1807. glorious and enduring fabric of British liberty; or Mira- CHAP. beau and Danton, who, by achieving for its votaries a bloody triumph on the banks of the Seine, plunged their children and all succeeding ages into the inextricable fetters of a centralised despotism? It is fitting, doubtless, that youth should rejoice; but it is fitting, also, that manhood should be prosperous and old age contented; and the seducers, whether of individuals or nations, are little to be commended, who, taking advantage of the passions of early years or the simplicity of inexperience, precipitate their victims into a course of iniquity, and lead them, through a few months of vicious indulgence or delirious excitement, to a life of suffering and an old age of contempt! CHAPTER LI. SETTLEMENT OF EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY OF TILSIT. CHAP. 1807. 1. If the treaty of Tilsit was productive of glory to the Emperor Napoleon, and transport and opulence to the citizens of his victorious capital, it was the commenceGeneral suf- ment of a period of suffering, ignominy, and bondage to fering and the other capitals and countries of continental Europe. Russia, it was true, had extricated herself unscathed from the treaty the strife; her military renown had suffered no diminu dismay pro duced in Russia by of Tilsit. tion on the field of Eylau, or in the struggle of Friedland; it was apparent to all the world that she had been overpowered by banded Europe, not conquered by France in the strife. But still she had failed in the object of the war. Her arms, instead of being advanced to the Rhine, were thrown back to the Niemen; in indignant silence her warriors had re-entered their country, and surrendered to their irresistible rivals the mastery of Western Europe. If the Czar had been seduced by the artifices of Napoleon, or dazzled by the halo of glory which encircled his brows; if the army was proud of having so long arrested, with inferior forces, the conqueror before whom the Austrian and Prussian monarchies had sunk to the dust, the nobles were not carried away by the general illusion. They saw clearly, amidst the flattery which was lavished on their rulers, the gilded chains which were imposed on their country. LI. They could not disguise from themselves that France had not only acquired by this treaty an irresistible preponderance in western and central Europe, but subjected 1807. Russia herself to her command; that the price to the empire of the Czar, at which all the advantages of the treaty had been purchased, was its accession to the Continental System, and the closing of its ports to the ships of Great Britain; and that thus not only were they likely to be deprived of half their wonted revenue from their estates, by losing the principal market for their produce, but compelled to contribute to the aggrandisement of a rival empire, already too powerful for their independence, and which, it was foreseen, would ere long aim a mortal stroke at their national existence. So strong and universal were these feelings among the whole aristocratic and commercial circles, that when General Savary, whom Napoleon had chosen as his ambassador at the Russian capital, on account of the address he had exhibited, and the favour with which he had been received by Alexander at the time of the battle of Austerlitz,' xl. § 139. arrived at St Petersburg, he experienced, by his own avowal, the utmost difficulty in finding any furnished hotel where he could obtain admission; and during the first six weeks of his stay there, though he was overwhelmed with attentions from the Emperor, he did not receive one invitation from any of the nobility. While he saw the guests whom he met at the palace depart in crowds to the balls and concerts of that scene of festivity, he himself returned, mortified and disconsolate, from the 28, 29. imperial table to his own apartments.2* * In Savary's case the general aversion to the cause of France was increased by the part which he was known to have taken in the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, which had been one of the leading causes of the irritation that led to the war. Napoleon, charmed at having extricated himself with credit from so perilous and unprofitable a contest, gave the most positive injunctions to his envoy at the Russian court at all hazards to avoid its renewal. "I have just concluded peace," said he to Savary: "they tell me I have done wrong, and that I shall repent it; but, by my faith, we have had enough of war-we must give repose to the world. I am going to send you to St Petersburg as chargéd'affaires till an ambassador is appointed. You will have the direction of my 1 Ante, ch. 2 Savary, iii. 98, 100. Hard. x. CHAP. 1807. 2. General feeling of Great In the British dominions the disastrous intelligence produced a different, but perhaps still more mournful impression. England was, by her maritime superiority, relieved from the apprehensions of immediate danger, despondence and the general resolution to maintain the contest conwhich prevailed in tinued unabated; but a feeling of despondence pervaded Britain. the public mind, and the strife was persevered in rather with the sternness of dogged resistance, or from a sense of the impossibility of making a secure accommodation, than from any hope that the war could be brought to a successful issue. This general impression cannot be better portrayed than in the words of Sir James Mackintosh, the able champion, in its earlier days, of the French Revolution :-" I do not indeed despair of the human race; but the days and nights of mighty revolutions have not yet been measured by human intellect. Though the whole course of human affairs may be towards a better state, experience does not justify us in supposing that many steps of the progress may not be immediately for the worse. The race of man may at last reach the promised land; but there is no assurance that the present generation will not perish in the wilderness. The prospect of the nearest part of futurity, of all that we can discover, is very dismal. The mere establishment of absolute power in France is the least part of the evil: it might be necessary for a time to moderate the vibrations of the pendulum in that agitated state; but what are the external effects of these convulsions? Europe is now affairs there: lay it down as the ruling principle of your conduct that any further contest is to be avoided; nothing would displease me so much as to be involved in that quarter in fresh embarrassments. Talleyrand will tell you what to do, and what has been arranged between the Emperor of Russia and me. I am about to give repose to the army in the country we have conquered, and to enforce payment of the contributions; that is the only difficulty which I anticipate; but regulate yourself by this principle, that I will on no account be again drawn into a contest. Never speak of war; in conversation studiously avoid everything which may give offence; contravene no usage; ridicule no custom. Neglect nothing which may draw closer and perpetuate the bonds of alliance now contracted with that country.”—SAVARY, iii. 96, 97 and HARDENBERG, X. 29. 1 LI. 1807. Mackintosh vie, Feb. Mem. i. covered with a multitude of dependent despots, whose CHAP. existence depends on their maintaining the paramount tyranny in France. The mischief has become too intricate to be unravelled in our day; an evil greater than despotism, or rather the worst and most hideous form of despotism, approaches; a monarchy literally universal seems about to be established; then all the spirit, variety, and emulation of separate nations, which the worst forms of internal government have not utterly extinguished, will vanish. And in that state of things, if we may judge Sir James from past examples, the whole energy of human intellect to W. Ogiland virtue will languish, and can scarce be revived other- 24, 1808. wise than by an infusion of barbarism." Such were the 383, 384. anticipations of the greatest intellects of the age, even among those who had originally been most favourable to the democratic principle, and that, too, on the eve of the Peninsular campaigns, and at no great distance from the general resurrection of Europe after the Moscow retreata memorable example of the fallacy of any political conclusions founded upon the supposed durability of the causes at any one time in operation; and of the oblivion of that provision for the remedy of intolerable evils, by the reaction of mankind against the suffering of these, and of the general intermixture of the principles of good and evil in human affairs, which, as it is the most general lesson to be deduced from history, so is it fitted above all others to inspire moderation in prosperous and constancy in adverse affairs. Warsaw. The political changes consequent in central Europe on 3. the treaty of Tilsit, were speedily developed. On his Constituroute to Paris, Napoleon met a deputation of eight of Grandthe principal nobles, in the French interest, of Prussian duchy of Poland at Dresden; and Talleyrand, in a few days, produced a constitution for the grand-duchy, calculated, as he thought, at once to satisfy the general wish for a restoration of their nationality, and to accord with the despotic views of the Emperors of the East and West. VOL. VIII. P |