Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV. Вальтер Скотт

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СКАЧАТЬ remained for the French general, save to detail in the pages of the Moniteur, what must have been the fate of the English but for their hasty and precipitate flight, when the well-concerted and boldly-executed enterprise of Arroyo-Molinos, convinced him to his cost that a retreat was no rout. In this village upwards of 1400 French were taken prisoners, at a moment when they least expected to be attacked. This little action showed a spirit of hazard, a disposition to assume the offensive, which the French did not expect from the British forces; and they were, for the first time, foiled in their own military qualities of vigilance, enterprise, and activity. In Britain, also, the nation perceived that their army showed the same courage and the same superiority, which had been considered as the exclusive property of their gallant sailors. The French were defeated under the rock of Gibraltar by the Spanish General Ballasteros, and their general, Godinet, blew out his own brains, rather than face the account, to which Soult, his commander-in-chief, was about to summon him. Tarifa, in the same quarter, was defended successfully by a garrison of mingled Spaniards and British, and the French were computed to have lost before it about two thousand five hundred men.

      On the other hand, the French discipline continued to render them superior over the patriots, wherever the latter could be brought to face them in any thing resembling a pitched battle. Thus Blake, after a gallant action, was totally defeated near Murviedro, and that town itself fell into possession of the enemy. A more severe consequence of the battle of Ocana, as that disastrous action was termed, was the capture of Valencia, where Blake and the remainder of his army were made prisoners.

      But amid those vicissitudes of good or bad fortune, Spain continued to Buonaparte the same harassing and exhausting undertaking, which it had been almost from the commencement. Sickness and want made more ravages amongst the French troops than the sword of the enemy, though that did not lie idle. Many of the districts are unhealthy to strangers; but of these, as well as others, it was necessary for the invaders to retain possession. There, while numerous deaths happened among the troops, the guerillas watched the remnant, until sickness and fatigue had reduced the garrisons to a number insufficient for defence, and then pounced upon them like birds of prey on a fallen animal, upon whom they have been long in attendance.

JOSEPH WISHES TO ABDICATE

      Besides, disunion continued to reign among the French generals. Joseph, although in point of power the very shadow of what a king ought to be, had spirit enough to resent the condition in which he was placed amid the haughty military chiefs who acknowledged no superior beside the Emperor, and listened to no commands save those emanating from Paris. He wrote to his brother a letter, accompanying a formal abdication of the throne of Spain, unless he was to be placed in more complete authority than even the orders of Napoleon himself had hitherto enabled him to attain. But the prospect of a northern war approaching nearer and nearer, Napoleon was induced to postpone his brother's request, although so pressingly urged, and Spain was in some measure left to its fate during the still more urgent events of the Russian campaign.87

      CHAPTER LV

      Retrospect of the causes leading to the Rupture with Russia – originate in the Treaty of Tilsit – Russia's alleged Reasons of Complaint – Arguments of Napoleon's Counsellors against War with Russia – Fouché is against the War – Presents a Memorial to Napoleon upon the Subject – His Answer – Napoleon's Views in favour of the War, as urged to his various Advisers.

RUPTURE WITH RUSSIA

      We are now approaching the verge of that fated year, when Fortune, hitherto unwearied in her partiality towards Napoleon, turned first upon himself, personally, a clouded and stormy aspect. Losses he had sustained both by land and sea, but he could still remark, as when he first heard of the defeat at Trafalgar – "I was not there – I could not be every where at once." But he was soon to experience misfortunes, to the narrative of which he could not apply this proud commentary. The reader must be first put in remembrance of the causes of the incipient quarrel betwixt the empire of France and that of Russia.

      Notwithstanding the subsequent personal intimacy which took place betwixt the two sovereigns, and which for five years prevented the springing up of any enmity betwixt Alexander and Napoleon, the seeds of that quarrel were, nevertheless, to be found in the treaty of pacification of Tilsit itself.88 Russia, lying remote from aggression in every other part of her immense territory, is open to injury on that important western frontier by which she is united with Europe, and in those possessions by virtue of which she claims to be a member of the European republic. The partition of Poland, unjust as it was in every point of view, was a measure of far greater importance to Russia than either to Austria or Prussia; for, while that state possessed its former semi-barbarous and stormy independence, it lay interposed in a great measure betwixt Russia and the rest of Europe, or, in other words, betwixt her and the civilized world. Any revolution which might restore Poland to the independence, for which the inhabitants had not ceased to sigh, would have effectually thrust the Czar back upon his forests, destroyed his interest and influence in European affairs, and reduced him comparatively to the rank of an Asiatic sovereign. This liberation of their country, and the reunion of its dismembered provinces under a national constitution, was what the Poles expected from Buonaparte. For this they crowded to his standard after the battle of Jena; and although he was too cautious to promise any thing explicitly concerning the restoration of Poland to its rank among nations, yet most of his measures indicated a future purpose of accomplishing that work. Thus, when those Polish provinces which had fallen to the portion of Prussia, were formed into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, as an independent principality, and the sovereignty was conferred, not without a secret meaning, on the King of Saxony, a descendant of the ancient monarchs of Poland, what could this be supposed to indicate, save the commencement of an independent state, to which might be added, as opportunity occurred, the remaining districts of Poland which had been seized upon by Austria and Russia? "To what purpose," asked those statesmen, who belonged to the old Russian or anti-Gallican party in the empire, "are those stipulations for a free military road and passage of troops from Saxony to Warsaw and its territory, through Silesia, if it is not that France may preserve the means of throwing an overpowering force into the duchy, so soon as it shall be her pleasure to undo the work of the sage Catherine, by depriving Russia of those rich Polish provinces, which her policy had added to the empire? Wherefore," asked the same persons, "should there have been a special article in the same treaty of Tilsit, that France should retain Dantzic until a maritime peace, unless it was to serve as a place of arms in the event of a new war with Russia, the probability of which Napoleon, therefore, must certainly have calculated upon, even at the very moment when he cultivated such close personal intimacy with the Emperor Alexander?"

      These suspicions were considerably increased by the articles of peace concluded with Austria at Schoenbrun. By that treaty all Western Galicia, together with the city of Cracow, and other territories, were disjoined from Austria, and added to the dukedom of Warsaw, marking, it was supposed, still farther, the intention of Napoleon, at one time or another, to restore in its integrity the ancient kingdom of Poland, of which Russia alone now held the full share allotted to her by the partition treaties.

      Other causes led to the same conclusion. The old Russians, a numerous and strong party in the empire, which comprehended the greater part of the large landholders, felt, as they had done under the Emperor Paul, much distress, national and personal, from the interruption of the British trade by Buonaparte's Continental System. Their timber, their pitch, their potash, their hemp, and other bulky and weighty commodities, the chief produce of their estates, for which the British had been ready customers, remained on their hands, while they were deprived of the colonial produce and manufactures of Britain, which they were wont to receive in exchange for those articles, with mutual profit and convenience to both parties. It was in vain that, to reconcile them to this state of interdiction, they saw in the speeches and decrees of Buonaparte, tirades about the freedom of the seas, and the maritime tyranny of England. It seemed an ill-omened species of liberation, which began by the destruction of their commerce and impoverishment of their estates; and the Russian Boyards could no more comprehend the declamation of Buonaparte against the СКАЧАТЬ