Buonaparte in both the thrones of the Peninsula. He concludes by sending Charles IV. and Ferdinand, with all their family, into state captivity in the interior of France; discarding Godoy without his stipulated principality; cheating the Queen of Etruria out of her promised indemnity; disinheriting at once the regal families of Spain, Portugal, and Etruria, and placing his own brother on the throne of the Peninsula, in virtue of a determination formed, by his own admission, at the treaty of Tilsit! LII. 1808. conse 89. this atro duct to house. Was, then, such atrocious conduct as successful in the end as it was in the commencement? and did the dynasty Ultimate of Napoleon reap in its final results benefits or injury quences of from acquisitions obtained by so black a course of per- cious confidy? Let the answer be given in his own words—“ It Napoleon was that unhappy war in Spain which ruined me. The and his results have irrevocably proved that I was in the wrong. There were serious faults in the execution. One of the greatest was that of having attached so much importance to the dethronement of the Bourbons. Charles IV. was worn out; I might have given a liberal constitution to the Spanish nation, and charged Ferdinand with its execution. If he put it in force in good faith, Spain would have prospered, and put itself in harmony with our new institutions; if he failed in the performance of his engagements, he would have met with his dismissal from the Spaniards themselves. The unfortunate war in Spain proved a real wound, the first cause of the misfortunes of France. If I could have foreseen that that affair would have caused me so much vexation and chagrin, I would never have engaged in it. But after the first steps taken in the affair, it was impossible for me to recede. When I saw those imbeciles quarrelling and trying to dethrone each other, I thought I might as well take advantage of it to dispossess an inimical family; but I was not the contriver of their disputes. Had I known at the first that the transaction would have given me so "He CHAP. much trouble, I would never have attempted it.” * LII. was drawn on," says M. Thiers, "from chicanery to per1808. fidy, and came to affix to his name a spot which has for ever tarnished his glory. He had no means left of expiating his fault but by the good which he might do to Spain, and through it to France. But Providence did not reserve for him even that expiation. The pages which follow will show how its terrible justice, worked out of the iv. 204,205. consequences of these very events, punished genius, which, not less than mediocrity, is subject to the laws of honour and good sense."1+ 1 Las Cas. O'Meara, ii. 167. That * The assertion here made, and which was frequently repeated by Napoleon, that he was not the author of the family disputes between Charles IV. and Ferdinand, but merely stepped in to dispossess them both, was perfectly well founded, and is quite consistent with all the facts stated in the preceding deduction. It is evident, also, that such was the fascination produced by his power and talents, that little difficulty was experienced in getting the royal family of Spain to throw themselves into his hands; nay, that there was rather a race between the father and son which should first arrive at his headquarters, to state their case favourably to that supreme arbiter of their fate. 2 De Pradt, Savary was sent to Madrid and again back to Vitoria, to induce Ferdinand to come to Bayonne, was admitted by himself, but he evidently had no great difficulty in accomplishing his task. But the real reproach against Napoleon, and that from which he has never attempted to exculpate himself, is his having first agreed with Alexander at Tilsit to dispossess the houses of Braganza and Bourbon; then, to lull asleep the latter power, signed the treaty of Fontainebleau, which guaranteed its dominions; then perfidiously seized its fortresses without a shadow of pretext; and finally taking advantage of the family dissensions to attract both the old King and his son to Bayonne, where they were compelled to abdicate. 73. Long as the preceding narrative of the causes which led to the Peninsular war has proved, it will not by the intelligent reader be deemed misplaced, when the vital importance of the facts it contains, both to the issue of the contest and the elucidation of the character of Napoleon, is taken into view, the more especially as it has hitherto not met with the attention it deserves from English historians. Colonel Napier, in particular, dismisses the whole subject in a few pages; and blames Napoleon, not for attacking Spain, but chiefly, if not entirely, for not attacking it in the interests of democracy. "There are many reasons," says this energetic and eloquent writer, "why Napoleon should have meddled with the interior affairs of Spain; there seems to be no good one for his manner of doing it. His great error was, that he looked only to the court, and treated the people with contempt. Had he taken care to bring the people and their government into hostile contact first, instead of appearing as the treacherous arbitrator of a domestic quarrel, he would have been hailed as the deliverer of a great people."-NAPIER, i. 22, 23. In energy and fire of military description, and ability of scientific disquisition, the gallant Colonel is above all praise; but he is far from being equally safe as a guide to political events, or as a judge of the measures of government. +THIERS, viii. 658. LII. 1808. 90. wisdom, so policy is The fact thus admitted by Napoleon, and clearly proved CHAP. by his history, that the Spanish war was the principal cause of his ruin, is one of the most luminous examples which the annals of the world exhibit of the subjection Its apparent of human affairs to the direction of an overruling Power, far as human which makes the passions and vices of men the instru- concerned. ment of their own punishment. So far as mere worldly policy was concerned, and on the supposition that there were no moral feelings in mankind, which cannot for a length of time be outraged with impunity, there can be no doubt that he judged wisely in attempting, by any means, the extension of his dynasty over the Peninsula. The reasons of state policy which rendered it essential for Louis XIV. to face the strength of banded Europe in order to maintain the Family Compact in the Peninsula, were still more forcibly applicable to Napoleon, as his dynasty was a revolutionary one, and could not hope to obtain lasting support except from sovereigns whose thrones rested on a similar foundation. How, then, did it happen that a step recommended by so clear a principle of expedience, and attended by the most unhoped-for success in the first instance, should ultimately have been attended with such disaster? Simply because it was throughout based on injustice; because it violated the moral feelings of mankind, outraged their national attachments, and roused all classes by the overbearing excitement of the generous emotions into an unreflecting, it may almost be called, an instinctive resistance. 91. ultimate about. In the final success of that resistance, in the memorable retribution which it at last brought on the principal actors And the in the drama which began with such apparently unde- punishment served success, is to be discerned the clearest proof of it brought the manner in which Providence works out the moral government of the world, and renders the guilt and longcontinued success of the wicked the instruments of their own ultimate and well-deserved punishment. When the Spaniards beheld Napoleon sending their princes into LII. 1808. CHAP. captivity and wresting from them their crown, from themselves their independence; when they saw Murat in triumph extinguishing the Madrid insurrection in blood, and securely massacring her gallant citizens after the fight was over, they sank and wept in silence, and possibly doubted the reality of the Divine superintendence of human affairs, when such crimes were permitted to bring nothing but increase of power and authority to their perpetrators. But mark the end of these things, and the consequences of these atrocities upon their authors, by a series of causes and effects, every one of which now stands forth in imperishable light. Napoleon, who then sent an unoffending race of monarchs into captivity, was himself, by its results, driven into lasting and melancholy exile: France, which then lent its aid to a perfidious and unjust invasion, was itself, from its effects, subjected to a severe and galling subjugation: Murat, who then with impunity massacred the innocent by the mockery of military trial, signed, in the order for their condemnation, the warrant for his own dethronement and execution not eight years afterwards! 92. of the Re volution were the real causes of the dis asters both of Europe and France. In authorising or committing these enormous state The passions crimes, Napoleon and France were in truth acting in conformity to that moral law of the universe, which dooms outrageous vice, whether in nations or individuals, to prepare, in the efforts which it makes for its present gratification or advancement, the means of its ultimate punishment. Napoleon constantly said, and said truly, that he was not to be blamed for the wars which he undertook; that he was driven on by necessity; that he was always placed in the alternative of further triumphs or immediate ruin; that he was in truth the head of a military republic, which would admit no pause to its dictator in the career of victory.* "Throughout my whole reign," said Napoleon, " I was the keystone of an edifice entirely new, and resting on the most slender foundations. Its duration depended on the issue of my battles. If I had been conquered at Marengo, the disastrous times of 1814 and 1815 would immediately have come on. It was the same at Austerlitz, Jena, and other fields. The vulgar accuse my ambition LII. 1808. There is no one who attentively considers his career but CHAP. must admit the justice of these observations, and absolve him individually, in consequence, from much of that obloquy which the spectacle of the dreadful and desolating wars, in which he was so powerful an agent, has naturally produced among mankind. But that just indignation at the profuse and unprofitable effusion of blood, which has been erroneously directed by a large and influential class in France to the single head of Napoleon, should not on that account be supposed to be ill-founded. The feeling is just the object only of it is mistaken. Its true object is that selfish spirit of revolutionary aggrandisement, which merely changed its direction, not its character, under the military dictatorship of the French Emperor; which hesitates at no crimes, pauses at no consequences; which, unsatiated by the blood and suffering it had produced in its own country, sought abroad, under his triumphant banners, the means of still greater gratification; and never ceased to urge on its remorseless career, till the world was filled with its devastation, and the unanimous indignation of mankind was aroused for its punishment. as the cause of all these wars; but they, in truth, arose from the nature of things, and that constant struggle of the past and the present, which placed me continually in the alternative of conquering, under pain of being beaten down. I was never, in truth, master of my own movements; I was never at my own disposal. At the commencement of my elevation, during the Consulate, my partisans frequently asked me, with the best intentions, whither I was tending, and I constantly answered with perfect sincerity, I did not know. They were astonished, but I said no more than the simple truth. My ambition, I admit, was great, but it was of a frigid nature, and caused by the opinion of the masses. During all my reign, the supreme direction of affairs really lay with the people; in fact, the imperial government was a kind of republic."-LAS CASES, vi. 41, vii. 125 ; O'Meara, i. 405. |