Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15 August 1769
in Ajaccio, Corsica.
France had acquired Corsica from Genoa in May 1768,
and the Bonaparte family was recognized as nobles in 1771.
Napoleon learned to read and write Italian in school.
In January 1779 he was enrolled in a seminary at Autun
in Burgundy for four months to learn French.
He read Rousseau’s romantic La Nouvelle Héloise
which taught him to follow his authentic feelings.
Then he spent five years at the military academy at
Brienne-le-Château in Troye, and he was bullied
for his Corsican accent and poverty.
Napoleon was good at mathematics and learned
geometry, algebra, and trigonometry.
He read Cicero, Voltaire, Diderot, Abbé Raynal, Erasmus,
Virgil, and ancient historians, and he especially liked
Plutarch’s Lives of Alexander, Caesar, and Brutus.
In October 1784 he moved on
to the Royal Military School in Paris.
He was an active Corsican nationalist,
but he supported the revolutionary Jacobins.
He believed in equality before the law, merit,
nationalistic government, and military discipline,
but he hated mob violence.
On October 28, 1785 Napoleon graduated and became
an artillery officer at Valence on November 3.
He continued to study many histories and military tactics.
In April 1786 he wrote an essay on
how the Corsicans could resist the French.
In June 1788 he began studying artillery at Auxonne.
In August 1789 he got sick leave
and spent 18 months on Corsica.
In January 1790 he supported Antoine Christophe Saliceti’s
plan to make Corsica a department of France.
Napoleon studied Rousseau’s Constitution of Corsica,
and he worked on a history of Corsica
but could not get it published.
He admired Pasquale Paoli who came back to Corsica in July
after 22 years in exile and was elected President.
In January 1791 Napoleon was a founding member of the
Patriotic Club in Ajaccio, and he returned there again in
October 1792 and served under President Paoli on an
expedition to the island of San Stefano in February 1793.
Paoli preferred the British to the French, but Napoleon
urged the Corsicans to support the French Revolution.
At the Jacobin Club in Toulon his younger brother Lucien
Bonaparte denounced Paoli as a traitor, and on 23 May 1793
a Paolist mob plundered the Bonaparte home.
Corsica’s Parliament outlawed the Bonapartes,
and on June 11 Napoleon and his family fled to Toulon.
In 1793 France produced 7,000 cannons
which Napoleon knew how to use.
He had been made artillery commander in Italy on March 24,
and on April 18 his battle plan helped the French army
take the port of Oneglia in Genoa away from the Piedmontese.
On 16 September Napoleon commanded the French artillery
in the siege of Toulon,
and he was promoted to major in October.
He studied the batteries at the French naval base in Toulon.
On 28 August about 13,000 British allies supported the
royalist rebels in Toulon, and the next day
the French besieged the port.
Napoleon was wounded in the thigh during the attack
on the Spaniards in Fort Mulgrave.
On 17 December General Jacques François Dugommier
approved Napoleon’s strategy that enabled the French
to drive out the British in two days
while a British squadron destroyed the French fleet.
Napoleon was promoted to brigadier general on the 22nd.
Saliceti and deputy Thomas Gasparin ordered about 400
suspected fédéres executed,
and they destroyed much of the town.
Barras took over Toulon,
and Robespierre criticized his corruption.
Napoleon was suspected of being a Jacobin
supporting Robespierre, and he was imprisoned
from August 9, 1794 to the 20th.
In October 1795
Napoleon defeated a Royalist uprising.
On October 15 he met Joséphine.
The French Directory established a Constitution on October 26.
The Stock Exchange in Paris was closed December 11, 1795
but was reopened on January 12, 1796.
On January 25 the Directory gave themselves the power
to appoint provisional administrations for
Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Bordeaux.
The next day Nicolas Stofflet in Maine and Loire followed
the orders of Louis XVIII and the Count of Artois
to take up arms again.
Stofflet was captured on February 23
and executed two days later.
France’s army had been depleted to 450,000 men.
The Directory decreed that the “Marseillaise” was
to be sung in all theatres before the performance.
In 1796 France had only about
15,000 priests for 40,000 parishes.
On February 1 the Directory excluded all but the indigent
from rations of bread and meat, but public pressure
persuaded them to repeal that restriction on the 20th.
On the 4th General Schérer resigned rather than implement
Napoleon’s plan to invade Italy.
On the 14th the Directory ordered theatres to be
“schools of morality and of republicanism,”
and on the 27th they closed the Feydeau theatre.
The assignats were down to 0.25% of their nominal value,
and the Directory limited their number to the current 34 billion;
only 300 million livres remained from the Ancient Régime.
On March 2, 1796 the Directory made Napoleon the commander
of the army in Italy and instructed him to live off the land
and to get funds for France’s Treasury and to pay soldiers.
On the 6th the 27-year-old Napoleon married the 33-year-old
widow of General Beauharnais, Joséphine de la Pagerie.
They both lied about their birth years, and she had been the
mistress of Barras, Hoche, and Napoleon.
Two days later he left to join the French army in Italy.
Also on March 8, 1796 the legislative Councils decreed that
officials must swear “hatred for royalty” before serving.
In January the Savona infantry regiment in Nice had
600 soldiers die in 20 days,
and the French army in Italy was down to 61,281 men.
Napoleon’s campaign against the Austrians began on March 11.
On March 18 the Directory replaced the nearly worthless
assignats with territorial mandate banknotes also based on
national property, but by July they were no longer accepted.
On 23 March one of the last Vendée leaders, Charette,
was wounded and captured,
and he was executed six days later.
At Nice on March 26 Napoleon with his aides-de-camp
Col. Joachim Murat, Major Andoche Junot,
Captain Auguste de Marmont, and his 17-year-old brother
Louis joined the demoralized army under the “older” generals
André Masséna 38, Charles Pierre Augereau 38,
Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier 53, A. E. F. Laharpe 32,
and chief-of-staff Louis Alexandre Berthier 42.
Fever had taken 600 lives in 20 days.
The Directory gave Napoleon only 40,000 livres for the
entire campaign, less than his annual salary.
He ordered the French minister Faipoult in Genoa to borrow
secretly 3 million from Jewish financiers.
He disbanded a battalion for mutiny, and on April 2 Napoleon
spoke to the army he called “naked and hungry,” saying
The government owes us much
but can give us nothing….
I will lead you into the most fertile plains on earth.
Rich provinces, wealthy towns
all will be yours for the taking.
There you will find honor and glory and riches.2
Also on 2 April royalists rebelled in Cher
and took over Sancerre, but Republican troops
took back Sancerre one week later.
On the 12th Napoleon’s army defeated Austrians
at Montenotte and three days later the last Austrians
in the Apennines surrendered at Dego.
On the 26th he promised his men the conquest of Italy
if they would respect the people and not pillage.
Two days later the Piedmontese agreed to an armistice,
giving up Tortona, Alessandria, Coni, and Ceva.
Napoleon obtained millions of livres from the Duke of Parma
and from Genoa, enabling him to pay his soldiers
half their wages in silver, which the Directory approved.
He appointed curators to remove objects of art
and scholars to collect historical manuscripts.
Scientists gathered plants and animals.
On 16 April 1796 the Councils decreed that anyone
advocating a return to the monarchy or the Constitution
of 1793 could be executed or deported.
On the 20th the Equals began distributing
The French People’s Cry against its Oppressors,
and their infiltration of the Police Legion led to mutinies
on the 28th and to the Directory dissolving the Legion and
deploying them on May 2 for military service on the borders.
On May 10 Babeuf and Buonarroti were arrested,
and Carnot issued warrants for 245 others.
Joseph de Maistre published his
Considerations on the French Revolution
calling it a “providential catastrophe.”
Napoleon’s army increased to 30,000 men by the time
they crossed the Po River on May 7.
On the 10th he aroused his men to take the bridge at Lodi,
and on the 15th the magistrates of Milan, glad to be rid of
Austrian administrators, opened the gates for the French army.
That day in a peace treaty Piedmont-Sardinia ceded Savoy
and Nice to France.
Catholic priests led a revolt in Pavia.
When the council of Pavia refused to surrender,
General Jean Lannes had them shot on the 26th.
Armed peasants in Binasco attacked the French who killed
a hundred men and burned the village as an example.
On May 30 at Borghetto they defeated
the Austrians who retreated.
Napoleon developed the habit of exaggerating enemy losses
while minimizing his, and he proclaimed a Lombardic Republic
to be governed by Italian giacobini (Jacobins).
He abolished internal tariffs and guilds, ended noble assemblies
and feudal privileges, declared tolerance for Jews,
and occasionally nationalized Church property.
On May 31 France’s army of the Sambre and Meuse
crossed the Rhine heading toward Vienna.
On June 3, 1796 Napoleon’s army captured Verona
in
the Venetian Republic and forced
the Austrians to retreat toward Tyrol.
In Germany the next day the French army led by Kléber
defeated Austrians at Altenkirchen.
On the 5th Napoleon agreed to an armistice with Naples.
The Directory ordered him to attack the Papal States,
and they occupied Bologna on the 19th
and Ferrara the next day.
On the 23rd Pope Pius VI and Napoleon
signed an armistice at Bologna.
The next day the Directorate increased the postage
on newspapers to five centimes
in order to discourage their distribution.
On June 27 Napoleon’s army occupied Livornio
and captured £12 million of English merchandise.
Two days later bombardment led to taking the Milan Citadel.
Napoleon entered Florence on July 1.
The journalist Pierre Louis de Lacretelle the elder began
criticizing the policies of the Directorate and Napoleon in Italy.
Italian peasants revolted at Imola on 4 July,
but the French army suppressed them three days later.
Also on July 4 Napoleon’s army began a siege of Mantua
where 14,000 Austrians occupied the garrison.
The French army led by General Jean Moreau
overcame the Austrians at Rastatt on July 5
and again at Ettlingen on the 9th.
Moreau’s army in Germany fought in the Black Forest
and then occupied Stuttgart on July 18.
Austrians forced the French to lift the siege on 1 August.
Napoleon went to relieve Mantua and defeated Austrians
at Lonato on the 3rd and again at Castiglione
in a surprise attack two days later.
His army was collecting art works in Italy,
and on August 15, 1796 David, Girodet, Soufflot,
and other artists circulated a protesting petition.
General Pérignon, the French ambassador in Madrid,
concluded a treaty of alliance with Spain on the 18th.
Four days later the Directory signed a treaty accepting
the towns of Huningen and Kehl from the Margrave of Baden.
On the 24th Moreau’s army defeated Austrians on the Lech
near Augsburg, but the Austrians were victorious over
the French army led by General Jourdan.
On the 26th Napoleon at Milan organized
a government for Lombardy using Italian patriots.
The French siege of Mantua was reasserted on August 27.
Napoleon continued to win victories in Italy
in September 1796 at Primolano, Bassano, and La Favorita.
Near Paris at the Grenelle military camp
where extremists made inroads a cavalry charge
killed 20 demonstrators on September 10.
The Directory established a Military Commission
to judge those arrested.
At Rome on the 16th the Jacobin Michele Laurora
proposed a convention for all Italy.
On the 26th General Petiet, the Minister of War, admitted
to the Directory that he had lost control over the army in Italy.
On October 2, 1796 Moreau’s army of 35,000 men
defeated about 15,000 Austrians at Biberach in Germany,
but on the 19th a force of 28,000 Austrians overcame
Moreau’s 32,000 French at Emmendingen.
On the 4th Napoleon had broken an armistice with
the Duke of Modena by invading his duchy.
The French removed the Duke, and on the 16th
Italians representing Ferraro, Bologna, Reggio, and Modena
formed the Cispadian Republic with civil equality
and a legion of 2,500 soldiers.
On the 10th a military commission had condemned to death
35 rebels who fought at the Grenelle camp uprising,
and that day the Directory made a peace treaty
with King Ferdinando IV of Naples, releasing French prisoners.
On November 3 the Directory established military courts
that would last for more than a century.
On the 7th an Austrian army of nearly 20,000 men
defeated 10,500 French led by Claude Vaubois at Calliano.
Five days later Austrians fought a French force at Caldiero,
and Napoleon retreated to Verona.
On the 17th Bonaparte’s army suffered heavier casualties
defeating the Habsburg force at Arcole,
but they captured 4,000 men and 11 cannons.
On November 30 the Directory repealed the 1794 law
requiring resident permits for foreigners.
On 4 December churches in Paris were allowed to reopen
with priests who did not take the oath.
On the 6th the Directory complied with Napoleon’s demand
that civil commissioners be removed from his army.
Two days later Jourdan’s successor,
General Pierre de Beurnonville, signed a separate treaty
with Austrians in Germany.
On the 11th the Directory informed ambassador Monroe
that they would not recognize his successor, C. C. Pinckney,
because the Americans had broken the treaty of 1778.
After a storm devastated the French invasion of Ireland,
they abandoned it at Cork on December 24.
In his Italian campaign Napoleon had collected officially
45,706,493 francs in cash and 12,132,909 in gold, silver,
and gems by the end of 1796 while his soldiers and officers
gathered loot worth about ten million francs.
The Theophilanthropy religion was founded in January 1797,
and it was gaining a little more support in Paris
with its temples of the Social Contract, Fidelity, and Harmony.
Director La Révellière-Lépeaux
especially promoted the deistic cult.
On 10 January 1797 after two months of an Austrian siege
the 20,000 French forces led by General Louis Desaix
abandoned Kehl in Baden.
On the 14th and 15th in Italy 23,000 French soldiers
led by Napoleon inflicted about 13,000 casualties
on an Austrian army of 28,000 at Rivoli.
Two days later most of Giovanni Provera’s Imperial army
surrendered to Napoleon at La Favorite in northern Italy.
The Polish General Dobrowski signed a treaty
with Bonaparte and on the 20th summoned
Polish patriots to form a legion in Italy.
In Paris on the 30th Director Carnot had the royalist
conspiracy led by Abbot Brottier arrested.
After 16,300 Austrians died over eight months,
Mantua capitulated on February 2.
On that day the Directory declared
the remaining French paper money invalid.
General Victor’s forces defeated the papal troops near Faenza.
On the 9th Napoleon’s army occupied Ancon
in the Vatican states, and on the 19th
he and Pope Pius VI signed the treaty of Tolentino.
The Pope ceded Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna to France
and paid 30 million francs in tribute along with
100 paintings, 500 manuscripts, and a few statues.
On 10 March 1797 Louis XVIII from Germany issued
a proclamation urging his supporters to win elections in France,
and on the 20th the Directory required all voters to take
an oath to the Constitution and the Republic promising
to protect them from royalism and anarchy.
The young General Hoche as the new commander of the
Sambre and Meuse Army removed suppliers and war
commissioners who had been stealing from the French army,
enabling him to raise soldiers’ pay.
At Bologna on March 27 the new Cispadian Republic
announced their Constitution with the Catholic state religion.
In the French elections for one third of the deputies on April 4
the conservative royalists won at least 170 seats in the Council
with 45 undecided new deputies; but only 17 were leftists,
and 16 supported the Directory.
The rightists elected Marquis de Barthélemy
of Basel the new director.
Napoleon’s army had been increased to 80,000 men
and was invading Austria, and in the first week of April
they seized Neumarkt, Ungmarkt, and Judenburg
where he signed an armistice on April 7.
On the 11th France’s Supreme Court overturned
the convictions of the Grenelle Camp rebels.
On Easter Sunday the people of Verona
slaughtered hundreds of French soldiers.
On April 18, 1797 Napoleon signed an armistice
with the Austrians near Leoben.
They recognized that France ruled Belgium and the Cisalpine
Republic that included Milan, Bologna, and Modena, and they
ceded Ionian Islands and the west bank of the Rhine to France.
Napoleon gave up Venice to the Austrians.
On April 20 Moreau’s Army of the Rhine and Moselle
crossed into Rhineland, and French troops
reached Frankfurt two days later.
That day Moreau discovered that
Pichegru had betrayed the Republic.
On the 24th the French occupied Padua
and proclaimed equal rights for Jews.
Sylvain Maréchal in April published the
“Manifesto of the Equals” calling for a Republic of Equals.
On May 3 Napoleon declared war on Venice.
On the 12th Venetian patriots rose up and forced the Doge
to flee, and three days later French troops entered the city.
French soldiers looted as commissioners listed items
to be removed, and the new government
in Venice promised to pay the French 15 million livres.
On the 22nd patriots rose up in Genoa
and were protected by French troops.
On 14 June Napoleon appointed 22 men to govern Genoa
as the new Ligurian Republic.
On the 18th Gibert des Molières persuaded the Council
to transfer the financial administration from the Directory
to the Treasury, and the Council of Elders approved the
repeal of the law against priests and émigrés.
On June 24 Director Barras wrote to General Hoche
asking him to intervene against the royalists in the Council.
On July 9, 1797 the new Cisalpine Republic in Milan
united the Cispadane Republic with Lombardy.
Napoleon transformed the previous Austrian administration
by establishing a congress and municipal councils.
On the 16th the directors Barras, Reubell,
and La Révellière-Lépeaux sided against Carnot
and Barthélemy and appointed Talleyrand Foreign Minister
and Hoche War Minister.
After Hoche’s forces approached Paris,
criticism by rightists persuaded him to resign.
Napoleon sent the republican General Augereau to Paris,
and the Directory gave him command of
the Paris Military Region on August 8, 1797.
The Directory reported that Napoleon’s army in the northern
Italian campaign had taken 150,000 prisoners, 540 cannons,
and 39 warships, winning 18 major battles
and 67 lesser conflicts.
Informed by Fouché’s police, the Directory
on 1 September 1797 had the royalist deputy Raffet arrested
for conspiring to kill directors Barras and Reubell.
On the night of the 3rd General Augereau’s troops occupied
the city and began arresting royalists the next day.
On the 5th the legislative Councils started passing
the Second Directory’s repressive laws.
They arrested 65 journalists and rightists,
and they banished 11 elders and 11 deputies from the 500.
They also quashed the election of royalists in 49 departments.
A total of 177 deputies were dismissed from the Councils
including 53 who were physically removed by grenadiers.
They declared 53 local officials and judges elected invalid,
and they were replaced by the Directory’s appointees.
The remaining 320 deputies in the Council of 500 repealed
recent laws that had benefited the Church.
The director Barthélemy was arrested,
and Carnot escaped to Switzerland.
On September 8 to replace them they elected the
Montagnard jurist Merlin de Douai
and the anticlerical François de Neufchâteau.
The Directory appointed General Hoche to command
the French armies in Germany, but on September 19
Hoche died at the age of 29 and was mourned.
That day Austrians released General Lafayette
who had been imprisoned in Slovakia.
On the 22nd Pichegru was one of the 18 royalists who
were deported to Guiana where they were imprisoned.
The next day the Directory dismissed General Moreau
because they suspected he was a royalist.
On September 24 the National Council of the Constitutional
Church was dissolved; bishops appealed for reunification
and the use of French in the liturgy.
Refractory priests were given two weeks to leave,
and about 1,750 French priests and 7,500 Belgian priests
were deported or imprisoned by June 1799.
Returned émigrés had ten days to leave or face death.
The number of men drafted into France’s army
in 1797 was 382,000.
In Italy on 17 October 1797 Napoleon and the
Austrian Cobenzl signed the peace treaty of Campo Formio
which the Directory ratified on the 26th, the day they named
Bonaparte commander for an invasion of England.
On November 4 the Directory approved the division of the
new territory west of the Rhine River into four departments.
West of those were nine departments that had been Belgium.
On the 19th Italian revolutionaries formed a republic
in Ancona as French soldiers watched.
Napoleon attended the Congress of Rastatt in Germany
that began on the 28th.
The next day the Directory’s law deprived nobles of the
rights of citizens, making them equal to foreigners
unless they could prove they supported the Revolution.
At Rastatt on December 1 Napoleon and the French
agreed to evacuate Mainz as the Austrians left Venice.
Swiss democrats led by Peter Ochs of Basel
appealed to the Directory.
Napoleon annexed the Valtelline to Lombardy
to form a connection to the Swiss.
Napoleon returned to Paris on December 5,
and his triumphs were celebrated on December 10.
He declared, “When the happiness of the French people
is established on the best organic laws,
all Europe will become free.”
One week later the Directory banned 16 royalist newspapers.
On 8 December 1797 Napoleon met with Ochs at
the home of Reubell, and then Ochs with Merlin
drafted a constitution for the Swiss cantons.
A French army moved to the Vaud frontier,
and the Vaudois accepted the new constitution.
Gaspard Monge had become Minister of the Navy
in August 1792 until Danton forced him to resign in April 1793.
From May 1796 to October 1797 Monge was in Italy.
He promoted the manufacture of weapons including
140,000 muskets a year in Paris, and the number of steel mills
increased from four to thirty.
On December 25 General Monge arranged for Napoleon
to be elected a member of the Institute of Sciences
and Arts which had replaced the French Academy.
In his acceptance speech Napoleon said,
True conquests, the only ones which leave no regret,
are those made over ignorance.
The most honorable and useful occupation for nations
is to contribute to the extension of human knowledge.
The true power of the French Republic
should consist henceforth in allowing
no single new idea to escape its embrace.3
Also on December 28 during a riot in Rome the guards of
Pope Pius VI killed the French General Duphot,
and the ambassador Joseph Bonaparte left the city.
The Directory ordered General Berthier to march on Rome,
and they sent civil commissioners led by Daunou and Monge.
Berthier soon resigned and was replaced by General Masséna.
Merlin drafted a constitution for Rome with tribunes, consuls,
and a senate, but all laws and governing
had to be ratified by the French general.
Officers mutinied against Masséna because he was notorious
for his plundering, and the Directory sent Moreau’s
lieutenant Saint-Cyr to replace him.
On the first day of 1798 royalists in Saint Etienne attacked
the mayor and continued to terrorize the town.
On January 4 the Directory ordered searches to seize
English goods throughout France, and two weeks later
they authorized the seizing of English cargo on neutral ships.
Highway robbery was made punishable by death.
On the 11th the Directory ordered
General Berthier to take control of Rome.
On January 21 the Prussian ambassador in Paris revealed
that Talleyrand had obtained a million livres in gold
from his “diplomatic” negotiations with
Austrians, Prussians, Portuguese, Spanish, and Americans.
On February 14, 1798 the Directory ordered a march
on Bern that was carried out by two forces led by
Guillaume Brune and Balthazar Schauenburg.
On February 15 the Directory proclaimed the Republic
of Rome, and Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner to Siena.
On the 21st the Directory signed a treaty with the
Cisalpine
Republic that agreed to maintain the occupying French army.
Bern surrendered on March 4, and the next day Schauenburg’s
army of 18,000 men defeated the Bernese resisting at Grauholz.
Other French troops occupied Freiburg and Soleure.
On March 28 General Rey declared martial law in Saint Etienne.
Also on the 28th the Directory accepted the annexation
of Alsace by the recent plebiscite.
On March 22 General Brune had summoned Swiss deputies
to meet at Aarau, and on April 1
they proclaimed
the Helvetic Republic.
On 9 April 1798 the Year 6 elections began,
and 437 seats needed to be filled.
Riots against the French in Vienna on the 13th persuaded
the ambassador, General Jean Baptiste Bernadotte,
to close the embassy and leave.
On May 11 the Council of Elders invalidated the elections
in 48 of the 95 departments, preventing 127 Jacobins
from taking their seats, and they elected
Jean Baptiste Treilhard to replace Director Neufchâteau.
The French seized the treasury at Bern, and they imposed
a tax of 15 million on the Swiss cantons;
but the Bernese paid off Talleyrand to gain a treaty
that lowered their taxes.
Civil commissioner Rapinat refused to ratify the treaty,
and on June 16 he brought about a coup d’état that forced
the two Swiss executives Ochs and La Harpe to resign.
France’s Directory recalled Rapinat, but he signed the
treaty of alliance with the Swiss on August 19, 1798
and stayed until his replacement arrived in May 1799.
Napoleon decided against an invasion of England,
and on March 5 the Directory approved
his plan to conquer Egypt.
Talleyrand had suggested to the Institute on July 7 that
France should establish colonies in the eastern Mediterranean.
On April 12 the Directory appointed Napoleon commander
of the new Army of the Orient and ordered him to seize Egypt
and “chase the English from all their possessions in the East”
while maintaining good relations with the Ottoman Sultan.
Because the British controlled the Cape of Good Hope,
the French wanted to find another route to the Indies.
They also ordered him to seize Malta because
they had refused to recognize the French Republic.
On May 19, 1798 Napoleon with 36,826 soldiers,
16,000 sailors and marines, and 167 scholars and artists
sailed from Toulon on 280 naval and transport ships with
45,000 tons of gunpowder and 1,330 horses.
The French armada reached the island of Malta on June 9.
The next day Napoleon had the French consul deliver a note
to the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John saying
he would take by force what he thought was right.
On June 11 the Maltese requested a suspension of arms,
and that night they surrendered and ceded Malta to France.
The French captured 1,200 cannons, 30,000 rifles,
7,000 barrels of gunpowder, and six ships, and they seized
from their church the Knights’ treasury of gold, silver,
and gems worth more than a million livres.
A few knights and Maltese joined the expedition,
and the rest of the knights left the island on the 18th.
Napoleon said that religious beliefs including Islam would
be respected, and he freed 2,000 Turkish and North African
slaves who had been chained to Maltese galleys.
He appointed General Vauban commander
on Malta with a French garrison.
The French armada managed to avoid Nelson’s British fleet,
and on July 1,1798 they landed at Alexandria
with 31,000 soldiers and 17,000 sailors.
The next day the French army stormed Alexandria,
and Napoleon announced that he respected Islam
and came only to end the tyranny of the Mamluks
who would be arrested and have their property confiscated.
He said soldiers guilty of pillaging or rape
would face a firing squad.
Egyptians laying down their arms and submitting would
be protected, but any village disobeying
or fighting the French would be burned.
He promised they would pay for property taken except
for horses, donkeys, oxen, and camels needed for transport.
On July 4 the leading muftis and sheikhs in Alexandria
agreed to support the French.
Lack of grain and grist mills would cause much misery.
The French did not have enough canteens for water,
and hundreds died of thirst, hunger, malaria,
sunstroke, and exhaustion.
The French also suffered from the trachoma eye disease
as well as dysentery, gonorrhea, and syphilis.
Arabs capturing the French often
sodomized them before killing them.
General Mireur criticized the expedition
and killed himself on the 7th, the day the army left for Cairo.
The French pushed back the Mamluk cavalry at El Ramaneh
and defeated them at Shubra Khit on 13 July.
At Wardan on the 18th hungry soldiers mutinied,
forcing Napoleon to order the seizure of sheep and crops.
In the “Battle of the Pyramids” on the 21st the French defeated
Murad Bey’s army of 18,000, killing about 2,500 Mamluks
and peasants while about a hundred French died.
Two days later Napoleon’s army occupied Cairo,
a city of 600,000 people.
Within three days he set up a municipal council of nine
Egyptians who swore allegiance to the French,
and he appointed Monge, the chemist Berthollet, and Charles
Magellon as an Administrative Commission for Cairo to
supervise Mamluk property, state funds, and tax collection.
Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey had escaped with much wealth,
and on July 31 Napoleon demanded
three million livres from rich merchants.
On August 1 a British squadron led by Admiral Nelson
devastated France’s eastern fleet in Abū Qīr Bay, capturing
eleven ships and sinking five with nearly 4,000 men.
On August 3 the British Navy defeated
the French in the Battle of the Nile.
On the 22nd Napoleon and Monge founded the
Egyptian Institute on the model of France’s Institute.
On 2 September he provided protection for Muslims
going on pilgrimage to Mecca.
The next day Maltese people revolted and forced the
French to withdraw into the citadel of Valetta.
On 21 October Arabs in Cairo revolted against
capitulating Muslim leaders around the al-Azhar Mosque
which became a fortress for 5,000 armed Muslims.
Napoleon had ordered soldiers to stay away from mosques;
but he ordered this one bombarded,
and about 5,000 were killed.
In early December he sent General Bon’s forces
to march to the Suez, and they secured it as a port
to control the commerce on the Red Sea.
Meanwhile in Paris on July 2 the Directory had banned
eleven new royalist and anarchist newspapers.
On the 7th the United States Congress repealed
the American treaties with France.
On 28 July Parisians celebrated liberty
with a parade of Italian art treasures.
On August 19 the French agreed to an alliance with the Swiss.
On the 30th the French ambassador Charles Joseph Trouvé
expelled Jacobins from the Cisalpine Republic, but the next day
Redon de Belleville, France’s minister to the Ligurian Republic,
led a Jacobin coup at Genoa.
On September 5,1798 the Council of 500 made military service
compulsory for all Frenchmen between the ages of 20 and 25,
and they would call up 200,000 annually.
In the first year 143,000 were declared fit;
but only 97,000 reported for duty,
and about 74,000 actually joined their regiments.
The next year only 71,000 responded to the summons.
A French force led by General Humbert had invaded
Ireland on August 22, but on September 15
they surrendered to the British General Cornwallis.
France’s army had been reduced to 327,000 men.
The British Navy blockaded Egypt, and ambassador
Spencer Smith allied them with the Ottoman Turks and Russia.
On September 9 the Ottoman Empire declared war on France.
On October 7 General Desaix’s forces routed the Mamluks
at Sediman, and on November 8 a force of 500 dispersed
several thousand rebellious peasants at El Faiyum.
On 6 October rebels at Haute Garonne in southwest France
attacked police and killed their commander.
The next day Belgian peasants rebelled against conscription,
attacking Overmere in Flanders on the 12th.
They formed a military force of 3,500 men
and pillaged public treasuries.
The French army eventually restored order in the Waes region
of Belgium and executed 41 insurgents on November 4.
About 7,000 clergy were to be deported from Belgium;
many fled as nearly 500 were arrested.
The Austrian General Karl Mack led a Neapolitan army
that attacked the Republic of Rome on the 22nd
and occupied the city five days later.
On the 25th the Directory imposed a tax
on every window and door in buildings.
The businessman Ouvard was a friend of Director Barras
and had accumulated about 15 million francs
while supplying the French Navy, but in November
he loaned 10 million to France.
Before the end of 1798 the British financed
the Second Coalition of 500,000 soldiers.
On November 26 the Neapolitans led by
Austrian General Mack occupied Rome,
but on December 5 General Championnet’s forces
defeated the Neapolitans at Civitacastellana.
The Directory declared war on the King of the Two Sicilies
and made Joubert commander of the army in Italy which
occupied Piedmont on the 8th when Charles Emmanuel
ceded it and withdrew to his kingdom of Sardinia.
The Neapolitans abandoned Rome,
and Championnet returned on the 14th.
Championnet’s French forces took over Naples
after three days of fighting on 23 January 1799.
Three days later the Jacobins in Naples
proclaimed the Parthenopian Republic.
The French plundered the castle of Caserta,
and the generals seized the public treasury of Naples.
Championnet dismissed the Civil Commissioner Faipoult
on February 6, and the Directory recalled Championnet
on the 13th and ordered him arrested on the 24th.
At Samhud in Egypt on January 22 Desaix’s army of 4,000
defeated 14,000 Mamluks led by Murad Bey.
Desaix’s army reached Aswan on February 2 and overcame
the last of the Mamluks.
About 2,000 Muslim warriors attacked a French flotilla
near Karnak, and on March 3 they killed more than 500
and wounded soldiers, sailors, marines,
and a band from the riverboat Italia.
Desaix’s men later in March destroyed
several hundred peasants near Asyut.
On February 10, 1799 Napoleon left Cairo
with 13,000 men to invade Syria.
An elite unit besieged the Ottoman fortress at El Arish
which surrendered on the 18th.
On the 25th Napoleon’s army occupied Gaza without a fight.
In early March the Russian and Turkish allies
drove French forces out of the Ionian Isles.
On the 7th Napoleon’s force stormed Jaffa,
and his men slaughtered 2,000 Albanian prisoners.
The excuses for this atrocity were that his aides were not
authorized to offer a surrender, that they had killed a messenger
and put his head on a pike, that men who had been captured
had broken their parole not to fight the French,
and if freed that they might fight them again at Acre.
Some French were catching the bubonic plague.
Napoleon’s force of 9,000 besieged Acre
from March 20 to May 21 while 2,300 of his men died,
mostly from the plague and the guns on British battleships.
At Canaa on April 11 Kléber’s force of 1,500 defeated
nearly 5,000 Turks, and four days later Murat’s men
overcame
the same number on the Jordan River near Lake Tiberias.
On February 26, 1799 Calabrian rebels led by Bishop Ruffo
took the town of Paolo in Naples and massacred the Jacobins.
On March 12 France declared war
on the Austrian Empire and Tuscany.
On the 25th Austrians led by Archduke Charles defeated
General Jourdan’s French at Stokach in Germany.
Jourdan resigned on April 3, and his army
retreated across the Rhine.
In Italy on 26 March French troops had entered Florence,
and the next day Paul Kray’s Austrian army occupied Verona.
On April 10 the French captured Pope Pius VI again
and took him to Valence in France
where he died on August 29.
On 8 April 1799 Junot’s forces defeated the Turks
at Nazareth, and on the 16th Napoleon’s army routed
the Ottomans near Mount Tabor.
Elections in Year 7 on April 18 the Jacobins gained a majority
while only 66 of the 187 Directory candidates were elected.
On the 27th at Cassano the Russian and Austrian Coalition
forces led by Suvorov defeated the French army
of reinstated General Moreau.
The next night Austrian hussars assassinated two of
France’s diplomats who had been meeting at Rastatt.
The French evacuated Milan and retreated to Genoa
and Cuneo, and Suvorov entered Milan.
Although Reubell was chosen by lot to be a director,
on May 16 the Council of Elders voted 118-87
to elect the Abbé Sieyès instead.
Several French forces made gains in Switzerland
at Winterthur, Andelfingen, and Frauenfeld.
On the 26th the Directory recalled Napoleon
who returned to Cairo on June 14.
On June 17, 1799 the Councils invalidated the election of
Director Treilhard and replaced him with the Jacobin
Louis-Jérome Gohier, and the next day they forced
Douai and La Révellière-Lépeaux to resign.
They were replaced by Roger Ducos and General
Jean-François Moulin, a friend of Barras.
The Coalition army led by Suvorov fought the French on the
banks of the Trebbia River for four days and was victorious
on the 20th as the French suffered about 14,000 casualties.
On the 28th the new Directory forced the rich
to loan them 100 million livres.
They appointed General Bernadotte to be Minister of War
on July 2, and three days later Joubert was reappointed
commander of the army in Italy.
On the 6th the Friends of Liberty and Equality founded
the Jacobin Club du Manège.
On the 12th the Councils passed a law allowing the taking
of counter-revolutionaries as hostages who could be
deported if officials were assassinated.
After a year as Foreign Minister Talleyrand resigned on the 20th.
On July 17, 1799 the British convoyed 18,000 Turks
who captured Abū Qīr, but Napoleon’s returning army
drove them away on the 25th.
About 7,000 Turks died in a siege.
When they surrendered, Napoleon gave the survivors
food and water and let them go home.
The Egypt Institute discovered the Rosetta stone that
eventually in 1822 enabled the translation of Egyptian
hieroglyphics from the Demotic and Greek versions.
On July 29 the Directory appointed Fouché the Police Minister,
and the next day the French garrison surrendered Mantua.
On August 1 the Council of Elders ended the ban on press
freedom, and a debate over the Constitution erupted.
On the 5th the Jacobins voted to redistribute property
from the wealthy and middle-class to the indigent.
On the 6th in Haute Garonne about 5,000 royalists led by
General Rougé and the Count of Paulo besieged Toulouse;
but officials showed a list of hostages to the rebels,
and four days later General Aubugeois
led the region’s military in suppressing the revolt.
Bordeaux also had rioting, and the next day
an insurrection failed at Dax.
Republican forces killed several hundred rebels
at L’Isle Jourdain.
On the 13th Directors Sieyès, Barras, and Ducos
ordered Fouché to close the Jacobin Clubs.
General Joubert was killed during a defeat
at Novi and was replaced by Moreau.
Three days later the Council of Elders refused 217-214
to approve the indictment of the four former Directors.
On August 20 General Commes and his forces
at Montréjeau ended the rebellion in Haute Garonne.
On the 23rd Napoleon left Kléber in command of the Army
of the Orient and sailed from Egypt for France.
On 3 September 1799 the Directory ordered 34 royalist
newspapers shut down and the next day
16 more including 10 Jacobin papers.
On the 14th General Jourdan asked the Council of 500
to
proclaim a national danger because of a mob threatening
the 500, and the next day the Directory replaced the
suspected Jacobin sympathizer, War Minister Bernadotte,
with Dubois Crancé.
Also on the 15th some 200 royalist leaders from Brittany,
Anjou, Main, and the Vendée met at La Jonchère castle in
Maine et Loire to plan strategy, and on the 23rd the
Count Louis de Frotté landed at Meuvaines
to command the Chouans in Normandy.
Meanwhile on the 19th at Bergen the Dutch in the Batavian
Republic led by Brune managed to fight off an invasion
of Anglo-Russian forces led by the Duke of York.
Austrians and Russians had invaded the Swiss Republic.
After a three-day battle the French led by General Masséna
drove Korsakov’s Austrian force out of Zurich on the 27th,
and Soult’s army forced the Austrians
to retreat toward Lake Constance.
On 6 October 1799 French forces led by Brune helped the
Batavian Republic defeat coalition forces at Castricum,
and on the 18th the Duke of York agreed to evacuate
the British from the Republic.
Napoleon on October 9 had managed to avoid a British
squadron near Touloun, and he was welcomed at Fréjus.
The Directory in Paris received him at an open meeting on
the 17th, and six days later the Council of 500 elected
his 24-year-old brother Lucien Bonaparte their president.
By the 29th most of the royalists in the Vendée had been
defeated, though about 10,000 insurgents had taken over
the region of Le Mans for three days in mid-October.
On November 1 the French led by General Verdier managed
to fight off 4,000 Turkish Janissaries who landed near Damietta
on the Nile delta, but on the 4th the Austrians inflicted
7,000 casualties on Championnet’s soldiers
and took 4,000 prisoners at Genola near Genoa.
Napoleon gained the support of Director Sieyès and Police
Minister Fouché by the 3rd, and on the 6th the Councils
honored him at a banquet with 750 guests.
The next day Napoleon attended the Council of Elders
at the Tuileries and warned them that the Republic was
threatened by British and Jacobin plots,
and so the two Councils must meet together at Saint-Cloud.
On November 9 at dawn Napoleon ordered sixty officers
to protect the two Councils.
He and Lucien persuaded the Council of 500 to disband,
though some accused him of illegality.
Napoleon was recognized as the commander
of the army in Paris.
The Councils were to meet the next day
at the château of Saint-Cloud.
Murat’s troops entered the chamber of the Elders,
and most deputies escaped out the windows.
Directors Sieyès and Roger Ducos agreed to resign,
and Talleyrand persuaded Barras to do so;
the other two directors Gohier and Moulin were arrested.
Before dawn the next morning Napoleon ordered
5,000 troops to Saint-cloud, and the Councils swore
in him, Sieyès, and Ducos as temporary consuls.
Napoleon persuaded the Elders to unanimously
accept the need for governmental change;
but in the Council of 500 the Jacobins protested.
Napoleon stepped outside and sent in soldiers
who removed the opposing deputies.
Then the Council approved Napoleon, Sieyès,
and Duclos as provisional consuls.
On November 11, 1799 Napoleon proposed
that he be president of the Consulate,
and he took control of the new government.
They repealed the hostage law.
On the 17th Napoleon asked for support
from the theatres decreeing,
Only peaceful feelings, expressions of moderation,
and wisdom and the language of great and
generous passions, should be heard on stage.
Nothing that might separate people from one
another and cause dissension is to be tolerated.
On the 22nd Talleyrand regained his position as Minister of
Foreign Affairs; General Berthier was made Minister of War;
Fouché was confirmed as Minister of Police; and Jean-Jacques
Régis de Cambacérès was appointed Minister of Justice.
Martin Gaudin became Finance Minister.
They put General Masséna in command of the army
in Italy and sent him to defend Genoa.
On the 24th Napoleon took from local officials
the power to assess and collect taxes.
By December 1 Napoleon had rejected the constitutional ideas
drafted by Sieyès for checks and balances,
and he asked Pierre Daunou to write a Constitution that
he accepted on the 12th with three consuls governing.
The First Consul was given broad powers for ten years to
nominate the advisory Council of State, ministers, ambassadors
and foreign agents, military officers, and local administrators.
The consuls were to live in the Tuileries palace;
the first consul would be paid 500,000 francs a year
and the other two 150,000 each.
After Sieyès was promised 350,000 francs,
an estate near Versailles, and a house in Paris,
he persuaded the committees to elect Napoleon,
Cambacérès, and Charles-François Lebrun
as the first three Consuls.
Napoleon on December 15, 1799 proclaimed this Constitution,
arguing that it would provide order, justice, stability, force,
and moderation, and it became effective on the 25th.
That day he sent letters to Britain’s George III and Austria’s
Emperor Franz II proposing an end to their wars.
On the 22nd the new Council of State
began meeting at the Luxembourg.
They repealed the laws that persecuted
émigrés and nonjuring priests.
On the 27th they established a Senate with Sieyès as the
president who with Duclos, Cambacérès, and Lebrun
appointed the first 31 members,
and then those senators elected the other 29.
The senators also elected the tribunes and legislators.
Later they were to be named by notables
chosen by a series of elections.
On the 28th the Consulate granted a complete amnesty for
past actions and allowed churches to be open on Sundays.
Napoleon put his Secretary of State Maret in charge of
press
relations and made Le Moniteur the Republic’s official journal.
Only Napoleon as First Consul could initiate laws
and enforce them.
This Constitution did not have the usual preamble listing rights.
Yet authorities could not enter one’s home without permission
except in case of fire or flood; citizens could not be detained
more than ten days without a trial;
and harsh arrests were made crimes.
Senators had to be at least 40 years of age
and could serve for life, and the Legislative Body
with 300 at least 30 years old could pass laws
without debate that the Senate could validate.
Of the 60 Senators, 100 Tribunes, and 300 Deputies,
347 of them had been in the National Assembly.
The Revolution had dramatically changed France,
removing the monarchy and the feudalistic aristocracy
in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The Catholic Church lost most of its power and authority.
About 3,000 clerics suffered violent deaths
including 920 who were executed.
About a quarter of the 140,000
priests, monks, and nuns emigrated.
Peasants had more rights, and a few obtained land.
Yet arable land and forests decreased.
The sansculottes in the working class supported the revolution;
but they made surprisingly few gains because of
controlled wages and increased unemployment.
Guilds were abolished, and craftsmen
were not allowed to form unions.
Industry marked time compared to Britain’s progress
even though science was encouraged.
Zeal for the revolution expanded the military, and conquests
enabled France to annex most of Belgium,
some of the Venetian territory, and a few islands.
They established the Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy,
transformed Naples into the Parthenopian Republic,
and fostered the Dutch Batavian Republic
and the Swiss Helvetic Republic.
France and these republics had a total of 82 million people.
On the first day of 1800 France’s new Legislative Body
and Tribunate met for the first time.
As First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte held most of the power,
but he did not purge opponents from these legislative bodies
nor in the 29-member Council of State
that met about three times a week.
This Council also worked in five sections
with different functions.
His aim was to win them over and unify France
now that the Revolution was over.
On January 7 he ordered the forming of a
Reserve Army of 30,000 men in Dijon.
On the 17th Napoleon closed down 60 of France’s
73 newspapers, and he prohibited foreign newspapers.
Yet total circulation remained about the same.
Napoleon ordered Finance Minister Gaudin to borrow
at least 12 million francs from rich bankers in Paris,
but he raised only 3 million.
On January 27 Napoleon had the wealthy banker
Gabriel Ouvrard detained until he agreed
to loan the government 14 million francs.
Already the value of the franc had doubled,
and by the end of January the 100-franc bond
which had been worth 12 francs had climbed to 60 francs.
Gaudin opened the Bank of France on February 13
with six regents and investors
in the 30 million francs of start-up capital.
Napoleon sent out 840 officials to collect taxes,
and they nearly doubled revenues.
The plebiscite on the new Constitution was held
at the end of January and in early February
with every man over the age of 25 eligible to vote.
Napoleon had replaced the Interior Minister Laplace
with his brother Lucien Bonaparte who announced
on February 7 that the Constitution of Year 8 had passed
with 3,011,007 votes in favor and 1,562 against,
though only about a quarter of those eligible voted.
Lucien had ordered counting stopped on the 4th
and overestimated votes in favor by about 900,000
to get the total over three million,
and probably several thousand voted no.
Many of the remaining rebels in southwest France
had become brigands.
Napoleon had suspected robbers detained or deported
while those convicted were executed.
He increased the paramilitary police from 10,575 to 16,500
and eliminated much corruption.
Nearly half of France had been under martial law
in November 1799, but gradually Napoleon removed that,
increasing his popularity.
In March 1800 the consuls replaced more than 3,000 judges
and prosecutors they considered
too old, corrupt, or incompetent.
Symbols of the Revolution such as red bonnets
on church steeples were removed,
and people no longer had to call each other “citizen.”
General Hédouville had been ordered to break up
and disarm rebels, and on 4 January 1800 he negotiated
an armistice with the Chouans in the Vendée.
Then Napoleon offered amnesty to those
who gave up their weapons by February 18.
On February 19 Napoleon moved from
the Luxembourg to the Tuileries palace.
On the 17th the Legislative Body had approved a law
that put a prefect in charge of each of France’s 83 departments,
and in 1800 they added twenty more departments.
Each department had between two and four arrondissements,
and inside these were the communes,
a system that is still in place.
The consuls appointed the prefects, and they in turn selected
the judges of peace and the administrators.
Napoleon ordered that all public officials be hired
based on merit, be well trained, and be paid salaries.
On March 2 Napoleon and Lucien chose
mostly moderates as prefects.
The Consuls selected mayors for towns with more than
5,600 people, and the prefects appointed the other mayors.
Police Minister Fouché exercised censorship for security,
and on April 5 Interior Minister
Lucien imposed it on the theatres.
Lucien often opposed his brother and did not please him
by publishing the pamphlet, A Comparison Between Caesar,
Cromwell, Monck, and Bonaparte
because none of them were elected.
On April 19, 1800 an Austrian army of 24,000 men besieged
12,000 French led by General André Masséna at Genoa.
Napoleon arrived at Geneva on May 9, and five days later
his army of 51,400 men started crossing the Alps.
About 400 Hungarians held out at Fort Bard
at the gate of the Aosta Valley for twelve days
until June 2, delaying the expedition.
During the Austrian siege of Genoa about 30,000 inhabitants
and 4,000 French soldiers died of malnutrition
before the others surrendered on June 4.
The British agreed to ship
4,000 wounded and sick French back to France.
Masséna was weak from not eating.
Yet Napoleon blamed him for not holding out longer,
and on June 14 the Emperor ordered 15,000 men to attack
an Austrian army of about 29,000 men at Marengo.
The French were losing the battle when General Desaix arrived
with 11,000 infantry and 1,200 cavalry who counter-attacked.
The French lost about 5,500 men including Desaix,
but the Austrians suffered some 6,500 casualties
and had about 3,000 men captured.
Austrian General Melas in the armistice gave up
12 fortresses and recognized the French
in Piedmont, Genoa, and most of Lombardy.
General Jean Moreau’s French army had crossed
the Rhine into Germany on April 25 and had only 90,000 men
against 140,000 Austrians, but they managed victories
in Bavaria in the next seven weeks.
Moreau’s army of 60,000 crossed the Danube at Hochstadt
on June 19 and defeated Kray’s 30,000 Austrians
who retreated to Ulm.
Napoleon wrote to Emperor Franz II offering him peace again.
Napoleon negotiated a Concordat with the new Pope Pius VII
that was signed on 16 July and was ratified in Rome
on August 15 and in Paris on September 8.
The French Republic acknowledged that the Catholic religion
is accepted by the majority of French citizens
and that this faith would be freely exercised in France.
Napoleon and the Pope agreed to appoint
ten archbishops and fifty bishops.
The Church promised to read Napoleon’s proclamations
from pulpits and to honor conscription as a patriotic duty.
This allowed 10,000 French priests
to return to the Roman Church.
On 30 September 1800 Napoleon’s older brother
Joseph Bonaparte signed a friendship and trade treaty
with three American commissioners.
The peace negotiations with Austria dragged on until Moreau’s
French army of 54,000 men defeated 60,000 Austrians
and Bavarians at Hohenlinden east of Munich on December 3,
capturing 8,950 men and 76 cannons.
On the 24th a large explosion on a Paris street killed less than
a dozen people and injured about two dozen,
but Napoleon and Josephine escaped.
Three previous plots against Napoleon had been discovered.
Police arrested 130 Jacobins on 8 January 1801,
and without any evidence or trial
they were deported, mostly to Guiana.
Severe security laws were passed.
Joseph Bonaparte and Foreign Minister Talleyrand
negotiated a peace treaty with Emperor Franz II
that was signed at Lunéville on 9 February 1801.
France had gained Belgian territory and Piedmont,
and the Austrian Empire was no longer in Italy
except on the Venetian coast.
Both sides recognized the independence of the
Batavian, Cisalpine, Helvetic, and Ligurian republics.
Napoleon created special criminal courts he could appoint in
32 departments starting in February, and on May 8 he sent
General Bernadotte with soldiers and military tribunals
to suppress the insurgent Chouans.
A French squadron from Toulon supported the French
and Spanish fleet at Algeciras on July 8.
On July 15 Napoleon joined Pope Pius VII
in the Concordat of 1801 in Paris.
In August the French and the Dutch agreed that
when peace came, French troops would leave Holland.
On the 19th the British besieged the French
in Alexandria, Egypt, and on September 2,
General Jacques-François Menou surrendered.
Before the British learned of this, Napoleon had his envoy
Louis-Guillaume Otto agree to evacuate Egypt, Naples,
and the Papal States in exchange for peace
and the British recognizing most of France’s territorial gains
since 1793 and the independence of Malta.
The agreement was signed on October 1,
and the French celebrated the peace.
In the 1790s the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti)
had 8,000 plantations that used slaves to produce 40%
of the sugar consumed by Europeans and 60% of their coffee,
and they accounted for 40% of France’s overseas trade.
A slave revolt that began in 1795 caused exports to be
reduced to 13% of the sugar in 1789 and 15% of the cotton.
In 1794 Jacobins had abolished slavery and the slave trade.
Napoleon wanted to revive this trade and sent his
brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc with 20,000 soldiers
that arrived on that island on 29 January 1802
followed by 8,000 more in February.
They were to restore slavery by making false promises
to the blacks, occupying the island,
and by arresting and deporting opponents.
Leclerc invited Governor Toussaint
to a conference and arrested him.
On May 20 Napoleon made a law reviving the slave trade
to French colonies and the slavery in those colonies.
In this racial war the French lost 50,000 men
mostly to disease, and about 100,000 Africans died.
Napoleon and his wife Josephine arranged for his brother
Louis to marry her daughter Hortense on 4 January 1802.
Both had affairs, and the paternity of their son was suspected.
On the 8th Napoleon and his wife left for Lyon where on the
25th the 442 deputies elected him president of the new
Italian Republic that he formed from the Cisalpine Republic
and other Italian provinces taken from the Austrians.
He returned to Paris, and on March 18 the Consul
Cambacérès used the Senate to purge the Legislative Body
and the Tribunate of “zealous republicans” including
disciples of the late philosopher Condorcet.
Napoleon removed the section on moral
and political science from the Institute,
and he banished Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël.
On March 25 the French and British signed a peace treaty
at Amiens that ended the Second Coalition against France.
The British released the survivors of the
70,000 French prisoners they held since 1793.
Britain also returned the Cape and West Indian colonies to the
Dutch, left Egypt, and gained Trinidad, Tobago, and Ceylon.
The French withdrew from the Papal States and Naples.
On 8 April 1802 France added “Organic Articles” to the
Concordat protecting the rights of 700,000 Protestants
and 55,000 Jews, and it was proclaimed
at Notre Dame on the 18th, Easter Sunday.
Napoleon allowed the clergy to be primary teachers,
and on May 1 a law established 45 public lycées
(secondary schools) with a humanistic curriculum
that included Greek, Latin, ethics, science,
and modern languages without much religion at all.
On the 19th the French Legion of Honor was
created with 15 cohorts each with 350 legionnaires
that Napoleon appointed.
Napoleon encouraged émigrés, aristocrats,
and priests to return with their citizenship rights
restored but not their property.
In April a law granted amnesty to émigrés who swore loyalty
to the Constitution by September 23.
Napoleon began giving directors of soup kitchens
12,000 francs a month to keep
the price of bread from rising in May.
That month the Senate voted 60-1 to give him
a second ten-year term as First Consul.
Then a plebiscite was held asking if Napoleon should be
made Consul for life, and 3,653,600 voted in favor with
only 8,272 opposed, though many people voted twice for it.
On June 26 he signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire
that allowed French trade in the Dardanelles.
In early July 1802 the British evacuated the tiny island of Elba,
and Napoleon had War Minister Berthier secure it in Augus
as a department of France by disarming inhabitants
and taking prominent hostages.
The Constitution of Year 10 called for electoral colleges
elected from the 600 richest men in each department,
and it went into effect in early August.
On August 2 Napoleon was proclaimed First Consul for life.
That month British newspapers, which often had caricatures
of Napoleon, were banned in France.
On September 11 Napoleon annexed Piedmont against the
advice of Talleyrand and divided it into six French departments.
Talleyrand protested against these
violations of the sacred law of nations.
Duke Ferdinand of Parma died on October 9,
and Napoleon sent in troops to occupy and annex Parma.
On September 30 Napoleon mediated for the Swiss
and imposed disarmament, and on October 15
he sent General Michel Ney with 40,000 soldiers.
France secretly purchased Louisiana from Spain on October 1,
and then on 30 April 1803 Napoleon sold 875,000
square miles for 80 million francs to the United States
in order to give the British a powerful rival.
On December 12, 1802 Napoleon claimed that
Europe recognized that the Italians, Dutch,
and Swiss were disposed by France.
That month 22 chambers of commerce were founded
in France which still used the economic imperialism
of tariffs on foreign goods.
On 19 February 1803 the Act of Mediation
reorganized the Helvetic Confederation into 19 cantons
with a small national army of 15,200 men.
On May 16 the British seized 1,200 French and Dutch
merchant ships, and two days later
Britain declared war on France.
Napoleon reacted by interning British men of military age
and by sending French troops to invade Hanover
at the end of May.
In June he ordered five large invasion camps at Brest,
Boulogne, Montreuil, Bruges, and Utrecht.
On the 25th the Dutch agreed to an alliance with France.
The Helvetic Confederation made a defensive alliance
with France on September 27.
By December he had an army of 79,000 infantry,
17,600 cavalry, and 4,700 artillerymen
for the English expedition.
On 16 January 1804 the English landed the
royalist General Pichegru at Biville,
and he met with General Moreau on the 28th.
The next day Police Minister Fouché discovered
the plot to assassinate Napoleon,
and he had Moreau arrested on February 15.
A total of 356 arrests were made.
The rebel Georges Cadoudal had returned to France
and was hiding in Paris, but on March 9
he was caught after killing a gendarme in a chase.
General Michel Ordener commanded 300 men
and entered Baden, and they captured the suspected
instigator, the Duc d’Enghien, at his home
in Ettenheim on March 15.
Six days later he was tried and executed.
Also on March 21 France established a Civil Code.
On April 6 Pichegru was found strangled in his cell,
and it was called a “suicide.”
On the 7th France set the ratio between
gold and silver at 1:15.5,
and for the first time money of account
and coins became the same in value.
A new constitution was drafted in two days and was
promulgated by the Senate on May 18.
Napoleon was officially proclaimed Emperor at Saint-Cloud,
and he appointed his brothers Joseph Grand Elector
and Louis Constable of France.
The next day the Emperor appointed four honorary
and fourteen active “Marshals of the Empire”
who were also given presents of land and titles such as prince.
Napoleon expanded the Consular Guard to become the
Imperial Guard with 18,000 men
which would increase to 100,000 by 1812.
Napoleon named his brothers Joseph and Louis
as his successors; but Lucien refused to divorce his wife
and went to Italy.
Napoleon imposed indirect taxes including on beverages
from production to consumption.
He also raised tariff rates so that colonial articles coming from
the British cost 50% more than those from French colonies.
Cadoudal and Moreau were tried for conspiracy in June 1804.
Twenty people including Cadoudal were sentenced to death,
but Napoleon pardoned twelve of them.
Moreau and four others were sent to prison,
and eight others were guillotined on June 25.
A plebiscite on the hereditary empire
was announced on August 7.
The vote was overwhelming again, though there were about
80,000 fewer voters than on the Life Consulate.
On the 16th Napoleon gave out the first crosses of
the Légion d’Honneur to 2,000 men in the army.
On 6 October the British Navy attacked Spain’s bullion fleet
and captured £900,000 in silver dollars and gold ingots
to prevent them from aiding their French ally.
On 2 December 1804 at Paris by agreement
Pope Pius VII attended and blessed Napoleon
who then crowned himself Emperor.
After a Mass he took the following coronation oath:
I swear to maintain the integrity of the territory
of the Republic, to respect and enforce
respect for the Concordat and freedom of religion,
equality of rights, political and civil liberty,
the irrevocability of the sale of national lands;
not to increase any tax except in virtue of the law;
to maintain the institution of the Legion of Honor,
and to govern in the sole interest,
happiness, and glory of the French people.4
Beethoven had entitled his 3rd symphony “Bonaparte,”
but upon learning that Napoleon had become Emperor
he changed the name to “Eroica.”
Having been known as “Bonaparte” before,
he now was called “Napoleon.”
Napoleon supervised the unifying of France’s 42 legal codes,
14,000 decrees, and laws made since 1789
by chairing 55 of the 107 plenary sessions that produced
the Civil Code of the French People
n 2,281 articles in 493 pages in 1804.
Religious toleration for all including atheists mandated
the separation of Church and State.
The laws continued to be patriarchal giving men
more rights than women.
The father’s permission for marriage was
required for men under 25 and girls under 18.
The minimum age for marriage
was raised to 15 for girls and 18 for boys.
A woman could be imprisoned for two years for adultery,
but a man could only be fined.
Wives needed their husband’s consent
to sell produce or property,
and unmarried women could not be legal guardians.
The Civil Code came to be known as the Code Napoléon
and was extended to most of the French Empire,
and it was supplemented by the Code of Civil Procedure
in 1806, the Commercial Code in 1807,
and the Criminal Code in 1808.
In December 1804 the British had allied with Sweden,
and by April 1805 they had formed the Third Coalition
by an alliance with Russia.
England agreed to pay £1.25 million for 100,000 men
deployed by Russia against the French.
Britain was spending 14% of its annual
revenues to support their allies.
Gabriel Julien Ouvrard loaned France 150 million francs
in June, and on the 25th the Dutch agreed to provide
16,000 men and required ships.
On December 19 Portugal promised
16 million francs to France.
On 2 January 1805 Napoleon had written to Britain’s
George III urging negotiation for peace.
On January 1 he had written to Emperor Franz II that
he was going to proclaim his older brother Joseph Bonaparte
the King of Italy; but Joseph declined because
he would not renounce his hope of succeeding in France.
On March 17 in his Paris palace Emperor Napoleon
was crowned King of Italy, and on May 26 at Milan
he was given the Iron Crown of Lombardy
attended by eight cardinals and 30,000 people.
He appointed Empress Josephine’s son Eugène de Beauharnais
to govern Italy as Viceroy with the help of the former
Vice President Francesco Melzi d’Eril.
Napoleon persuaded Queen Maria Carolina of Naples
and Sicily to sign a treaty of neutrality with France
on 22 September 1805,
and he put Marshal Masséna in command in Italy.
During a storm on 30 March 1805 Admiral Villeneuve
escape from the British blockade of Toulon with his fleet
and sailed to Cadiz and then west to Martinique,
and Admiral Nelson’s squadron followed him.
The French were prepared to invade England,
and Napoleon ordered Villeneuve to sail to northern Spain.
However, Villeneuve went south to Cadiz and was
defeated at Cape Finisterre by Nelson
on July 22 and was blockaded again.
Emperor Franz II resented that Napoleon
had become King of Italy and had annexed Genoa,
and Austria secretly joined the Coalition on August 9.
Four days later Napoleon learned of Villeneuve’s fate.
At this time France’s army including allies was 446,745 men.
France allied with Bavaria on the 25th,
with Württemberg on September 5, and with Baden.
Napoleon had organized his Grand Army into corps
of between 20,000 and 40,000 men each.
They could march far apart enough to live off the countryside.
Yet each could confront an enemy in battle.
By 1812 European armies used this system
which would last until 1945.
Napoleon had Talleyrand offer Hanover to Prussia
to gain their neutrality.
In September he went to Paris to ask
the Senate to levy 80,000 men.
He ordered Fouché to make sure no newspapers mentioned
the army, and he sent German speakers to spy on his enemies.
On the 23rd he decreed that France would abandon
its revolutionary calendar and go back
to the Gregorian on 1 January 1806.
In August 1805 the French armies that had gathered
by the English Channel marched east with 170,000 men,
and on September 25 they crossed the Rhine River.
In Paris a rumor that Napoleon had seized all the
gold and silver from the Bank of France caused a panic.
Actually he had not removed any gold,
though the Bank had circulated 75 million francs in paper.
The Bank paid some depositors before stopping them.
Napoleon returned to Germany and got the Elector
of Württemberg to let Ney’s corps pass through.
By October 6, 1805 the Grand Army was near
the Danube from Ulm to Ingolstadt.
Two days later the forces led by Murat and Lannes,
who was killed, defeated the Austrians
at Wertingen, capturing 2,900 men.
The French won again at Günzburg the next day,
and on the 11th at Haslach-Jungingen 5,000 French
faced 35,000 Austrians and captured 6,000.
To fool the Austrian General Mack the French let “deserters”
be captured who said the French were close to mutiny.
On the 14th they took another 6,000 at Elchingen,
and two days later Murat’s corps
captured 15,000 men at Trochtelfingen.
On October 20 General Mack at Ulm surrendered
20,000 infantry, 3,300 cavalry, and 17 generals.
The French had killed 4,000
while suffering only 1,500 casualties.
However, the next day off Cape Trafalgar west of Cadiz
the British squadron of 27 ships led by Admiral Nelson
destroyed the Franco-Spanish fleet
of 33 ships led by Villeneuve.
The allies had 3,280 killed, but the British
lost only 458 including Nelson.
Napoleon ordered the news of Trafalgar censored,
and most of the French did not know of it until 1814.
A Russian army of about 100,000 men led by Field Marshal
Mikhail Kutuzov was marching west to join some
90,000 Austrians led by Archduke Karl.
A French Army led by Masséna at Caldiero on
October 30, 1805 fought Austrians
who suffered many more casualties.
On November 3 Prussia signed an armed mediation treaty
with Austria and Russia against France for a British subsidy.
Yet Friedrich Wilhelm III could not get Hanover from Britain.
On the 7th Napoleon gave strict orders against pillaging,
and six days later after taking Tabor bridge they spread
a false report that peace had been made in Vienna
which the French then took.
Napoleon entered Vienna as Franz retreated to the east.
Napoleon’s army of 78,000 men marched 200 miles
eastward in late November 1805.
Before dawn on December 2 the French armies
took their positions near Austerlitz.
Napoleon’s strategy lured 12,000 Russians to the Pratzen
high ground, and then 24,000 French attacked them.
In the battles that day the French had about
1,300 men killed and about 7,000 wounded.
About 20,000 Russians and Austrians were captured,
and they suffered 16,000 casualties.
The next day Emperor Franz II asked Napoleon for a truce.
Napoleon formed an alliance with Prussia at the
Schönbrunn palace near Vienna on the 15th,
and on the 26th the treaty that Talleyrand signed at Pressburg
in Hungary ended the War of the Third Coalition.
Bavaria and Württemberg were liberated from the
Austrian Empire to become independent kingdoms,
and Baden gained Austrian territory and became a grand duchy.
Austria ceded Franconia, Vorarlberg, and the Tyrol to Bavaria
and Venice, Dalmatia, and Istria to the Kingdom of Italy.
Austria also had to pay an indemnity
of 40 million francs to France.
His Civil Code was made the law in Italy on 1 January 1806.
Marshal Masséna marched an army south from Milan
and conquered most of Naples, though a guerrilla war
went on in the Calabria mountains for years.
Napoleon had Eugène marry Princess Augusta of Bavaria
on 14 January 1806, and he brought her back to Italy.
France claimed a profit of 50 million francs on the War of the
Third Coalition, having seized cash and property
and exacted payments from enemies.
On January 27 Napoleon threatened the lives of merchants
who would not give France credit.
On February 15 Napoleon forced Prussia to annex Hanover
and stop its trade with England.
Territory east of the Rhine was annexed by the Duchy of Berg,
and Murat became its Grand Duke.
Talleyrand became Prince of Benevento,
Bernadotte Prince of Corvo, Fouché Duke of Otranto,
and Berhier Prince of Neuchâtel.
Napoleon’s policy toward Jews was ambiguous.
On March 17 his decree made it
more difficult for Jews to collect debts.
On April 22 Napoleon put the Bank of France
under state control by Finance Minister Mollien.
Spain, which provided grain and subsidies,
was made to bear a debt of 60 million francs,
and Vanlerberghe and Ouvrard went bankrupt.
On 30 March 1806 Napoleon made his
older brother Joseph the King of Naples
and his younger brother Louis on June 5 King of Holland.
He gave out aristocratic titles as well as other dignified office
titles using the word “grand.”
On May 30 he accused Jews of “unjust greed,”
and he punished the Jews in Alsace who were
nearly half of France’s 55,000 Jews.
France equipped the armies
but expected them to sustain themselves.
In more than ten years of wars through 1814
France would raise 1.2 billion francs that included 80 million
from unpopular taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and salt,
137 million from customs duties,
and 232 million from selling national and communal property;
but the war expenses were about three billion francs.
A tax on butter and eggs paid the bills for hospitals in Paris,
and Napoleon put a duty on newspapers.
The French Imperial University was founded in May 1806.
The British Navy guarded the straits of Messina,
and 5,236 English soldiers badly defeated 5,400 French
allies at Maida on 4 July 1806;
but the French eventually pacified the Kingdom.
Only the Papal States held out, but Napoleon reorganized
the clergy, suppressed monasteries, and reduced parishes.
On 12 July 1806 Napoleon became the Protector of the
Confederation of the Rhine that included sixteen states
that withdrew from the Holy Roman Empire and allied
with France and provided 63,000 German troops,
but Prussia and Austria were excluded.
On August 6 Austrian Franz II abolished the
Holy Roman Empire, though he had declared himself
Emperor of Austria in May 1804.
Prussia’s Friedrich Wilhelm III decided to go to war
against France in July 1806 but did not do so until October.
That summer Napoleon remained at peace with Prussia
because he was worried about Russia.
On August 25 the publisher Johann Palm in neutral Nuremberg
was tried for being “anti-Napoleonic,”
and he refused to name the German nationalist
Philipp Yelin who had published the pamphlet,
Germany’s Profound Degradation.
Also on August 25, 1806 Friedrich Wilhelm III
demanded that Napoleon withdraw French troops
that were east of the Rhine by October 8.
Napoleon in early September mobilized
30,000 reserve soldiers, summoned 50,000 conscripts,
and sent spies into Berlin.
On September 15 Britain, Prussia and Russia
formed an alliance against Napoleon.
King Louis Napoleon raised 30,000 troops at Utrecht.
Emperor Napoleon ordered his marshals
to be in position by October 4.
He left Paris on September 25
and reached Bamberg on October 7
when he received the Prussian declaration of war.
Five days later he wrote to the Prussian king
urging him to stop the war.
Prussia had an army of 225,000 men,
but 90,000 were in garrisons.
French forces led by Marshal Lannes
defeated fewer Prussians and Saxons at Saalfeld.
Lannes attacked Jena on the 13th.
Prussia had 60,000 troops in Jena.
The next day the French defeated Prussians led by
the Prince of Hohenlohe at Jena while 13 miles away
at Auerstedt the French army of 27,000 men
led by Louis Nicolas Davout overcame
60,500 Prussian soldiers led by the Duke of Brunswick.
That day the Prussians lost 38,000 killed, wounded,
and captured to France’s 6,830.
On the 16th the Prince of Orange surrendered 12,000
Prussian soldiers and 65 cannons to Marshal Murat.
The French continued to move across Prussia,
and Napoleon’s army entered Berlin on October 27.
On the 30th Friedrich Wilhelm III was willing to cede
much territory, but he would not agree to let the French
use Prussia as a base for fighting the Russians.
On November 7 General Blücher surrendered his remaining
army to the French at Lübeck, and on the 11th the entire
garrison of about 25,000 in fortified Magdeburg
capitulated to Marshal Ney.
On November 21
Napoleon issued his Berlin Decree in
response to the British Order-in-Council on May 16.
The Grand Duke of Würzburg had joined the
Confederation of the Rhine on September 27,
and Elector Friedrich of Saxony did so
on December 11 and became a king.
On November 6 Napoleon had learned that
68,000 Russian soldiers were coming to the aid of Prussia,
and on the 21st he declared a blockade against
the British Isles in retaliation for the British blockade
from Brest to the Elbe since May 1806.
He stayed in Berlin arranging reinforcements
while his army reached Warsaw on the 27th.
Napoleon began an offensive against Bennigsen’s
retreating army of 35,000 men, and Davout’s forces
crossed the Wkra at Czarnovwo.
French soldiers were exhausted and hungry,
and a hundred committed suicide by Christmas.
The French led by Lannes attacked Pultusk on December 26.
Many Poles rose up and overthrew the Prussian administrators.
Napoleon had enlisted about 25,000 Poles in his
Italian campaigns in 1797, and on 14 January 1807
he set up a temporary Polish government at Posen (Poznań)
under President Malchowski and a commission supervised
by Talleyrand and Secretary of State Hugues Maret.
Napoleon was angry that Queen Maria Carolina of Naples
had broken her neutrality and joined the Coalition,
and he declared her deposed on December 27, 1806.
On 7 January 1807 Napoleon ordered
his troops into winter quarters.
That month Britain announced a blockade against France
and its allies that also affected neutral nations trading with them.
On February 8 a Russian army of 76,000 men
attacked the 75,000 French at Eylau.
They fought for two days, and each side
lost more than 20,000 men.
After the battle as the troops passed by Napoleon,
many shouted for peace and bread.
The French army went into winter quarters by the
Passarge River for three months
while the Russians rested along the Alle.
Napoleon summoned 10,000 troops
from Bavaria and 6,000 Poles.
In March he annexed Tuscany, Parma, Lucca
and other states in central Italy.
He assigned Marshal Lefebvre with 27,000 soldiers
to besiege 14,400 Prussians at Danzig on March 19,
and it continued until the port capitulated on May 24.
Napoleon stayed at Finckenstein Castle
and in April wrote 443 letters.
Russia and Prussia confirmed the Fourth Coalition with
the Convention of Bartenstein on 26 April.
Sweden and Austria joined them,
and the British contributed money.
Napoleon sent General Gardane with seventy men to
negotiate with Persia, and at Teheran on May 4
they agreed to an alliance against the British.
Yet he proclaimed Judaism as one of the three official
religions in France, and in 1807 his edict abolished
the special taxes on Jews in Westphalia.
The salt tax was restored.
Napoleon led an army of 158,000 men.
On June 10 at Heilsberg the Russians led by
Count von Bennigsen lost 6,000 men, and French losses
were double that; but on the 14th at Friedland
(now Pravdinsk) the French led by Napoleon
and Lannes suffered about 10,000 casualties,
and Bennigsen’s Russians lost twice as many.
Emperors Napoleon and Aleksandr of Russia agreed to
an armistice on June 23, and they negotiated secretly
at Tilsit and formed an alliance they signed on July 7.
Russia gave up Ionian islands and promised to withdraw
from Moldavia and Wallachia and be in France’s
Continental System blockading the British.
Prussia lost half their population in the war and a third
of their territory including eastern Bialystok to Russia.
Napoleon formed the Duchy of Warsaw, and Prussian land
west of the Elbe became the kingdom of Westphalia
that contained Magdeburg.
On July 12 the French agreed to evacuate Prussia
if they paid a war indemnity of 153 million francs.
In Dresden on the 22nd Napoleon gave Poland a garrison
of 30,000 French soldiers and a constitution
as it joined the Confederation of the Rhine.
By July the French army in Germany had 410,000 men
plus 120,000 in Italy, and 110,000 guarding the coast.
While in northern Germany in 1806 and 1807
the French took 133 statues and busts,
193 bronze works, and 367 paintings.
They had also captured 140,000 Prussian soldiers
and more than 2,000 cannons.
After being away for ten months,
Napoleon returned to Paris on July 27.
On August 9 he made Talleyrand the third most powerful
man in France by appointing him Vice Grand Elector,
but he resigned from the foreign office the next day.
Talleyrand believed that France’s enemies would seek
vengeance against their oppressors because
Napoleon lacked moral force and was bringing
sorrow to himself and Europe.
Napoleon wanted the Tribunate abolished,
and the Senate did so on August 19.
The 38-year-old Emperor raised the age requirement
for the Legislative Body to 40.
After the French invaded Etruria on the 29th,
the Spanish premier Manuel Godoy agreed to let
French troops pass through Spain to Portugal.
Napoleon wrote to Spain’s Carlos IV on September 7 explaining
that Portugal must be taken so that
the British would make peace.
On 18 October French forces led by Junot crossed into Spain,
and marching a thousand kilometers in a month
they had about 1,750 men die from hunger and accidents.
On the 27th a Spanish envoy signed a treaty at Fontainebleau
that secretly divided Portugal giving the north to the
Infanta Maria Luisa, who had lost Etruria, and the south
to Godoy with the central region to be occupied
by French and Spanish military.
On November 29 the royal Braganza family sailed for
Rio de Janeiro on British warships, and the next day
the French army occupied Lisbon without resistance.
Junot confiscated the Braganza’s property,
demanded 100 million francs, and imposed a constitution
with equality before the law and religious freedom.
On November 15 Napoleon sent his son Jerome
a constitution to use in ruling Westphalia.
In his private letter he wrote,
The people of Germany, as those
of France, Italy, and Spain,
want equality and liberal values.
I have become convinced that the
burden of privileges was
contrary to general opinion.
Be a constitutional king.5
By the end of 1807 Napoleon had reduced the political
newspapers in Paris to only four—the Moniteur,
the Journal de l’Empire, the Gazette de France,
and the Journal de Paris.
In January 1808 Napoleon sent Murat with an army
of 100,000 to take over Spanish fortresses in San Sebastian,
Pamplona, Figueras, and Barcelona
with Premier Godoy’s cooperation.
The French army reached Burgos on March 13
and then threatened Madrid.
On March 17 the French planned
how they would operate their University.
Also on the 17th at Aranjuez south of Madrid an uprising
overthrew Godoy who hid in his attic
and was eventually arrested.
Two days later King Carlos IV abdicated
to Prince Fernando who supported the revolt.
On March 23 Murat with 50,000 troops occupied Madrid,
and the next day the people welcomed Fernando VII.
On April 10 he left to meet with Napoleon at Bayonne.
There Fernando agreed to relinquish the crown.
On 2 May people in Madrid revolted
and killed at least 150 French soldiers.
Murat on the 3rd ordered a firing squad to shoot peasants
which the painter Goya depicted famously six years later.
The French attacked anyone who was armed in the streets
and killed about a thousand Spaniards.
On May 6 Fernando abdicated in favor of Carlos IV
who two days later passed the crown on to Napoleon
who than appointed his older brother Joseph.
Fernando was detained at Talleyrand’s estate,
and Carlos IV went to live in Rome.
Insurrections broke out in Biscay, Catalonia, Navarre, Valencia,
Andalusia, Estremadura, Galicia, Leon, and in parts of Castile.
The British Navy took over Iberian ports.
On May 25 Col. Palafox led a revolt in Zaragoza
with 220 men against the French.
Seville rose up two days later, followed by
Galicia on the 30th and Catalonia on June 7.
Because people in Torquemada had burned Napoleon in effigy,
Marshal Bessières had the town razed.
The French attacked Cordoba on June 13
and for three days plundered the city.
They had an army of 120,000 in Spain,
and on the 15th they besieged Zaragoza.
Napoleon persuaded Spanish grandees at Bayonne
to ratify a written constitution that maintained
the Cortes (parliament) with three estates.
At Oviedo the Asturias Estates declared war on Napoleon,
followed on July 6th by the Seville junta and 15 more.
Portugal’s riots against Napoleon’s blockade
led to Joseph Bonaparte being crowned
King of Spain on July 7 at Madrid,
and after eleven days he fled to Burgos.
Napoleon organized several allied armies and began the
Peninsular War that would go on for nearly six years.
On July 14 a French army defeated
Galicia’s smaller force at Medina del Rioseco.
Spain’s larger army defeated the French army
in the battle of Bailén in July 16-19.
On the 19th the army of Andalusia
killed 2,200 French at Bailén,
and wounded General Pierre Dupont who
surrendered his remaining army of 18,000 men.
The Seville junta did not recognize the agreement,
and the prisoners were taken to the island
of Cabrera where they died of hunger.
The French besieged Girona on the 24th,
but in mid-August the sieges of
Girona and Zaragoza were lifted.
A force of 13,000 British and 7,000 Portuguese led
by Arthur Wellesley defeated Junot’s army in Portugal
at Roliça on August 17 and four days later at Vimeiro.
They agreed to the Convention of Cintra on the 30th,
and the British Navy took 20,000 defeated French
with their arms and booty back to France.
Although only about 40,000 guerrillas were operating
in Spain, they were very effective at ambushes.
From 1808 to 1814 the British provided
Spain and Portugal with about £2.65 million a year.
The French Legislative Body called up 160,000 recruits.
Also in March 1808 the French Empire created the ranks
of count, baron, and chevalier
to be based on merit, not heredity.
That year Napoleon made 744 men nobles
and 2,015 more in the next three years.
Of the 3,263 he named 59% who were military men.
He also gave donations to loyal subjects.
He had 39 imperial palaces, but some he never visited.
He worked as much as 16 hours a day,
usually ate quickly, and never drank liquor.
He traveled to Erfurt to confer with Emperor Aleksandr
on September 28 and stayed for 19 days.
Napoleon had dismissed Foreign Minister Talleyrand
in August 1807 for having taken too many bribes,
but he kept him on as Vice-Grand Elector
which gave him access to his person and palaces.
Talleyrand used this to sell secrets, and he even told
Aleksandr that Napoleon was not civilized like the French.
The Russian economy was suffering
from the banned British trade.
Napoleon invited Goethe for lunch
on October 2 and enjoyed his conversation.
Napoleon and Aleksandr agreed to divide most of Europe
between them and pledged mutual defense
if Austria attacked either of them.
On June 25 Napoleon had learned that Archduke Karl
had levied an Austrian army of 150,000 men.
Napoleon traveled to Spain in November
and by then had an army there of 240,000 men.
On December 2 he reached Madrid
which capitulated two days later.
On the 22nd he set out after a British force led by
General John Moore across the Sierra de Guadarrama
mountains during a blizzard.
That winter the French had 300,000 soldiers in Spain.
Napoleon without consulting his brother Joseph
abolished the Spanish Inquisition and eliminated
some convents, seizing their property.
On 16 January 1809 Soult’s French army had killed Moore
and forced the British to depart from Corunna.
On February 20 Zaragoza capitulated, and two days later
King Joseph regained power in Madrid.
In this war Spain lost about 108,000 lives,
48,000 from disease.
Napoleon left Valladolid on 17 January 1809,
and six days later he reached Paris.
He had the Legislative Body call up the conscription class
of 1810 to mobilize 230,000 men.
On January 28 he reprimanded Fouché and Talleyrand
for having criticized in salons his Spanish campaign.
He dismissed Talleyrand but did not banish him.
The Austrian ambassador Metternich paid about
350,000 francs to know the French battle order,
and Talleyrand was suspected of taking the bribe.
Napoleon prepared for the Austrian campaign,
sending many letters including 29 on March 9.
On April 3 Austria declared war on France and Bavaria,
and four days later they invaded the latter.
On the 12th by tower signals, which had been invented
by the Chappe brothers, Napoleon learned of the invasion
led by Austria’s Archduke Karl, and the next day
the Emperor left for Donauworth
which he reached by the 18th.
On the 15th he banned gambling in his empire
except in Paris where the police used it to account.
Napoleon with his army of 89,000 French and Bavarians
blocked Karl’s Austrian army of 93,000 men
from retreating to Vienna.
Napoleon ordered the Bavarian officers to tell their men that
Austria intended to partition Bavaria and disband their units.
A larger Austrian army defeated the French
in the
Battle of Raszyn on April 19.
The next day the French and Bavarian allies
defeated the Austrians at Abensberg in the first
of four victories in Bavaria in four days.
The next day at Landshut their army of 77,000
defeated 36,000 Austrians.
Napoleon’s Franco-Bavarian army moved north,
and on the 22nd they defeated Karl’s Austrians at Eckmühl
inflicting double the losses they endured.
The next day Napoleon ordered his men to storm Ratisbon,
and Karl lost 5,000 men and eight cannons while escaping.
Napoleon’s army reached Vienna on 10 May,
and Austrians cheered him from the walls.
After some bombardment Vienna
surrendered early on the 13th.
Archduke Karl had crossed the Danube
and destroyed the bridges.
Napoleon ordered stragglers rounded up
and set up a tribunal to punish pillagers.
On 8 May at the Piave River in Italy the French army led
by Eugène de Beauharnais had defeated the Austrians
under Archduke Johann, and both armies headed for Vienna.
Napoleon’s men put together a boat bridge across the Danube.
About 27,000 of the French army crossed on May 21 at
Aspern-Essling and faced 95,000 Austrians,
but the next day the French had 66,000 men.
The French suffered about 23,000 casualties
and the Austrians about 19,000, and they had
only 700 captured, but they took 3,000 French.
Napoleon ordered a retreat in his
first major defeat since Acre in 1799.
Napoleon had sent General Sextius Miollis to Italy
to take over the Papal States, and his troops
had occupied Rome on 3 February 1808.
The Kingdom of Italy annexed the papal provinces of
Ancona, Macerata, Fermo, and Urbino.
On 17 May 1809 from Schönbrunn palace Napoleon issued
a decree that criticized popes for abusing the Donation of
Charlemagne, and the French Empire
annexed the remaining Papal States.
He offered Pope Pius VII an annual stipend
of two million francs,
and on June 10 Miollis replaced the Pontifical flag
with the French tricolor over St. Angelo.
On July 5 Napoleon had Pius VII arrested and taken to
the bishop’s palace at Savona on the Italian Riviera where
he was kept under “guard of honor” until May 1812
when the Pope was taken to Fontainebleau.
Napoleon proclaimed Rome an “imperial free city”
and the “second city of the Empire.”
Austrians invaded Saxony on 9 June 1809, but Eugène’s army
from Italy defeated Archduke Johann again at Raab in Hungary.
Napoleon complained that the Russians had not come to his
aid, but Józef Poniatowski’s Poles defeated Austrians in Silesia.
Napoleon increased his army to 130,800 infantry,
23,300 cavalry, and 10,000 artillerymen with 544 guns.
Archduke Karl had 113,800 infantry,
14,600 cavalry, and 414 cannons.
These two armies fought for two days at Wagram
on 5-6 July in Europe’s biggest battle so far.
On the first day the Austrians were winning,
but the next day the French forced the Austrians to retreat.
Napoleon lost about 30,000 men and had 4,000 captured.
The Austrians had 23,000 casualties,
but 18,000 men were made prisoners.
On July 12 they agreed to an armistice.
At the battle of Talavera in Spain on July 27-28 the forces
led by Wellington and Captain-General Cuesta fought
the French army led by King Joseph Bonaparte
and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan,
and each side lost about 7,400 men.
Napoleon complained that Jourdan exaggerated
Wellington’s losses to him, though
he did not care what he told the newspapers.
On October 12 a man with a knife was
prevented from assassinating Napoleon.
He confessed that he wanted to kill him,
and he was executed five days later.
The War of the Fifth Coalition ended
with a peace treaty at Schönbrunn on October 14.
Emperor Franz II refused to abdicate;
but the Habsburg Empire lost their German states
in the Confederation of the Rhine,
Istria and Carinthia to France,
Salzburg and part of Upper Austria to Bavaria,
most of Galicia to the Warsaw Duchy
with the eastern fifth going to Russia,
and the port of Trieste in the Illyrian Provinces,
a total of about 3.5 million people.
Austria also agreed to pay an indemnity
of 200 million francs and to reduce
their army to 150,000 men.
Austrians had rebelled in the Tyrol in April,
and Napoleon ordered Eugène’s French and Bavarian
army of 56,000 men to subdue them in October.
Napoleon returned to Fontainebleau on October 26.
On November 30 he informed Josephine that he wanted to
annul their marriage because she could not give him a child.
On December 7they formally consented to the divorce,
and on the 15th Josephine broke down as she was reading,
“We are each of us glorious in the sacrifice
we are now making on behalf of the country.”
Empress Josephine kept her title, had 2 million francs of debt
paid for her, and was given 3 million per year for life.
On 6 January 1810 France agreed
to a peace treaty with Sweden.
On February 10 Napoleon imposed censorship,
and 97 of the 157 presses in Paris were shut down.
In 1811 about 12% of the books would be refused.
In December he restricted censoring to libels,
and in 1812 less than 4% would be rejected.
Napoleon negotiated a possible marriage with Emperor
Aleksandr’s sister Anna Pavlovna; but the Tsar demanded that
Napoleon promise not to let Poland be revived as a nation.
Napoleon’s mistress Marie Walewska gave birth
to his son Alexandre on 4 May 1810.
Five of his councilors wanted him to marry the Austrian
Archduchess Marie Louise; but Cambacérès advised
wedding Anna because he dreaded marching into Russia.
Marie Louise’s uncle Karl represented her in the proxy
wedding to Napoleon with Berthier standing in
for him on 11 March 1810 in Vienna.
The couple met for the first time on March 27,
and they consummated the marriage that night before
the ceremonial wedding at the Louvre on April 1
when 6,000 veterans were also married
and were given 600 francs each.
Napoleon later realized that Austria was his natural enemy
and would never support him and that if not for this marriage,
he never would have gone to war against Russia.
On 16 April Napoleon appointed the reluctant
Marshal Masséna to command a new army in Portugal.
Napoleon had nearly blinded him in a
hunting accident in September 1808.
Napoleon had planned to give himself an army of 100,000
but only allotted 70,000 for Masséna’s Portugal campaign
to drive out Wellington’s British troops.
The liaison Berthier and Masséna hated each other.
Troops were not paid for six months,
and many rations were lost because they lacked wagons.
A third of the artillery was left in Spain for lack of mules.
Reinforcements were promised but did not come.
Napoleon believed that they could overcome Wellington’s
25,000 British; but he had also 25,000 Portuguese
well defended by fortifications and 628 cannons.
Wellington used scorched-earth tactics,
and by January 1811 Masséna’s soldiers at Santarem
were hungry and plundering if not deserting.
Napoleon’s son was born on March 20, 1811,
and he was head of the Bonaparte House (1821-32).
Napoleon learned that the Police Minister Fouché was
involved in secret negotiations with the British,
and he dismissed him on June 3
and sent him off to govern Rome.
His accomplice Ouvrard had been involved in speculation
and was put in debtors’ prison at Sainte-Pélagie.
Royalists founded the Order of the Knights of Faith.
On July 1 a fire at a ball at the Austrian embassy
killed four people, and after that Napoleon made sure that
the fire-engine system in Paris was improved.
He not only collected art in his conquests, but he spent more
than his annual budget of 60,000 francs promoting art.
In addition to the famous David, other artists who flourished
during his reign included Gérard, Géricault, Girodet, Gros,
Guérin, Ingres, Prud’hon, Vernet, and Vigée-Lebrun.
France set the style in many aspects of life.
On July 3 Napoleon deposed his brother Louis in Holland
because he favored Dutch interests over the French Empire
which then annexed Holland.
Also in July he adjusted the Continental Blockade by
permitting licenses for trading with the British that mostly
were given to the French and caused foreign resentment.
Napoleon learned by October that Russia
was building up their army and defenses.
That month Jerome Bonaparte complained that Westphalia’s
debt had increased to 220 million francs from the 47 million
when he became king in December 1807.
On November 4 Napoleon wrote to Tsar Aleksandr noting
that Russia had sent colonial produce to the Leipzig Fair
in 700 wagons and 1,200 merchant ships which were
escorted by 20 British warships, and he asked him to
confiscate all the goods the British introduced.
In December the French Emperor warned the Russian
ambassador Aleksandr Kurakin in Paris through his
Foreign Minister Champagny that if Russia opened ports
to ships with English merchandise, war would be inevitable.
On the 19th Napoleon’s empire annexed the Hanseatic
towns of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck as well as the
Duchy of Oldenburg which was trading with the British.
Tsar Aleksandr reacted by decreeing that Russian trade
would be opened to neutral nations by the end of the year
and that French luxury goods would be banned
and others such as wine would have high import duties.
Prince Adam Czartoryski advised the Russian Emperor that
Poles were the enemies of Russia and were brothers in arms
with the French as 20,000 were fighting for them in Spain.
Militarized France was suffering economically.
France had at least 250,000 soldiers in Spain, and the cost
of this occupation went from 142 million francs
in 1808 to 865 million in 1813.
In 1789 French manufacturing was worth 50 million francs;
but by 1811 this had fallen to 12 million while that year
England’s exports were worth 1.25 billion francs.
Europe endured an economic crisis in 1811 that included
the British who had bad harvests, unemployment,
lower wages, Luddites, and inadequate food.
In eastern France 40,000 people were unemployed
in Mulhouse, and more than 20,000 were jobless in Lyon.
By January 1811 Napoleon learned that Russia’s duties
on
land imports were increasing while those by sea were reduced.
He suspected that Tsar Aleksandr
was going to ally Russia with the British.
On the 10th Napoleon reorganized
his Grand Army into four large corps.
On February 18 he ordered War Minister Clarke to prepare
for war with Russia, and on the 28th he wrote to Aleksandr
in St. Petersburg that their alliance no longer existed.
From the time the units in the Rhine Confederation received
their orders to mobilize, the Russians
had more than a year to prepare for war.
Usually Napoleon’s opponents only had a few weeks’ notice.
By April the French Empire had stockpiled
a million rations in Stettin and Küstrin.
On 20 March Empress Marie Louise gave birth to
Napoleon-François-Joseph-Charles
who was proclaimed “King of Rome.”
Napoleon wrote to the King of Württemberg in early
April urging him to join the kings of Saxony, Bavaria,
and Westphalia by providing soldiers
and protecting Danzig from the British Navy.
Champagny opposed war against Russia,
and on April 17 Napoleon replaced him by making
Hugues-Bernard Maret the Foreign Minister.
Coulaincourt had been replaced as ambassador
at St. Petersburg in May, and in June for five hours
he tried to talk Napoleon out of the war.
Napoleon would not pay Aleksandr an indemnity for
Oldenburg nor would he cede two districts in Poland to him.
On May 5 Wellington’s British and Portuguese forces
induced Masséna’s French army to retreat
from the battle at Fuentes de Oñoro.
Napoleon replaced Masséna with Marshal
Auguste de Marmont as the French commander in Spain.
The French army of 290,000 men on the Iberian peninsula
in 1812 would have only 224,000 troops a year later.
In July 1811 the harvest in northern France failed.
Napoleon called it a famine and subsidized the baking industry,
but the price of bread doubled by September.
Troops were sent into Caen and other towns to subdue
bread riots, and some rioters were executed.
At his birthday reception on 15 August Napoleon told
Ambassador Kurakin that war was likely
unless their two countries renewed their alliance.
The next day Napoleon and Maret reviewed the negotiations
and concluded that the Russians were not in good faith;
Napoleon informed the Council of State that after Prussian
and Austrian cooperation was assured,
Russia would be punished in 1812.
He ordered six pairs of shoes for each soldier,
and in December he asked his librarian for all the books
on Russia and Lithuania including accounts of Karl XII’s
Swedish invasion of Russia in 1709.
Aleksandr’s spies reported to him that
France was preparing for war.
France occupied Pomerania and annexed it
on 20 January 1812, alienating Russia’s recent enemy Sweden.
The former French Marshal Bernadotte had become regent
of Sweden, and on April 10
he signed a friendship treaty with Russia.
Austria in February promised to provide 30,000 troops
led
by Prince von Schwarzenberg for the Russian invasion,
and on March 5 Prussia agreed to send 20,000 men,
though a quarter of the officers resigned
in protest including Carl von Clausewitz.
Eugène had begun marching the 27,400 men in his army
of Italy toward Poland on February 24.
That day Napoleon wrote to Tsar Aleksandr suggesting
that they could resolve their differences, but by the time
he received a reply in April he had put his forces
on alert for an expected Russian attack.
France’s Grand Army reached the Elbe
on March 15 and the Oder on 8 April.
Aleksandr had ordered three emergency levies
that raised 400,000 new recruits in Russia,
and he joined his army at Vilnius on 21 April.
Napoleon’s offer for both the French and British
to withdraw from the Iberian peninsula
was rejected by Foreign Secretary Castlereagh.
On 9 May 1812 Napoleon with his wife
and baby left Paris for the eastern front.
He sent General Andreossy to negotiate with
Sultan Mahmud IV in Istanbul, and he promised him Moldavia,
Wallachia, and the Crimea; but the Turks accepted the Russian
offer of the Danube provinces instead
in the treaty at Bucharest on the 29th.
That day Napoleon left his family at Dresden
and said he would be back within two months.
At Danzig on June 7 he told Rapp that he merely wanted
to take Russian Poland to unite it with the Warsaw Duchy
to revive the kingdom of Poland.
The French Imperial army of more than a million men
had mobilized 600,000 troops and was more than
twice as large as the Russian army in the field.
The French made up 48% of the infantry
and 64% of the cavalry,
and most of the foreigners were Austrians and Germans.
Napoleon crossed the Niemen River early on June 24,
but it took five days for his army to get across.
His army was divided into three corps,
and he commanded the central one with 180,000 men.
They had about 250,000 horses and more than 1,200 cannons.
Russia had about 250,000 soldiers with 129,000 led by
Barclay de Tolly deployed around Vilnius and Bagration’s
second army of 48,000 men a hundred miles to the south
while Tormasov’s third army was coming from farther south.
Napoleon sent forces led by Eugène and Jérôme Bonaparte
to surround Bagration’s army before
they could join Barclay’s main force.
Tsar Aleksandr’s strategy was to have Barclay’s army
lure Napoleon’s Grand Army far into Russia.
On 28 June Napoleon reached Vilnius where he established
a provisional government for Polish Lithuania,
and in the cathedral he proclaimed it united with Poland.
The French Emperor explained that he could not restore
the provinces that Austria had taken because the army
of Schwarzenberg was guarding his southern flank.
People in the country herded their livestock
into forests to avoid French requisition.
Napoleon sent the army of 80,000 Austrians, Poles,
and Saxons to cross the Berezina River and attack
Bagration’s army; but Jérôme’s army let that army escape,
and Napoleon replaced his brother with Marshal Davout.
Napoleon received General Aleksandr Balashov
who urged him to withdraw, but he replied that
the ultimatum to do so in April had forced him
to choose between “war and dishonor.”
Yet Napoleon said he still felt friendship
for Tsar Aleksandr and was open to peace.
The Russians were retreating while destroying
everything that might help the French.
In the hot weather the French suffered from lack of water,
and wagons having trouble crossing rivers
left them short of food.
During the Grand Army’s 175 days in Russia
an average of 1,000 horses died each day.
Davout’s army captured Minsk on July 16,
but Bagration’s army escaped.
By then the French had 80,000 men sick or dead from typhus,
a war disease that had been plaguing the French since 1806.
Typhus was the cause of a majority of the
140,000 French who died of disease.
Many soldiers were deserting in bands,
and hundreds killed themselves.
Senior officers began lying to Napoleon.
On the 23rd Davout’s army defeated
Bagration’s smaller force at Saltanovka.
Murat’s forward force mauled Barclay’s rearguard.
Napoleon wanted a major battle, but he found
Vitebsk deserted and stayed there sixteen days.
On July 24 Tsar Aleksandr called up 80,000 militia
in Moscow and 400,000 serfs.
Because of this and British aid that might be coming,
Napoleon decided on 11 August to push on toward Smolensk.
The next day Schwarzenberg’s forces damaged Tormasov’
army at Gorodeczna, but the other two Russian armies were
able to defend against Napoleon’s attack on Smolensk
on the 17th in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.
That night the Russians slipped away.
The next day the Russians fought off Ney’s forces
east of Smolensk and managed to retreat.
Barclay’s army escaped to Dorogobuzh, but Aleksandr
replaced him by appointing Field Marshal
Mikhail Kutuzov as commander-in-chief.
He retreated but chose the village of Borodino
east of Moscow for a confrontation.
The French army found Vyazma deserted on the 29th.
Russians evacuated Moscow on September 1.
On September 2 Napoleon learned that Wellington’s army
had defeated the French at Salamanca, Spain on July 22.
On September 5 Napoleon’s army captured a redoubt
at Borodino as the Russians lost
6,000 men and the French 4,000.
Napoleon had 103,000 men and 587 cannons
against 120,800 Russians with 640 guns.
The Moscow militia had a well placed redoubt for artillery
on the battlefield, but Napoleon’s redoubt
had to be moved forward during the battle.
This battle at Borodino on the 7th was the deadliest
battle in history since Hannibal’s Carthaginians
defeated the Romans at Cannae in 216 BC.
The French army used at least 60,000 cannonballs
and 1.4 million cartridges.
The Russians suffered more than
40,000 casualties and the French 28,000.
Murat’s cavalry pursued retreating Russians
and captured 10,000 wounded men.
The Russian army entered Moscow on September 14
and evacuated the city of 270,000
leaving only about 15,000 behind.
Murat made a truce with the Russian rearguard,
and the French army occupied Moscow.
The next day Governor Fyodor Rostopchin, who had already
removed treasures from the Kremlin before Borodino,
had the city’s fire-engines destroyed, torched his own estate,
and ordered the police chief to set fires.
The French army ransacked the city in two days
and shot about 400 people accused of arson.
About 12,000 people burned to death.
Napoleon was in the Kremlin and fled from the fire,
returning on the 18th.
About two-thirds of the city was destroyed,
but Napoleon stayed there for 35 days.
He plundered the treasury and handed out 50,000 rubles
to Muscovites who had lost their homes.
He sent a letter to Tsar Aleksandr at St. Petersburg
suggesting an end to hostilities.
Cossacks raided the edges of Moscow
and supplemented Kutuzov’s army.
On 3 October Napoleon secretly ordered preparations
to leave Moscow, and the first real snowfall was on the 13th.
On the 18th Napoleon’s army of 107,000 men,
3,000 Russian prisoners, and many thousands of civilians
left Moscow with 533 cannons and more than
40,000 vehicles loaded with loot.
That day Kutuzov’s army attacked them at Tarutino.
They crossed the Borodino battlefield where
30,000 corpses had not been buried.
At a council of war Napoleon decided
to take the northern route to Smolensk.
Kutuzov marched his army south but parallel to harass them,
and on November 3 at Vyazma
they captured about 3,000 French.
The French foraged for food and ate dead horses,
but they were following the path
they and the Russians had devastated on the way to Moscow.
On 6 November a letter from Cambacérès informed Napoleon
that General Claude François de Malet, who had been under
house arrest for more than two years for opposing Napoleon,
conspired with two priests on the night of October 22.
Forging a report that Napoleon was dead and pretending to be
“General Lamotte,” he persuaded 1,200 National Guardsmen
to back him and had generals Guidal and Lahorie
released into his custody.
In the morning of the 23rd Lahorie with troops arrested
the Police Prefect Pasquier in his office.
Malet killed General Hulin, the military governor of Paris,
at his home and tried to replace him
by promoting General Doucet.
However, General Laborde recognized Malet
and had him arrested.
They arrested and charged 84 people,
and 14 were convicted and executed.
During the French retreat on November 7 the temperature
fell to -30°C, and bodily extremities were subjected to frostbite.
Many died of cold or hunger, and cannibalism was reported.
Many soldiers threw away their guns.
They reached Smolensk on the 9th with about 73,000 men
who took five days to straggle in.
Napoleon himself led the French
against Kutuzov’s army at Krasnoi.
In three days the French had 13,000 men killed,
and about 26,000 stragglers were captured.
As they moved on, more men were falling down on the road.
On the 21st the French reached the wide Berezina River
and built two bridges, and it took them
more than a week to get across.
They left behind about 8,000 camp-followers, civilians,
and 10,000 vehicles, which men had not been allowed to burn,
and the Russians captured 36,000 stragglers.
Napoleon’s army had been reduced to about 40,000 men
with many officers and only 14,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.
On 3 December Napoleon issued his famous 29th bulletin
arguing that the cold weather was responsible for the disaster
and ordering the raising of 300,000 men.
This was published in Paris on the 16th, and the final sentence
that the “health of His Majesty has never been better”
aroused criticism and resentment for its egotism.
He put Murat in command of the army,
but he had to abandon Poland and retreat to the Oder.
Murat after secretly conferring with Austrians
went back to reclaim his throne at Naples.
Eugène, Davout, and Poniatowski
worked to reorganize the Grand Army.
Napoleon covered the 1,300 miles from Vilnius to Paris
in 13 days, arriving on December 18.
Five days later the remnants of the army reached Königsberg.
More than 100,000 of the 540,000 men
he lost had been captured.
Of those at least 53,000 died in captivity, and about 20,000
who were not French volunteered to fight for the Russians.
In this war the Russians lost about 150,000 soldiers killed
and 300,000 wounded or frost-bitten, and all together
about a million people probably died
in this man-made disaster.
During the winter of 1813 Napoleon transferred
93,000 soldiers from the National Guard to his army,
called up 250,000 conscripts, ordered 150,000 muskets
from factories, and told each of the 12,000 cantons in his
Empire to provide one man and one horse.
In that year French conscription would exceed 2%
of the population, the highest since the wars of Louis XIV.
Tsar Aleksandr was determined to destroy Napoleon,
and early in 1813 the Russian army crossed the Vistula
and invaded Pomerania,
driving the French out of Lübeck and Stralsund.
On 7 January Sweden declared war against France.
One week later the Russian army reached Marienwerder
in
Prussia, and Eugène withdrew the French army back to Berlin.
Napoleon on 25 January made a new Concordat with
Pope Pius VII recognizing his pontificate in France and Italy,
but on March 24 the Pope withdrew his consent.
On 7 February Napoleon held a parade by the Tuileries palace,
and at a Council of State meeting he arranged in case of his
death for Empress Marie Louise and a Regency Council
to govern until his son Louis came of age.
Six days later he learned that Austria was mobilizing an army
of 100,000 men, but Metternich offered to mediate a peace.
Marshal Eugène gave up the Oder line by the end of February.
France’s budget deficit in 1812 was 37.5 million francs,
and new taxes were needed. Selling state-owned land raised
only 50 million francs, and so they
raised sales taxes by 11.5% and land taxes by 22.6%.
The massive mobilization and military spending in the
next two years would result in even higher deficits.
On February 28 Prussia’s Friedrich Wilhelm III
and Tsar Aleksandr formed an alliance at Kalisch.
Russia promised 150,000 troops to fight Napoleon,
and Prussia offered 80,000.
The British began shipping arms, equipment,
and uniforms to both armies.
On 18 March Cossacks instigated a Hanseatic revolt,
and Mecklenburg was the first state to withdraw
from the Confederation of the Rhine.
Prussia and Russia declared war against France on March 17,
and three days later in a proclamation to his people
Friedrich Wilhelm called for a war of liberation.
Sweden agreed to send 30,000 men
for a subsidy of £1,000,000 from the British.
In early April the French garrison abandoned Dresden,
and on the 15th Napoleon left Paris to join allies
from Denmark, Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony,
Baden, and Würzburg.
On the 25th he took command at Erfurt,
and three days later his army of 121,000 men crossed
the Elbe into Saxony; but he had only 8,540 cavalry.
Pyotr Wittgenstein and Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht
von Blücher commanded the army of 96,000 Russians
and Prussians that included 30,000 cavalry.
On May 2 a Russian force attacked
Marshal Ney’s army near Lützen.
Napoleon’s army fought the Allies, and the Allies retreated
but the French suffered 19,655 casualties
and the Allies about the same.
Napoleon went to Dresden on the 8th
and stayed there ten days.
He wrote to his wife Marie Louise urging her to appeal
to her father, Austrian Emperor Franz II.
Napoleon’s army of 90,000 men attacked the fortified town
of Bautzen on the 20th, and they were reinforced by
Ney’s
army of 57,000, forcing the Allied army of 96,000 to retreat.
Yet the French had 21,200 casualties
and the Allies only about half as many.
Two days later in a battle at Reichenbach
the death of his close friend, General Géraud Duroc,
affected Napoleon deeply.
Despite their losses these victories gave Napoleon control
over Saxony and most of Silesia, and both sides
agreed to a truce on 4 June until 20 July.
In a treaty signed on June 14 at Reichenbach the British
promised to provide a subsidy of £2,000,000 with one-third
going to Prussia for their 80,000 troops
and two-thirds for Russia’s army of 160,000 men.
Prussia ceded Hildesheim and part of Hanover to Britain.
The British also guaranteed a war chest
for loans up to £5,000,000 for both allies.
On the 26th Napoleon met in Dresden with Austria’s
Foreign Minister Metternich who was
determined to negotiate a peace agreement.
The next day Austria agreed in the Reichenbach Convention
to fight Napoleon if he did not accept a peace treaty.
On 30 June Napoleon and Metternich extended the armistice
to 30 August, and the Emperor agreed to accept
Austrian mediation at the Prague conference on 29 July.
On 4 January 1813 Napoleon had ordered his brother Joseph
to withdraw from Madrid and move his headquarters
north to Valladolid, but he did not finally do so until March 17.
On June 21 Wellington’s allied army decisively defeated
the French led by King Joseph and Marshal Jourdan at Vitoria
in northern Spain, and Napoleon learned of this on July 2.
He ordered Marshal Soult and several generals to take
command of Joseph’s army, but the French occupation
of the Iberian peninsula was a failure
that had cost more than 250,000 French lives.
On 12 July Russian, Prussian, and Swedish generals at
Trachenberg adopted a strategy proposed by Austria’s
General Joseph Radetzky to form three armies and avoid
attacking Napoleon’s army
but concentrate on those of his lieutenants.
Armand de Caulaincourt and General Narbonne-Lara
represented the French at Prague,
but they would not agree to the demands of Metternich.
On August 11 the Allies announced that hostilities
would resume on the 17th,
and on the 12th Austria declared war against France.
Schwarzenberg’s army of Bohemia had 230,000 Austrians,
Russians, and Prussians. Blücher led the Army of Silesia
with 85,000 Prussians and Russians.
Bernadotte was leading an army of 110,000 Prussians,
Russians, and Swedes moving south from Brandenburg.
Napoleon had 351,000 men in Germany near the upper Oder
with 93,000 in garrisons in Germany and Poland.
Napoleon led 250,000 against Schwarzenberg’s army,
and he sent Marshal Oudinot north
with 66,000 troops to take Berlin.
Davout was ordered to leave 10,000 men to defend
Hamburg and reinforce Oudinot with 25,000.
Blücher’s army had captured Breslau,
but on August 16 he avoided an engagement with Napoleon.
Oudinot’s force was attacked three times in three days
and was defeated at Gross-Beeren on August 23
and retreated to Wittenberg.
Napoleon sent Marshal Ney to replace Oudinot.
On 19 August Russians increased Schwarzenberg’s army
to 237,770, and they invaded Saxony two days later.
Napoleon’s army arrived at Dresden on the 26th.
Defecting generals Moreau and Henri de Jomini advised
Tsar Aleksandr not to attack Napoleon,
but Prussia’s Friedrich Wilhelm III insisted they do so.
The Russian Field Marshal Wittgenstein arrived with
28,000 men that afternoon; but in the two-day battle
Napoleon’s army of 155,000 troops was victorious.
The Allies lost 38,000 men and the French only 10,000
as Murat’s cavalry captured 13,000 Austrians.
Napoleon became sick with influenza and diarrhea.
Also on August 26 Blücher’s army defeated
Marshal Macdonald’s 67,000 French in Prussian Silesia,
and the next day General Girard’s force
was devastated at Hagelberg.
On 31 August 16,000 Spaniards
defeated 18,000 French
while losing only 2,500 casualties compared
to the 4,000 the French suffered.
On September 6 at Dennewitz in Brandenburg the coalition
of Prussia, Russia, and Sweden
defeated France and Württemberg.
General von Bülow overwhelmed 60,000 French
led by Ney and Oudinot who lost about 21,000 troops.
By the end of September the Allies had
abolished the Confederation of the Rhine.
Empress Marie Louise asked the Senate to authorize
280,000 recruits, but opposition to
conscription in France was spreading.
Bernadotte had 160,000 men in the north,
Blücher that many in the east,
and Schwarzenberg led 190,000 in the south.
On October 6 Bavaria declared war on France,
and the next day Wellington’s army from Spain invaded France.
On the 10th the armies of Schwarzenberg, Blücher,
and Bernadotte converged on
Napoleon’s army of 203,000 troops at Leipzig.
In Europe’s largest battle so far about 500,000 men
clashed from the 16th to the 19th.
The ill Napoleon asked for an armistice
on October 18 which was refused.
By the 19th the Allies had 362,000 men and 1,456 cannons.
At Leipzig the French had 38,000 killed or wounded
while the Allies lost over 54,000 men.
The French tried to escape on a bridge
that was blown up before noon on the 19th
which resulted in over 30,000 French being captured.
Napoleon had his army fight
as they retreated toward the Rhine.
His Empire had 120,000 men besieged in German fortresses.
They were starved into surrendering,
and most became prisoners of war by 1814.
On 24 October 1813 Murat persuaded the Allies
to let him defect and remain King of Naples.
Napoleon replaced Foreign Minister Maret with Caulaincourt.
A levy to raise 300,000 recruits gained only 120,000.
Spaniards survived the French siege of Pamplona
that began on June 26 and ended on October 31
when Napoleon was victorious at Hanau in Frankfort.
On November 10 in a battle at Nivelle
Britain, Portugal and Spain lost more men than the French.
On November 14 Napoleon spoke to Senate leaders
in the Tuileries palace, informing them that
all of Europe was marching against them.
He ordered taxes on tobacco and salt
to raise 180 million francs.
When only 30 million francs remained in the treasury,
he suspended payment on pensions and salaries
so that the war administration could continue.
On 14 November Napoleon told the Senate,
“The Grand Empire no longer exists.
It is France itself we must now defend.”
On the 16th General Lebrun evacuated Amsterdam,
and the next day the Hague revolted.
Benjamin Constant criticized Napoleon in
On the Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation in its
Relation to European Civilization.
The Allies at Frankfurt agreed to offer peace terms that
would allow France to keep its “natural frontiers,”
but they would have to give up Italy, Germany, Spain,
and Holland, though only some of Belgium.
On December 1 the Allies’ Frankfurt peace terms were
made public by distributing 20,000 copies in France,
and Napoleon’s intelligence service told him that
the French people wanted him to accept a France
with more territory than it had under kings.
Caulaincourt wrote to Metternich that they would agree,
but Wellington arrived on the 10th and insisted that
France give up Antwerp and the Belgian coast.
On December 8 Napoleon liberated Fernando VII
in the Valençay treaty.
The Senate demanded peace.
In the battle of the Nive allied Britain, Portugal and Spain
defeated the French led by Marshal Soult
near
Bayonne from December 9 to 13.
On December 29 the Swiss canceled their mediation
agreement that had bound them to Emperor Napoleon.
In 1813 the Paris stock exchange fell sharply,
and shares of the Bank of France
dropped from 1,480 francs to 690.
At Lyon factories were closed down,
and thousands were unemployed.
In twenty years the city of Bordeaux had lost 30,000 people,
and the price of a barrel of wine in twelve years
had fallen from 2,850 francs to 850.
Napoleon in December appealed to the senators and deputies
for approval of his rejecting the Allies’ peace proposals.
The Senate replied that France and humanity needed peace.
Deputy Joachim Lainé from Bordeaux wrote an indictment
that called the policy of the last twenty years
“disastrous for all the people of France.”
The deputies voted 223-51 for his criticisms
of Napoleon’s
actions, and they demanded political and civil rights.
The next day Napoleon banished Lainé, banned printing
of the document, and prorogued the Legislative Body.
British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh arrived in January 1814
and persuaded Tsar Aleksandr not to accept any peace
with Napoleon who now had some 220,000 men
against 957,000 Allied troops.
During his imperial rule the French had called up
2,432,335 men, and nearly half were raised in 1813
by altering the height and age requirements.
Now draft riots were breaking out in northern France.
Napoleon rejected the British peace terms, but on January 16
he wrote to Metternich asking for an armistice.
Marshal Murat was King of Naples 1808-15.
He had agreed to lead 30,000 troops against
Eugène in Italy in exchange for security and some territory.
Napoleon let Pope Pius VII return to the Papal States,
and on the 26th he took command of 36,000 troops
at Vitry-le-François and distributed to them
300,000 bottles of champagne and brandy.
Three days later they attacked the Army of Silesia at Brienne.
On February 6 the treasury’s bullion
was secretly removed from Paris.
Napoleon defended northern France from the invading
armies of Prussia and Russia from February 10 to 15,
defeating their larger armies.
The more numerous Allied armies of the Prussian Blücher,
Russian Tsar Aleksandr, and the Austrian Schwarzenberg
advanced in France toward Paris, and Napoleon’s reduced
army occasionally harassed them with minor battles.
On March 5 he decreed death for anyone
wearing the white cockade.
Bernadotte’s army arrived and helped Blücher’s Prussians
defeated Napoleon at Laon on March 9-10.
The next day his brother Joseph wrote,
“We are on the eve of a total dissolution;
there is no way out except to make peace.”6
On March 12 Wellington’s army entered Bordeaux,
and the mayor set up a royalist government.
Napoleon moved south, but his army was repulsed by the
much larger Allied army led by Tsar Aleksandr,
and Napoleon marched his army to attack Rheims
and drove out the Russians and Prussians on March 13.
Schwarzenberg at Arcis-sur-Aube by 21 March.
One week later the armies of Schwarzenberg
and Blücher joined in front of Paris.
On March 30 the French army of 29,000 men led
by Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Marmont
met the combined Allied army of 100,000 Russians,
40,000 Prussians, and 15,000 Austrians and Germans,
and the French surrendered the next day.
Napoleon’s senior officers Ney, Lefebvre,
and Macdonald would no longer follow him.
Also on March 30 Talleyrand organized a coup
and negotiated with the Allies.
He persuaded the Senate to appoint a provisional government
on April 1, the day the Allied armies entered Paris.
The next day the Senate and the Legislative Body
deposed Emperor Napoleon and his family.
They invited Louis XVIII to become king,
and they released French soldiers from allegiance to Napoleon.
On the 4th Marmont’s corps surrendered to an allied camp,
and Tsar Aleksandr demanded that Napoleon abdicate.
On April 5 the Allies told Caulaincourt that Napoleon
would be sovereign for life over the tiny island of Elba off Italy,
and the next day he signed the
provisional abdication at Fontainebleau.
Also on the 5th the Senate unanimously
adopted constitutional guarantees.
Article 1 stated, “The French government is monarchical
and hereditary from male to male by order of primogeniture.”7
Two days later the army of 40,000 men there paraded
shouting, “Vive l’Empereur!”
Similar demonstrations occurred at barracks in Orléans,
Briaire, Lyon, Douai, Thionville, and Landau,
and uprisings broke out in Antwerp, Metz, and Mainz.
Troops in Lille rebelled for three days.
On April 10 at Toulouse Wellington’s army lost more men
than the French led by Marshal Soult.
The next day the Allies signed the treaty of Fontainebleau
that let Napoleon keep his imperial title
and granted him financial support for his family.
He would have 2.5 million francs per year.
Marie Louise was given the duchies of Parma, Piacenza,
and Gustalla, but Austrians took her to Vienna.
The next night Napoleon took the poison he always carried;
but a doctor was summoned, and he induced vomiting.
Napoleon signed the abdication the next morning.
On April 14 in the battle of Bayonne the larger
Peninsula alliance defeated the French.
On that day the Senate designated the Count of Artois as
head of the provisional government, and he signed an armistice
on April 20 surrendering ports occupied by the French.
After a ceremony Napoleon left Fontainebleau
on April 20 and reached Elba on May 3.
He was accompanied by three French generals,
600 Imperial Guardsmen, and the Allied commissioners,
the British Col. Neil Campbell
and the Austrian General Franz von Koller.
Revenues on Elba were insufficient for his government there,
and but he had enough money for 28 months.
He organized the island’s defense, aided the poorest
11,400 inhabitants, and read some of the
1,100 books in the library he donated.
Josephine died at Malmaison on May 29.
The next day France agreed to peace treaties
with major allies negotiated by Talleyrand in Paris.
The British returned to France the colonies they had taken
since 1789, but France ceded to Britain the colonies of
Tobago, Saint Lucia, the Ile de France (Mauritius), Roderigo,
and the Seychelles and to Spain the rest of Saint Domingo.
The British Navy guarded Napoleon with one frigate
and let him have the Elban flagship, L’Inconstant.
France also made treaties with Sweden on June 8,
with Portugal on the 12th, and with Spain on July 20.
France got Guadaloupe back from Sweden
and French Guiana from Portugal.
Allies had escorted the Bourbon King Louis XVIII
to Paris in May, and France was diminished
to the 87 departments of 1791.
He offered a new Constitutional Charter on June 4
that
established a Chamber of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies.
Taxes and prices rose, and the Church regained power.
Tariffs on British goods were removed or reduced,
hurting French manufacturing.
Napoleon suggested that Louis should have proclaimed
a new dynasty instead of trying to revive the old regime.
Tricolor flags were replaced by white ones with the fleur-de-lis,
and émigrés were given senior military offices.
Metternich and Talleyrand organized the Congress of Vienna
that began meeting on September 15.
On December 18 King Louis confiscated Napoleon’s
personal property in France, ending his income.
On 3 January 1815 Talleyrand and Metternich
signed a treaty of alliance with the British.
In February Maret got a message to Napoleon that
France was ready for him to return.
On the 16th Campbell left Elba
to visit his doctor or his mistress.
The next day Napoleon had L’Inconstant refitted,
and on the 26th he left Elba on it with eight small ships
and about a thousand men.
They reached the French coast on March 1 and in six days
marched north over Alpine mountains to Grenoble
where they gained more troops, muskets, and cannons.
He issued proclamations to the French people and the army,
saying that Louis XVIII was bringing back feudal rights
which was not true.
Napoleon promised to help peasants
who feared émigrés taking feudal dues.
When he met a battalion with soldiers aiming their muskets
at him, he asked if they wanted to kill him.
They did not, and he took control of the 5th Regiment.
Crowds cheered him at Vizille, and the 7th Line joined him.
War Minister Soult and Marshal Ney told Louis XVIII
that they would seize Napoleon.
Two commanders of the three armies would be
nephews of Louis, but both Soult and Ney
decided to fight for Napoleon.
On March 13 the seven Allies proclaimed Napoleon an outlaw.
The next day Ney went over to Napoleon
and urged him to correct the evils he had caused.
On March 20 Napoleon returned to Fontainebleau
and began his 100 days,
and that day Louis XVIII fled from Paris
and went to Lille and then Ghent.
That night Napoleon returned to the Tuileries
for his son’s fourth birthday.
Not one person had been killed or wounded
in his return to power.
The next day on horseback he paraded by
more than 50,000 cheering Parisians.
He declared himself a product of the Revolution,
and he ordered all royalists to leave Paris.
Fouché issued warrants for Talleyrand and others.
In the next three months Napoleon wrote
more than 900 letters to prepare for another war.
On the 26th he ordered the formation of eight new army corps,
but most of the 120,000 recruits were teenagers.
He appointed his best general Davout as War Minister,
and only ten of his 19 active marshals took his side.
His long-time chief-of-staff Berthier died on June 15
falling from a window in Bamberg, Bavaria.
Napoleon reversed many of the unpopular Bourbon reforms
regarding judicial tribunals, the flag, the Imperial Guard,
Bourbon property, the Legion of Honor,
and the names of regiments,
and he ended censorship and slavery.
He dissolved the Legislative Body and summoned the
electoral colleges to meet in June
to approve a new constitution.
His Finance Minister Gaudin managed
to raise 17,434,352 francs.
Napoleon told his Council that he had renounced imperial
ambitions and was now only concerned with France.
The Allies meeting at Vienna had formed
the Seventh Coalition against him on March 25.
On the 31st Napoleon restored the University of France
and brought back the Comte de Lacépède as chancellor.
In April he extended conscription to married men
and to all men between the ages of 20 and 60.
On April 11 rebellion had broken out in the Vendée again,
and he sent 25,000 troops there
and to Marseilles and a few other places.
On April 22 the Additional Act for a national plebiscite was
announced to elect deputies, and Napoleon chose
80 candidates for the Peers from a list of 120 names
drawn up by his brother Joseph.
Out of five million electors 1,532,357 voted for the new
Imperial Constitution with only 4,802 opposing.
Hundreds of thousands of federalists (fédérés)
met in assemblies twice a week.
He named the talented Marshal Davout to be War Minister,
and he and Lazare Carnot worked
to get 300,000 muskets quickly.
On May 15 the Allies declared war on France.
On June 1 the Additional Act was ratified,
and Napoleon spoke to 15,000 seated and a crowd of
more than 100,000, and he accused the Allies
of breaking their peace treaties.
The newly elected legislators swore allegiance to the Emperor.
On the 9th the Allies signed the treaty at Vienna that
reaffirmed their aim to remove Napoleon from power.
On June 12 Napoleon left Paris to join his army in the north.
France had an army of 280,000 in Europe but marched into
Belgium with only 120,000 troops.
The Allies had already an army of 250,000 men in Belgium
and with the Russians and Austrians
could have 800,000 troops.
On the 15th the former Chouan General Bourmont
defected with his staff to the Allies.
Napoleon’s Imperial Guards were not stopped
from plundering in Belgium.
On the 16th he divided his army into three corps.
Ney on the left attacked the army
led by the Duke of Wellington
at Quatre Bras while the forces led by Napoleon
and Marshal Grouchy fought Blücher’s army
at Ligny where the French were victorious
and had about 11,000 casualties.
The Prussians had 12,000 killed and wounded;
but they also lost 15 cannons and 8,000 deserters.
The French led by Ney failed to take Quatre Bras
and had 4,000 casualties compared to
4,800 for the Anglo-Dutch-German army.
The next day Napoleon sent
Grouchy’s army of 33,000 to pursue the Prussians.
On June 18 the battle near Waterloo
began at 11 in the morning.
The French had a hundred more cannons than Wellington
and 4,000 more men, but at 4 in the afternoon
Blücher arrived with 30,000 Prussians.
Four hours later at dusk the French
threw down their muskets and fled.
The French suffered about 25,000 casualties
and had some 15,000 missing while
the Allies lost a total of 24,000 men.
Napoleon had also fled.
Yet the next day he wrote to Joseph that they could raise
an army of 300,000 men; but it was not to be.
He rode back to Paris and arrived early on June 21,
and he abdicated the next day, ending his 100 days.
Lafayette took control by appointing five men from each
chamber to administer the government.
Napoleon may have taken poison but again
changed his mind and recovered.
King Louis XVIII was restored again on June 28.
Napoleon fled to Malmaison and reached Rochefort on July 5.
Davout had been put in command of the army
and had signed the capitulation on the 2nd.
King Louis XVIII took over the government on July 8.
The territory of France was reduced
to what it had been in 1789.
Napoleon’s 100 days ended on June 22, 1815.
On July 15 Napoleon surrendered himself to the British
in order to avoid being taken by the Bourbons or the Prussians.
In the past twelve years France had been at war
against Britain for 242 months.
Napoleon learned that he would be confined
to the isolated island of St. Helena and was
taken there on British ships, arriving on October 14.
In June 1816 Napoleon began dictating his memoirs to
his Chamberlain Las Casas who published them in 1823
in four volumes as Le Memorial de Sainte-Hélène.
Napoleon died there on 5 May 1821 at the age of 51.
While on that island he wrote,
The men who have changed the world
never succeeded by winning over the powerful,
but always by stirring the masses.
The first method is a resort to intrigue
and only brings limited results.
The latter is the course of genius
and changes the face of the world.8
Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born at Paris
on 22 April 1766; but both her grandfathers were Protestant
pastors, and both her parents were Swiss.
Her father Jacques Necker was a banker.
In 1773 his eulogy of Colbert won a prize from the
French Academy whose members
often attended Madame Necker’s salon.
He served as Finance Minister for Louis XVI in 1777-81
and again in August 1788 when he became
the chief minister for most of the next two years.
In 1781 he criticized government expenditures in
Compte-Rendu which sold 80,000 copies.
Her mother was well educated and had had an affair with
Edward Gibbon whom Rousseau thought was unworthy of her.
Madame Suzanne Necker began raising Germaine according
to how Rousseau’s Emile advised raising a boy, not a girl,
and she taught her English and Latin.
From the age of ten Germaine attended her mother’s
intellectual salon on Fridays that included the philosopher
Helvétius, the historians Marmontel and Raynal,
the economist Galiani, the naturalist Buffon, and encyclopedia
writers Diderot, d’Alembert, and Grimm.
She learned to write her thoughts without excessive emotion.
In her teens she read tragedies by Racine and Voltaire
and later acted in them to entertain guests.
She studied Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws.
She read novels and admired Lafayette’s Princess of Cleves,
Richardson’s Clarissa, St. Pierre’s Paul et Virginie,
Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloise,
Fielding’s Tom Jones,
and Goethe’s Sorrows ofYoung Werther.
When she was 17, her mother tried to get her to
marry William Pitt, but Germaine would not leave France.
Germaine agreed to marry the 36-year-old Swedish
ambassador Erik Magnus, Baron Staël von Holstein,
in the embassy on 14 January 1786 based on a contract
with Sweden’s King Gustavus III
that was signed by Queen Marie Antoinette.
Germaine could not be forced to move to Sweden
which gained the island of St. Barthelémy from France.
She sent reports on court news to Gustavus.
She loved conversation and took over her mother’s salon
which was often attended by the
American diplomat, Gouverneur Morris.
Germaine was devoted to her father and had competed
with her mother for his affection
even though he never approved of her writing.
That year she wrote the three-act play,
Sophie; or, The Secret Sentiments which revealed
the incestuous feelings she felt for her father,
and it had the effect of liberating her from them.
She wrote romantic stories
and short novels about tragic lovers.
Adélaide et Théodore portrayed
the manners of the ancien régime.
In July 1787 Germaine gave birth to a girl, the only child
she had by her husband, but she died in April 1789.
Germaine and her husband had love affairs.
The father of her first son was Louis de Narbonne
who was by rumor considered a son of Louis XV.
She and her husband separated in 1797, and he died in 1802.
She loved Narbonne’s charm, Mathieu de Montmorency’s
idealism, and Talleyrand’s wit.
Known as Madame de Staël, she published her
Letters on the works and character of J. J. Rousseau
in 1788 expressing her belief in freedom
whether in love, politics or literature.
She discussed the moral issues of Julie in his novel,
criticized his views on educating women in Emile,
challenged some of Rousseau’s political ideas
based on Montesquieu, and examined
his character as revealed in his Confessions.
Germaine experienced the early events
of the French Revolution in Paris.
After the hard winter of 1788-89 the chief minister Necker
loaned the government two million francs to purchase wheat
for the starving people, and he persuaded the King to accept
the doubling of the Third Estate’s representatives.
In her account of the French Revolution she considered the
Third Estate declaring itself the “National Assembly of France”
on 17 June 1789 the beginning of the Revolution.
She noted what France lacked:
Religion founded on inquiry,
education generally diffused,
the liberty of the press,
and the right of voting at public elections,
are sources of improvement which had been in
operation in England for more than a century.9
Louis XVI dismissed her father Necker at dinner on
11 July 1789, and the next day news of this
aroused thousands of Parisians.
She went to join him in Brussels and Switzerland;
but five days after the Bastille was stormed,
the King recalled Necker.
When Necker and his daughter returned from Basel,
people lined the roads to cheer him.
She hoped that a constitutional monarchy could consolidate
the gains of the Revolution with rational solutions.
Her salons were a center of political intrigue and included
Siéyès, Brissot, and Condorcet of the left as well as
some on the right; but she pleaded for moderation.
When the women led the march to Versailles in early October,
she was living with her parents there.
She witnessed the mob that killed guards in the Queen’s
antechamber and put their heads on pikes as they returned
the King and Queen with Lafayette to Paris.
From that time Louis XVI considered himself a prisoner.
In September 1790 Necker resigned
and retired to Coppet Castle near Geneva.
Germaine stayed in Paris to give birth to Gustave
but went to Coppet in October for eleven months.
In early 1791 a satirical pamphlet accused her of being
a nymphomaniac who provoked riots to keep her lovers.
That year she wrote the essay “How Can We Determine
What Is the Opinion of the Majority of the Nation?”
She perceived a conflict between the tendency
to cherish calm and the impulse for liberty.
She named the two parties
Royalists and Republicans and wrote,
The right wing of the Assembly,
known as the Aristocrats,
claims that fear stifles the voice of the majority.
A section of the left wing, known as the Jacobins,
blames all opposition it encounters
upon an attachment to the old abuses.
The two parties agree in professing
to submit to the general will.
But both wrongly rest
(the one with logic completely contrary to the facts
and the other with facts completely contrary to logic)
upon the existence of a majority that never appears
or upon one that is always in rebellion.10
Germaine got Narbonne appointed Minister of War
on 6 December 1791.
The next day he spoke to the Assembly which appropriated
twenty million for the army,
and he promised to raise a force of 150,000 men.
Her lover Talleyrand was sent to London
to gain Britain’s neutrality.
She and Narbonne persuaded the Foreign Minister de Lessart
to send an envoy to gain the support of the Duke of Brunswick,
but he eventually declined.
Louis XVI replaced Narbonne on 9 March 1792.
De Lessart was arrested, and the rest of the cabinet resigned.
France declared war on April 20.
Germaine attended the large demonstrations,
and on August 10 she learned that the Swiss Guards
were massacred at the Tuileries and that
the royal family was imprisoned in the Temple.
Narbonne and Mathieu hid in the Swedish embassy.
She persuaded the physician Erich Bollman
to help them escape to England on the 20th.
Her home in the embassy was searched,
and she complained about the violation of diplomatic rights.
On September 2 Germaine narrowly escaped injury or death
in a riot, and the next day she fled to Coppet
where her second son Albert was born.
In January 1793 she and Narbonne went to England and lived
at Juniper Hall in Surrey, but after the King’s death
Narbonne no longer shared her liberal ideas.
On June 10 she wrote to Gibbon that she is not intoxicated
by “romantic ideas” but always believes in reason.
In August she wrote “Reflections on the Trial of the Queen”
to the Tribunal in Paris.
She warned that “what is written
in letters of blood will be read by the universe.”
When the people are neither just nor generous,
liberty cannot be preserved.
Her generosity saved several people from the guillotine.
On November 19 she published her “Brief Reflections Relating
to the Emigrant French Clergy” to defend the refractory priests.
That year she wrote in the novella Zulma,
Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men;
it is the truth, the flame, the pure element,
the primary idea of the moral world.11
In July 1794 during the climax of the Great Terror
Germaine wrote her Reflections on Peace addressing
the first part to William Pitt and advocating the restoration
of good government in a virtuous republic
and an end to foreign wars.
Yet she warned the Coalition that French victories
could lead to more revolutions.
She endorsed republics but often
criticized the men who governed them.
In September she met Benjamin Constant.
One night he attempted suicide
and confessed his passion for her.
Her Reflections on Internal Peace
was published in 1795, arguing that only in peace
can France work out its republican government.
She wanted to help the poor acquire property
so that they could participate in a stable government.
On April 22 Baron Staël presented his credentials
to the Convention, and Sweden became
the first nation to recognize the French Republic.
Germaine and Constant returned to Paris that spring,
and she wrote her “Profession of Republican Faith”
and “Essay on Fiction” which
Goethe translated into German.
She noted that fiction can amuse
but also influences moral ideas.
In October she was given ten days to leave France,
but her husband’s diplomacy extended this to December.
On 9 June 1797 Germaine gave birth to Albertine de Staël,
probably the daughter of Constant.
They lived at Coppet, and he wrote
The Strength of the Present Government in France
and on the Necessity of Supporting It.
That year she published On the Influence of the Passions
on the Happiness of Individuals and nations,
and he circulated the book for her to influential friends in Paris.
She noted that a man’s love is physical and immediate
while the woman’s love is more emotional and lasts longer.
She believed that government could promote the happiness
of nations and individuals, but she also argued that
such emotions could be the obstacles to happiness.
Individual feelings could be stirred or calmed
to promote the contentment of a group.
She did not believe that despotism could heal
popular passions but that the rule of law could.
She advised moderation and warned that
selfish ambition can corrode character.
She warned against the intolerance of the partisan spirit,
and she opposed using evil means to try to do good.
She found that men can limit a woman’s career
even if she has a beautiful heart or a broad and strong mind.
Yet nothing in life can equal being truly loved.
Love dominates a woman’s life but is only an episode for a man.
Goethe liked this book and in April 1797 sent her a copy of his
Wilhelm Meister, and this would stimulate her to learn German.
In July her influence got Talleyrand appointed Foreign Minister.
At the end of her life Germaine wrote about the
French Revolution and described her encounters
and reflections on Napoleon Bonaparte.
When she met him on 6 December 1797, she had the feeling
that “no emotion of the heart could influence him”12
because he considered humans as things.
As she studied his face, he noticed
and erased all expression from his eyes.
He seemed obsessed with war and used it
to establish and maintain absolute power.
He appealed to imagination by invading Egypt.
He used the fear of Jacobinism to establish his power.
He made his power acceptable by presenting himself
as a lesser evil in comparison to another cause for alarm.
She noted that in 1800 General Bonaparte decreed
a constitution without safeguards,
and he used laws made during the Revolution as weapons.
She observed that individuals were neglected
as he managed the masses with military victories
during his “ten years of disorder.”
He had French newspapers cleverly censored
by spreading propaganda.
She claimed that she sensed quickly his
“tyrannical character and intentions.”
She was the first woman he banished,
but there were many others.
Women irritated him, and he delighted in
“saying offensive and vulgar things to them.”
She believed that he was afraid of the wit of French women.
When Napoleon sent his brother Lucien
to ask what she wants, offering to repay her father, she replied
that what she thinks is more important than what she wants.
On 17 January 1802 Napoleon warned her
not to block any road he chose, or he would break her.
In 1797 Germaine was allowed to return to France
to have a baby but had to live at least twenty miles from Paris.
She met Napoleon,
but he seemed threatened by intellectual women.
She helped Talleyrand get appointed foreign minister,
but in her salon Napoleon was criticized.
In June 1798 she was permitted to move back to Paris.
She persuaded Sieyès to have Constant appointed
to the Tribunate on 24 December 1799.
In his first speech he advised
ending the repressive emergency law.
Early in 1800 at her dinner party she encouraged Constant
to speak frankly, and his prediction that
her drawing-room would be deserted came true.
She believed she had a “perfect friendship” with Talleyrand,
but he did not invite her to
his grand ball for Napoleon on February 25.
She had arranged his return from America after the Terror
and blamed him for the persecution
that led to her ten-year exile.
Germaine de Staël published her Literature Considered
in Its Relation to Social Institutions in 1800.
In the introduction she explained the importance of literature.
Her purpose was to examine the influences of literature
on religion, custom, and law and their effect on literature.
She wanted to bring enlightened minds
back to enjoying philosophy.
She believed that perfect virtue creates
perfect beauty in the intellectual world.
Humans can surrender their deeds to vice but never their
judgment which can evaluate works of the imagination.
Thus literary criticism involves ethics, and the art
of stirring people explores the secrets of virtue.
Literary masterpieces can inspire generous actions.
Improving one’s taste in literature lifts one’s character.
In addition to virtue human dignity
benefits from liberty, honor, and knowledge.
The art of thinking is essential to the preservation of freedom.
When the citizens have a role in directing their government,
knowledge becomes indispensable.
The principle of equality is based
on reason and depends on education.
Noble expression elevates the soul
and is needed in a democratic state,
and eloquence enhances a republican society.
Intelligent writing can change and direct national habits,
and literature can expose old prejudices.
Germaine considered philosophical literature
the best guarantee of liberty,
though the sciences and arts are also important.
Persuading by reasoning is more precise
than carrying one away by imagination.
Selfishness reduces happiness
because it deprives people of help from others.
Practicing expanded good will increases social happiness
even though public opinion may condemn it.
Sometimes one must stand alone to preserve
what is great and beautiful and protect true inspiration.
In the main part of the book she described
the literature of various cultures.
She did not consider the thousand years of the
middle ages as the “dark ages,” and she noticed
a difference in the literature of the cold northern Europe
from that of the warm southern countries.
She argued that a revolution in politics
should bring about a revolution in literature.
In the last chapter she described how genius and virtue
can lead to indestructible progress,
and she suggested
that a higher source of virtue than reason is God.
Germaine de Staël’s first great novel Delphine was written
in 1802, the year her husband died,
and describes personal relationships and a tragic romance.
Set during the early years of the French Revolution
it avoids the political events of the time and is written
as a series of letters in the style of many 18th-century novels
she admired such as Clarissa, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloise,
and Young Werther.
In her preface she wrote,
The great religious ideas—the existence of God,
the immortality of the soul,
and the union of these splendid hopes with morality—
are so inseparable from all noble emotion,
all musing and tender enthusiasm,
that it would seem impossible to me for any novel,
any tragedy, in sum any work of the imagination,
to move people without their help.11
She also noted that she removed from the letters
everything
related to political events during the French Revolution.
In her story the widow Delphine represents herself,
Léonce de Mondeville her lover Narbonne,
and oddly Mme. de Vernon her friend Talleyrand.
Just below the title Delphine is the quote,
“A man must be able to brave opinion;
a woman to submit to it.”
Delphine d’Albemarle’s late husband was older than her
and wealthy, and she generously provides money for her
cousin Mathilde de Vernon to marry the Spanish noble Léonce.
Before his wedding he meets Delphine,
and they fall in love while she is urging him toward Mathilde.
Delphine’s friend Thérèse d’Ervins has a jealous husband,
and Delphine facilitates the unhappy wife in her love affair
with M. de Serbellane; but they are caught at her house,
and Thérèse’s husband is killed in a duel.
Delphine tries to protect her friend’s
reputation as her own suffers.
Mme. de Vernon tells Delphine that she will let Léonce
know that she is innocent, but Vernon betrays her instead
so that Léonce will marry her daughter Mathilde.
After the wedding Léonce learns that Delphine is innocent.
He and Delphine enjoy a Platonic friendship,
but gossip spreads innuendos.
Mathilde also loves Léonce and becomes pregnant.
When Delphine admits to her that she is in love
with Léonce, Mathilde asks her to give him up.
Delphine joins a convent in Switzerland that is run by
Léonce’s aunt who persuades her to take vows.
M. de Valorbe is also in love with Delphine
who has rejected him, but he pursues her.
Léonce challenges him to a duel, but Valorbe refuses.
To prevent the duel she has promised to marry him.
He begs her help, and they meet in a German town
where soldiers arrest Delphine.
After her vows are taken,
Valorbe informs Léonce that Delphine is innocent.
Then Valorbe in despair takes his own life.
Delphine learns that Mathilde and her baby have died.
Léonce finds that his beloved has taken her vows,
but Delphine is informed that the Revolution has weakened
religion so much that she can get out of her vows.
This, however, makes her unpopular,
and to protect him she renounces marriage with Léonce.
He tries to join a royalist force
but is arrested and sentenced to death.
After trying to get him pardoned, she takes poison and dies
where he is to be executed.
The bodies of the lovers are buried together.
In Delphine the heroine finds she cannot rely on reason
and turns to courage, acceptance, and patience.
She finds her happiness in devoting herself to helping others,
and Léonce loves her for these qualities.
Delphine was successful in France, England,
and Germany and had several editions.
This novel is an early example of the
social criticism in the 19th century.
The character of M. de Lebensei is based
on her friend and lover, Benjamin Constant, and in a letter
to Delphine he writes that love is a great mystery,
perhaps a treasure from heaven
left on earth by a departing angel.
He argues that in a society which accepts marriage of
convenience and at a young age the laws against divorce
punish the victims of matches arranged by parents.
He notes that only the Catholic religion sanctifies indissoluble
marriage because it imposes many kinds of pain on people
as religious training; but Protestant nations
have more humane
laws, and the Gospels inspire benevolence and humanity.
Lebensei writes to Léonce that liberty is the main source
of happiness and the glory of the social order.
The novel concludes with the admonition,
“Endure the pain, wait upon nature,
and do good to humankind.”
After Delphine was published in December 1802
with a dedication to “French silence,”
Napoleon read a digest of it and banished her from Paris,
though in September 1803
he let her live 25 miles away in Mafliers.
Disturbed by her gatherings, he sent a policeman
to order her to move a hundred miles away.
She and her children went with the officer to see Napoleon
who considered her request to live in Paris.
She translated a speech in England by the
famous lawyer James Mackintosh
defending the royalist émigré Jean-Gabriel Peltier.
In 1803 she wrote a new ending without Delphine’s suicide.
She also wrote her
“Reflections on the Moral Aim of Delphine”
and expressed the purpose
to show how, with a superior soul,
one can commit more errors than a
mediocre person could, unless the
power of passion is matched by that of reason;
and how, with a generous and sensible heart,
one is apt to become guilty of many sins if one
does not submit to the most rigid morality.15
She also gave the following advice to society:
Be more careful of superior minds and souls;
you do not know the harm and injustice you do
when you give way to your hate for superiority
because it does not submit to all your laws.
Your punishments are disproportionate to the fault;
you break hearts; you strike down destinies
that would have been the world’s jewels.16
In December 1803 Germaine and Constant went to
Germany and met Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Fichte,
and the Schlegel brothers.
Goethe noted that her special passion was philosophy,
and later he would thank her for breaking up the prejudices
that separated Germans from the French and the British.
Schiller wrote to Goethe that she wants to explain everything,
examine everything, and pass judgment on everything.
After her father’s death in April 1804 she returned to Coppet
with August Wilhelm von Schlegel as tutor for her two sons.
In December they went to Italy, and in Turin they were joined
by Simonde de Sismondi, who wrote
History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages.
She was getting over her father’s death and felt she could
be free there and benefit from the warm climate.
In 1805 she made Coppet an intellectual center.
Germaine published her greatest novel Corinne, or Italy
in April 1807 which was successful and became
one of the most popular novels in the 19th century.
She offered to remove “offending” passages from Corinne
but would not agree to praise Napoleon, and so did neither.
Her exile from Paris was renewed, and yet the exasperated
Napoleon read it with interest during his lonely exile.
Set between 1794 and 1803 the autobiographical Corinne
never refers to Napoleon’s victorious campaigns in Italy.
Like Germaine, the Scottish hero, Oswald Lord Nevil,
is mourning his father’s death
and comes to Italy to improve his health.
In the first paragraph she described Oswald this way:
The most personal of all griefs, the loss of a father,
had provoked his illness; harsh circumstances,
remorse stirred by a meticulous conscience,
embittered his sorrow still more,
and imagination added its own haunting shadows.
When People suffer, they are
readily persuaded of their guilt,
and violent sorrow unsettles conscience itself.17
Because of the war with France he has to go
through Germany and Switzerland.
Germaine had read Lessing’s Nathan the Wise,
and Oswald helps trapped Jews at Ancona escape from a fire.
Blonde Corinne is very intelligent and is based on the
Italian poet Diodata Saluzzo Roero (1774–1840),
and Oswald attends her crowning at Rome.
The French Count d’Erfeuil arranges for Oswald to meet her.
Corinne is attracted to him and tries
to make him love Italy so that he will stay.
Although Oswald has promised his father that
he will marry Lucy Edgermond, he falls in love with Corinne
who is the daughter of Lord Edgermond by an Italian wife.
She shows him the Pantheon and other sites in Rome
so that they can elevate their minds.
She contrasts the gothic churches in England and Germany
to Italian architecture.
After her mother died,
her father Lord Edgermond married an English woman.
Oswald is about to propose to her; but when his uncle
Edgermond arrives, she wonders if their relationship will work.
They agree to tell each other about
their past as they journey to Naples.
She is not sure that she could adapt to English life,
and Oswald’s father seems to prefer
her half-sister Lucile who has dark hair.
He has given Corinne his ring but returns to England,
and she secretly follows him and becomes ill there.
Because she has not responded to his letters,
he plans to marry Lucile.
Corinne recovers and discovers that her sister loves Oswald,
and so she sends the ring back to him.
She loses her gift for poetry, and he fights in wars
in the West Indies before returning
to Italy with his wife and daughter.
Corinne becomes friends with the child,
and Lucile learns of her past.
Corinne forgives him for breaking her heart
and becomes too weak to recite her poetry and dies.
Germaine de Staël’s novels would influence Walter Scott,
Hawthorne, Stendahl and especially Jane Austen, Mary Shelley,
Margaret Fuller, Charlotte Brontë, George Sand, George Eliot,
Elizabeth Browning, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Her Corinne inspired Constant to write his
autobiographical novel Adolphe which
the poet Byron suggested could be given as
an antidote to women who had read Corinne.
In 1803-04 Germaine de Staël
and Benjamin Constant had visited Germany.
At Coppet she presented plays, writing Géneviève
de Brabant, Hagar in the Desert, and La Sunamite.
In 1807 she and Constant performed in Racine’s Andromaque.
The publication of Corinne renewed her exile from Paris,
and she went back to Germany,
visiting Mainz, Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna.
In 1808 Constant broke up with Germaine,
and the next year he secretly married Caroline von Hardenberg.
Germaine spent six years studying Germany
and two years writing the book.
In the spring of 1810 Napoleon allowed her
to return to Paris to embark for America.
She rented a castle ninety miles from Paris and arranged
for the printing of 5,000 copies of On Germany
that was approved by the censors in September.
However, Napoleon ordered the Police Minister
to destroy them, and he banished her from France.
Fortunately she had hidden three copies.
In On Germany she described the German character as
sincere, faithful, serious, and imaginative, the Latin character
as gay, elegant, and witty, and she distinguished
these ethnic groups from the European Slavs.
She found German better for poetry
while the French excelled in prose and conversation.
She wrote that love is a religion in Germany,
and she found the French lively but arrogant.
She observed that the desire to please makes us dependent,
but the need to be loved frees us.
To understand Prussia she advised studying Friedrich II
who was influenced by French philosophy
and created
an empire; but he did not respect religion and morality,
and his rule was based on military force.
She especially criticized his role in the partitioning of Poland.
She praised the universities in northern Germany
for their broad learning.
She valued the study of ancient and modern languages,
and she noted that grammar connects ideas
and so requires more thought than mathematics.
Grammar combines precise reasoning
and independent thought.
She welcomed Pestalozzi’s educational work with children.
She believed that the free institutions in England
and America helped them develop wisdom.
Staël admired Schiller for his talent and integrity as a writer.
She found Goethe’s passion in Werther unequaled,
and she was perhaps the first to describe
the new trend in literature as “romantic.”
She considered Shakespeare’s dramas the greatest
and philosophical, and she noted
how enjoyable Molière’s comedies are.
She analyzed the dramas of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe
in whose work she found great variety.
She praised Joachim de Müller’s History of Switzerland
and the literary criticism of the Schlegel brothers.
She recognized that Germans excelled in instrumental music.
Staël observed that Descartes had directed philosophy inward,
and she analyzed the philosophies of
Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Lessing, and Schelling.
She considered Leibniz a rational idealist and contrasted
his philosophy to Locke’s empiricism based on sensations.
She especially liked Kant’s Critique of Judgment;
but she suggested that if his view that the highest duty
is to be truthful were rigidly followed,
social life would be difficult.
In ethics she protested against making self-interest
the main standard of action.
For her “the only supreme law is the law of justice.”
In regard to love and marriage she noted the excessive
inequality and wanted the double standard between
the sexes ended, though noted
there will always be a “war between the two sexes.”
She found value in religion and distinguished from fanaticism
the enthusiasm which comes from the God within
and elevates the soul toward truth.
Enthusiasm vitalizes thought and action
and brings about happiness.
She praised the courage of Luther, and she recognized
that the Reformation brought forth new ideas.
She found Catholics in Germany
more tolerant than those in other nations.
Her liberal spirit wants the temple opened to the genius
of the fine arts, science, and philosophy.
She urged people to follow the examples of
Jesus and Socrates in forgiving.
She got in trouble describing the negative results
of France becoming the “master of the world.”
She believed that the universe is more like a poem
than a machine, and she found imagination
more helpful in discovering truth than mathematics.
She lived at Coppet and in Geneva, and in 1811
she secretly became engaged to young John Rocca.
Their son Alphonse Rocca was born in 1812,
and the family escaped with Schlegel to Russia in July.
Yet even while Napoleon was invading their country,
the noble Russians gave her hospitality.
In August she won over Tsar Aleksandr and urged him
to accept Jean Bernadotte as an ally
and to mediate peace between Britain and America.
She had invested 1.5 million francs in American land, bonds,
and banks, but at St. Petersburg in September
she met John Quincy Adams and criticized the United States
for their war against England
while the British were fighting Napoleon.
Germaine went to Sweden in September,
and in January 1813 she published “Reflections on Suicide.”
She organized a salon for diplomats in Stockholm,
and Schlegel became Bernadotte’s secretary
and her son Albert his aide-de-camp.
She supported the effort by Schlegel and Constant
to have Bernadotte replace Napoleon.
Staël moved to London in June 1813, and in October
On Germany was printed there in French
and sold out in three days.
After Napoleon abdicated in April 1814,
she opened her salon in Paris to great acclaim that
included the Duke of Wellington, the Humboldt brothers,
James Mackintosh, Bernadotte, and Prince Friedrich of Prussia.
When she learned of a plot to murder him at Elba,
she warned his brother Joseph Bonaparte who was her friend.
In July she wrote to Gallatin that she supported
the United States against the British
as she had backed the British against Napoleon.
When she met Wellington, she lectured him
about the war against America.
When Germaine learned that Napoleon had returned
in March 1815, she said, “There will be no liberty
if Bonaparte wins and no national independence if he loses,”
and she concluded, “There is no counter-revolution
so fatal to liberty as the one he made.”18
After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo she suggested
the liberal Duke Philippe of Orléans,
who came to power in 1830, but she accepted
the Bourbon Restoration of Louis XVIII
and held her brilliant salon.
In 1816 she published “The Spirit of Translation”
and became friends with the poet Byron at Coppet.
She believed that the Americans would be very great
but wrote to Jefferson that they needed
to eliminate slavery first to become more perfect.
Also in 1816 Germaine Staël wrote Considerations on
Principal events of the French Revolution.
She argued that the triumph of enlightenment
always improves mankind.
She noted that the ancient Greek and Roman nations
fell
because of unjust institutions such as slavery
and that despotism made the Asian civilizations stagnant.
She described the feudalism set up by conquerors and nobles,
and in Europe that was followed by emancipation
of the middle classes in German and Italian republics.
The Renaissance, printing, Reformation, and discovery
of the New World advanced commerce
and showed that not all power was military.
She observed that British nobility was more liberal
and had become Europe’s only great empire,
having honored commerce and industry.
She noted how the English supported charity
by private contribution,
and English legislation advanced security and liberty.
Yet she found their civil law too costly and too long,
and she noticed that votes in Parliament could be purchased.
Local administration, elections, juries,
and newspapers opened English affairs to many.
She noted that religious and political fanaticism
caused violence, though William Penn and others
banished this in North America.
In the work of Byron she saw the beginning of
“a new age of glory for English poetry.”
She criticized British imperialism
and the corruption of civil servants in India.
Staël considered slavery indefensible
even though it had lasted 4,000 years.
She believed that the French Revolution showed
the perfectibility of humanity and that it would survive
the excesses of the Terror, the dictatorship of Napoleon,
and the Bourbon Restoration.
She asserted that freedom of expression is
the only right on which all others depend.
She valued religion and the way the United States
had separated it from the state.
She believed that all people could be freed by education
from superstitions and prejudices.
Her liberal ideas influenced Victor Hugo’s preface
to the unproduced play Cromwell and also the
French historians Guizot, Michelet, and Lamartine.
She concluded that her errors in politics resulted from
her belief that people could be moved by the truth
that was expressed vigorously.
Her husband Rocca had tuberculosis, and they went to Italy.
Germaine suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in February 21, 1817.
She talked politics with the Duke of Orléans
the day before her death on July 14, 1817.
Her son Auguste edited and published her book on
the French Revolution in 1818, and her complete
works in 1820 including the unfinished
autobiographical Ten Years of Exile.
1. Quoted in The French Revolution by J. F. Bosher, p. 230.
2. Quoted in Napoleon Bonaparte by Alan Schom, p. 42.
3. Quoted in The French Revolution, 1789-1804 by Robert B. Asprey, p. 245.
4. Quoted in Napoleon: A Political Life by Steven Englund, p. 245.
5. Quoted in Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts, p. 462.
6. Quoted in The Bourbon Restoration by Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, tr. Lynn M. Case, p. 17.
7. Ibid., p. 37.
8. Quoted in Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts, p. 206
9. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution
ed. Duc de Broglie and Baron de Staël (1818), Vol. 1, p. 118.
10. On Politics, Literature, and National Character by Madame de Staël, tr. Morroe Berger, p. 124.
11. Quoted in Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël by Christopher J. Herold, p. 52.
12. Quotes from On Politics, Literature, and National Character by Madame de Staël,
tr. Morroe Berger, p. 89, 95, 97, 98.
13. Ibid., p. 103, 105.
14. Delphine by Madame de Staël, tr. Avriel H. Goldberger, p. 7.
15. Quoted in Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël by Christopher J. Herold, p. 232.
16.Quoted in Delphine by Madame de Staël, tr. Avriel H. Goldberger, p. xxviii.
17. Corinne, or Italy by Madame de Staël, tr. Avriel H. Goldberger, p. 3.
18. On Politics, Literature, and National Character by Madame de Staël,
r. Morroe Berger, p. 105.