WE set out at exactly ten o’clock in the evening. [December 5, 1812.] The Emperor and I were in his sleeping coach; the gallant Wonsowicz was on horseback, riding beside the carriage; and Roustam also was mounted, along with the outriders Fagalde and Amodru. One of them went ahead to order post-horses at Oschmiana. Duroc and Count Lobau followed in one calèche, Baron Fain and M. Constant in a second.56 The necessary preparations had been so carefully made, the secret so well kept, that no one had the least suspicion of what was happening. With the exception of the Grand Marshal and Baron Fain, even those who set out on this journey did not know of it until seven-thirty, when the marshals were notified.
The Emperor reached Oschmiana about midnight. Loison’s division and a detachment of the Neapolitan cavalry had taken up their position there during the afternoon. It was freezing hard. The troops were full of confidence, in the belief that they were covered by the main army; consequently the outposts were badly placed, and in addition badly manned. The main body of the division was quartered in the town, where everyone shut himself indoors to escape the cold, which was extreme. Shortly before the Emperor’s arrival, a Russian commanding some irregular troops had taken advantage of this confidence to carry out a raid through the town with Cossacks and hussars. The slaughter of a few sentinels and the capture of a few men were the only result of his expedition. A fusillade from every house soon forced the Russians to beat a hurried retreat, whereupon they took up a position overlooking the town, which they bombarded for some time. This was the state of affairs when the Emperor arrived. M. van Hogendorp, who carried the orders dictated by the Emperor, and even the ordinary courier, had barely preceded us, so that we had to wait for the horses and the Neapolitans.
The Emperor hesitated a moment in favour of waiting till daylight. The calèche following us had not yet arrived. We held a sort of council to decide also whether it would not be well to send a few squads of infantry to keep the road open, in case the Russians tried to occupy it. This precaution, however, would have delayed us, and might have informed the enemy of the Emperor’s departure.57 We therefore decided to put along the road a small advance-guard composed of the mounted Neapolitans. We sent two further advance-guards to follow them in echelon. The rest were divided, half going in front of us and half behind. The Emperor’s saddle-horses, which had followed us from Smorgoni, were ordered to come on as far as Miedniki. The cold was increasing, and the horses of the escort could not keep their feet. Of all the detachments, there were not fifteen men still with us when we reached the relay, and hardly eight, including the general and some officers, as we approached Wilna.
At a league’s distance from Miedniki and at the break of day we met the Duke of Bassano, who took my place beside the Emperor. Since His Majesty did not wish to enter the town, I went ahead in M. Bassano’s carriage to carry the orders to the government and make further arrangements for our journey. It was well that I went to Wilna myself; for M. van Hogendorp, who had just arrived, had so far been able to get nothing prepared. He had had to awaken people who had just got home from a ball at M. Bassano’s. They danced while others froze to death. The inhabitants of Wilna had no conception of our situation, of what had already happened, or of what was to come. I mustered a dozen men for the escort. There were no post-horses. I had to take M. Bassano’s for the second relay. No one had any suspicion that the Emperor was so near.
The Emperor stopped to change horses in the suburbs of the town. I arrived there at almost the same time, and we set out immediately. In Wilna I had bought fur-lined boots for all the travellers of our party; and they thanked me for them more than once when we met later in Paris, for they would certainly have arrived there with a frost-bitten limb or two if it had not been for this precaution. Duroc and Count Lobau arrived as we were leaving. The Neapolitans, who were still acting as escort, had their hands or feet frost-bitten. I found the commanding officer with both his hands pressed against the stove. He expected to relieve the acute pain, and I had great difficulty in making him realize that he was risking the loss of his hands, and in making him go out and rub them with snow—a treatment which so increased his sufferings that he was not able to keep it up.
M. Wonsowicz, who had no more lead-horses and was tired besides, took the footman’s seat of the Emperor’s carriage. We reached Kowno two hours before dawn [December 7]. The courier had had a fire lit in a kind of tavern, kept by an Italian scullion who had set himself up there since the passage of the army. The meal seemed superb because it was hot. Good bread, fowl, a table and chairs, a table-cloth—all these were novelties to us. Only the Emperor had been well served throughout the retreat: that is to say he had always had white bread, linen, his Chambertin, good oil, beef or mutton, rice, and beans or lentils, his favourite vegetables. The Grand Marshall and M. Lobau rejoined us here.
I do not remember that I ever suffered so much from cold as on the journey from Wilna to Kowno. The thermometer had gone to twenty below. Although the Emperor was dressed in thick wool and covered with a good rug, with his legs in fur boots and then in a bag made of a bear’s skin, yet he complained of the cold to such an extent that I had to cover him with half my own bear-skin rug. Breath froze on the lips, and formed small icicles under the nose, on the eyebrows, and round the eyelids. All the clothwork of the carriage, and particularly the hood, where our breath rose, was frozen hard and white. When we reached Kowno the Emperor was shivering as with the ague.
At Rumsiszki we found a regiment on the line of march. On the way from Wilna to Kowno the Emperor again raised the problem whether he should take, as he had first intended, the direct route through Königsberg. Would it be prudent, with the possibility that some incident would lead to his recognition, to cross the whole breadth of Prussia? We had a commandant in every town, but apart from the regiments on the line of march we had no troops.
On the other hand there was so much snow that we might be seriously delayed if we followed a less frequented road, on which there were no post-horses. These considerations made us hesitate to take the road through the Duchy of Warsaw, which from other points of view was the safer. If we were not to be delayed, however, it was necessary to make up our minds, so that we could order the horses. After weighing again the advantages and disadvantages of each arrangement, we came to a decision. I say we, because the Emperor refused to judge the question and insisted that I alone should decide—which, I confess, seemed to me a heavy responsibility, and worried me considerably. I took a chance, and sent [word] forward along the road to Königsberg, but left myself free to change direction at Mariampol if I heard that the roads through the Duchy were passable.
Fagalde was sent in advance as far as Gumbinnen [on the road to Königsberg]. It was not without some difficulty that we climbed the almost perpendicular slope which one must surmount on leaving Kowno for Mariampol. We were forced to get out and walk. As the horses were falling or losing their foothold at every moment, the carriage was several times on the point of running backwards and tumbling over the precipice. We heaved at the wheels, and at last reached Mariampol. I held a consultation with the master of the posting-house, an honest fellow full of zeal and good feeling. He assured me that the roads were passable, and that if we gave him two hours’ start he would undertake to arrange relays of horses for us as far as Warsaw, going by Augustowo. The desire to meet his despatches from France en route made the Emperor incline a little toward the road by Königsberg; but he left the final choice to me. I did not hesitate. I sent instructions to Fagalde to rejoin us at Posen; and I sent the post-master along the road to Warsaw with instructions to order horses in my name as far forward as Pultusk, where he was to wait for us. He had seen the Emperor before, and so recognized him when we first arrived; he promised me, however, not to mention his name, and he kept to his word. The Emperor spoke to him, which delighted him.
We set out an hour behind him, and found peasants’ horses everywhere; but, as our carriage was on wheels and there was no time to fit runners on it, we were unable to get through the snow, which was piled up everywhere to a considerable height. The couriers’ sleighs, on the other hand, flew over the surface. Chance led me to discover a covered sledge at the first relay station. This was a piece of good fortune, in view of the Emperor’s impatience to reach his journey’s end. The gentleman who owned the sledge was glad to let me have it for a few gold pieces. The Emperor and I took our places in it. We left the carriage in charge of the footman, who had gallantly stuck by it, seated on the flunkey’s step. The Emperor hardly gave us time to transfer our rugs and arms; for lack of space in the sledge, he was even forced to abandon the toilet equipment which was so useful to him.58 The seats were uncomfortable, we were poorly supported against the jolts of the road, and the air was close; the Emperor, for the sake of arriving sooner, had sacrificed everything which makes a long journey endurable. Henceforward we travelled much more easily; we even made time. The Grand Marshal, who had again caught up with us at Mariampol, now fell behind us in the first mile we covered beyond the town. Thereafter we never saw again either a carriage or a man of all that had left Smorgoni with the Emperor.
The Emperor had become very cheerful as soon as we entered the Duchy,59 and had been talking incessantly about the army and about Paris. He had no doubt that the army would remain at Wilna, and did not in the least recognize the extent of his losses.
“Wilna is well stocked with food, and will put everything to rights again,” he said to me. “There are more supplies than it will take to stop the enemy. The Russians will be at least as tired as we are, and suffer just as much from the cold; they are certain to go into cantonments. Nothing will be seen of them but Cossacks. The orders and recommendations I left with M. Bassano will anticipate everything that can come up. Maret is confident of Schwarzenberg’s sense of honour, and says he will hold his position and defend the Duchy. M. Bassano has written to him, as well as to Vienna and Berlin.”
The Emperor was anxious only about the effect that our reverses had had upon those two courts. He felt, though, that his return to Paris would restore his political ascendancy.
“Our disasters,” he said, “will make a great sensation in France; but my arrival will counter-balance their bad effects.”
He planned to take advantage of his passage through Warsaw to bring the Poles to life.
“If they really want to be a nation, they’ll rise in a body against their enemies,” he added. “And if they do, I shall take up arms to defend them. Later on I should be able to grant Austria those concessions she has so much at heart; then we could proclaim the re-establishment of Poland. Austria has a greater interest in that than I have, because she lies nearer to the Colossus of Russia. If the Poles don’t do as they should, that will simplify things for France and for everyone else; for peace with Russia will then be easy.”
He chose to believe, or at least tried to make me think so, that all the cabinets of Europe, even those most wounded in pride by the power of France, were anxious that the Cossacks should not be allowed to cross the Niemen.
“The Russians should be viewed by everyone as a scourge,” he said further. “The war against Russia is a war which is wholly in the interests—if those interests are rightly judged—of Old Europe and of civilization. The Austrian Emperor and M. Metternich realize this so well that they often said as much to me at Dresden. Emperor Francis understands perfectly the weak and shifty character of Tsar Alexander, and mistrusts him, having already been deceived by his protestations and tricked by his promises. The Viennese government understands perfectly that, apart from Russian contact with Austria over a long frontier, and all the divergent interests arising from such a situation, Russia’s designs upon Turkey made her doubly dangerous. The reverses that France has just suffered will put an end to all jealousies and quiet all the anxieties that may have sprung from her power or influence. Europe should think of only one enemy. And that enemy is the Russian Colossus.”
I answered the Emperor frankly.
“As a matter of fact, it is Your Majesty they fear. It is Your Majesty who is the cause of everyone’s anxiety and prevents them from seeing other dangers. The governments are afraid there is going to be a World State. Your dynasty is already spreading everywhere, and the other dynasties are afraid they will see it established in their own countries. Even now all the German interests are being hurt by the system of taxation adopted three years ago. And the political inquisition set up by certain tactless representatives offends national opinion, wounds everyone’s self-respect, and runs counter to all their habits of thought. All these causes and considerations, which are perhaps partly hidden from Your Majesty, make their hatred of you a national force. And what has stirred up the people, even more than it has the governments, is the military regime imposed upon Germany under the administration of the Prince of Eckmühl.”60
The Emperor was so far from checking my frankness that he listened and replied not only without anger but with sly good-humour. From the way in which he received and discussed several of my remarks, one would have thought they did not touch him at any point. He smiled at the things which came closest to him, and kept up the air of taking them in good part and of wishing to encourage me to say all I had on my mind. At the things which doubtless seemed to him rather strongly expressed, he tried to tweak my ear; but he could not find it under my fur cap, and so my neck or my cheek received the pinch—a kindly rather than an irritable one. He was in such a good mood that he admitted the truth of some of the points I brought forward. Others he refuted. Concerning still others he remarked that particular interests might here and there have been disturbed by police measures, or by combinations of circumstances which had nothing to do with the end he had in view. The people, however, were too enlightened, he said, not to see, from the very administrative system of the countries he had merged together, that our laws, under which they now lived, offered real guarantees to every citizen against all arbitrary action. He insisted that our administration was based upon principles that were broadly conceived, noble, adapted to the ideas of the century, and suited to the real needs of the people. He went on to say:
“I could treat them like conquered countries, but I administer them like Departments of France. It is wrong of them to complain. It is the checks on trade that irk them. But those depend on considerations of a higher order, to which the interests of France must also yield. Only peace with England can end those inconveniences and their complaints. They need only be patient. Two years of persevering effort will bring about the fall of the English government. England will be forced to conclude a peace consistent with the commercial rights of all nations. Then they will forget the inconveniences they complain of; while the consequent prosperity, and the state of affairs that will then be established, will for the most part provide means for the prompt repair of all their losses.”
The Emperor complained that in these days everyone obstinately refused to look beyond the little circle of his own difficulties. Even the most capable men held to this narrow range of vision. Whereas it needed no more than a little goodwill to realize all the advantages they were on the point of enjoying as a result of a larger view. All the sacrifices had been made; it needed only patience to gather in the harvest. It was not given to everybody to judge the new road he had pointed out. The System he had been forced to adopt against England could be judged, together with everything that followed from it, only after the passage of some years. It ran counter to too many habits, and damaged too many petty interests, not to stir up discontent in a lot of people. And it was of these malcontents that the forces of stupidity and blind hate were now taking advantage.
He added that the Continental System was nonetheless a great conception, and was destined to win the voluntary consent of every people; for it was as much to the interest of individuals as it was to the interest of the Continent as a whole. Prohibition against prohibitioners was common justice. Moreover, in his desire to establish on the Continent industries that would make it independent of England, he had had no choice of means; he had adopted the sole method which would really hit England’s prosperity. It was a great undertaking; and only he could carry it out. If the present opportunity were allowed to pass, another would not come; for the enterprise had needed just that combination of circumstances which had in fact obtained in Europe during the last few years. He already had proof that he had not been mistaken, and could cite in support of his plea the flourishing condition of industry, not only in the original territory of France but also in Germany—and that, too, even though the wars were still going on.
The Emperor inferred from this that the Continental System had built up the industries of France and Germany. It would therefore, he said, be a source of wealth which would replace the foreign trade which we were at present missing. The benefit would be still more perceptible a little later. In less than three years the Rhineland, Germany, the very countries which were most hotly opposed to the prohibitions, would do justice to his foresight and his achievements. To have taught the French and the Germans that they could themselves earn the money which English industries had previously drawn out of the country, was a great victory over the London government. This result alone would immortalize his reign, through the internal prosperity it would bring to France and Germany.
The Emperor concluded from this that what I referred to as the colossus of the power of France was, at that time, a state of affairs wholly advantageous to Europe, since it was the only way to check the excessive pretensions of the English. England, he added, by the very fact that she weighed less heavily than he upon the chancelleries of Europe, weighed all the more heavily upon the people. For she seized for herself alone all the benefits of industrial development. As an island, she doubtless excited less jealousy and anxiety in the minds of governments that had no coast-lines. Her maritime ascendancy seemed for this reason less burdensome to the governments of Europe than the ascendancy of France. Her situation precluded the danger of territorial disputes with them. But her exclusive commercial policy was nonetheless damaging to individual interests. This fact was not willingly recognized at the present time because the various governments found it convenient to go to London for subsidies when they wanted them; and it mattered little to them if the cash they received had come from the pockets of their own subjects—or rather, had been earned at the expense of these subjects, whose industries would never be able to develop so long as the English monopoly continued.
The Emperor admitted that the annexation of Hamburg and of Lübeck,61 towns whose independence was useful to commerce, must have alarmed the traders as well as the governments of Europe because these changes were thought to indicate a policy which would be continued.
But he justified these measures of expediency by the necessity of confronting England, along that coast, with our own rigid system of prohibition of imports. He added that, as he was in conflict with the actual trade of the towns, he must win over the sentiments of all thinking persons in the population. Constitutional government and our code of laws would bring about that change. Being unable to maintain an army of twenty-five thousand men in the new Departments, he had instituted governmental reforms to ensure us the confidence of the inhabitants. This step, he added further, which was wholly advantageous to the greatest number and in the true interest of the landowners, already counter-balanced the opposition of the maritime trading interests, which could not be expected to become friendly so long as they could not resume their activities and find outlets for their capital.
The Emperor’s opinion was that, far from giving way on some points, he ought to strengthen every measure that might force England to make an earlier peace. He thought it better to suffer severely all at once than to suffer over a long time. Since the English tried every means to evade the prohibition of imports, in order to support their industries and uphold their credit, it was his duty to do all he could to triumph over their cunning, and force his enemy to yield.
“It is a battle of giants,” he went on to say. “The seaport merchants are caught between the two champions. How could anyone help being jostled in the fight? But this fight to the death is in the interests even of the men who grumble. They will be the first to gather the fruits. The English have driven me, forced me, to every step I have taken. If they had not broken the Treaty of Amiens, if they had made peace after Austerlitz, or after Tilsit, I would have stayed quietly at home. Fear for my commercial capital would have kept me in check. I should have undertaken nothing outside France, for it would not have been to my advantage. I should have grown rusty and easy-going. Nothing could be more delightful. I am no enemy to the pleasures of life. I am no Don Quixote, with a craving for adventures. I am a reasonable being, who does no more than he thinks will profit him. The only difference between me and other rulers is that difficulties can stop them. But I like to overcome difficulties whenever it is clear to me that the end in view is a great and noble one, worthy of myself and of the people over whom I rule.
“If the English had let me,” he repeated, “I would have lived in peace. It is in their own interests alone that they have carried on the fight, and refused offers of peace; for if they had acted in the interests of Europe they would have accepted them. Holding Malta in the Mediterranean, and being in a position to protect other points necessary for the safety of their trade and the victualling of their fleet, what other claim could they advance? What further security could they want? But it is their monopoly they want to keep. They need an enormous volume of trade if their customs-houses are to pay the interest on their public debt. If the English were acting in good faith, they would not so consistently have refused to negotiate. They are afraid they would have to explain themselves, and they dare not admit their designs. If we negotiated, they would have to put their cards on the table. And then the world would see which side had been acting in good faith.
“They say—and you are the first to say it, Caulaincourt—that I abuse my power. I admit it, but I do it for the good of the Continent at large. Now England thoroughly abuses her strength, the power that comes from standing isolated among the tempests. And she does so for her own good alone. The good of that Europe which seems to envelop her with goodwill counts for nothing with the merchants of London. They would sacrifice every State in Europe, even the whole world, to further one of their speculations. If their debt were not so large they might be more reasonable. It is the necessity of paying this, of maintaining their credit, that drives them on. Some day they will certainly have to do something about that debt. Meanwhile they sacrifice the world to it. The world will realize that, in time; men’s eyes will be opened; but it will be too late. If I triumph over them, Europe will bless me. If I fall, the English will soon drop their mask. The world will see that they have thought of nothing but themselves; that they have sacrificed the peace of a continent to their momentary interests.
“The Continent cannot—or rather, should not—complain of measures that aim at closing it, for the moment, against English trade. The annexations that have provoked such an outcry are temporary measures”; so he told me in confidence. “They are designed to inconvenience the English, to wreck their trade, to break off their trade relations. They are pledges which I hold in exchange for our colonies, or those of the Dutch, or certain claims which the English must give up for the general good.”
Since peace could last and could promise a future for everyone only if it were general, it was wrong, according to the Emperor, to complain of all his efforts to achieve it. Clearsighted people and real politicians well knew what was his aim.
The Emperor asked me several times during the journey if I thought that Russia would make peace. He added that it would be wise of the Tsar Alexander to conclude it while he was enjoying some measure of success. I replied that I still doubted if he would negotiate so long as we were within his territory, and that the reverses we had suffered would not in the least incline him towards peace.
“So you think he is very proud?”
“I think he is obstinate. He may well be a little proud of having to some extent foreseen what has happened, and of having refused to listen to any proposals while we were at Moscow.”
The Emperor took up the point:
“The burning of the Russian towns, the burning of Moscow, was merely stupid,” he said. “Why use fire, if he relied so much on the winter? He has arms and soldiers for fighting. It is madness to spend so much money on them for nothing. One should not begin by harming oneself more than if one were beaten by the enemy. Kutusof’s retreat was inept as it could be: it’s the winter that has been our undoing. We are victims of the climate. The fine weather tricked me. If I had set out a fortnight sooner, my army would be at Witepsk;62 and I should be laughing at the Russians and your prophet Alexander. He would be regretting that he did not negotiate. All our disasters hinge on that fortnight, and on the failure to carry out my orders for the levies of Polish Cossacks.
“Those prophetic proclamations of his were all nonsense. If they had wanted to draw us on into the interior they should have retired in the first place and not have endangered Bagration’s army by spreading their forces over a line which, being too near the frontier, had to be too long. They should not have spent so much money building card-castles along the Dwina. They should not have collected so many stores there. They have been planning from one day to the next without settled scheme. They have never been able to fight to any purpose. But for the cowardice and stupidity of Partouneaux, the Russians would not have captured a single waggon from me at the crossing of the Beresina; and we should have cut off part of their advance-guard, taken eighteen hundred prisoners, and, with an army of wretches who had nothing left but their lives, we should have won a battle against the pick of their infantry, which has fought against the Turks. Actually, though, when the wreck of our army was surrounded by three of theirs, what did they do? They picked off the wretches who were dying of cold or whom hunger forced to break away from their units!”
On another occasion the Emperor remarked to me that if the Russians had really intended to draw him into the interior, they would not have marched to attack him at Witepsk; that from the beginning they should have harassed our flanks more. He said they should have waged only this guerilla warfare, intercepting our despatches, our smaller detachments, the officers who came out to join us, and the raiding parties. He regarded it as a serious fault to have given battle so near to Moscow.
“Everything turned out badly,” the Emperor said to me on another occasion, “because I stayed too long at Moscow. If I had left four days after I occupied it, as I thought of doing when I saw the town in flames, the Russians would have been lost. The Tsar would have been only too glad to accept the generous peace which I should then have offered from Witepsk. Even from Wilna, if the cold hadn’t robbed me of my army, I should have dictated the terms of peace; and your precious Alexander would have signed them, if only to be rid of the military guardianship of his boyars. It was they who thrust Kutusof upon him. And what has Kutusof done? He risked losing his army on the Moskowa, and brought about the burning of Moscow. During the retreat when he had nothing to fight against but lifeless troops, nothing but walking ghosts, what did he attempt? He and Wittgenstein permitted the crushing of the admiral.
“All the other Russian generals were worth more than that old dowager Kutusof. Tolly did at least spare the army: he did not fight with a capital at his back. Even Wittgenstein, who had just committed so many blunders so as not to put himself under the orders of the admiral or Kutusof, was far superior to him. If the King of Naples plays me no foolish tricks, if he supervises the generals and stays at first with the vanguard so as to encourage the younger troops, who will be a little scared, things will soon be righted again. The Russians will halt, and the Cossacks will keep their distance as soon as they see us show our teeth. If the Poles support me and the Russians don’t make peace during the winter, you will see what has happened to them by July.
“Everything has conspired to cause my failure. I was not well served in Warsaw. The Abbé de Pradt was afraid: he played the busy-body instead of the grand seigneur. He looked after his own interests, and chattered in drawing-rooms and newspapers. But in public affairs—nothing. He roused no enthusiasm in the Poles. The levies were not made; I got nothing from all the resources I should have been able to rely on. Bassano bungled things in Poland as he did in Turkey and in Sweden. I was wrong to be angry with Talleyrand. The boudoir intrigues of the Duchess 63 irritated me against him; and now my affairs have miscarried. He would have given a much more definite direction to Polish effort. As it is, the Poles have immortalized themselves in our ranks, as individuals, but they have done nothing for their country. Everyone lauded this Abbé de Pradt to me. He has intelligence, but he’s a muddler.”
On another occasion the Emperor said to me, speaking of the Tsar Alexander:
“He is an intelligent prince, and full of good intentions. He is more capable than all his ministers. If he were less distrust-ful of his own powers he would be better than all his generals. He needs only decisiveness to be very capable indeed; but he is not master in his own house. He is continually hampered by a thousand petty considerations on account of his family, and of individuals, too. Although he takes a close interest in the army and gives a good deal of attention to it—perhaps more than I do, to questions of detail—yet he is deceived about these very things. Distance, custom, the opposition of the nobility to recruiting, and the interest that ill-paid commanders have in drawing pay and rations, all combine to keep the army from being up to strength. They had been working ceaselessly for three years to bring it up to strength; and as a result they had less than half the number of men under arms that they were supposed to have had before the day of battle came. You must admit you thought yourself that the army was much stronger than it was. I always thought you overestimated them, but you never would believe me.
“That Cossack at Ghjat was right when he said that the Russian generals valued their comfort and didn’t know how to fight properly. One must do justice to the Cossacks. It is they who have achieved all the Russian successes in this campaign. They are certainly the best light troops in existence. That army might go a long way if the Russian soldiers had someone else to lead them.”
At various times the Emperor discussed with me the sacrifices that peace would involve, and what the Russians would probably demand on behalf of the Duke of Oldenburg.
“They will want to re-establish him in his possessions,” he said. “Alexander takes the matter very much to heart because of the dowager Empress.”
Since he had asked my opinion, I put it to him that I found it difficult to suppose the Russians would not try to profit by the occasion, to the extent of obtaining the evacuation of Danzig and the other positions in the North which we had used as starting-points against them. I said that if we were obliged to abandon the Niemen, as I expected we should be, their demands would surely include the surrender of our fortified positions on the Oder. At this the Emperor cried out in protest that he would then lose all the advantages he had so far obtained against the English; that the main issue still was to force them to make peace, for without that there could be no lasting tranquillity. I replied that it might be possible to maintain the customs-organization in the ports and along the coast without turning them into French citadels.
“And the Russians?” he asked. “What attitude will they take with regard to England?”
“Your Majesty is in a better position to pronounce on that question than I,” I replied. “But certainly you will not persuade them to put themselves in the same position that they were in before. I doubt if even the Tsar could do that.”
“Then peace is impossible,” the Emperor replied sharply, “if it is not to be general. One must not deceive oneself.”
The conversation later turned on the situation in France and on the uneasy state of Europe, which I attributed to the invasions that had taken place. I suggested to the Emperor that a system of more modified power within more restricted limits would bind our allies to us, and even those States which would remain outside the system. I pointed out to him that from the Duke of Gotha to the Emperor of Austria, all the governments were frightened by the expansion of our political system; that they saw it as a step towards a universal monarchy, for which the war with England seemed to them a pretext.
The Emperor listened to me attentively, joked about my moderation, and repeated to me what he had said on other occasions about his intentions and his motives. He tried to prove to me that he was far from having in view those ends with which he was credited. He was working against the English alone; since their trade had ramifications everywhere, he had to pursue them everywhere. He said it was the intrigues of the English, what he called fides Punica, which had continually forced him to extend his sphere of operations. He spoke of how needful it would always be for him to maintain a considerable army, as long as the struggle with the English continued, because their government was always working to stir up Europe against him—and so forth.
I spoke of the impression produced, even in France, by these frequent annexations of provinces and by these changes of allies which disturbed the loyalties of the people. I told the Emperor that instead of looking on these things as advantages, people were disturbed by them, and were made anxious about the future. And I added the following reflections on these points. These amazing extensions of power were, I thought, destructive to the feeling of stability, and actually prevented that feeling of confidence through which institutions acquire their sanctity. Even those who flattered him felt that while his genius might make these new structures last for his lifetime, they would never last beyond it. People did not dare to tell him so, but they thought so; and this opinion was all the more strongly held for being suppressed. It was felt that he was creating great difficulties for his son. He was arming Europe in advance against the King of Rome, and even against his family; and it was a pity, when founding a new dynasty, to give room for a growing expectation of some change. No one would be able to support the burden of that colossus which the course of events and the vigour of his rule were now setting in motion. These diverse nations would never make Frenchmen; the Rhinelanders already were finding it hard to persuade themselves that they had become French.
The Emperor admitted with absolute frankness the justice of my remarks. He did, however, rebut several of them:
“I shall create institutions,” he said, “to strengthen the organization I have set up. No one can foretell what sacrifices I might not make—and even gladly—to secure such a state of affairs in Europe as would guarantee a lasting peace to all people, and which would guarantee to the French, and to the Germans, domestic prosperity such as the English enjoy. They are a worthy people, the Germans,” he added. “They must be repaid for the sacrifices they have made. I am not clinging to Hamburg, or to any other place in particular. I am not one of those narrow-minded men who see things from only one point of view and are obstinate on a question. There will be many ways of arranging things as soon as the English make up their minds to peace, and agree to concede to others those rights and privileges which Heaven never intended for them alone. We can never make peace with the English unless we have compensations to offer them, because among them the ministry have a responsibility toward the people about which they must be set at rest. They cannot take so decisive a step as making peace with France unless they can say to the nation: ‘We have made a certain sacrifice for such and such reasons; but here are the compensations made to us, and the advantages we have gained.’ There is a delicate and difficult relationship between the country and the ministry, and still more so, therefore, between the ministry and myself. Without this English peace, however, all others are merely truces. The English are playing for too high stakes to give way lightly. They know very well that I shall take advantage of a peace to establish a navy—that I shall not allow ourselves to be robbed again of our commercial capital during a state of peace. They know that a navy in my hands could do them considerable damage. If they were sure I should live only three or four years more, they would make peace to-morrow; for the difficulty of the question lies in the navy that I shall have—that I shall build up within a few years.”
He added further that he had greater need of peace than anyone, and frankly desired it. How could anyone doubt that? He did not live under canvas for his own pleasure. It was the English who would not decide upon peace and who, according to him, might not be in a position to decide upon it, being afraid of the future. The English ministry included some clever men, who could not have overlooked any of the major considerations of which he spoke. He was well aware that the institutions of France were incomplete. He did not disguise from himself that peace alone would put him in a position to give them their full development. And who could doubt that he desired peace, when only peace could consolidate this achievement? In the forefront of those institutions he put the Senate, which by no means enjoyed the independence it must have if it were to command respect enough to influence the opinion of the country. He told me that he would raise it to the status of a Chamber of Peers.
The Emperor pointed out that the failure of this campaign was an obstacle to everything. There had to be a buffer state as an outpost against irruptions from the North, and to exercise a moderating influence on the ambitions of other powers. Europe owed its misfortunes to the weakness of the Bourbons in allowing a partition of Poland. The Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia fully realized the mistake that had been made. They had, quite openly, entered the war against Russia solely because they were the people most interested in the creation of this barrier. The Austrians expected through these arrangements to obtain a redistribution of territory which would give them necessary outlets for their trade. The King of Prussia flattered himself perhaps that the new state would come under his rule.
The Emperor added further that the silence maintained by the Russians towards the Austrians when the latter attempted mediation, before the opening of the campaign, had left the Emperor Francis in no doubt as to the ambitious intentions of the Tsar Alexander. Francis had told him so several times at Dresden. The Russian government snatched with both hands, from friends as much as from enemies. Everything looked good to them. After Tilsit they had profited at the expense of their allies the Prussians; after the war against Austria they had accepted a portion of Galicia. No delicate scruples ever hindered the Tsar from rounding off his territory.
The Emperor put forward the reflection that the Tsar, with his gentle methods and air of moderation, had done more for the interests of Russia than the ambitious Catherine whom they idolized; and that Finland was of far greater importance to an empire whose capital was at Petersburg than the uninhabited Crimea and all that which Catherine had conquered from the Turks.
The Emperor kept reverting to the idea that the Austrians desired the restoration of Poland, and that they were by no means set on retaining what remained to them of Galicia, adding that, at the Peace of Vienna, they would gladly have surrendered their millions of Galicians for a part of Illyria, no matter what, or for a few fragments of territory on the Inn. This arrangement could be made, therefore, whenever he wished.64 His father-in-law had urged it upon him at Dresden, and indeed had probably come there in the hope of concluding the matter. He, however, had wished to be sure of the attitude of the Lithuanians, and to see for himself whether the Poles were capable of becoming and remaining an independent country. The result of this policy was that he had not yet set all the Poles free; and events were proving him right. He would soon be able to see whether they were as worthy of independence nationally as they were individually; for adversity steels a gallant spirit more than prosperity. He intended to speak to that effect at Warsaw. He would tell the Poles all our misfortunes, and even all the dangers in which they stood. But he would tell them also all that he hoped for, if they, as a nation, would second him.
I pointed out to the Emperor that the lack of unity and zeal of which he complained on the part of the Poles was surely due to his leaving them in too great uncertainty about their future. In practice there was no limit to the sacrifices asked of them; the unfortunate Duchy, after furnishing supplies for everything over a long period, seemed now to be exhausted, and even the richest no longer had a penny to their names. I reminded him that I had always appreciated the advantages of this restoration, for it would form a buffer state; and held that this motive was sufficient, as I had had the honour of telling him in other circumstances, to justify the war against Russia. But for several years, I, like many others, and even like some of the Poles, ... had seen in his references to Poland and in the measures he had taken, only a method of arriving, through that restoration, at a different goal. In fact, Poland had become a military and political stepping-stone.
Moreover, I pointed out to him jokingly that everything he told me about his conversations at Dresden with the Emperor Francis, about his refusal to give up Illyria to the Austrians, and indeed about all that had passed between M. Bassano and M. Metternich, showed me that he wanted to hold over Austria his power of giving or refusing, according to circumstances. He wished always to be able to make use of the Poles, I told him; to stimulate them with hopes, but not to make any undertaking so definite as to inconvenience his further plans or prevent him from adapting his course of action to future events. I added that when Poland was once restored, the Poles would show scant eagerness to supply us with troops to fight in Spain. In fact it was perfectly plain that if he really had been guided by those broad European considerations that demand a buffer state, he would at once have indemnified the Austrians for the loss of their Polish interests and proclaimed the restoration of Poland.
The Emperor replied with a smile:
“You make the same political calculations as the English.” Then he added sharply: “But how was I to make peace with the Russians if they would not cede Lithuania? I could not bind myself to be at war all my life for this object. I certainly did want a restored Poland, but not a Poland whose king would tremble before the Russians and after a couple of years put himself under their protection. Under an elected king, the state could not maintain itself. It would be out of tune with the rest of Europe. Under a hereditary monarch the jealousy of the great houses would again have brought about its dismemberment. Do you suppose, for instance, that the Lithuanians would have reconciled themselves to a Poniatowski? The condition of the Court at Petersburg, and the protection of the ruler of a great empire, would always have suited them far better than the petty court of Mme. Tyszkiewicz at Warsaw.65
“Poland must be made into a powerful state by the addition of further provinces. It must have Danzig, and a coast-line, so that the country may have an outlet for its produce. And it must have a foreign king. A Pole would create too much jealousy. To name this king in advance would have cooled the zeal of the Poles, for they are none too sure themselves what they want. The Czartoriskis, the Poniatowskis, the Potockis, and a host of others, are full of pretensions. Murat would have suited them, but he has so little sense! Jerome, of whom I had thought, has no other quality but vanity; I’ve had nothing but blunders from him. He left the army because he would not serve under Davout, as though he did not owe his throne to the Battle of Auerstädt. His behaviour in the Duchy when he passed through was regrettable. My family have never backed me up. My brothers are as full of pretensions as though they could say “The King, our father...”
Breaking off suddenly, the Emperor asked me:
“Whom would you have made king?”
I replied that as I had never made any kings, I was not prepared to answer him offhand.
The Emperor laughed, and said the choice was very difficult. I replied that I thought, even more definitely than he, that to establish his own dynasty on that throne would create yet another cause of anxiety in Europe; that it seemed to me very difficult even to hope for such a thing in the present state of affairs; that in any circumstances a member of his family on the throne of Poland would have been yet another obstacle to peace with the English, although in itself the creation of this buffer state would have suited their policy.
“In that regard you are quite right,” the Emperor said.
The conversation gradually turned to past events, to Prussia and the Peace of Tilsit. I told the Emperor that, instead of destroying Prussia, it seemed to me he should have reconstructed it—even perhaps under the name of the Kingdom of Poland, if he thought it useful to revive that power. I said that he had there broken down the very buffer state which it was so useful to have in the centre of Europe; and that in his place I should freely have pardoned the Prussians, and reorganized their power on a larger scale and without the intervention of the Russians, in order to bring them within my system of alliances—a result which would certainly have followed from making Prussia Polish.
“The policy of the Prussians has always been so tortuous,” said the Emperor, “and they have always shown such bad faith towards everyone, and have been so clumsy, that no government was genuinely interested in them. I hesitated for a moment whether to declare that the house of Brandenburg should no longer reign; but I had used the Prussians so severely that some consolation had to be left to them. And then Alexander took so much interest in the fate of that family that I gave in to his requests. I made a serious mistake; for I left the King enough power to keep him mindful of the power he has lost.”
I replied that to change the ruling house, if he mistrusted it, was undoubtedly preferable to depriving Europe of a State whose power would continue indispensable to him, even if he insisted on taking that power out of the hands of the house of Brandenburg. The Emperor answered that it would have been difficult to make the Tsar Alexander take that view, though more on account of the King than on account of the country; and at that time his main and absolutely necessary object had been to close the Continent against the English. It was to achieve this that he had made the concession.
The Emperor complained yet again of his brothers. I pointed out that it was difficult not to desire complete independence from the moment that one became a king. Moreover, it was often necessary for their popularity in their own countries that they should resist the Emperor’s demands. As my frankness did not seem unpalatable, I said that his intention was indeed to create kingdoms, but that in fact he only allotted his kings extended prefectures in place of independent States; and that, his kings being mere proconsuls, their position did not match with their title and the condition of their affairs. The Emperor smiled as though he found my remarks correct.
Probably the conversation did not displease him; he reverted to it five or six times during the journey, and I needed no urging to repeat the same views. The Emperor nearly always tried to bring me to his own opinion. He put patience and detailed care into the endeavour, discussing and reasoning as though I were some foreign power whom it would be to his advantage to persuade. Though his reasoning brought me to share his view on one or two points, in the main I held to my own. I noticed that he passed lightly over points which he did not wish to explain. Then if I came back to them, he would say:
“You see things as a young man; you don’t understand.”
He also said at times, when my opinion was too much at variance with his:
“You don’t understand anything about public affairs.”
Often he would not agree that things were as I represented them. In answer to the remarks which most directly attacked his ambition and his passion for war, he smiled, joked, and tried to get hold of my ear and pinch it—an action which my fur bonnet always made difficult. He would give me several friendly taps on the neck, and say jokingly:
“They’re wrong! I’m not ambitious. Long nights, fatigue, war—I’m too old for all that. I like my bed and my rest as well as anyone; but I want to finish my work. In this world there are only two alternatives: command or obey. The attitude of all the governments towards France showed me that she could count on nothing but her own power: which means, on force. So I’ve been obliged to make her powerful, and to maintain large armies. I did not pick a quarrel with the Austrians, when they grew alarmed about the fate of England and forced me to leave Boulogne and fight the battle of Austerlitz. I had not been threatening the Prussians, when they forced me to go and dethrone them at Jena. But in any case, what is this power they talk about? Nothing! The power of the whole Continent is nothing so long as the flag does not protect trade. The passports of the Duke of Gotha are respected at Paris as they are at Weimar, but the Austrians cannot send out a felucca loaded with Hungarian wine without the permission of the Court of St. James.
“I have more foresight than the other rulers,” the Emperor added. “I want to take advantage of this opportunity to wind up the old quarrel between England and the Continent. Similar circumstances will never occur again. What seems to offend no one but me to-day will offend the other rulers before long. Emotion and habits of thought are against me. The ministries are blinded by prejudice and favouritism. After a few years of harmful peace the nations and their rulers would realize their need. I am the only one who can see it now because the others are determined to shut their eyes to it. The power of the English, as it is at present, rests only upon the monopoly they exercise over other nations, and can be maintained only by that. Why should they alone reap the benefits which millions of others could reap as well? The proof that they exploit for themselves what should belong to others lies in the fact that they live only by their customs-houses, by their trading, and that their population cannot consume all that pays tax to them. Why should what others consume pay dues to London?
“If I were so weak as to give way on certain points in order to make an improper peace, the Continent would blame me for it within four years. There would be no time to change it then. All our wealth would be at sea; and the English—who would have taken advantage of the truce to fill their coffers and get their breath—would confiscate it all if we showed the least sign of provocation before certain governments had been roused by the howling of their merchants. Then ten years of war, of trouble and misfortune, with three or four coalitions formed and broken up, might not take us even so far as the point we have reached to-day. But posterity sums up without favour and will judge between Rome and Carthage. The verdict will be for the French. They are fighting now, whatever the world may say, only for the general good. It is therefore just that the flags of the Continent should stand in line with ours. The French are fighting for the most sacred rights of nations: the English are only defending their self-assumed privileges.”
Returning later to this subject, the Emperor remarked to me that the more he studied the government of England the more innately vigorous it seemed to him. It had all the advantages possible to an oligarchy. It was strong in wealth and influence; it ruled the country with the support of the public opinion which it created itself through its many connections. He considered, moreover, that it drew added force even from the opposition—which, according to him, grew weaker every day because it only served to show the strength of its adversaries. According to the Emperor the ranks of the opposition would be still further thinned; for men starting on a career would for their own advantage take the side of power, which is also the side of Fortune. He was of opinion that, if the war continued, the English would fall within two years into a kind of bankruptcy, by reducing the rates of interest. And if peace were made, this bankruptcy would come within ten years unless the new conditions, which would follow on the great changes now about to take place in the New World, should offer the English an enormous outlet for their trade.
“In English affairs,” he said, “everything depends on an imaginary factor. Their credit rests upon confidence, since they have nothing on which to secure it; although I admit the government has something even better, since all individual fortunes are wrapped up with those of the State. The system of continual borrowing, which continually links the present with the past, does in some degree compel confidence in the future. By involving everyone’s fortunes in the fortunes of the State, their government has gained something better than the actual security it lacked; for by that means it has created an unlimited security in the shape of individual self-interest. That,” the Emperor added emphatically, “is why we must have perseverance. The time is not far off when the ministry will not be able to raise loans so easily—or at least not such big ones. Then they will not be able to grant their subsidies, which have a great influence on the Continent. For, apart from France, the States of the Continent possess nothing but worthless paper; only at London and Paris is there any money or any credit. At this moment, English affairs are at a crisis. Their trade is damaged. Doubtless the Russians, by opening their ports to them, are delaying the effect of the depression; but since the cause continues the evil hour is only postponed. The English have, it is true, considerable resources yet; but since with them everything depends upon confidence, the least thing may paralyze, endanger, and even destroy their whole system, in spite of the fact that there are among them some very capable men and citizens moved by a true love of their country.”
The Emperor returned continually to the subject of England, which occupied his mind above everything else, and during one of our conversations he said to me:
“The people of Europe are blind to their real dangers. They pay heed to nothing but the inconvenience they feel on account of the war at sea. One might think that all the politics and all the interests of this unhappy Continent are bounded by the price of a cask of sugar. It is pitiable: yet that is how things stand. They protest only against the French, and refuse to see anything but the French armies—as though the English also were not present on every side, and more threatening by far. Heligoland, Gibraltar, Tarifa, Malta—aren’t all those English citadels? Don’t they threaten the trade of all the powers much more than Danzig threatens the trade of Russia? Yet if I gave the people of Europe their head, they would deliver themselves into the hands of the English. Next day they would let the English have Corfu—yes, and Madeira—just as they have already given them the Cape. Yet from the rocks of Malta the English already control Turkey, and consequently the Black Sea and Russia also. At Gibraltar they hold the entrance to the Mediterranean. If they could seize Corfu they would have a foothold in Greece, and be masters even of the gulf. [The Adriatic.]
“The situation leaps to the eye; yet the Austrians will not, any more than the Russians, admit the dangers that threaten them. Jealousy of France is stronger than reason. They refuse to exercise any foresight. But for me, the European governments would grant the English to-morrow the supremacy they desire. When all trade protection is subject to the whims of the London government—when we are forced to eat no sugar but of their selling, and to wear only stockings and cloth of their manufacture—then Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin will grasp the fact that the English have a monopoly. Until then they will shut their eyes to it, for fear of recognizing that I am defending the interests of all of us alike. The fact is plain to people of goodwill. But where is there any goodwill? The blindness of European politics is pitiable.”
The same trend of conversation led us on another occasion to discuss the outlets that the English had secured for their trade; and the outlets they were seeking, and would secure, in the Spanish colonies brought us finally to the war in the Peninsula.
“Doubtless it would have been better,” the Emperor said to me, “to have wound up the war in Spain before embarking on this Russian expedition—though there is much room for discussion on the point. As for the war in Spain itself, it is now a matter only of guerilla contests. On the day the English are driven out of the Peninsula, there will be nothing left of the war but isolated bodies of rebels; and one cannot hope to clear a country of those in a month or two.
“Since the opposition to the new régime comes from the lower classes, only time and the conduct of the upper classes—assisted by a strong and cautious government which has the support of a national gendarmerie and, at the same time, of the presence of some French troops—will calm the storm. Their hatred will wear out when they see that we bring them only wiser laws; a code more liberal, and better suited to the times in which we live, than the ancient customs and the Inquisition by which the country used to be governed. At present the Spaniards are fighting because they still believe that we want to make Frenchmen of them. Everything will settle down as soon as we can persuade them that it is to our interest that they should continue to be Spaniards. But for the disasters in Russia the time would be drawing near when the French troops would not need to occupy more than a few fortified points in certain provinces. If the peasants saw no more French troops about the countryside, if they were governed only by their own governors and controlled only by Spanish police, confidence would be established, and this would lead to a spread of peace and reconciliation.”
According to the Emperor the presence of the English army was the greatest obstacle to the pacification of Spain; but he would rather see it in that country than be threatened with it, at any moment, in Brittany or Italy, or anywhere, in fact, where the coast was accessible. As it was, he knew where to look for the English; whereas if they were not occupied there he would be forced to prepare for them, and hold himself ready for defence against them, at every point. And that would use up many more troops, give him much more anxiety, and possibly do him much more damage.
“If thirty thousand English landed in Belgium,” he said to me, “or in the Pas-de-Calais, and requisitioned supplies from three hundred villages—if they were to go and burn the château of Caulaincourt—they would do us much more harm than by forcing me to maintain an army in Spain. You would make a much worse outcry, my good Master of Horse! You would complain much more loudly than you do when you say that I aim at universal monarchy! The English are playing into my hands. If the ministry were in my pay, they could not act in a way more favourable to me. You must take good care not to repeat the ideas I express to you; for if the idea entered their heads to make expeditions against my coasts, now at one point and now at another—to re-embark as soon as forces were collected to fight them, and go at once to threaten some other point—the situation would be insupportable.
“As it is,” he added, “the war in Spain costs me no more than any other war, or any other compulsory defence against the English. So long as peace is not made with that power, there is not much difference in cost between the present state of affairs in Spain and an ordinary state of war with England. In view of the great length of Spain’s coast-line, and with the situation as it now stands, we must limit ourselves to keeping the English under observation—unless, indeed, they should march into the interior, or unless a highly favourable opportunity should arise for giving battle; for if we forced them to re-embark at one point, they would disembark again at another, since they would always be sure of finding auxiliaries.
“The marshals and generals who have been left to look after themselves in Spain might have done better; but they will not come to an agreement. There has never been any unity in their operations. They detest each other to such an extent that they would be in despair if one thought he had made a movement that might reflect some glory on another. Accordingly there is nothing to be done except hold the country and try to pacify it, until I can myself put some vigour into the operations there. Soult has ability: but no one will take orders. Every general wants to be independent, so as to play the viceroy in his own province. In Wellington,” he added, “my generals have encountered an opponent superior to some of them. Moreover, they have made childish mistakes. Marmont shows a really high quality of judgment and logic in discussing war, but is not even moderately able in action. In fact, our momentary reverses in that war, which delight the city of London, have little effect on the general course of affairs—and cannot indeed have any real importance, since I can change the face of affairs whenever I please.
“Events at present,” he said, “are giving Wellington a reputation; but in war men may lose in a day what they have spent years in building up. As to the outlet for English trade which the war has created in the Spanish colonies, I admit that that is certainly unfortunate; for within two years those outlets may counter-balance our prohibition of imports on the Continent.”
The Emperor saw, in the separation of these colonies from their mother country,66 an important development which would change the politics of the world, which would give new strength to America, and in less than ten years would threaten the power of the English—which would be a compensation. He did not question that Mexico, and all the major Spanish possessions overseas, would declare their independence and form one or two nations under a form of government which would force them, in their own interests, to become auxiliaries of the United States.
“It marks a new era,” he said. “It will lead to the independence of all other colonies.”
The changes that would arise from this development he regarded as the most important of the century, since they would shift the balance of commercial interests and, in consequence, alter the policy of the different governments.
“All the colonies,” he said, “will follow the example of the United States. You grow tired of waiting for orders from five thousand miles away; tired of obeying a government which seems foreign to you because it is remote, and because of necessity it subordinates you to its own local interest, which it cannot sacrifice to yours. As soon as colonies feel strong enough to resist, they want to shake off the yoke of those who created them. One’s country is where one lives; a man does not take long to forget that he or his father was born under another sky. Ambition achieves what self-interest has begun. They want to have a standing of their own; and then the yoke is soon thrown off.”
I spoke to the Emperor of the moral effect which the resistance of the Spanish nation was having on people in general, and suggested to him that he was mistaken in attaching no importance to the example they were setting. I reminded him of the remark of the Tsar Alexander, which had struck me and which I had repeated to him on my return: “You have beaten the Spanish armies but you have not subdued the nation. The nation will raise other armies. The Spaniards, without any government, are setting a noble example to other nations. They are teaching the sovereigns what can be accomplished by perseverance in a just cause.”
The Emperor treated as a joke what he called “the maxims of the prophet of the North.” He added, however:
“Although he made many mistakes—or, at least, allowed his generals to make them—the Tsar Alexander is the only one [among the rulers] who has shown good judgment, and made a sound estimate of his position and of the course of events. That prince has more intelligence than men think; and he has good judgment. His misfortune lies in being so poorly seconded.”
Returning to affairs in Spain, the Emperor said:
“It is easy to pronounce judgment upon what is past; and easy to exalt as heroism what pertains to causes that are in truth hardly honourable. The heroism with which, in their hatred of France, they now credit the Spaniards, arises simply out of the barbarous condition of that half-savage population and out of the superstitions to which the mistakes of our generals have given new vigour. It is out of laziness, not out of heroism, that the Spanish peasant prefers the dangers of a smuggler’s life, or a highwayman’s, to the labours of cultivating the soil. The Spanish peasants have seized the opportunity of taking up this nomadic, smuggler’s existence which is so well suited to their taste and to the relief of their extreme poverty. There’s nothing patriotic about that.”
The Emperor cited, in support of his dictum, that armies of fifty thousand Spaniards gave ground and took to flight before much smaller forces, because the Spaniards would only go into danger where there was hope of booty.
“The Romans and the Spartans,” he added, “had other aims. They faced death for other motives. The land of their fathers meant something to them; but the wretched Spaniard is only moved by the attractions of booty. Anything is better than the miserable existence he leads in his own village. It is nothing but bias that has pompously ascribed nobility to a course of action whose objects have never been honourable, although the result may be useful at the moment to the cause they think the Spaniards are defending. The Spaniard of to-day is still the same as in the time of the Romans; like a savage, he hates the foreigner—or, rather, whatever is unfamiliar to him. He hates anything that tends to bring him out of his state of barbarism. The Spanish peasantry have even less share in the civilization of Europe than the Russians.
“It is true,” he went on, “that the proximity of the Spanish Bourbons to my own dynasty, which sits on the throne of Louis XVI, seemed to me a state of affairs which was likely to prove inconvenient. I often discussed it with Talleyrand, as I did so many other questions which are involved in the broader interests of the world. For a long time, however, I did not think that it bore directly upon the affairs of the moment; for it seemed to me very clear that the obstinate stupidity of the King, controlled as he was by Godoy, the ‘Prince of Peace,’ would keep the country from any development that might cause me anxiety. Accordingly I had no other intention than to make Spain useful to me against the English. The weakness of the King— combined with the interests of his favourite, who would wish, I thought, not to be in bad odour with the French—suited my policy too well for me to have any thought of other arrangements. And then suddenly, roused no doubt by the mutterings of Castilian pride which had been wounded by some proposal, or by some clumsiness on the part of our diplomatic representatives, the King felt the moment favourable to regain the respect of the Spaniards by calling them out against me, to whom he was thought to have sold himself. The fool! At the moment when his favour was disappearing in a general outcry against him, he thought to save himself by rousing the nation in the very direction of its discontent; and in trying to save himself he lost Spain. And Murat, in his turn, lost Spain for me by trying to save the favourite. For in the Madrid rebellion the nation was angry only against Godoy; they only looked upon us as enemies because Murat tried to save him and by this tactlessness gave the nation ground for believing what ill will whispered against us: that we were partners with Godoy, or he with us.”
The Emperor discussed Godoy’s insolent proclamation to the Spaniards—the proclamation of October 3, 1806.67
“The behaviour of the favourite,” he said to me, “seemed a little suspicious even before Jena. It would have seemed thoroughly suspicious if my ambassador had been a capable man and had kept me informed of what was happening in Spain; but I was not well served. Amazed to find then an opposition to which I was not accustomed in that cabinet, I was on my guard. This change of policy even made me wish to arrange the differences which had arisen with Prussia, although otherwise I should have made haste to pick up the gauntlet which the Prussian court threw down at such an ill-judged moment. I could see there was some discontent among the Spaniards but I thought only their vanity was wounded, which I could have soothed at a later date; and I confess I was a long way from thinking that I should receive a declaration of war from the favourite. I though him better advised.”
The Emperor added that he had been amazed at receiving, after Jena, this strange proclamation, by which he was not misled for a moment. He went on:
“Not being able to disguise from myself the intentions of this new enemy, I disguised my attitude from him. Although the success I had just gained stood me in as good stead as I could have wished, and although, being more subtle in politics than Godoy, I had myself provided him, for the moment, with the means to explain everything to me so as to think me satisfied, yet I promised myself to take a startling revenge upon him at the first opportunity, or, at the least, to put the Spanish court in such a position that it could not prove an embarrassment to me on any future occasion.
“This behaviour opened my eyes,” the Emperor remarked to me more than once; and he added: “The ‘Prince of Peace’ might have caused me some grey hairs on the day before Jena, but on the day after I was master of the circumstances. For a moment I thought the Spaniards more decided than they seemed and my ambassador their dupe; but that anxiety didn’t last. Godoy was more fatal to Spain on the one occasion when he showed some energy than by all his weakness, and the dishonour with which publicly, and for years, he had stamped his master. He did not stop to realize that when a man in his position draws his sword against a sovereign ruler, he must conquer or die; for though kings may forgive each other their injuries, they have not and should not have the same indulgence towards subjects. He should have seen that there could be no possible pardon for a man, who, like himself, had no roots in the land; neither reason nor policy would allow of it. He made a sacrifice of Spain in order to continue the favourite; and the Spanish sacrificed themselves in order to be revenged on him and on those whom they wrongly believed were his supporters. In a state of revolution, rumour and popular hatred can strike roots. Once the first gun is fired, there are no more explanations; passions rise and men who cannot agree kill each other.”
[Here the Emperor reviewed the story of the intrigues, French, Spanish and Portuguese, which led to the removal of the Bourbons from the Peninsula, and to the placing of Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne. The Emperor’s argument was that he never had wished to deal with the quarrelling Bourbons—Charles IV and Marie-Louise, and their son Ferdinand—at Bayonne in 1808, nor thereafter to compel the abdication of their rights.]
“... There were three courses I might have followed in this affair. I chose the one which was indicated to me by my concern for the well-being of Spain and our own interests. Of the others, the second would have made me accessory to a crime, and the last accessory to the humiliation of a nation which was trying to throw off the disgrace of the previous reign. I could not hesitate over the choice; and it was these considerations that prevented me from sending those princes back to Spain, as my own interests advised. Ferdinand would soon have exhausted the enthusiasm of the nation; and his father’s return would have humiliated him so badly that he would certainly have turned to me and called me to his aid within six months. But C———and M———68 thought it would be best to take advantage of the moment when everything was ripe, and the change all the easier to bring about, because the Bourbons had succeeded in discrediting themselves at Bayonne—even in the eyes of those Spaniards who were most devoted to their cause. Murat told me fairy-tales, which also led me into error. I thought to cut short the misfortunes of the country: I was mistaken. If I had followed my own instinct, I should have sent those princes home. To-day, Spain would have been at my feet.
“I was misled—or rather, the course of events defied all human foresight. Could one have foreseen that Murat would commit nothing but stupidities, and Dupont an act of cowardice? [The surrender at Baylen, July 22, 1808.] The Spanish will one day regret the loss of the constitution I gave them. It would have given the country new life. It was Dupont’s greed, his grasping spirit, his desire to preserve at all costs his ill-gotten fortune, which led to the Spanish revolt.
“The surrender at Baylen ruined everything. In order to save his waggons of booty, Dupont committed his soldiers, his own countrymen, to the disgrace of a surrender which is without parallel—and to the disgrace, so damaging in its effect on the Spanish people, of giving proof of the acts of sacrilege and church-robbery that their general had tolerated in order to cover his own depredations. When Dupont stipulated that the soldiers’ packs should be examined and his own waggons go untouched, he wrote his own shame into the pages of history forever. These are the Caudine Forks of our history. The sight of the stolen objects was the signal for the rising; and the ring-leaders made use of them to incite the superstitious people to vengeance.”
Returning to the affairs of Spain in general, the Emperor said that intelligent people, those who knew something of him, would never suspect him of having wished to debase the sovereign authority.
“I look at these things from a higher standpoint,” he went on. “I am too conscious of my strength to stoop to such intrigues, so far beneath my character. I proceed more frankly. It would be a more reasonable reproach, perhaps, to say that I shape my policy as a torrent shapes its course. While you were at Petersburg, you must have heard the details of the revolt from the Russian envoy to Madrid, and from Tchernychev, who came to Bayonne; for the Emperor Alexander, who for a long while refused to recognize King Joseph, did in time come to realize that I had nothing to do with those intrigues.”
The Emperor discussed M. Talleyrand:
“He boasts that the disfavour in which he thinks himself held arises from his supposed opposition to the war in Spain. In truth, he didn’t urge me to it at the moment when it began, for I was myself far from seeing the events which afterwards took place and which brought it about; but no one was more convinced than he that the co-operation of Spain and Portugal and even the partial occupation of those States by our troops was the only way of forcing the London government to make peace. He was so strongly of this opinion that that was his object in negotiating with Isquierdo the treaty Duroc signed at Fontainebleau. Talleyrand was the moving spirit of those negotiations, although he held no office. This method of forcing the English to make peace—peace with the object of securing the evacuation of those States—seemed to him imperative.
“He brought great energy to bear on the situation, too, when the departure of the Court of Lisbon for Brazil altered all our plans. It was he who sent Isquierdo to Madrid. If it were not that he had a great interest in the success of that journey, I should have suspected him of contributing to the anxiety that came upon the King when his agent arrived at Madrid.
“Talleyrand, realizing later that he had been mistaken in the hopes of fortune and influence that he had built upon these treaties, and realizing that I was doing without him, thought himself tricked. Being a clever man, he has since attempted nothing but to justify himself in the eyes of the public for the part he is known to have taken in this affair; and he has constituted himself the apostle of discontent.
“He forgets that he also conceived the idea, previously, of deposing the dynasty in Spain as we had done in Etruria. I am far from reproaching him for that. He has good judgment. He is the most capable minister I have ever had. Talleyrand was too well-informed about public affairs, and too good a politician, to admit that the Bourbons could return to Madrid when there were no longer Bourbons at Paris or Naples. Time might perhaps have brought about this change without violence; the interests of France, and even those of Spain if rightly understood, pointed in that direction. There was never anything settled on the point: an infinite range of conjecture, as on all the more far-reaching political questions—and that was all.
“Talleyrand saw and pointed out to me all that intelligent people were thinking and that policy demanded. In a difficult position, in a war against a section of Europe, could the French take the risk of having a hostile dynasty on their flank? Talleyrand, who is among those who have done most to establish my own dynasty, was too much concerned in its maintenance, too clever, too far-seeing, not to advise everything which would tend to its preservation and to the preservation of tranquillity in France. He sided against that war only because he was not made a minister with plenary powers, as he had hoped. Forgetting then that it was French blood which was being spilt in Spain, he began, like a bad citizen, to preach against the affair more loudly as he saw it taking a bad turn. With him, as with many people, one would need to be always successful. I knew what he was up to—and I made him feel that I did—because his ill will began with the defeat of Dupont. Like a coward, he threw stones at me when he thought I was beaten.
“Everything that has been done against the Bourbons has been done under his ministry and at his suggestion. It was he who kept preaching to me about how necessary it was to take all political influence away from them. It was he who persuaded me to have the Duke of Enghien arrested, to whom I did not give a thought until the prefect Shée and the English intrigues of Drake [at Munich] drew the attention of the police upon him. At the time I was far from attaching the least importance to his stay on the banks of the Rhine, and consequently I was far from having any settled intentions with regard to him. It was either Moncey or Shée who then told me that he often came to Strasbourg. I had not known of it. Berthier and Cambacérès were doubtful about having him arrested, on account of the court of Baden. Talleyrand insisted: and so did Murat and Fouché.69
“Taken in by the revolutionaries, and urged on by them, Murat, alarmed by Fouché and Rœderer, saw no safety for himself or for me, as soon as he heard of the Duke’s arrival in Paris, except in his execution. To listen to him, one would have thought the government was threatened and the Commandant of Paris in danger. He’s a brave man on the battle field, Murat, but he has no head. He likes only intriguers, and is always taken in by them. All the men who had taken part in the Revolution—the generals, the men bred in republican ideas —were disturbed by my advance to power. The royalists, intriguing still and clumsy, spread the rumour, without giving much thought to it, that I was going to play the rôle of Monk. I was not steady in my seat. To hear Murat, Fouché and the rest, one would have thought that public opinion was drifting out of my control; that in this uncertainty no party supported me; that the weak royalist party regarded me as only a transitional figure. No party, moreover, could achieve anything. The nation then would be against me; the revolutionaries were afraid of me, but still more afraid of the Bourbons. They scared Murat, and made him lose his head.
“For my own part, they made no great impression on me. I protected them because it is the duty of the government to protect everyone, without distinction. I myself looked at things from a higher standpoint than the rest, and was no more inclined than usual to seek support among the parties; but I felt that France needed a government which would embody the results of her sacrifices and the glory she had won—a government whose concern it would be to create confidence and security for all the nation’s interests, within and without the country. I felt that I was the Strong Man, designed by my nature to preside over these great destinies. I was not so foolish as to work for others when I felt myself the only man equal to the demands of the French people. I had read my history; and I was no more eager to put France at the mercy of vengeful émigrés than I was to raise to power men who would show no gratitude—not when I knew myself competent to keep everything in hand.
“So I took a stand. I prepared everything for the reorganization of a monarchy. It is the only form of government suitable for France, and the only one which can keep the European monarchs quiet. They needed me; experience had proved to me that I was not mistaken there. As for the Duke of Enghien, I believed him of no great importance at the time I sent Ordener to arrest him. I thought they would take Dumouriez as well, which was of more concern to me; for his name lent the air of a major conspiracy to the plot. I was within my rights, because the Bourbon Prince was conspiring against me, as were Georges Cadoudal and the others. All these intrigues were interconnected.
“They caught Enghien fifteen miles beyond my frontier, flagrante delicto, while the assassins hired by his family, urged on by him and by the English minister at Stuttgart, were arrested in France, sword in hand. You ought to know this, Caulaincourt. Weren’t you instructed to effect a reconciliation between ourselves and Baden over the violation of the territory?”
I answered yes, and that some charitably minded people had even attributed the Prince’s arrest to me.
“That is notoriously untrue,” replied the Emperor. “The chief of the gendarmes even denounced you at the time as having secretly warned the Prince that Ordener intended to arrest him, and as being the cause of his having tried to shoot Ordener and nearly killing him. I didn’t believe a word of it.”
The Emperor added that, having given orders for the Prince to be brought to Paris, he was rather undecided as to what policy he should adopt. However, Murat, urged on by the revolutionaries, had so impressed upon him that all would be lost if he did not make an example, that, without giving his positive consent, he had sent orders that the prince should be tried by a military commission. This, he reflected, was only a legitimate precaution on his part. The Prince asked to see him, and even wrote asking for an audience, but he only learned this after sentence had been carried out.
“This haste on the part of Murat,” the Emperor continued, “was the reason why the police had no time to question Enghien, and therefore missed some important intelligence concerning other branches of the conspiracy. Berthier and Cambacérès would have preferred that he not be arrested at all, and above all that he not come to Paris, since they felt that, directly he was there, the situation would become awkward and even embarrassing for me, faced as I was by the nation whom I must leave in no doubt as to my intentions. Their common sense told them that I should have to show severity, and at the same time they veered towards leniency. Talleyrand, more politic than they, was quite properly in favour of the arrest. No account was taken then of what effect the execution would have upon the people; nothing was seen but some conspirators who wanted to assassinate the First Magistrate of France, and so deserved the same fate.
“Although there was a good deal of gossip in Paris about the whole business, I should do the same thing should a similar case arise.70
“All the same, it is possible that I might have shown mercy had Murat let me know of the Prince’s request. Enghien certainly would not have perished if I had received it, even though the law was mandatory that condemned him, no motive being strong enough to authorize his conspiracies on our frontier and his hiring sixty ruffians to have me murdered. It is not I who have dethroned the Bourbons; they really have no one but themselves to blame. Instead of chasing them out and ill-treating their friends, I have offered them pensions and paid off their servants. They have answered my kindness by arming assassins. Blood calls for blood. However, I have always rejected the proposals made to me. At a million a head I could have found people who struck with greater precision than their conspirators; but such methods were beneath me. Had I known of a plot against their lives, I should have had them warned. I showed mercy to Polignac and Rivière because they were conspirators by nature, and because public morals had been sufficiently avenged by the execution of mere assassins.
“It is not I, it is not even the leaders of the Revolution, whom the Bourbons should blame for their expulsion; Coblentz was the cause of the King’s death. There are documents in the archives which leave no doubt on that score. They disclose plots compromising to none but the principal émigrés. No doubt the execution of the King was a great crime. That calamity was none of my work—the Bourbons have no right to conspire against my life on account of it. If I were not occupying the throne it would be occupied by another; for the nation did not want them in any case.”
The Emperor returned to M. Talleyrand.
“He is your friend,” he told me, adding: “He is a born intriguer, and quite immoral, but he’s very witty and certainly the most capable of all the ministers I have had. We were on very cool terms for a long time, but I am no longer angry with him. He would still be minister if he had wished to be. I thought before the campaign of sending him to Warsaw, where he would have been very useful to me; but monetary intrigues on his part, and bedroom intrigues on the part of Mme. Bassano, prevented this. The Duchess, seeing in his entry into politics the probable removal of her husband from the office of Secretary for Foreign Affairs—husband and wife both clung to that, above everything—she did all she could to get M. Talleyrand out of the way. Having started an intrigue with one of her friends, they contrived to make me so annoyed with M. Talleyrand that I was on the point of having him arrested. I found out the truth too late, from the police.
“It was this intrigue,” added the Emperor, “which led to the Abbé de Pradt’s nomination, of whom Savary and Duroc were so loud in their praises—as Maret was, too, who thought him a prodigy of nature because he had the gift of gab and wrote articles for the papers. Choosing him lost me my campaign. ... Talleyrand would have done more there, through the medium of Mme. Tyszkiewicz’s salon, than Maret and the Abbé de Pradt with their fret and gossiping and all their dealings with Poland from which, thanks to them, I got nothing I could turn to any account in the Russian business, even though that was really Poland’s affair.”
On another occasion the Emperor, in repeating to me what he had already said about M. Talleyrand, added that it was his inveterate longing for grandeur which had lost him the ministry; that he had wanted to be a great dignitary, a prince, and, above all, Archchancellor of State; but that he, the Emperor, had never wished it, partly because the office of Secretary for Foreign Affairs could not be occupied by two people, and partly because it would have been distasteful in the extreme to the Duke of Bassano, who was accustomed to his own manner of working and did his job perfectly.
“He understood me, which is the privilege of very few people,” added the Emperor. “As for Talleyrand, he has always regretted his loss of the ministry because to him it represented a means of getting money, of which he and those around him are always in need. I would, however, give him back the office if he would consent to separate from his wife. It isn’t fitting that the diplomatic corps should associate with that b———. I have no desire that my affairs should be put up for auction by her.”
I observed that M. Talleyrand was not on sufficiently good terms with his wife to warrant any suspicion of his confiding in her, or the belief that he would be susceptible to the least influence from her. He would, I said, fall into disrepute if he were to leave her now to enter into politics; that such a condition made the whole thing impossible—which was unfortunate, since choosing him would appear to all the cabinets to indicate moderation, and would even seem to be a preparatory step towards peace. Something of that sort was necessary at this juncture to satisfy public opinion in Europe and in France. I added, furthermore, that I failed to understand the importance which he laid on Mme. Talleyrand’s removal, since she had already done the honours of her husband’s house and had even been received at Court several times.
To this the Emperor replied with spirit that Talleyrand would have to change some of the company he kept; besides, that he would have to get rid of his m———and his———; and he told me that I had no idea of what went on in that house. When Talleyrand was minister the salon was an auction-room, with his supposed friends as the brokers; and he wanted no more scandal of that sort. Talleyrand had believed, moreover, that he could not do without him and that he would, in consequence, make him Archchancellor and leave him to look after everything; whereas in such an arrangement the Minister for Foreign Affairs would have been merely a head clerk—and Talleyrand had probably forgotten that the Emperor did not want two authorities in the State; that it was the Emperor who was governing....
I pointed out to the Emperor that the general esteem did not seem to me to have grown with his power during the past two or three years; indeed, that in my view we were declining even as we expanded. I paid tribute to the noble qualities of M. Bassano; and this seemed to please the Emperor. But I pointed out to him that amongst the general public his minister was more blamed for having been a supporter of this war, and generally for not opposing His Majesty’s warlike zeal, than for the Turkish peace and the Russo-Swedish alliance, because everyone knew that the Emperor ruled singlehanded, and that his ministers were neither accustomed nor able to settle problems out of hand, to dispose of millions, or to despatch, on their own authority, agents with the power to do so. M. Bassano, being his sole confidant, had had plenty of other resources at his disposal. To my expressions of doubt regarding this assertion, the Emperor replied to me peevishly:
“When I tell you a thing, you’ve got to believe it.”
The conversation was interrupted by our arrival at a stage, where supper had been ordered. The Emperor seemed displeased with me. He was tired, and his displeasure was heightened by the fact that he could not shave, as he wished to do, because Roustam had not arrived. He lay down as usual, on the long couch which is generally to be found in Polish houses, and rested there for an hour. Supper restored his good humour. That evening we were very well entertained. Was it in my honour? Or had the postmaster, as he approached the end of his course, been less afraid of indiscretion? I cannot tell. The fact remains that we were in an excellent house, enjoyed an excellent supper, and that the masters of the posting-house did the honours with much care and discretion, if they really did know that this was the Emperor.
Every morning between eight and nine o’clock, when coffee could be obtained at a stage, the Emperor drank a cup with milk, sometimes without emerging from the sledge. At night, between five and nine, according to the particular stage, the courier ordered supper for us. We rested then for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half when the meal was slow in coming, so that M. Wonsowicz and the courier could also have time to eat. On arrival the Emperor sometimes made his toilet. He bathed his eyes, and stretched out on a couch—for after we left his carriage he could no longer sleep en route. I took advantage of this time to make hasty notes of our conversations, at least of the matters which seemed to me to have some interest.
On [December 10], two hours before dawn, we reached Pultusk, where I dispensed with the services of our worthy postmaster, whom the Emperor suitably rewarded. While the horses were being changed, the Emperor, feeling chilled, entered the local postmaster’s house, he being away from home. His young wife made haste to light a fire and to prepare the coffee and soup which we asked for, as we had suffered severely from cold during that night. A Polish servant-girl, half dressed, poked and blew the flames as well as she could, and nearly scorched her eyes out over the poorest fire that ever was made. The Emperor inquired what this poor girl earned. It was so little that he remarked that the sum would hardly pay for his woolens. He bade me give her a few napoleons and tell her they were for her dowry. The poor child could not believe her eyes, and it was not, I think, until after our departure that she realized her joy and her small fortune.
The Emperor remarked that, in that class, it was possible to make many people happy with very little money.
“I am impatient, Caulaincourt,” he added, “for the day of a general peace, so as to get some rest and be able to act the good man. We shall spend four months in every year travelling without our own frontiers. I shall go by short stages with my horses. I shall see the cottage firesides of our fair France. I wish to visit the Departments which lack proper communications, to build roads and canals, to help commerce and encourage industry. There is an enormous amount to be done in France; there are Departments where everything has to be built up from the beginning. I have already busied myself with many improvements, and through the Ministry of the Interior I have collected very valuable information. In ten years’ time I shall be blessed as wholeheartedly as I am hated to-day. In some seaports commerce is selfish to the point of injustice, constantly anxious to profit, heedless if others lose. Whatever happens, it is I who have created industry in France. A few more years of perseverance, a few more bivouacs, and Marseilles and Bordeaux will soon be gathering in the millions they have failed to win.”
The soup and coffee were slow in coming, and the Emperor, numbed by the cold and the growing heat of the fire, fell asleep. I seized the opportunity to make notes. When he awoke, his sorry meal was soon swallowed and we clambered into our sledge again.
Although the snow was knee-deep, the Emperor visited the defences of Sierock and Prago. We shook the snow off as best we could before re-entering our cage, for such was exactly the shape of the ancient box in which we were. It was so cold, and we were so pleased at having found this means of progress, in spite of the depth of snow everywhere, that the Emperor’s vanity did not assert itself until we reached the gates of Warsaw. On reaching the bridge over the Vistula, we could not repress a humble reflection on the modest equipage of the King over Kings. The aged box, which had once been red, had been mounted on a sled, and had four large windows—or rather panes of glass set in worm-eaten sash-frames, which did not close properly. The joints of this wreck, three-quarters rotten, gaped on all sides and gave free access to the wind and snow. I had to be sweeping out the interior of our domicile constantly, to keep us from getting soaked through by snow melting on the seats.