The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0004/00047.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 12KB | 204 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00047}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XIV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{england
english
napoleon
france
spain
war
portugal
spanish
army
french}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XIV

The Berlin Decree - War In The Peninsula - Bonapartes On The Spanish Throne

     When Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England and
turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he by no means
gave up the idea of one day humbling his enemy.  Persistently throughout the
campaigns of 1805-1807 his despatches and addresses remind addresses remind
Frenchmen that vengeance is only deferred.

     In every way he strives to awaken indignation and hatred against England.
The alliance which has compelled him to turn his armies against his neighbors
on the Continent, he characterizes as an "unjust league fomented by the hatred
and gold of England." He tells the soldiers of the Grand Army that it is
English gold which has transported the Russian army from the extremities of
the universe to fight them.  He charges the horrors of Austerlitz upon the
English.  "May all the blood shed, may all these misfortunes, fall upon the
perfidious islanders who have caused them!  May the cowardly oligarchies of
London support the consequences of so many woes!" From now on, all the
treaties he makes are drawn up with a view to humbling "the eternal enemies of
the Continent."

     Negotiation for peace went on, it is true, in 1806, between the two
countries.  Napoleon offered to return Hanover and Malta.  He offered several
things which belonged to other people, but England refused all of his
combinations; and when, a few days after Jena, he addressed his army, it was
to tell them: "We shall not lay down our arms until we have obliged the
English, those eternal enemies of our nation, to renounce their plan of
troubling the Continent and their tyranny of the seas."

     A month later - November 21, 1806 - he proclaimed the famous Decree of
Berlin, his future policy towards Great Britain.  As she had shut her enemies
from the sea, he would shut her from the land.  The "continental blockade," as
this struggle of land against sea was called, was only using England's own
weapon of war; but it was using it with a sweeping audacity, thoroughly
Napoleonic in conception and in the proposed execution. Henceforth, all
communication was forbidden between the British Isles and France and her
allies.  Every Englishman found under French authority - and that was about
all the Continent as the emperor estimated it - was a prisoner of war.  Every
dollar's worth of English property found within Napoleon's boundaries, whether
it belonged to rich trader or inoffensive tourist, was prize of war.  If one
remembers the extent of the seaboard which Napoleon at that moment commanded,
the full peril of this menace to English commerce is clear.  From St.
Petersburg to Trieste there was not a port, save those of Denmark and
Portugal, which would not close at his bidding.  At Tilsit he and Alexander
had entered into an agreement to complete this seaboard, to close the Baltic,
the Channel, the European Atlantic, and the Mediterranean to the English.
This was nothing else than asking Continental Europe to destroy her commerce
for their sakes.

     There were several serious uncertainties in the scheme.  What retaliation
would England make?  Could Napoleon and Alexander agree long enough to succeed
in dividing the valuable portions of the continents of Europe, Asia, and
Africa?  Would the nations cheerfully give up the English cottons and tweeds
they had been buying, the boots they had been wearing, the cutlery and dishes
they had been using?  Would they cheerfully see their own products lie
uncalled for in their warehouses, for the sake of aiding a foreign monarch -
although the most brilliant and powerful on earth - to carry out a vast plan
for crushing an enemy who was not their enemy?  It remained to be seen.

     In the meantime there was the small part of the coast line remaining
independent to be joined to the portion already blockaded to the English.
There was no delay in Napoleon's action.  Denmark was ordered to choose
between war with England and war with France.  Portugal was notified that if
her ports were not closed in forty days the French and Spanish armies would
invade her.  England gave a drastic reply to Napoleon's measures. In August
she appeared before Copenhagen, seized the Danish fleet, and for three days
bombarded the town.  This unjustifiable attack on a nation with which she was
at peace horrified Europe, and it supported the emperor in pushing to the
uttermost the Berlin Decree.  He made no secret of his determination.  In a
diplomatic audience at Fontainebleau, October 14, 1807, he declared:

          "Great Britain shall be destroyed.  I have the means of doing it, and
     they shall be employed.  I have three hundred thousand men devoted to this
     object, and an ally who has three hundred thousand to support them.  I
     will permit no nation to receive a minister from Great Britain until she
     shall have renounced her maritime usages and tyranny; and I desire you,
     gentlemen, to convey this determination to your respective sovereigns."

     Such an alarming extent did the blockade threaten to take, that even our
minister to France, Mr. Armstrong, began to be nervous.  His diplomatic
acquaintances told him cynically, "You are much favored, but it won't last;"
and, in fact, it was not long before it was evident that the United States was
not to be allowed to remain neutral.  Napoleon's notice to Mr. Armstrong was
clear and decisive:

          "Since America suffers her vessels to be searched, she adopts the
     principle that the flag does not cover the goods.  Since she recognizes
     the absurd blockades laid by England, consents to having her vessels
     incessantly stopped, sent to England, and so turned aside from their
     course, why should the Americans not suffer the blockade laid by France?
     Certainly France is no more blockaded by England than England by France.
     Why should Americans not equally suffer their vessels to be searched by
     French ships?  Certainly France recognizes that these measures are unjust,
     illegal and subversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of
     nations to resort to force, and to declare themselves against things which
     dishonor them and disgrace their independence."

     The attempt to force Portugal to close her ports caused war.  In all but
one particular she had obeyed Napoleon's orders: she had closed her ports,
detained all Englishmen in her borders, declared war; but her king refused to
confiscate the property of British subjects in Portugal.  This evasion
furnished Napoleon an excuse for refusing to believe in the sincerity of her
pretensions.  "Continue your march," he wrote to Junot, who had been ordered
into the country a few days before (October 12, 1807).  "I have reason to
believe that there is an understanding with England, so as to give the British
troops time to arrive from Copenhagen."

     Without waiting for the results of the invasion, he and the King of Spain
divided up Portugal between them.  If their action was premature, Portugal did
nothing to gainsay them; for when Junot arrived at Lisbon in December, he
found the country without a government, the royal family having fled in fright
to Brazil.  There was only one thing now to be done; Junot must so establish
himself as to hold the country against the English, who naturally would resent
the injury done their ally.  From St. Petersburg to Trieste, Napoleon now held
the seaboard.

     But he was not satisfied.  Spain was between him and Portugal.  If he was
going to rule Western Europe he ought to possess her.