arms: indeed,
her approaches to Britain, Austria and Prussia had all essentially been
designed to get them to do all the necessary fighting and keep the bulk of the
Russian army out of harm’s way. Opinion in St Petersburg was deeply divided.
Czartoryski and Vorontzov favoured war, but Alexander opposed the anti-Prussian
aspects of the former’s policies and distrusted the British nearly as much as
his father had done, while plenty of observers could be found who wanted Russia
to have no truck at all with the affairs of the West. And if Czartoryski wanted
war with France and Prussia, he did not want Britain to acquire a share in the
future of the Ottoman Empire. To push Russia over the brink, something more was
needed, and, Napoleon being Napoleon, this was soon forthcoming.
We come here to the so-called ‘tragedy of Vincennes’. On 20
March 1804 the Duc d’Enghien, a distant connection of the French royal family,
was kidnapped from his country retreat in neutral Baden and executed after a
summary trial on suspicion of involvement in a royalist conspiracy. According
to the Napoleonic legend, this was a necessary act of statecraft and by no
means a step that the French ruler embarked on lightly. ‘After the sentence had
been executed,’ wrote a young Belgian nobleman who was shortly to become a
senior official at the Napoleonic court, ‘as soon as the emperor heard of it at
Malmaison, he was observed to be troubled, preoccupied, sunk in thought . . .
walking up and down his apartment, his hands at his back, his head bent. And
thus he remained a long time, absorbed in contemplation.’ Other observers were
less convinced. Now unhappily married to Napoleon’s brother Louis, Hortense de
Beauharnais had a very different impression. ‘I remain convinced, from the
knowledge that I have of Napoleon’s character . . . that he never felt the need
to justify himself. As doubt was not something which he ever acknowledged, his
view, I am sure, was “I did the thing; therefore I had the right to do it.” ’
At the same time, as she observed, the execution bestowed certain political
advantages on Napoleon: ‘From that moment all those who had rallied to the
Revolution attached themselves to the First Consul. “He will not be a Monk,”
they said. “Herewith the proof. One can count on him.” ’ And that Napoleon was
aware of this, there was no doubt. Indeed, according to Pasquier, it was
precisely for this reason that he had the duke executed. As the future Prefect
of Police wrote, ‘Bonaparte . . . let it be known . . . that he wanted . . . to
inspire all those who had attached themselves to his fortune with the
confidence that all chance of a reconciliation between himself and the house of
Bourbon had disappeared.’
And it was not just statecraft. In fairness to Napoleon, as
revealed by a series of arrests in the winter of 1803-4, there really was a
plot to overthrow the First Consul in that the chouan leader, Georges Cadoudal,
and the repentant radical, General Pichegru, who had been banished following
the coup of 18 Fructidor in 1797, had been trying to persuade the victor of
Hohenlinden, General Moreau, to mount a coup. The main figures in the plot were
soon dealt with – Cadoudal and Pichegru were sentenced to death and Moreau
banished – but their interrogation had produced rumours of some Bourbon prince
coming to lead the revolt. With the unfortunate Enghien just over the frontier,
the conclusion was obvious. As Napoleon himself remarked, ‘The Duc d’Enghien
was a conspirator just like any other, and it was necessary to treat him as any
other might be treated.’ The observer is still, however, left with the feeling
that what moved Napoleon was in the end little more than a desire to flex his
muscles. With the war at a standstill, he was suddenly presented with an
opportunity to lash out and deliver a mighty blow that would serve to remind
Europe of his power. To turn around the words of Hortense de Beauharnais, the
thing could be done, and so Napoleon did it. And there is, as ever, the
question of the First Consul’s ambition, both Bourrienne and Staël hinting very
strongly that Enghien’s death was engineered as a means of paving the way for
his elevation to the throne. Thus, ‘Napoleon would not confess the real cause
of the death of the Duc d’Enghien, but inexorable history will relate that he
was proclaimed emperor three months after his assassination.’ Still more
damning was the blunt manner in which he summed up the affair for Josephine and
Claire de Rémusat: ‘From time to time it is no bad thing to show who is
master.’
Whatever the reasons for the execution, there can be no
doubt as to its impact. In the famous words of Joseph Fouché, ‘It was worse than
a crime: it was an error.’ Though in receipt of a British pension, Enghien was
not in arms when he was taken, but rather was living quietly in neutral
territory, while he was never given anything even remotely approaching a fair
trial. In Napoleon’s household even, there was much grief: news of the
execution produced a noisy scene between Josephine and her husband, whilst
Eugène de Beauharnais later wrote, ‘I was very upset on account of the respect
and attachment in which I held the First Consul: it seemed to me that his glory
had been sullied.’ What of the execution’s impact outside France? Amongst the
intellectual community, the First Consul’s reputation as a hero of justice and
reform took a serious blow – it was at this point that Beethoven famously
scratched out the original dedication to the ‘Eroica’ symphony – and it is
clear that there was widespread shock. In the words of one observer, ‘The
assassination of the unhappy Duc d’Enghien proved, even to the admirers of
Napoleon, of what terrible excesses ambition could render him capable. All
Europe shuddered with horror at that deed by which the most sacred rights were
violated.’ Connected with the ruling house of Baden by marriage, Gustav IV of
Sweden called for an immediate crusade against Napoleon, and was so upset by
the affair that he became increasingly obsessed with the belief that the French
ruler was the beast of the Apocalypse. Though effectively a French satellite,
Duke Frederick of Württemberg accused Napoleon of violating international law.
And as for Russia, in Czartoryski’s words, ‘This event produced the strongest
impression on Alexander and the rest of the imperial family; far from hiding
this, this was expressed without constraint.’ Acting in his role as guarantor
of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, Alexander I protested at the
violation of Baden’s neutrality and demanded an explanation of Napoleon’s
actions, while he also enjoined the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire to register
its own protest. The court went into mourning and the tsar openly snubbed the
French ambassador, Hédouville, at a court levee that was held the day after the
news arrived in St Petersburg. The First Consul, however, was unmoved: Sweden
was ignored; the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire bullied into submission; and
Alexander rebuffed with a stinging dispatch in which Napoleon pointedly
inquired whether the tsar would not have seized the murderers of his father if
he had discovered that they were in hiding in some town just outside his own
frontiers. With the French ambassador withdrawn for good measure, there could
be but one response: the Russian chargé d’affaires in Paris was instructed to
ask for his passports, while troops began to be massed in Poland and Galicia.
It was a key moment: though war was still not inevitable, from now on Alexander
was committed to curbing Napoleon’s power.
If Napoleon was serious in his desire to avoid a war with
Russia, now was the moment to adopt a policy of moderation. On the contrary, on
18 May 1804 there came the declaration that France was henceforth a hereditary empire.
For apologists for the French ruler, this step is easy enough to explain.
Napoleon himself was anxious to ensure the permanency of his regime, while the
French people were in favour of the change and even beginning to demand it. At
the same time, the step was not so very great: after all, had not Rome
continued to call itself a republic even when it had long been ruled by the
caesars? But all this was so much casuistry: the growing clamour for the First
Consul to become emperor was all too clearly manufactured by the administration
– the plebiscite held to ratify the establishment of the empire in the autumn
was little short of farce – while the mere fact of making the regime hereditary
was not enough to scotch royalist conspiracy: aside from anything else,
Napoleon and Josephine had yet to produce an heir. Once again what mattered was
naked ambition: the First Consul wanted to be a ruler as other rulers, to enjoy
the trappings of monarchy and, perhaps above all, to break down yet another of
the barriers that hemmed him in. To quote Thibaudeau, ‘Each time that the
question of securing the power of the executive was mooted, the word heredity
came to the front, and for the last six months it had been openly talked about
in society. Every day people wondered when the First Consul was going to
complete the “stability” of his government. The discovery of the conspiracy of
[Cadoudal] and Pichegru furnished an excellent pretext to carry out the
execution of a plan which had been maturing for the past three years.’ Also
instructive, meanwhile, is Napoleon’s own comment on the change: ‘The people
and the army are for me: anyone who did not know how to seize the throne in
such a situation would be a real fool.’
With French power as unrivalled as it was, the impact of
this pronouncement should not be underestimated. That the Bourbons had been
replaced by a new dynasty was not in itself a problem: very few statesmen were
so committed to the cause of legitimism that they wanted Louis XVIII and
nothing else. The issue was rather the imperial title, which suggested that the
erstwhile First Consul was laying claim to the mantle of Charlemagne and,
beyond him, the Roman Empire. Secure in her northern bailiwick, an area that
had never fallen under the suzerainty of either the Caesars or Charlemagne,
Prussia could respond to the change with equanimity and recognized Napoleon’s
new title without demur. But for Austria and Russia it was a different matter.
For both powers, the new dispensation threatened to exclude them from Germany,
while neither the Habsburgs nor the Romanovs were happy about granting equal
status to the Bonapartes. In consequence, Austria dragged her feet over the
issue of recognition and, despite threats of war, did not give way until she
had secured a promise that Francis would be acknowledged as hereditary emperor
of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire granted precedence over France. As for
Russia, she joined with Sweden in refusing Napoleon her recognition while at the
same time putting pressure on Turkey to follow this example. With varying
degrees of enthusiasm, the tsar and his advisers began to work for a new
coalition that would drive Napoleon back at least to the limits agreed at
Lunéville and Amiens, obtaining for this purpose the promise of substantial
British subsidies. Meanwhile an ultimatum was sent to Napoleon demanding that
he evacuate Hanover and Naples, and the French ruler’s refusal to comply led
Russia to break off diplomatic relations once and for all in September 1804.
And, last but not least, Czartoryski moderated his hostility to Prussia: the
territories of Thorn and Posen would be restored to a Russian-controlled
Poland, certainly, but Potsdam would now be compensated with further lands in
western Germany.
With a Franco-Russian rupture now a fact, it would appear
that a wider conflict was inevitable. However, even now there were other
complications. In October 1804, for example, Britain had shocked European opinion
by launching a surprise attack on a defenceless Spanish treasure fleet on the
grounds that she had been covertly aiding France and might as well be forced
openly to enter the war. Prepared, seemingly gratuitously, to extend her
problems by going to war against Spain, Britain further irritated the Russians
by making difficulties over assisting them against the French in the Adriatic:
a naval squadron, it seemed, would be no difficulty, but even so few as 10,000
men would take many months to assemble. Nor would Britain pay out the money
that Russia wanted: ‘Pitt’s gold’ would be in evidence, certainly, but only in
limited quantities. With other problems occurring over the question of Malta,
which Alexander was determined to claim for himself, having previously been
ceded its sovereignty by the Knights of St John, the year drew to a close with
an Anglo-Russian alliance seemingly out of reach, despite the fact that
Alexander had dispatched a special envoy to London in the person of his friend
and confidant, Nicolai Novosiltsev. As for the other partners who would be
necessary – and it should be reiterated that Alexander was not prepared to send
in his forces unless Austria moved as well – only Sweden was prepared to go to
war. Despite clear evidence that Napoleon was planning the formation of a new
German confederation that would finally overthrow the Holy Roman Empire, all
that Austria would agree to was a defensive alliance that would come into play
in the case of further French aggression in Egypt, the Balkans, Italy or
Germany. As for Prussia, fears that Napoleon might launch a surprise attack
were countered by suspicions of Russia and Sweden, the most that Frederick
William was prepared to offer being an agreement to resist any French advance
across the Prussian frontier provided that he was sent a Russian auxiliary
force of at least 40,000 men.
Given Czartoryski’s foreign policy, the growth of hostility
to France in St Petersburg might appear a mere pretext for the annexation of
fresh territory in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In this respect Serbia
offers a very useful test case. In February 1804 a major revolt broke out in
the Ottoman pashalik of Belgrade under the leadership of a local chieftain
named Djordje Petrovic (or to use the name by which he is invariably known,
Karadjordje). Initially, this was no nationalist convulsion. National feeling
among the populace was very weak, if not non-existent, and many of the
inhabitants had to be coerced into taking arms. The goal of the revolt was not
independence, but rather autonomy on the lines granted to the Ionian islands
(despite governing themselves, they in theory acknowledged the sovereignty of
the Sultan in Constantinople). Indeed, the greatest loyalty was expressed with
regard to the person of Selim III, the chief goal of the insurgents being
rather to break the power of the oppressive Turkish landlord class – the
chiftliks – and, still more so, the undisciplined bands of marauders known as
yamaks into which the janissaries that garrisoned the region had deteriorated.
Nor was a desire to support the rule, and even strengthen the authority, of
Constantinople surprising: under Selim III, who had been on the throne since
1789, fears that the Balkans might otherwise revolt had led to a great push for
reform that for ten years had made a real difference to the Serbian position.
Recently, however, things had got much worse: following Napoleon’s attack on
Egypt, the Sultan’s need for the support of every man he could raise had led
him to abandon his attempts to protect the Serbs. Meanwhile, the yamaks had
murdered Selim’s governor, the sensible and moderate Hajji Mustafa, and
replaced him with their own man, while at the same time venting years of
suppressed frustration on the populace and its leaders, the clergy of the
Serbian Orthodox Church and the tribal chieftains known as the knezes. Hence
the revolt of 1804: desperate to save their heads, priests and chieftains
banded together and established an assembly at the town of Orasac, while
irregular levies attacked the yamaks and exacted a terrible vengeance.
We have, then, a revolt in the Balkans, but do we also have
Russian imperialism? Evidently not. Prior to 1804 the Russians had almost no
contact with the Serbs of the Ottoman Empire, and they returned a non-committal
but on the whole rather discouraging answer to a delegation that had travelled
to St Petersburg with the news that an insurrection was brewing. When revolt
actually broke out, moreover, the Russian position was at first one of
neutrality: the commander of the Russian forces on the Adriatic coast refused
to supply the rebels with arms, while the Foreign Ministry declared the affair
to be of no interest to Russia, characterizing it as merely one more of the
incessant disturbances that plagued the Ottoman Empire. Still more
interestingly, proposals emanating from the Serbian exiles who had a century
before fled to the Habsburg-controlled Vojvodina for a South Slav union of the
sort put forward by Czartoryski were simply ignored. Czartoryski aside, neither
pan-slavism nor imperialism marked Russian policy in the Balkans: the aim was
neither to conquer the area, nor to partition it with France, but rather to
prop up the Ottoman Empire as a dependent state that would keep the southern
approaches to Russia in friendly hands. Since 1799, indeed, St Petersburg had
been allied to Constantinople, and, greatly alarmed by French designs on the
Balkans, the Russians were at this time trying to strengthen their military
ties with Selim III.
