Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

The horn of plenty was not yet empty. Napoleon, after Austerlitz, forced the Batavian Republic, that is Holland, to become a monarchy and to accept his brother Louis, thirty-two years of age, as its king. Louis, as mild as his brother was hard, thought that the way to rule was to consult the interests and win the affections of his subjects. As this was not Napoleon's idea, Louis was destined to a rough and unhappy, and also brief, experience as king. " When men say of a king that he is a good man, it means that he is a failure," was the information that Napoleon sent Louis for his instruction.

The number of kingdoms at Napoleon's disposal was limited, temporarily at least. But he had many other favors to bestow, which were not to be despised. Nor were they despised. His sister Elise was made Princess of Lucca and Carrara, his sister Pauline, a beautiful and luxurious young creature, married Prince Borghese and became Duchess of Guastalla, and his youngest sister, Caroline, who resembled him in strength of character, married Murat, the dashing cavalry officer, who now became Duke of Berg, an artificial state which Napoleon created along the lower Rhine.

Two brothers, Lucien and Jerome, were not provided for, and thereby hangs a tale. Each had incurred Napoleon's displeasure, as each had married for love and without asking his consent. He had other plans for them and was enraged at their independence. Both were expelled from the charmed circle, until they should put away their wives and marry others according to Napoleon's taste, not theirs. This Lucien steadfastly refused to do and so he who, by his presence of mind on the 19th of Brumaire, had saved the day and rendered all this story possible, stood outside the imperial favor, counting no more in the history of the times. When Jerome, the youngest member of this astonishing family, and made of more pliable stuff, awoke from love's young dream, at the furious demands of Napoleon, and put away his beautiful American bride, the Baltimore belle, Elizabeth Patterson, then he too became a king. All who worshiped Mammon in those exciting days received their appropriate reward.

It would be pleasant to continue this catalogue of favors, scattered right and left by the man who had rapidly grown so great. Officials of the state, generals of the army, and more distant relatives received glittering prizes and went on their way rejoicing, anxious for more. Appetite is said to grow by that on which it feeds.

More important far than this flowering of family fortunes was another result of the Austerlitz campaign, the transformation of Germany, effected by the French with the eager and selfish cooperation of many German princes. That transformation, which greatly reduced the distracting number of German states, by allowing some to absorb others, had already been going on for several years. When France acquired the German territory west of the river Rhine, it was agreed, in the treaties of Campo Formio and Luneville, that the princes thus dispossessed should receive compensations east of the river Rhine. This obviously could not be done literally and for all, as every inch of territory east of the Rhine already had its ruler. As a matter of fact the change was worked out by compensating only the hereditary rulers. There were, both on the left bank and on the right and all throughout Germany, many petty states whose rulers were not hereditary - ecclesiastical states, and free imperial cities. Now these were tossed to the princes who ruled by hereditary right, as compensation for the territories they had lost west of the river Rhine. This wholesale destruction of petty German states for the advantage of other lucky German states was accomplished not by the Germans themselves, which would have been shameless enough, but was accomplished in Paris. In the antechambers of the First Consul, particularly in the parlors of Talleyrand, the disgraceful begging for pelf went on. Talleyrand grew rapidly rich, so many were the " gifts "- one dreads to think what they would be called in a vulgar democracy which German princes gave him for his support in despoiling their fellow-Germans.

For months the disgusting traffic went on and, when it ended in the "Conclusion" of March, 1803, really dictated by Bonaparte, the number of German principalities had greatly decreased. All the ecclesiastical states of Germany, with one single exception, had disappeared and of the fifty free cities only six remained. All went to enlarge other states. At least the map of Germany was simpler, but the position of the Church and of the Empire was greatly altered. Of the 360 states which composed the Holy Roman or German Empire in 1792 only eighty- two remained in 1805.

All this had occurred before Austerlitz. After Austerlitz the pace was increased, ending in the complete destruction of the Empire. Paris again became the center of German politics and intrigues, as in 1803. The result was that in 1806 the new kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg and fourteen other German princes renounced their allegiance to the German Emperor, formed a new Confederation of the Rhine (July 12, 1806), recognized Napoleon as their 'Protector,' made an offensive and defensive alliance with him which gave to him the control of their foreign policy, the settlement of questions of peace and the Rhine and guaranteed him 63,000 German troops for his wars. Fresh annexations to these states were made. Thus perished many more petty German states, eagerly absorbed by the fortunate sixteen.

Perished also the Holy Roman Empire which had been in existence, real or shadowy, for a thousand years. The secession of the sixteen princes and the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine killed it. It was only formal interment, therefore, when Napoleon demanded of the Emperor Francis, whom he had defeated at Austerlitz, that he renounce his title as Holy Roman Emperor. This Francis hastened to do (August 6, 1806), contenting himself henceforth with the new title he had given himself two years earlier, when Napoleon had assumed the imperial title. Henceforth he who had been Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire was called Francis I, Hereditary Emperor of Austria.

Napoleon, who could neither read nor speak a word of German, was now the real ruler of a large part of Germany, the strongest factor in German politics. To French domination of West Germany, annexed to France earlier, came an important increase of influence. It was now that French ideas began in a modified form to remold the civil life of South Germany. Tithes were abolished, the inequality of social classes in the eyes of the law was reduced though not destroyed, religious liberty was established, the position of the Jews was improved. The Germans lost in self-respect from this French domination, the patriotism of such as were patriotic was sorely wounded at the sight of this alien rule, but in the practical contrivances of a modernized social life, worked out by the French Revolution, and now in a measure introduced among them, they had a salutary compensation.

While all this shifting of scenes was being effected Napoleon had kept a large army in South Germany. The relations with Prussia which country had been neutral for the past ten years, since the Treaty of Basel of 1795, were becoming strained and grew rapidly more so. The policy of the Prussian King, Frederick William III, was weak, vacillating, covetous. His diplomacy was playing fast and loose with his obligations as a neutral and with his desires for the territorial aggrandizement of Prussia. Napoleon's attitude was insolent and contemptuous. Both sides made an unenviable but characteristic record in double-dealing. The sordid details, highly discreditable to both, cannot be narrated here. Finally the war party in Berlin got the upper hand, led by the high-spirited and beautiful Queen Louise and by the military chiefs, relics of the glorious era of Frederick the Great, who thought they could do what Frederick had done, that is, defeat the French with ease. As if to give the world some intimation of the terrible significance of their displeasure they went to the French Embassy in Berlin and bravely whetted their swords upon its steps of stone. The royalist officers at Versailles in the early days of the Revolution had shown no more inane folly in playing with fire than did the Prussian military caste at this time. The one had learned its lesson. The other was now to go to the same pitiless school of experience.