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LI.

1807.

CHAP. By this deed, which was produced with more than usual rapidity even in those days of constitution-manufacture, the ducal crown was declared to be hereditary in the Saxon family the grand-duke was invested with the whole executive power, and he alone had the privilege of proposing laws to the diet, with whom the prerogative This diet was remained of passing or rejecting them. composed of a senate of eighteen, named by the grandduke, embracing six bishops and twelve lay nobles, and a chamber of deputies of a hundred members; sixty being appointed by the nobility, and forty by the burghs. The chambers, like those at Paris, were doomed to silence; they could only decide on the arguments laid before them, on the part of the government, by the orators of the council of state, and of the chambers by commissions appointed by them. This mockery of a parliament was to assemble only once in two years, and then to sit but fifteen days. The ardent plebeian noblesse of Poland, whose democratic passions had so long brought desolation on their country, found little in these enactments to gratify their wishes; but a substantial, though perhaps precipitate improvement was made in the condition of the peasantry, by a clause declaring that the whole serfs were free. No time, however, was left for reflection; the deputies were con448, 449. strained to accept it; and the new constitution of Poland was not only framed, but sworn to at Dresden during the brief period of Napoleon's sojourn there on his route to Paris.1

July 22.

1 Hard. ix.

Bign. vi.

387, 388. Lucches.

ii. 14, 19.

The constitution given to the infant kingdom of WestConstitution phalia was, in like manner, framed entirely upon the of the king- model of that of France. It contained a king, council Westphalia. of state, senate, silent aristocratic legislature, and public

dom of

Dec. 15.

orators, cast like all those at this period from the Parisian mould. The throne was declared hereditary in the family of Jerome Buonaparte, the Emperor's brother, and the first sovereign; one half of the allodial territories of the

CHAP.

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1807.

former sovereigns, of which the new kingdom was composed, was placed at the disposal of Napoleon, as a fund from which to form estates for his military followers ; provision was made for payment of the contributions levied by France, before any part of the revenue was obtained by the new sovereign; the kingdom was directed to form part of the Confederation of the Rhine, and its military contingent, drawn from a population of about two millions of souls, fixed at twenty-five thousand men : in default of heirs-male of his body, the succession to the throne was to devolve on Napoleon and his heirs by birth or adoption. Every corporate right and privilege was abolished; trial by jury and in open court introduced in criminal cases; all exclusive privileges and exemptions from taxation annulled; the nobility preserved, but deprived of their former invidious rights. The chamber of deputies, consisted of a hundred members, of whom seventy were chosen from the landed aristocracy, fifteen from the commercial, and fifteen from the literary classes. Salutary changes if the equality which they were calculated to induce was the enjoyment of equal rights and general 1 Ann. Reg. security; but utterly fatal to freedom, if they were only 1807, 783. fitted to introduce an equality of servitude, and disable pers. Bign. any individuals or associated bodies from taking the lead Mart. viii. in the contest for the public liberties with the executive iv. 493. power.1

State Pa

vi. 389, 390.

723. Sup.

military

of the Con

and Hanse

The states of the Rhenish confederacy had flattered 5. themselves that the general peace concluded on the shores Oppressive of the Niemen would finally deliver them from the scourge government of warlike armaments and military contributions. But federation they were soon cruelly undeceived. Shortly after the of the Rhine general pacification, and before they had recovered from Towns. the burden of maintaining, clothing, and lodging the numerous corps of the Grand Army which traversed their territories on the road to the Rhine, they were overwhelmed by the entry of a fresh body of forty thousand September. men, who issued from France, and took the route to the

LI.

1807.

October.

CHAP. Vistula, still at the sole expense of the allied states. They were speedily followed by a large body of Spaniards drawn from Italy, and which went to augment the corps of Romana, under the orders of Bernadotte, on the shores of the Baltic; a sad omen for succeeding times, when the conclusion of peace was immediately succeeded by fresh irruptions of armed men, and burdensome preparations, at the cost of the allied states, for future hostilities. It soon appeared that the stipulations in favour of the conquered territories in the formal treaties were to be a mere empty name. It had been provided at Tilsit that Dantzic was to be a free city, governed by its own magistrates; but Rapp, the new governor, was speedily introduced at the head of a numerous French garrison, who summarily expelled the Prussian authorities and great part of the inhabitants, and began the rigorous enforcement of the French military contributions and the Continental System. The same system of government was sternly acted upon in Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and all the Hanse Towns ; Bourrienne continued to enforce it with such severity at Hamburg, that the trade of the place was entirely ruined, and large sums were remitted by him quarterly to the Tuileries out of the last fruits of the commercial enterprise of the Hanse Towns.1

1 Bour. vii.

231, 240.

Hard. ix.

442, 443.

Lucches. ii. 14, 17.

6.

But most of all did the ruthless hand of conquest fall Excessive with unmitigated rigour on the inhabitants of Prussia, rigour of the Hard as their lot appeared to be, as it was chalked out in which Prus- the treaty of Tilsit, it was yet enviable compared to that enced. which, in the course of the pacification which followed,

treatment

sia experi

July 12,

actually ensued from the oppressive exactions of the French government and the unbounded insolence of its soldiery. Immediately after the conclusion of the treaty which reft them of half their dominions, the King and Queen repaired to Memel, where they were compelled to sign a fresh convention, which, under pretext of providing for the liquidation of the contributions and speedy evacuation of their territories, in effect subjected them, without

LI.

1807.

any prospect of relief, to those intolerable burdens. By CHAP. this treaty it was provided that the evacuation of the fortresses, with the exception of Stettin, Cüstrin, and Glogau, should take place before the 1st November; but this only on the condition that the whole contributions were previously paid up-a condition which it was well known could not be complied with, as they amounted to above four times the revenue of the whole kingdom before its dismemberment,* in addition to the burden of feeding, clothing, paying, and lodging above one hundred and fifty thousand men, for which no credit was given in estimating their amount by the French commissaries. By a second convention, concluded at Elbing three months afterwards, Oct. 13. the unhappy monarch, instead of the single military road through his territories from Dresden to Warsaw, stipulated by the treaty of Tilsit, was compelled to allow five passages, two for troops, and three for commercial purposes, to Saxony, Poland, and their respective allies—a stipulation which in effect cut his dominions through the middle, and subjected the inhabitants on these roads to unnumbered exactions and demands both from the French and allied troops. Rapp, soon after, instead of a terri- Nov. 5. tory of two leagues in breadth around the walls of Dantzic, as provided in the treaty, seized upon one, two German miles or eight English miles broad, counting from the extreme point of its outworks; while by a third convention, in the beginning of November, Prussia was not only forced to cede to the Grand-duchy of Warsaw New Silesia and the circle of Michelau,-no inconsiderable addition to the losses, already enormous, imposed by the treaty of 1 Hard. ix. Tilsit, but to ratify the ample grants out of the heredi- 451, 454. tary revenues of the Prussian crown, made by the Emperor 646, 668, and Sup. iv. Napoleon in favour of Berthier, Mortier, and others of 452, 474. his military chiefs.1

* They amounted to 600,000,000 francs, or £24,000,000, and the revenue of Prussia, before the war, was about £6,000,000.-See ante, Chap. XLVI., § 77,

note.

Mart. viii.

CHAP.

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1807.

7.

sitions im

posed on Prussia, and

forces.

Vexatious as these fresh demands were, and cruelly as their bitterness was aggravated by the arrogant manner in which compliance was demanded by the French authoFresh requi- rities, they were inconsiderable compared to the enormous burden of the military requisitions which, from this time limitation of till the opening of the Russian campaign, perpetually its regular drained away all the resources of Prussia. Not content with the crushing exactions, to the amount of six hundred millions of francs (£24,000,000,) already imposed during the war, Daru, the French receiver-general for the north of Germany, brought forward after the peace fresh claims to the amount of 154,000,000 (£6,160,000); and although that able functionary, on the earnest representations of the King, consented to take 35,000,000 francs off this requisition, the French minister Champagny, by the directions of Napoleon, raised it again to the original sum. It was at length, at the earnest intercession of the Emperor Alexander, fixed at one hundred and forty millions (£5,600,000,) and Glogau, Stettin, and Cüstrin were pledged for its final liquidation, on condition that, till that took place, a French corps of ten thousand men should be put in possession of these fortresses, and maintained there entirely at the expense of Prussia. All this was exclusive of the cost of feeding, paying, and clothing the whole French troops still on or passing through the Prussian territory, who were not under a hundred thousand men. In addition to this, the King was obliged to bind himself not to keep on foot, for the next ten years, more than forty-two thousand men. Thus, while his territory was intersected in every direction by military chaussées for the benefit of his enemies, his chief fortresses still in their hands, and his subjects oppressed by the merciless exactions of a prodigious army, quartered apparently permanently upon their industry, his own troops were reduced to so low an amount as to be barely equal to the collection of the revenue required by so vast a host of depredators. To complete the picture of his misfor

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