L. 1807. CHAP. Parma, vir simplex et timens Deum, who had been sentenced to three years' confinement for having written, in 1809, to a neighbouring curate, that the Archduke John was advancing with his army; the next was Tognetti de Pisa, condemned to six months' imprisonment for having imprudently repeated a satire he had heard against the Emperor. Girolamo de Forte, also, for having composed some poems in favour of the Austrians, when, in 1800, they chased the French from Italy; and Leonard de Modigliano, Dean of Forli, for having been imprudent in his language against the French Emperor, were sentenced to an unlimited period of captivity, and only received their liberation on the downfall of Napoleon. They traversed the most populous cities of Lombardy in the course of their transmission to prison, the former with handcuffs, the latter with a chain about his neck, of which he still bore the marks when I saw him in the prison of Fenestrelles."1 1 Pacca, i. 237, 239. 72. The state prisons exhibited the most extraordinary Extraordin- assemblage of persons. Those in the north of the empire blage of per- were chiefly filled with ardent democrats, or devoted sons in these partisans of the house of Bourbon; those in the southern ary assem state pri provinces with ecclesiastics or priests, who had expressed themselves incautiously regarding the captivity and dethronement of their spiritual sovereign. But numbers were there immured against whom no definite charge or overt act could be alleged, although, from some unknown cause, they had excited the jealousy of the Emperor or some of the imperial authorities. One day there arrived at the doors of these gloomy abodes a young nobleman of elegant figure, gay manners, and dissipated habits; the next an aged priest, in the decline of life, whose grey hairs were sent to bleach amidst the snows of the Alps; next came a violent democrat, who, untaught by the disasters of twenty years, was still raving about the Rights of Man; then a faithful adherent of the fallen dynasty, or an uncompromising asserter of the wrongs of the con L. 1807. quered provinces. All who in any way, or from any CHAP. motive, had excited either the displeasure or the fears of the Emperor, were sent into captivity; but the greater proportion were ecclesiastics, among whom was 1 Pacca's the intrepid and able Cardinal Pacca, to whose able work Mem. i. 237, we are indebted for the greater part of these valuable 274. facts.1* 270,271, extent of great aggra was of his One circumstance of peculiar and unprecedented seve- 73. rity attended the state victims of Napoleon, which had Universal been unknown in Europe since the fall of the Roman Napoleon's empire. The extent of his dominions, the wide sway of power, and his influence, rendered it almost impossible to fly from vation this his persecution. By passing the frontier, and escaping persecutions. into other states, no asylum, as in former times, was obtained; the influence of the imperial authorities, the terrors of the imperial sway, pursued the fugitive through the whole of Europe; and, as in the days of Caligula or Nero, the victim of imperial jealousy could find no resting-place on the Continent till he had passed the utmost limits of civilisation, and amidst the nomade or semi-barbarous tribes on the frontiers of Europe, found that security which the boasted institutions of its ancient states could no longer afford. The mandates of the Emperor, the inquisition of his police, reached the trembling fugitive as effectually on the utmost verge of the Austrian or Spanish dominions, in the extremity of Calabria, or in the marshes of Poland, as in the centre of Paris; and it was not till he had escaped into the These ecclesiastics were sentenced to unlimited imprisonment for the most trifling causes. Out of nineteen who were imprisoned along with Cardinal Pacca in the fortress of Fenestrelles, amidst the Savoy Alps, three Spaniards by birth were there for having declared, at Parma, against the iniquitous war which the Emperor was waging against their nation; another for being suspected of having carried on a secret correspondence with the Pope when in confinement in France; others for having refused to take the oath of fidelity to the French Emperor in the Roman States; one from Bastia in Corsica for having preached a sermon containing some passages which were thought to be a satire on the Emperor, in regard to the affairs of the church. He was seized before he had concluded his discourse, and instantly conducted to prison.PACCA, i. 271, 272. 1807. CHAP. Ukraine, or the Turkish provinces, or had found an L. asylum in the yet unsubdued realm of Britain, that the victim of imperial persecution could be secure of a restingplace. The knowledge of this, which universally prevailed, added fearfully to the terrors of the imperial government. The firmest mind, the most undaunted resolution, despaired of entering the lists with an authority which the whole civilised world seemed constrained to obey; and the immense majority of the prudent and the selfish quailed under the prospect of incurring the displeasure of a power whose lightest measure of animadversion would be banishment into the savage or uncivilised parts of the earth.* Such was the weight of this despotism that even the brothers of Napoleon could not 1 De Stael, endure it. Louis resigned the throne of Holland, and Dix Ann. Lucien sought in England that freedom, for the loss of 319; and which all the grandeur and power of the brother whom his presence of mind had seated on the consular throne, could afford no compensation.1 d'Exil, 229, Rév. Franc. ii. 400. 2 Ante, chap. xxxvii. § 39. With such powers to support his authority, and such terrors to overawe discontent or stifle resistance, Napoleon succeeded, without the least difficulty, in maintain * Madame de Stael has left a graphic picture of the terrors with which the jealousy of Napoleon was attended even to the softer sex; and which prompted her to undertake a perilous journey from Geneva by the Tyrol, Vienna, and Gallicia, into Russia, in the depth of winter, in order to fly the intolerable anxiety of her situation. The Austrian police, acting under his orders, continued the same odious system; and it was not till she reached the frontiers of Old Russia, and war was declared between that power and Napoleon in 1812, that she was able to draw breath. The Duchess of Abrantès has given a still more romantic and interesting account of the extraordinary adventures of Mrs Spencer Smith, wife of the British resident at Stutgard, who incurred the real or feigned displeasure of Napoleon in 1804, at the time of the Duc d'Enghien's murder, and the alleged counterplot in which he was participant to dethrone the Emperor. She was actively pursued by the bloodhounds of the French police, solely on account of her husband's acts, from the neighbourhood of Vicenza, across the Julian and Tyrol Alps to the romantic shores of the Königs See, near Salzbourg, where she for the first time got beyond their reach, by escaping into the Austrian territories, which were not at that period (1804) subjected to the disgrace of being forced to yield obedience to the mandates of the French police. See D'ABR. xiii. 124. A few years later she could have found no security till she had traversed the whole imperial territories, and reached the Ottoman dominions.-Dix Années d'Exil, 239, 250. L. 1807. 74. and slavish his author ing a despotism in France, during the whole remainder CHAP. of the empire, unparalleled for rigour and severity in modern times. Not a whisper of resistance to his orders was anywhere heard throughout all his vast dominions. Universal The senate joyfully and servilely registered his decrees, obedience to voted his taxes, and authorised his conscriptions; the ity. press was occupied only with narrating his journeys, transcribing his eulogies, or enforcing his orders; the chamber of deputies vied with their dignified brethren in the upper chamber in addressing the Emperor only with the incense of Eastern adulation. The legislature voted, and the nation furnished to their ruler, during the ten years which elapsed from his assuming the imperial throne to his abdication, the stupendous number of Two MILLION ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND CONSCRIPTS, and from among these, or the army existing in 1804, above two million two hundred thousand perished in his service.* The taxes, enormously heavy, were only prevented from being raised to the highest possible amount by the systematic plunder of all the tributary countries of Europe. Yet his government was not only obeyed without a murmur during all that time, but these terrible sacrifices, draining as they did its heart's blood from the nation, 276, 277. were passively yielded by all classes :1 and the despot, 1 Montg. vi. The following is a summary of the men levied and destroyed in France Enormous during the ten years of the Emperor's reign-the most extraordinary instance destruction of the destruction of the human species by the operation of regular government life under that exists in the annals of the world : of human his foreign wars and the conscription. 16th Jan., 3d April, 24th Aug., 9th Oct., 11th Nov. 1813, 1,040,000 In ten years, exclusive of voluntary enlistment, 2,113,000 CHAP. who was visibly leading them to perdition, was surrounded L. on all sides and at all times by the incense of flattery and 1807. 75. the voice of adulation. So severely, however, did the conscription press upon Excessive the natural feelings of the human heart, both in parents conscription and their offspring, that although the salaried dependents laws. of the Emperor, in the legislature and elsewhere, obse rigour of the C quiously voted all his demands for men, and the press lavished nothing but encomiums on his measures, yet it was not without extreme difficulty and excessive rigour that it could be carried into execution, especially in the rural districts of the empire. The infirmities which might be pleaded in exemption were severely scrutinised; and inveterate asthma, habitual spitting of blood, or incipient consumption, was alone sustained as a sufficient excuse. Exemptions at first were allowed to be purchased for three hundred francs; but this privilege was soon repealed, and in the latter years of the empire a substitute could not be procured for less than eight hundred or a thousand pounds. It was not surprising that the price became so high; for it was perfectly understood, what in fact was the case, that it was bribing one man to give his life for another. No Frenchman liable, or who once had been liable, to the conscription, could hold any public office, receive any public salary, exerCode Na- cise any public right, receive any legacy, or inherit any Conscrip property, unless he could produce a certificate that he had obeyed the law, and was either legally exempted, in actual service, discharged, or that his services had not poléon, Art. tion, $$ 72, 124. -See DUPIN, Force Commerciale de la France, i. 3; and Moniteur, dates ut supra. |