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

The result of the interview was in the main satisfactory enough to both. The accord between the two seemed complete. The alliance was renewed, a new treaty was made, which was to be kept secret "for ten years at least," and now Napoleon felt free to direct his attention to the annoying Spanish problem, resolved to end it once for all. Assembling a splendid army of 200,000 men he crossed the Pyrenees and in a brief campaign of a month he swept aside all obstacles with comparative ease, and entered Madrid (December, 1808). There he remained a few weeks sketching the institutions of the new Spain which he intended to create. It would certainly have been a far more rational and enlightened and progressive state than it ever had been in the past. He declared the Inquisition, which still existed, abolished; also the remains of the feudal system; also the tariff boundaries which shut off province from province to the great detriment of commerce. He closed two-thirds of the monasteries, which were more than superabundant in the land. But, just as no individual cares to be reformed under the compulsion of a master, so the Spaniards would have nothing to do with these modern improvements in the social art, imposed by a heretic and a tyrant, who had wantonly filched their throne and invaded their country.

Napoleon might perhaps have established his control over Spain so firmly that the new institutions would have struck root, despite this opposition. But time was necessary and time was something he could not command. In Madrid only a month, he was compelled to hurry back to France because of alarming news that reached him. He never returned to Spain.

Austria had thrown down the gauntlet again. It was entirely natural for her to seek at the convenient opportunity to avenge the humiliations she had repeatedly endured at the hands of France to recover the position she had lost. Moreover the close alliance of Russia and France and Napoleon's seizure of the Spanish crown filled her with alarm. If Napoleon was capable of treating in this way a hitherto submissive ally, such as Spain had been, what might he not do to a chronic enemy and now a mere neutral like Austria, particularly as the latter had nowhere to look for support since Russia had deserted the cause. Moreover Austria had learned something from her disastrous experiences; among other things that her previous military system was defective in that it made no appeal to the people, to national sentiment. After Austerlitz the army was reorganized and a great militia was created composed of all men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. A promising invigoration of the national consciousness began. What occasion could be more convenient for paying off old scores and regaining lost ground than this, with Napoleon weakened by the necessity of holding down a spirited and outraged nation like the Spanish, resolved to go to any lengths, and by the necessity of checking or crushing the English in Portugal?

Under the influence of such considerations the war party gained the ascendency, and Austria, under the lead of Archduke Charles, brother of the Emperor and a very able commander, began a war in the spring of 1809. This war, which Napoleon did not seek, from which he had nothing to gain, was another Austrian mistake. Austria should have allowed more time for the full development of her new military system before running perilous risks again.

The Austrians paid for their precipitancy. Napoleon astonished them again by the rapidity of his movements. In April, 1809, he fought Napoleon them in Bavaria, five battles in five days, throwing them back. Then he advanced down the Danube, entered Vienna for the fourth without difficulty and crossed the river to the northern bank, whither the army of the Archduke had withdrawn.

There Napoleon fought a two days' battle at Essling (May 21-22). The fighting was furious, the village of Essling changing hands nine times. Napoleon was seriously checked. He was obliged to take refuge for six weeks on the Island of Lobau in the Danube, until additional troops were brought up from Italy, and from Germany. Then, when his army was sufficiently reinforced, he crossed to the northern bank again and fought the great battle of Wagram (July 5-6). He was victorious of Wagram but in no superlative sense as at Austerlitz. The Archduke's army retired from the field in good order. The losses had been heavy but no part of the army had been captured, none of the flags taken. This was the last victorious campaign fought by Napoleon. Even in it he had won his victory with unaccustomed difficulty. His army was of inferior quality, many of his best troops being detained by the inglorious Spanish adventure and the new soldiers proving inferior to the old veterans. Moreover he was encountering an opposition that was stronger in numbers, because of the army reforms just alluded to, while opposing generals were learning lessons from a study of his methods and were turning them against him. Archduke Charles, for instance, revered Napoleon's genius but he now fought him tooth and nail and with ability.

After Wagram, Austria again made peace with Napoleon, the Peace of Vienna or of Schonbrunn. Austria was obliged to relinquish extensive territories. Of the Polish possessions which she had acquired in the third partition she was forced to cede a part to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and a part to Russia. She was also forced to cede to France Trieste. Carniola, and part of Carinthia and Croatia. These were made into the Illyrian Provinces which were declared imperial territory, although not formally annexed to France. Austria lost 4,000,000 subjects, nearly a sixth of all that she possessed. She lost her only port and became entirely land-locked.

Having defeated Austria for the fourth time, Napoleon treated Europe to one of those swift transformation scenes of which he was fond as showing his easy and incalculable mastery of the situation. He contracted a marriage alliance with the House of Hapsburg which he had so repeatedly humbled, one of the proudest royal houses in Europe. He had long considered the advisability of a divorce from Josephine, as she had given him no heir and as the stability of the system he had erected depended upon his having one. At his demand the Senate dissolved his marriage with Josephine, and the ecclesiastical court in Paris was even more accommodating, declaring that owing to some irregularity the marriage had never taken place at all. Free thus by action of the State and the Church he asked the Emperor of Austria for the hand of his daughter, the Archduchess Marie Louise, and received it. This political marriage was considered advantageous on both sides. It seemed likely to prevent any further trouble between the two countries, to serve as a protection to Austria, to raise Napoleon's prestige by his connection with one of the oldest and proudest reigning houses of Europe, and to insure the continuance of the regime he had established with such display of genius. Thus only seventeen years after the execution of Marie Antoinette, another Austrian princess sat upon the throne of France. The marriage occurred in 1810 and in the following year was born the son for whom the title 'King of Rome' stood ready.

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Napoleon was now at the zenith of his power. He ruled directly over an empire that was far larger than the former Kingdom of France. In 1809 he annexed what remained of the Papal States in Italy, together with the incomparable city of Rome, thus ending, for the time at least, the temporal power of the Pope. In 1810 he forced his brother Louis to abdicate the kingship of Holland, which country was now incorporated in France. He also, as has been already stated, extended the empire along the northern coasts of Germany from Holland to Lubeck, thus controlling Hamburg, Bremen, and the mouths of the important German rivers. Each one of these annexations was in pursuance of his policy of the Continental Blockade, closing so much more of the coastline of Europe to the commerce of England, the remaining enemy which he now expected to humble. He was Emperor of a state that had 130 departments. He was also King of Italy, a state in the northeastern part of the peninsula. He was Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, which included all Germany except Prussia and Austria, a confederation which had been enlarged since its formation by the addition of Westphalia and Saxony and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, extending, therefore, clear up to Russia. His brother Joseph was King of Spain, his brother Jerome King of Westphalia, his brother-in-law Murat King of Naples. All were mere satellites of his, receiving and executing his orders. Russia was his willing ally. Prussia and Austria were his allies, the former because forced to be, the latter at first for the same reason, and later because she saw an advantage in it. No ruler in history had ever dominated so much of Europe. This supreme, incomparable preeminence had been won by his sword, supplemented by his remarkable statesmanship and diplomacy.