CHAP. II. December, that the Russians were, on their side, constructing defensive works; not 500 leagues from their frontier, as he was doing, but at about 100 behind it—namely, on the Dwina and the Dniester. He instantly became indignant, and had a despatch written to Caulaincourt, saying that it is impossible not to see that these works show bad feeling on the part of the Russians. Do they wish to make peace with England and to violate the treaty of Tilsit? It would be the immediate cause of war.'1 But these menaces missed their mark. Alexander listened to Caulaincourt's representations with the utmost amiability, and then with minute accuracy enumerated, to the astonishment of our ambassador, the works which Napoleon was himself having executed at Modlin, at Praga, at Sierok, at Thorn, and at Dantzic, besides the consignment of arms and the troops he had sent to the King of Saxony and into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; he pointed out the eminently offensive character of such military precautions, the purely defensive attitude, on the other hand, of Russia, which was limited to the fortification of a few towns at a distance from the frontier, such as Dunaburg, Riga, Revel, and Smolensk, and to the recal of some troops from Finland and Lithuania; he recounted his legitimate subjects of complaint against France-the Galician cessions, the rejection of the Polish convention, the offensive duplicity with which he had been treated in the affair of the marriage, our new encroachments in Italy and Holland, the bad faith displayed with regard to the continental system by means of the licences, while it was sought to impose its harshest terms upon him. Having finished this statement, he contented himself with appealing to Caulaincourt in a friendly manner to be his judge in the matter; Caulaincourt, a just and upright man, knew far less of our position than did Alexander, and could not help admitting the legitimacy of his grievances, at one moment by his silence, at another by his confused explanations.

However disquieting the subjects of complaint might have

been which Napoleon seemed bent on incessantly reviving, instead of trying to make them be forgotten, they were as if effaced in one single day by the new attack on the rights of nations, which struck Europe dumb with astonishment, at the very moment that Alexander was addressing his well-grounded remonstrances to Caulaincourt. On the roth of December, 1810, in the midst of peace over the entire continent, with the exception of Spain, and without the shadow of a pretext or provocation to allege for its justification, a message addressed to the Senate by the Emperor, informed the European governments that Napoleon had annexed to the Empire the Valais, a part of Hanover, the Hanseatic towns, Lauenburg, the Duchy of Oldenburg, and the whole coast from the Ems to the Elbe. This act, extraordinary even in the author of so many usurpations, was grounded on considerations even more extraordinary. The English,' said Napoleon, 'have torn asunder the public rights of Europe; a new order of things governs the universe. Fresh guarantees having become necessary to me, the annexation of the mouths of the Scheldt, of the Meuse, of the Rhine, of the Ems, of the Weser, and of the Elbe to the Empire appears to me to be the first and the most important. . . . The annexation of the Valais is the anticipated result of the immense works that I have been making for the past ten years in that part of the Alps.'

And this was all. To justify such violence he did not condescend to allege any pretext-to urge forward opportunities that were too long in developing, or to make trickery subserve the use of force-he consulted nothing but his policy; in other words, his good pleasure. To take possession of a country, it was sufficient that the country suited him: he said so openly, as the simplest thing in the world, and thought proper to add that these new usurpations were but a beginning, the first, according to his own expression, of those which seemed to him still necessary. And it was Europe, discontented, humbled, driven wild by the barbarous follies of the continental system, that he thus defied, as though he wished at any cost to convince every one that no amicable arrangement or conciliation

CHAP. II.

CHAP. II.

was possible; and that there was but one course for governments or men of spirit to adopt, that of fighting unto death. Marmont in his Memoirs relates, that being in Paris about this period, he went to see his friend and compatriot Decrès, the Minister of Marine, an eminently sensible and intellectual man, and who greatly astonished him. Marmont shared the intoxication then so general, especially amongst the military, and firmly believed in the perpetuity of the Imperial phantasmagoria. In good faith, he believed that that fanciful creation stood on immovable foundations, that we had inherited Roman grandeur, and that a nation so brilliant and so restless, so incapable of governing herself, was destined to govern the world. And the whole of France, like him, so seriously believed this vision, that she continued dazzled and infatuated by it for many long years after the dream had vanished. Well, Marmont,' said Decrès, 'so here you are; very happy at having been made marshal. You look upon everything in a bright light. Would you like me to tell you the truth and to unfold the future to you? The Emperor is mad, quite mad; he will upset us all, as certain as we stand here; and all this will end in some fearful catastrophe!'

ALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER III.

STATE OF SPAIN AT THE END OF THE YEAR 1809. CAMPAIGN OF ANDALUSIA. (November 1809—July 1810.)

It might have been supposed, from the imprudent manner in which Napoleon annoyed the European governments one after the other towards the end of 1810, that the affairs of Spain-which ought to have been his principal, if not his sole, care-had taken a new and unhoped-for turn; that his armies there had obtained some brilliant victory; that, in a word, he was on the eve of being at length disembarrassed from that exhaustive war, which alone had already cost him more soldiers than all his previous campaigns together. But it was nothing of the kind. In spite of the 400,000 men whom he then maintained in the Peninsula, his domination there had never been less stable, or his name more detested; his generals, in that quarter, never more discouraged, his partisans more downhearted, his enemies more confident.

When, in the month of October, 1810, Napoleon had signed the peace with Austria, and the great masses of the army in Germany were once more at his disposal, every one expected to see them turn back towards Spain, headed by him who had just led them to victory at Wagram. No one in Europe was any longer capable of attempting a diversion in favour of that unfortunate country; all were interested in her fate, it is true, and gave her their best wishes, but they looked upon her fall as inevitable, and resigned themselves to it beforehand. England alone persisted in supporting Spain with 30,000 men, which she kept in Portugal under the orders of Wellington.

CHAP. III.

CHAP. III

But, notwithstanding the miracles which that little army had effected at Oporto and at Talavera, how could it be supposed possible for it to hold out against the crushing reinforcements which were about to submerge the Peninsula, if the Emperor decided on bringing the soldiers of Wagram thither. The English, like the Spaniards, looked forward to this contingency with dismay; King Joseph longed for it with his whole heart, seeing in it the consolidation of his tottering throne; the army looked forward to it as the termination of their humiliations and of long months of suffering; France, as the preliminary of a more certain peace than that which had just been signed at Vienna.

Napoleon was so deeply impressed with the importance of such a resolve, that he announced his approaching departure for Spain to the Senate, prophesying 'the flight of the terrified leopard' with more emphasis than was exactly becoming. After such a promise, doubt no longer seemed allowable, and as early as the month of November, 1809, the rumour of his immediate arrival was so accredited in Spain, that King Joseph sent some of his officers to meet and welcome him.1 What those on the one side feared, and on the other hoped, from his presence in Spain, was not merely the undeniable superiority of his genius, but the certainty that nothing would be wanting either in resources or troops for the attainment of a great end; that the jealousies and rivalries which had paralysed the command would be extinguished; that he would operate such great concentrations of troops as there was no force at that moment in Spain to resist, and which should sweep all before them like a hurricane. It was so clearly the Emperor's interest to show himself in the Peninsula, were it but for an instant, that he was every moment expected to appear there. As time passed by, doubts, it is true, began to rise; but for many long months the very uncertainty was sufficient to intimidate and seriously to trouble his enemies.

Whatever may have been his secret intentions in this respect,

1 Memoirs of Miot de Melito.