Napoleon’s elevation to the rank of Emperor of the French only legalised in a more striking fashion the possession of power which he had long held. It did not make his authority any greater, for he had been practically the absolute monarch of France ever since 1799, but it gave promise of permanency, and that was what the French people most needed after the series of successive governments which had run their course since 1789. It is a mistake to regard Napoleon as having been made supreme ruler of France by the army alone; the legalisation of his power was even more enthusiastically received by the peaceful part of the population. The few ardent republicans who were left had been terrified out of resistance by the wholesale deportation of the principal Jacobins after the affair of the Infernal Machine. The adherents of the Bourbons were equally discouraged by the severe punishment dealt out to Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal. Every section of both the military and civil communities was ready to hail Napoleon as Emperor. But in the institution of the Empire he appealed to more than men’s interests, he appealed to their imaginations. This he did in two ways. He created a Court, with all the magnificent apparatus of the great officers of the household, stately ceremonies and ancient customs, which gave to the people of Paris the spectacle of royal pomp which they had long regretted. On the other hand, he called to his assistance the most powerful engine for influencing the imagination of men, namely, religion. He determined to be consecrated with a ceremony which should exceed in splendour all the coronation ceremonies of the Bourbons. He summoned the Pope to France, and instead of being crowned at Rheims by the Archbishop and Primate, he received his crown at Paris from the hands of the Holy Father himself. At the very moment of his coronation he showed a pride of bearing at least equal to that of any of his predecessors upon the throne of France. After the Pope had anointed him, girded the sword of empire about him, and given him the sceptre, he prepared to place the crown upon the head of the new Caesar. But Napoleon gently took the crown from the hands of Pius VII., and after replacing it on the altar, raised it and crowned himself. The presence of the Pope in Paris for this great ceremony following upon the Concordat, caused Napoleon to be looked upon as the restorer of the Catholic religion, and greatly strengthened his position. Not satisfied with the crown of France, he accepted that of Italy also on the 20th of May 1805, and proceeded to Milan, where he placed upon his head the Iron Crown of the old Lombard Kings. He at once declared his intention of not personally administering his Italian kingdom, and appointed his step-son, EugÈne de Beauharnais, to be Viceroy of Italy.

It has been said that Napoleon created a new Court, which was intended to efface the recollection of the magnificence of the old Court of Versailles. At the head of this Court he created a hierarchy of Grand Dignitaries of the Empire, who were designed to form a Council of Regency in case of necessity. The chief of them was the Grand Elector, whose duty was to convoke the Senate, the Legislative Body, and the Electoral Colleges,—this post was conferred on the Emperor’s elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Next ranked the Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, who was the chief of the judicial body,—this post was conferred on CambacÉrÈs, the former Second Consul. Third came the Arch-Chancellor of State, whose business it was to receive foreign ambassadors and ratify treaties—this post was conferred upon EugÈne de Beauharnais. Next came the Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, which post was first filled by Le Brun, the former Third Consul, and the remaining Grand Dignitaries were the Constable of the Empire, Louis Bonaparte, the Grand Admiral, Marshal Murat, and the Grand Judge, Regnier. In the same way as the Grand Dignitaries were at the head of the civil administration of the Empire, Napoleon created Marshals of France to be the representatives of the army. The first marshals were eighteen in number, and included all the most famous generals of the revolutionary period except Pichegru and Moreau, whose fate has been related. It was indispensable for the rank of Marshal of France to have commanded an army in the field, or at least a detached corps, and the office was surrounded with so many privileges as to make it the object of ambition to every colonel of a French regiment. The third hierarchy consisted of the great officers of the Emperor’s household, who comprised a Grand Marshal, Duroc; a Grand Almoner, his uncle, Joseph Fesch, whom he had induced the Pope to make a cardinal; a Grand Chamberlain, Talleyrand; a Grand Huntsman, Marshal Berthier; and a Grand Equerry, Caulaincourt; and most of the first occupants of these offices were personal friends and former comrades in arms of the Emperor.

The Senate remained under the Constitution of the Empire, as under that of the Consulate, the most important and dignified political body. It was extended by the addition of the Grand Dignitaries, of the members of the Emperor’s family, and of those whom he specially wished to reward; its seats were conferred for life; but it did little but congratulate the Emperor on all his proceedings. The Tribunate was reduced to fifty members, and the Legislative Body was allowed to discuss laws, but only in closed committees. These institutions, carefully devised though they were to maintain a semblance of free discussion, were really reduced to impotence by the autocratic power of the Emperor. The Council of State became more and more the real key-stone of the administration of France. It was the one institution of the Consulate which developed under the Empire. But it did not develop collectively, but rather as a convenient administrative centre and a court of appeal for administrators in every branch of the government. Though the ministries were maintained, they were, as the government became more bureaucratic in its form, and more concentrated into the hand of Napoleon, infinitely subdivided, and the head of each subdivision had a seat in the Council of State. By this arrangement the Emperor was able to keep a check on his ministers, and to prevent the administration from being thrown out of gear by the death or retirement of a single man. Nevertheless, the ministries, as in all highly organised states, were of vast importance, and Napoleon was fortunate in the men he placed at their head. It is worthy of note that three of the ministers who had served him during the Consulate remained in office throughout the Empire, namely, Gaudin, afterwards created Duke of Gaeta, Minister of Finance, who had several assistants in the Council of State, of whom the most notable were Defermon, a former deputy in the Constituent Assembly and the Convention, and Louis; DecrÈs, also created a duke, Minister of the Marine; and Regnier, Duke of Massa and Grand Judge, Minister of Justice. At the War Office, the Emperor retained his chief of the staff, Marshal Berthier, until 1807, when he was succeeded by General Clarke, Duke of Feltre; and the various sections were presided over by able administrators, of whom the best were perhaps LacuÉe de Cessac and Daru. At the Foreign Office, Talleyrand remained supreme until after the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, when he was replaced by Champagny, Duke of Cadore, who in his turn gave way to Maret, Duke of Bassano. At the Ministry of the Interior a change was made at the beginning of the Empire by the retirement of Chaptal, who had held that post with singular distinction throughout the Consulate, and the appointment of Champagny. But this department was overshadowed by the existence of the Ministry of General Police. Napoleon abolished this office in 1803, in the hope, doubtless, of dispensing with the services of FouchÉ; but that astute minister was a necessity, and in 1804 he was again appointed to his old office, which he held until 1810.

In the midst of the fÊtes which accompanied his acceptance of the Empire, Napoleon did not forget that he was engaged in war with England. He declared that as he had crossed the Alps, so, too, he could cross the Channel. For this purpose he collected a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats at Boulogne, and encamped picked soldiers from the Armies of the Rhine and of Italy upon the coast. But he felt that it would be impossible for his flotilla to cross the Channel while the English fleets were masters of the sea. He therefore determined to unite the two French fleets, which were concentrated at Toulon and Brest, and summoned his allies, the Dutch and the Spaniards, to prepare fleets also. He kept 120,000 veterans continually at work practising embarkation and disembarkation, and it was commonly believed, not only in Europe, but in England itself, that the invasion would be carried into effect. The army was equipped in a very thorough fashion, and carefully organised as the Grand Army under the most experienced generals in France, and it became one of the most efficient fighting machines ever known in the history of the world, its discipline being perfect and its enthusiasm unbounded.

While making these preparations for the invasion of England, Napoleon struck at other more accessible branches of the British power. In 1803 he occupied Hanover, the hereditary dominion of George III., in spite of its being covered by the Prussian line of demarcation. In 1804 he sent a division into the kingdom of Naples, in order to close the Neapolitan ports to English trade; and once more he threatened Portugal. He also endeavoured to stir up a maritime foe to the English, and sold to the United States the province of Louisiana, which he had annexed from Spain, in the hope of obtaining their alliance. It was only necessary for Napoleon to be master of the Channel for a few hours, and to have a fine day, for his project of invading England to succeed. According to his instructions, Admiral Villeneuve left Toulon in March 1805, eluded Nelson, joined the Spanish fleet, and made his way to the West Indies, where he expected to meet the fleet from Brest. But the Brest fleet could not break through the blockade; Villeneuve had to return, and, after an action with an English squadron under Sir Robert Calder on 22nd July, he put into Ferrol. At Napoleon’s command, the admiral set out for Brest on 11th August, but meeting with bad weather, he lost heart and sailed away to Cadiz. Thus foiled in his great scheme for bringing up an overpowering French fleet to cover his invading army, Napoleon dared not leave the harbour of Boulogne.

While threatened by the Boulogne flotilla, the English Government did all in its power to raise enemies on the Continent against Napoleon. Prussia, as usual, insisted on her neutrality; but Russia and Austria were not unwilling to try their strength once more with France. The Emperor Alexander of Russia was personally inclined to admire Napoleon, but he was induced by his Court, his family, and his ministry, who pointed out to him the importance of remaining on good terms with England, to sign an alliance with Pitt; he was further profoundly irritated by the violent scene which Napoleon, as First Consul, had had with his ambassador, Count Morkov, and was horrified at the execution of the Duc d’Enghien. The Emperor Francis of Austria was even more willing to fight Napoleon. He had spent the period of peace since the Treaty of LunÉville in reorganising his army, and believed that he would be more successful now that he was freed from the incubus of his position as Holy Roman Emperor. The State Chancellor, Cobenzl, was also keenly in favour of war, for he was a sincere believer in the might of Russia, and had imbibed a desire to please the Court of St. Petersburg, at which he had long held the post of Austrian ambassador. To induce these powerful allies to attack in force, Pitt, who was once more Prime Minister, did not grudge the wealth of England. Large subsidies were offered both to Russia and Austria, which supplied the means for commencing the campaign; and strenuous efforts were made to win the assistance of Prussia.

In the second line, Pitt counted on the assistance of Sweden and Naples. Napoleon’s promptitude in invading the latter country destroyed any chance of its effecting a diversion in Italy, and Gustavus IV. of Sweden, though, like his father, a violent enemy of France, was unable to bring any active assistance, while Prussia remained neutral. A pretext for war was found in the annexation of Lucca and Genoa to the French Empire, and the Austrians and Russians resolved to strike at once. General Mack, with a powerful Austrian force, invaded Bavaria before the declaration of war, and, by the occupation of Ulm, he believed he had secured the valley of the Danube. Meanwhile the principal Austrian army of 120,000 men, under the Archduke Charles, invaded Italy, and a powerful force of Russians kept close to the Prussian frontier, in the hope of inducing Prussia to declare war against France.

Napoleon, despairing of success in his projected invasion of England, resolved to turn promptly upon England’s principal ally, and directed the Grand Army to break up from Boulogne and enter Germany. Mack regarded it as certain that the French, as in the campaigns of Moreau, would advance through the Black Forest. Napoleon encouraged his illusion by showing him a few French troops in that quarter. Meanwhile, the Grand Army advanced in two portions through WÜrtemburg and Franconia, and, on reaching the Danube, after violating the Prussian neutrality by marching through Anspach, cut off Mack’s retreat on Vienna. The Austrian general made an effort to break through the French army, but he was defeated by Ney at Elchingen, and surrendered on the 20th of October 1805 with 33,000 men. The capitulation of Ulm did more than deprive Austria of a serviceable army,—it left open the road to Vienna. Napoleon rapidly followed up his success. He marched past a united Russian and Austrian army, which was quartered in Moravia, to influence Prussia, occupied Vienna, crossed the Danube, and eventually faced the army of the two emperors at Austerlitz. On the 2d of December 1805, the anniversary of his coronation, the Grand Army utterly defeated the Austrians and Russians. The allies lost 15,000 men killed and wounded, 20,000 prisoners, and 189 guns; and the Emperor Francis found himself defenceless, for his only other army, that in Italy, had been defeated at Caldiero by EugÈne de Beauharnais and MassÉna on the 30th of October. While the rapid campaign of Austerlitz,—perhaps the most glorious of Napoleon’s military career,—was taking place, he lost the navy which he had prepared with so much care, and which had been intended to cover his invasion of England. The French admiral, Villeneuve, left Cadiz at the head of the united French and Spanish fleet, consisting of thirty-three ships of the line and five frigates. He had not gone far when he was met by Nelson at the head of the English squadron of twenty-seven ships off Cape Trafalgar. The victory of Trafalgar, which was won on the 21st of October, was as complete as that of Austerlitz. The French and Spanish fleet was as entirely destroyed as the Austrian and Russian army. The allies at Trafalgar lost 7000 men in killed and wounded, and the English only 3000, among whom, however, was Nelson himself.

The result of the battle of Austerlitz was the Treaty of Pressburg, which was signed by Austria and France on the 26th of December 1805. The Russians had only lost one army, and their territory had not been invaded, so that they were still enabled to remain in arms. But Austria was completely crushed. By the Treaty of Pressburg, Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia were ceded to the Kingdom of Italy; but Napoleon kept the two latter provinces under his direct rule, and gave the command of them to General Marmont. The Tyrol and part of Swabia were ceded to Bavaria, and the Elector of that State took the title of King. The same title was conferred on the Duke of WÜrtemburg; the Duke of Baden became a Grand Duke; many small German principalities were suppressed, and, on 12th of July 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was formed under the protectorate of the French Emperor. England could not blame Austria for making a separate treaty with France, for she herself had been saved from invasion by the departure of the Grand Army from Boulogne, not less than by the victory of Trafalgar. The news of Austerlitz was followed on the 23d of January 1806 by the death of Pitt, and the new English ministry of Fox and Grenville, now that the fear of invasion was over, desired to enter into negotiations with Napoleon.

The overthrow of Austria was followed by the overthrow of Prussia. Frederick William III. had prided himself on the manner in which, in spite of many temptations, he had maintained his attitude of strict neutrality. Neither the offers of the Directory or of Napoleon, nor the subsidies lavishly promised by England, had been able to disturb his determination. The Prussian ministry proudly pointed to the fact that, while the rest of Europe had been torn by disastrous wars, Prussia had remained at peace ever since the Treaty of Basle in 1795. She had profited by her peace policy as much as France and Austria by their war policy. The rearrangement of Germany in 1803 had converted Prussia from a collection of scattered states into a united kingdom. She had even, up to the year 1803, maintained the freedom of the whole of the north of Germany from the terrible French invaders by the observation of the line of demarcation settled in 1795. The northern states of Germany looked to Prussia as their leader, and since the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire the Prussian policy had been completely victorious over the Austrian. The maintenance of the line of demarcation was the favourite scheme of the Prussian King, and as long as it was observed, nothing short of invasion would have disturbed his neutrality. But the occupation of Hanover in 1803, as one of the measures taken by Napoleon against England, had infringed the line of demarcation, and from that moment Frederick William III. inclined towards war.

In this warlike attitude he was encouraged by Russia and England, and still more by his own army. The Prussian army, the creation of Frederick the Great, represented in more than an ordinary fashion the Prussian nation. Relying on the recollections of the Seven Years’ War, and confident in the proverbial discipline of their soldiers, the Prussian generals believed that they would be able to defeat the conquerors of the rest of Europe. With the utmost ardour the young Prussian noblemen shouted for war; they resented the long peace, and applauded the new attitude of the king. He was stimulated likewise by the hatred for France, which was openly encouraged by his beautiful Queen Louisa, and he met with opposition only from a few of his more experienced ministers, and from the old Duke of Brunswick, who well knew the excellence of the French troops. Undecided and hesitating, Frederick William refused to join the coalition of Austria and Russia in 1805, when his assistance would have been of the greatest service. He signed, indeed, the Treaty of Potsdam on 3d November 1805, undertaking to mediate, and to join the coalition with 180,000 men if Napoleon refused the terms he offered. But the proposed intervention came to nothing. Haugwitz, the Prussian minister, awaited at Napoleon’s headquarters the result of the battle of Austerlitz, and on December 15 he signed the Treaty of SchÖnbrunn, by which Prussia ceded Cleves to France and Anspach to Bavaria, and received provisional possession of Hanover. Two months later, on February 15, Prussia was compelled by a supplementary treaty to definitely accept Hanover from Napoleon, an arrangement which was tantamount to declaring war with England.

The long neutrality of Frederick William III. was thus broken, and, as it soon appeared, in vain. For Napoleon almost immediately offered to restore Hanover to England, with which country he was induced to enter into negotiations for peace by the accession of Fox to office. At this news Frederick William mobilised his troops and prepared for war with France. In October 1806 he ordered the victor of Austerlitz to at once retire behind the Rhine, and slowly concentrated his army in Thuringia without waiting for the succour promised by the Russians. The Prussian officers applauded their king’s conduct, for they desired to have the glory of defeating the French entirely to themselves. On the 14th of October 1806 the two corps of the Prussian army, which were advancing along the river Saale, were defeated by Napoleon himself at Jena, and by Marshal Davout at AuerstÄdt. The triumph was as complete as that of Austerlitz; and on the 25th the French army entered Berlin.

It was now necessary for the Grand Army to attack the Russians. Napoleon, after occupying nearly the whole of Prussia and laying siege to Dantzic, entered Poland. He was received with an enthusiastic welcome by the Poles, whose independence he hinted at restoring. Polish troops had long served in his armies, and the sympathy of the French people for the oppressed Poles was known throughout Poland. On the 15th of December 1806 Napoleon occupied Warsaw and sent his army into winter quarters upon the Russian frontier. The Russian general, Benningsen, one of the murderers of the Emperor Paul, conceived the idea of surprising part of the French army in its winter quarters. He drove back the division of Bernadotte; but when he reached the neighbourhood of KÖnigsberg he found that Napoleon had received information of his movement and had collected the bulk of his army. It was now Napoleon’s turn to pursue the Russians. At the head of 60,000 men he found 80,000 Russians intrenched in the village of Eylau, and attacked them during a snowstorm on the 8th of February 1807. The battle was long disputed. The Russians had to retire, but it was estimated that the loss of both armies was about the same, namely, 35,000 men. This loss was far more severe to the French than to the Russians, for the French soldiers slain at Eylau were veterans of the Grand Army, and their place could only be taken by raw conscripts.

The result of the battle of Eylau was to allow the French army to remain undisturbed in its winter quarters. In the Russian camp, meanwhile, important diplomatic negotiations had been going on. Frederick William cemented his friendship with the Emperor Alexander, and appointed the most able of his servants, Hardenberg, to be State Chancellor in the place of Haugwitz. Prussia could indeed give but little real help, for her army was destroyed, and her country almost entirely in the hands of the French; but Alexander, nevertheless, consented in April 1807 to sign the Treaty of Bartenstein with Frederick William, by which they formed an offensive and defensive alliance. But the hopes of the diplomatists, founded on the drawn battle of Eylau, were soon to be frustrated by the military successes of Napoleon. On the 24th of May 1807 Dantzic, which had withstood a desperate siege, surrendered to General Lefebvre, and the besieging troops were able to join the main army. The summer campaign of 1807 was very short. Benningsen, accompanied by the Emperor Alexander in person, advanced to attack the French army on the 14th of June. The Russians foolishly crossed the Alle at Friedland, and with the river at their back were completely defeated with a loss of 25,000 men. The victory of Friedland was decisive; it did not destroy the Russian Empire, as the victories of Austerlitz and Jena had destroyed the Austrian Empire and the Prussian Kingdom; it did not extinguish the fighting power of Russia; it did not diminish the morale of the Russian army, which proudly boasted that it had made a better stand against the French than either the Austrians or the Prussians. It was not positively necessary for the very existence of his monarchy that the Emperor Alexander should treat with Napoleon, but his successive defeats justified him before his Court and his ministers in demanding peace. He could reply to their arguments in favour of an English alliance for Russia that he had loyally tried to carry out the terms of that alliance, but that under the circumstances he could maintain it no longer. He had always wished for peace with France and the friendship of Napoleon; he now considered himself free to follow his personal inclinations.

On the 25th of June 1807 the Emperor of the French and the Czar of Russia had their famous interview at Tilsit on a raft moored in the middle of the river Niemen. The personal magnetism of Napoleon and his glory as a great conqueror powerfully impressed the vivid imagination of Alexander, who had always felt the warmest admiration for him. During this interview Napoleon spread before the eyes of the Emperor of Russia his favourite conception of the re-establishment of the old Empires of the East and of the West. They were to be faithful allies. France was to be the supreme power over the Latin races and in the centre of Europe; Russia was to represent the Greek Empire and to expand into Asia. These grandiose views charmed the Emperor Alexander, who believed that in adopting them he was following out the policy of Peter the Great and of the Empress Catherine. The one enemy to be feared and to be crushed according to Napoleon was England. And Alexander, in spite of the loss which his subjects would suffer, promised to enter into Napoleon’s policy for the exclusion of England’s commerce from the Continent, and to accept the doctrine of the Continental Blockade. But, at the same time, Alexander did not dare to go so far as to promise to declare war against England, in spite of the pressure put upon him by Napoleon. The first interview at Tilsit was followed by others, and eventually by the Peace of Tilsit. By this treaty Russia ceded the Ionian Islands and the mouths of the river Cattaro in the south of Dalmatia, which had been occupied by the Russians since 1799, to France. Napoleon, on his part, promised that he would not restore the independence of Poland, and advised Alexander to obtain compensation for the growth of the power of France from Sweden and from Turkey. In pursuance of this policy a division of the French army invaded Swedish Pomerania and took Stralsund, while the Russians occupied Finland. Alexander was pressed by Napoleon to invade Turkey, and was promised the assistance of France in obtaining the cession of the Danubian principalities. The Emperor of Russia made loyal efforts to obtain a favourable peace for his ally, the King of Prussia. But Napoleon, though willing to humour Alexander, and desirous of making Russia his firm ally, did not hesitate to show his contempt for Frederick William III. He thought for a time of entirely extinguishing Prussia, but on the representations of Alexander he contented himself by taking possession of the Rhenish and Westphalian provinces of Prussia, and forming them with the principality of Hesse-Cassel into the kingdom of Westphalia. He also included Prussian Poland in his new Grand Duchy of Warsaw.

The Peace of Tilsit left Napoleon face to face with only one enemy, and that was England. The destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar and the diminution of the strength of the Grand Army from the losses suffered at Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau, proved to the Emperor of the French that he had better abandon his project of invading England. But if he could not cross the Channel in force or meet the English fleets at sea, he believed he could ruin England by excluding her from the markets of the Continent. The English ministry, in pursuance of its reading of international law, had closed all neutral seaborne commerce from the mouth of the Elbe to the extremity of the French coast. Napoleon answered this measure by his Berlin Decree, which was issued in that city on the 21st of November 1806, and declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade. All English merchandise was to be confiscated, as well as all ships which had touched either at a British port or at a port in the British Colonies. He followed up this measure by the Milan Decree of the 17th of December 1807, by which he declared that any ship of any country which had touched at a British port was liable to be seized and treated as prize. The entry of Russia into the scheme of the Continental Blockade would, Napoleon hoped, entirely ruin the English trade. But, in reality, it did nothing of the sort. English commerce was as active and enterprising as ever, and the risks it encountered in running the Continental Blockade only increased the profits of the English merchants. The real sufferers were the inhabitants of the Continent, who had to pay enhanced prices for such articles of prime necessity as sugar. Napoleon’s expectation that the carrying trade of the world would desert England and fall into the hands of France and her allies was not fulfilled, because the English war fleets remained complete masters of the sea, and effectually prevented the rise of any other commercial power. The result of the Continental Blockade was therefore the impoverishment of the allies of France and their consequent hatred of Napoleon, while it increased rather than diminished the commercial prosperity of England.

The English ministers were not afraid of Napoleon’s Continental Blockade. But his occupation of Northern Germany made them fear that his next step would be to seize the Danish fleet as the Directory had in former days appropriated the Dutch fleet. Secret stipulations were indeed made at Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be seized by France. Information of this scheme was given to the English ministers, and a secret expedition was planned to prevent its being carried into effect. Denmark was a neutral nation, and had given no pretext for war to either France or England. But Denmark was a weak nation and unable to defend itself. Under these circumstances the English struck first. A powerful expedition anchored before Copenhagen in September 1807; the city was bombarded; the small Danish army was defeated at Kioge by a division under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley; and the whole Danish fleet was appropriated or destroyed by England. By this rapid blow one of Napoleon’s most cherished schemes came to nought, and his hope of getting another serviceable navy effectually extinguished.

The two most faithful allies of England were the small kingdoms of Portugal and Sweden. The Russians were left to deal with the latter; Napoleon resolved to attack the former himself. The French Emperor, like the Directory before him, insisted on regarding Portugal as an outlying province of England, and, indeed, there was some ground for this view, as owing to the Methuen Treaty the relations between the two countries were very close. Yet the Prince Regent of Portugal in 1806 had declined to declare himself the open ally of England, and insisted on the maintenance of his position of neutrality. Nevertheless, Napoleon resolved to ruin Portugal because the Prince Regent declined to become a party to the Continental Blockade. He at first resolved to act with Spain as he had done in 1801, and on the 29th of October 1807 the Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, by which it was agreed that the combined armies of France and Spain should conquer Portugal. The little kingdom was then to be divided into three parts; the northern provinces were to be given to the King of Etruria in exchange for his dominions in Italy which Napoleon desired to annex; the southern districts were to be formed into an independent kingdom for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, the lover of the Queen of Spain, and the most powerful man in that kingdom; and the central portion was to be temporarily held by France. In pursuance of this secret treaty a French army under General Junot marched rapidly across the Peninsula, and on the news that it was close to Lisbon, the Prince Regent, with his mother, the mad queen, Maria I., and his two sons sailed for Brazil with an English squadron. Hardly had the Regent left the Tagus when Junot entered Lisbon on the 20th of November 1807. The French were favourably received in Portugal. The Portuguese resented the departure of the Prince Regent; democratic principles had made considerable progress; and no idea was entertained that there was a secret design to dismember the kingdom. Junot had little difficulty in occupying almost the whole of Portugal; he sent the picked troops of the Portuguese army under the name of the Portuguese Legion to join the Grand Army in Germany; and he promised a Constitution to the country. On the 1st of February 1808 he issued a proclamation that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign, and after the fortresses had been surrendered he proceeded to administer Portugal as a conquered country.

Gustavus IV. of Sweden, who had taken the power into his own hands from his uncle the Regent Duke of Sudermania and had married the sister-in-law of the Emperor Alexander of Russia, in 1797, had inherited the hatred for France, which had been, after 1789, one of the guiding principles of his father, Gustavus III. He had been the ready ally of England in all the coalitions against both the French Directory and Napoleon, and after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803, he became the key-stone of the Anglo-Russian alliance. In 1805 he promised to place himself at the head of an English, Russian, and Swedish army which was to invade Hanover, and occupy Holland; but he failed to set sail on the appointed day, and caused the expedition to lead to no result. Nevertheless, he remained faithful to England, and at the time of the Treaty of Tilsit refused to abandon the English alliance. As has been already said, Swedish Pomerania was occupied by a division of the Grand Army, under Marshal Brune, and Sweden never recovered the ancient conquest of Gustavus Adolphus. In 1808, on the obstinate refusal of the Swedish King to accede to the Continental Blockade, the Emperor Alexander, as had been agreed at Tilsit, invaded Finland. England was ready to assist Sweden, and a powerful army, under Sir John Moore, was sent to Stockholm. At this crisis the King showed signs of insanity. The English expedition retired, and at the beginning of 1809 Gustavus IV. was dethroned.

After he had made himself Emperor, and still more after his victories over Austria and Prussia and his alliance with Russia, Napoleon began to assure his power on the Continent by establishing vassal kings in the neighbourhood of France. Just as the French Directory had surrounded the French Republic with smaller republics governed after its own model, so Napoleon surrounded his frontiers with subject kingdoms. The Batavian, the Cisalpine, and the Parthenopean Republics were succeeded by the kingdoms of Holland and of Naples and the vice-royalty of Italy. The form of the Batavian Republic had altered with every change in the Constitution of France. From a democratic Republic in the time of the Convention it had become a Directory and a Consulate, and in 1805, after the French Empire had been established, it received a new Constitution. By this arrangement Count Schimmelpenninck, a distinguished Dutch statesman, was appointed Grand Pensionary for life, but in June 1806 he was induced to resign, and Louis Bonaparte, the favourite brother of the French Emperor, was made King of Holland. The Dutch people had no objection to these changes. The introduction of the French system of administration consolidated the country from a group of federal states into a united nation. Its trade prospered, though it lost its fleet at Camperdown in 1797, and in the Texel in 1799, and it became more wealthy than ever, in spite of the conquest of all its colonies by England, by the close communication established with Paris and the abolition of the vexatious transit-duties in Belgium. Louis Bonaparte, the first King of Holland, showed himself a sagacious monarch. He caused the Civil Code to be introduced into his dominions in the place of the old cumbrous system of Dutch law. He encouraged literature and art, and he moved the capital from the Hague to Amsterdam. But the introduction of the Continental Blockade caused profound discontent. The Dutch merchants were ruined by its rigorous application; riots took place in many districts; and since Napoleon found the Continental Blockade was being evaded he caused French troops to enter Holland and occupy the mouths of the rivers. Louis Bonaparte protested against this conduct, and in 1810 he resigned the crown which his brother had given him.

It has been said that when Napoleon made himself Emperor he likewise assumed the title of King of Italy, and that he did not undertake the government, but conferred it upon his step-son, EugÈne de Beauharnais, as Viceroy. The original Kingdom of Italy only comprehended the dominions of the Cisalpine Republic,—that is to say, Lombardy, the Duchies of Modena and Parma, and the former Papal Legations of Bologna and Ferrara. By the Treaty of Pressburg in 1806 the Kingdom of Italy was increased by the addition of Venice and of the former Venetian territories on the mainland. Genoa, Lucca, Piedmont, and Tuscany, were, however, directly administered by France, and the city of Rome and the Campagna was added to the French Empire in the year 1810. In the south of the Italian peninsula Naples was erected into an independent kingdom, which was intended to include the island of Sicily. This kingdom was conferred upon the elder brother of Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, on the 30th of March 1806. Joseph, like King Louis of Holland, tried to act as a good king. He formed an able ministry, consisting almost entirely of Neapolitans, and containing but two Frenchmen,—Miot de Melito, Minister of War, and Saliceti, Minister of Police. He introduced good laws, and made efforts to put down the brigandage which ravaged the southern districts of his kingdom. The island of Sicily meanwhile resisted all the attempts of the French. It acknowledged the rule of Ferdinand, King of the Two Sicilies, who had retired to Palermo, and it was garrisoned by an English army. This army kept Joseph in perpetual embarrassment. The English encouraged the brigands of Calabria, and in the summer of 1806 they made a descent upon the mainland, and on the 3d of July the English general, Sir John Stuart, defeated the French general Reynier at Maida. This victory, however, was followed by the capitulation of Gaeta on the 18th of July, after which event the French army in Calabria was strengthened to such an extent that the English were unable to do more than defend Sicily. The internal administration of Joseph Bonaparte deserves every praise; he abolished feudalism; he endeavoured to introduce honesty and uprightness in the collection of the taxes; he declared the equality of all citizens before the law; and by the suppression of many monasteries he improved the finances of the country and largely increased the number of peasant proprietors. Lastly, must be noticed the Illyrian provinces of Dalmatia and Istria, which had been ceded by the Treaty of Pressburg. They were directly administered by General Marmont, who reported to Napoleon himself and not to the Viceroy of Italy. After the Treaty of Tilsit they were augmented by the Ionian Islands, and Napoleon kept a powerful army in this quarter to threaten the Turks. It is probable, indeed, that he dreamt of restoring the independence of Greece, and his Illyrian army was well placed for carrying out such a project.

In his rearrangement of the states of Germany and of the balance of power in Central Europe, Napoleon, like the Directory, followed out the traditional policy of Richelieu and Mazarin. He held it to be an advantage for France that there should be a number of small German states between the Rhine and the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, but he considered that the very small size of the states maintained by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 made them inadequate buffers. He, therefore, enlarged the Western German states and endeavoured to unite their interests with those of France. The reconstitution of Germany after the Peace of LunÉville in 1803 destroyed the old Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon worked on the same lines, and his measures have had almost the same permanence as the arrangements of 1803. The changes took place gradually in accordance with the Treaties of Pressburg and of Tilsit, but their final results may be considered as a whole.

Maximilian Joseph, the Elector of Bavaria, had, by hereditary right, united the Electorates of the Palatinate and of Bavaria with the Duchy of Deux-Ponts. He had been educated at the Court of Versailles, but nevertheless he approved of the doctrines of the French Revolution and became one of the earliest allies of Napoleon. The arrangements after the Treaty of LunÉville, which had deprived him of the Palatinate and of the Duchy of Deux-Ponts, had given him a powerful and concentrated state. By the Treaty of Pressburg he received in addition the Tyrol and the cities of Nuremberg and Ratisbon with the title of King. In 1809 he further received the Principality of Salzburg, which made his kingdom one of the most powerful in Germany. Possessing the whole of the upper valley of the Danube, and the valleys of its affluents, Bavaria formed a strong frontier state against Austria, and to the north marched with the kingdom of Saxony. King Maximilian Joseph felt that he owed his power to the French Emperor, and to seal the friendship he gave his daughter, the Princess Augusta, in marriage to Napoleon’s step-son, the Viceroy EugÈne de Beauharnais. On the western frontier of Bavaria, in order to check that state if it became too powerful, Napoleon erected the smaller kingdom of WÜrtemberg. Frederick, Duke of WÜrtemberg, like Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, had shown himself ready to recognise the authority of the French Republic and of Napoleon. He had received considerable additions to his territories with the title of Elector in 1803, and after the Treaty of Pressburg he received the whole of Austrian Suabia except the Breisgau and Ortenau with the title of King. He, too, like the first King of Bavaria, entered into a personal alliance with Napoleon, and gave his daughter, the Princess Catherine, in marriage to Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. The third south German state which deserves notice is Baden, whose Duke, Charles Frederick, was made an Elector in 1803, and in 1805 received the title of Grand Duke with the greater part of Ortenau and the Breisgau from Austrian Suabia. He, too, formed a family alliance with Napoleon by the marriage of his heir to StÉphanie de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s step-daughter. The kingdom of Westphalia, which was formed by Napoleon for his brother Jerome after the Treaty of Tilsit, was an entirely new creation, not an enlargement of a former German state like Bavaria and WÜrtemberg. It consisted of the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, the Prussian territories on the left of the Elbe, including the bishoprics of Paderborn and Hildesheim, the Old Mark of Brandenburg, etc., the Duchy of Brunswick, a portion of Hanover, and other scattered districts. It thus contained the greater part of the valleys of the Ems, the Weser, and the Oder, but it did not reach the sea, and its only important fortress was Magdeburg. Jerome, who was appointed its first king, was not such a capable monarch as his brothers Joseph and Louis, but he formed an able ministry, of which the most conspicuous members were SimÉon, the famous French jurist, as Minister of Justice, and the historian, Johann MÜller as Minister of Public Instruction. The Westphalian people did not amalgamate so thoroughly as Napoleon had expected; but this was not the fault of Jerome’s ministry, which abolished feudalism, introduced the Civil Code, and regularised the administration. The Grand Duchy of Berg, which he granted to his brother-in-law Murat in 1806, was another creation of Napoleon. It was formed out of the Duchy of Berg ceded by Bavaria, the County of the Mark and the Bishopric of MÜnster, detached from Prussia, and of the Duchy of Nassau. It formed a compact little state of a million inhabitants, commanding part of the course of the Rhine, with its capital at DÜsseldorf. The key-stone of Napoleon’s policy in Eastern Germany was Saxony. The Elector of that state had taken part with the Prussians in the campaign of Jena, but Napoleon nevertheless calculated that the ruler of Saxony, placed as he was between Prussia and Austria, must naturally be an ally of France. He, therefore, in spite of his behaviour in 1806, gave the Elector of Saxony the title of King and the Circle of Lower Lusatia. After the Treaty of Tilsit Napoleon did yet more for the King of Saxony, whom he created likewise Grand Duke of Warsaw. Of the smaller states of Germany maintained by Napoleon, the most important was Hesse-Darmstadt which separated the kingdom of Westphalia from the Grand Duchy of Berg. As a faithful ally of Napoleon, the Landgrave Louis X. received some accessions of territory with the title of Grand Duke. The fourth Grand Duchy after Baden, Berg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, was the Grand Duchy of Frankfort. This was conferred upon the Archbishop, Charles de Dalberg. This prelate had been coadjutor to the Archbishop-Elector of Mayence in the time of the Revolution. He had succeeded to the Archbishopric in 1802, and in 1803, on the reorganisation of Germany, was the only ecclesiastical elector retained. He was then given the Bishopric of Ratisbon, and when that was transferred to Bavaria, was granted instead the Principalities of Fulda and Hanau and the territory of Aschaffenburg. The last Grand Duchy was that of WÜrtzburg, which was conferred on the Archduke Ferdinand, the former Grand Duke of Tuscany, in exchange for the Principality of Salzburg given to Bavaria in 1809. These territorial changes were supplemented by a wholesale destruction of the very small states. The Knights of the Empire lost their sovereign rights; all the petty dukes and princes whose territory was enclosed in the larger states which have been mentioned, were also mediatised, that is to say, while retaining their rights as lords and their titles, they lost their immediate sovereignty and became a sort of privileged aristocracy. This measure, which supplemented the arrangements of 1803, finally destroyed the ancient system of Germany. The little courts with but few exceptions disappeared, and Germany became a collection of powerful states instead of a congeries of feudal principalities.

Napoleon endeavoured to concentrate the power of the German princes as a whole by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he was officially recognised as Protector. The original Confederation of the Rhine established in July 1805, consisted of only fifteen princes, but after Tilsit it comprised thirty-two. The Arch-Chancellor of the new confederation was Charles de Dalberg, the Grand Duke of Frankfort, the only ecclesiastic who was acknowledged as a member. It comprised in all the four kingdoms of Bavaria, WÜrtemberg, Westphalia, and Saxony, the five grand duchies and twenty-three principalities. Its policy was conducted by a Diet sitting at Frankfort composed of two colleges,—the College of Kings and the College of Princes. The Confederation of the Rhine, which was mainly situated between the Rhine and the Elbe, contained a population of twenty million Germans, and was bound by treaty to contribute a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers to the armies of Napoleon.

In no respect did Napoleon prove how thoroughly his idea of re-establishing the ancient Empires of the East and the West had taken possession of his imagination than in his treatment of Poland. In order to please the Emperor Alexander he did not insist upon re-establishing Polish independence. Not only did he neither dare nor wish to deprive Russia of her Polish provinces, but at Tilsit he even ceded to Alexander the two Polish circles of Salkief and Tloczow. But though he dared not establish a powerful independent Poland for fear of offending Russia, he nevertheless formed, in 1807, a small Polish state under the name of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. By this half measure he failed to satisfy the Poles, who had looked to him to be the restorer of Polish independence, and at the same time offended the Emperor Alexander, who disliked the creation of a Polish state of any size or under any form. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw eventually contained the whole of Prussian and the greater part of Austrian Poland, and was placed under the rule of the King of Saxony as Grand Duke of Warsaw, just as in former days the Electors of Saxony had been Kings of Poland. In this half-and-half policy with regard to Poland was to be found the greatest peril to the newly-formed alliance between Alexander and Napoleon.

For more than a year the alliance between Russia and France, between Alexander and Napoleon, remained the most important fact of European polity; but causes of dissension soon arose. On the one hand, Alexander resented the existence of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and felt that his subjects had cause to grumble at the sufferings they endured owing to the Continental Blockade; on the other, there were not wanting signs that Napoleon’s power had reached its height, and was now about to decline. The first symptoms of this decline were his quarrel with the Pope and his intervention in the affairs of Spain. The first blows struck at his military superiority were the defeat of the French troops in Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley at Vimeiro and the capitulation of General Dupont to the Spaniards. The Treaty of Tilsit marked the true zenith of Napoleon’s power; but in spite of the misfortunes he suffered in 1808, and his wanton intervention in the affairs of Spain, he still seemed the greatest monarch in Europe. Feeling his prestige somewhat affected, and fearing the effect upon the mind of his imaginative ally, Napoleon, trusting in the magnetism of his presence and his conversation, had recourse to a personal interview with Alexander at Erfurt in September 1808. There the two masters of Europe discussed the state of affairs; Napoleon soothed Alexander’s discontent, and again promised him the Danubian provinces. But the full confidence which had been established at Tilsit was not restored at Erfurt. Alexander, in spite of his admiration for the person of Napoleon, felt distrustful of his policy, and Napoleon deceived himself when he thought he had regained his ascendency over the mind of the Russian Emperor. The interviews between the two Emperors formed the important political side of the Congress of Erfurt; but the features which dazzled Europe were the grand fÊtes, the pit full of kings which listened to Talma, the great French actor, and the obsequiousness of the high-born German princes to one who, a few years before but a general of the French Republic, was now master of Europe.