SECTION I NAPOLEON AND THE SPANISH BOURBONS CHAPTER I THE TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU

‘I am not the heir of Louis XIV, I am the heir of Charlemagne,’ wrote Napoleon, in one of those moments of epigrammatic self-revelation which are so precious to the students of the most interesting epoch and the most interesting personality of modern history[2]. There are historians who have sought for the origins of the Peninsular War far back in the eternal and inevitable conflict between democracy and privilege[3]: there are others who—accepting the Emperor’s own version of the facts—have represented it as a fortuitous development arising from his plan of forcing the Continental System upon every state in Europe. To us it seems that the moment beyond which we need not search backward was that in which Bonaparte formulated to himself the idea that he was not the successor of the greatest of the Bourbons, but of the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a different thing to claim to be the first of European monarchs, and to claim to be the king of kings. Louis XIV had wide-reaching ambitions for himself and for his family: but it was from his not very deep or accurate knowledge of Charlemagne that Napoleon had derived his idea of a single imperial power bestriding Europe, of a monarch whose writ ran alike at Paris and at Mainz, at Milan and at Hamburg, at Rome and at Barcelona, and whose vassal[p. 2]-princes brought him the tribute of all the lands of the Oder, the Elbe, and the middle Danube[4].

There is no need for us to trace back the growth of Napoleon’s conception of himself as the successor of Charlemagne beyond the winter of 1805-6, the moment when victorious at Austerlitz and master for the first time of Central Europe, he began to put into execution his grandiose scheme for enfeoffing all the realms of the Continent as vassal states of the French Empire. He had extorted from Francis of Austria the renunciation of his meagre and time-worn rights as head of the Holy Roman Empire, because he intended to replace the ancient shadow by a new reality. The idea that he might be Emperor of Europe and not merely Emperor of the French was already developed, though Prussia still needed to be chastised, and Russia to be checked and turned back on to the ways of the East. It was after Austerlitz but before Jena that the foundations of the Confederation of the Rhine were laid[5], and that the Emperor took in hand the erection of that series of subject realms under princes of his own house, which was to culminate in the new kingdom of Spain ruled by ‘Joseph Napoleon the First.’ By the summer of 1806 the system was already well developed: the first modest experiment, the planting out of his sister Eliza and her insignificant husband in the duchy of Lucca and Piombino was now twelve months old. There had followed the gift of the old Bourbon kingdom of Naples to Joseph Bonaparte in February, 1806, and the transformation of the Batavian Republic into Louis Bonaparte’s kingdom of Holland in June. The Emperor’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, had been made Grand-Duke of Berg in March, his sister, Pauline, Duchess of Guastalla in the same month. It cannot be doubted that his eye was already roving all round Europe, marking out every region in which the system of feudatory states could be further extended.

At the ill-governed realms of Spain and Portugal it is certain that he must have taken a specially long glance. He had against the house of the Bourbons the grudge that men always feel against[p. 3] those whom they have injured. He knew that they could never forgive the disappointed hopes of 1799, nor the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, however much they might disguise their sentiments by base servility. What their real feelings were might be guessed from the treacherous conduct of their kinsmen of Naples, whom he had just expelled from the Continent. The Bourbons of Spain were at this moment the most subservient and the most ill-used of his allies. Under the imbecile guidance of his favourite Godoy, Charles IV had consistently held to the league with France since 1795, and had thereby brought down untold calamities upon his realm. Nevertheless Napoleon was profoundly dissatisfied with him as an ally. The seventy-two million francs of subsidies which he was annually wringing from his impoverished neighbour seemed to him a trifle. The chief gain that he had hoped to secure, when he goaded Spain into war with England in 1804, had been the assistance of her fleet, by whose aid he had intended to gain the control of the narrow seas, and to dominate the Channel long enough to enable him to launch his projected invasion against the shores of Kent and Sussex. But the Spanish navy, always more formidable on paper than in battle, had proved a broken reed. The flower of its vessels had been destroyed at Trafalgar. There only remained in 1806 a few ships rotting in harbour at Cadiz, Cartagena, and Ferrol, unable even to concentrate on account of the strictness of Collingwood’s blockade. Napoleon was angry at his ally’s impotence, and was already reflecting that in hands more able and energetic than those of Charles IV Spain might give aid of a very different kind. In after years men remembered that as early as 1805 he had muttered to his confidants that a Bourbon on the Spanish throne was a tiresome neighbour—too weak as an ally, yet dangerous as a possible enemy[6]. For in spite of all the subservience of Charles IV the Emperor believed, and believed quite rightly, that a Bourbon prince must in his heart loathe the unnatural alliance with the child of the Revolution. But in 1806 Bonaparte had an impending war with Prussia on his hands, and there was no leisure for interfering in the affairs of the Peninsula.[p. 4] Spain, he thought, could wait, and it is improbable that he had formulated in his brain any definite plan for dealing with her.

The determining factor in his subsequent action was undoubtedly supplied in the autumn of 1806 by the conduct of the Spanish government during the campaign of Jena. There was a moment, just before that decisive battle had been fought, during which European public opinion was expecting a check to the French arms. The military prestige of Prussia was still very great, and it was well known that Russia had not been able to put forth her full strength at Austerlitz. Combined it was believed that they would be too much for Napoleon. While this idea was still current, the Spanish king, or rather his favourite Godoy, put forth a strange proclamation which showed how slight was the bond of allegiance that united them to France, and how hollow their much vaunted loyalty to the emperor[7]. It was an impassioned appeal to the people of Spain to take arms en masse, and to help the government with liberal gifts of men, horses and money. ‘Come,’ it said, ‘dear fellow countrymen, come and swear loyalty beneath the banners of the most benevolent of sovereigns.’ The God of Victories was to smile on a people which helped itself, and a happy and enduring peace was to be the result of a vigorous effort. It might have been pleaded in defence of Charles IV that all this was very vague, and that the anonymous enemy who was to be crushed might be England. But unfortunately for this interpretation, three whole sentences of the document are filled with demands for horses and an instant increase in the cavalry arm of the Spanish military establishment. It could hardly be urged with seriousness that horsemen were intended to be employed against the English fleet. And of naval armaments there was not one word in the proclamation.

This document was issued on Oct. 5, 1806: not long after there arrived in Madrid the news of the battle of Jena and the capture of Berlin. The Prince of the Peace was thunderstruck at the non-fulfilment of his expectations and the complete triumph of Napoleon. He hastened to countermand his armaments, and to shower letters of explanation and apology on the Emperor, pointing out that his respected ally could not possibly have been the ‘enemy’ referred to in the proclamation. That document had[p. 5] reached Napoleon on the very battle-field of Jena, and had caused a violent paroxysm of rage in the august reader[8]. But, having Russia still to fight, he repressed his wrath for a moment, affecting to regard as satisfactory Godoy’s servile letters of explanation. Yet we can hardly doubt that this was the moment at which he made up his mind that the House of Bourbon must cease to reign in Spain. He must have reflected on the danger that southern France had escaped; a hundred thousand Spaniards might have marched on Bordeaux or Toulouse at the moment of Jena, and there would have been no army whatever on the unguarded frontier of the Pyrenees to hold them in check. Supposing that Jena had been deferred a month, or that no decisive battle at all had been fought in the first stage of the struggle with Prussia, it was clear that Godoy would have committed himself to open war. A stab in the back, even if dealt with no better weapon than the disorganized Spanish army, must have deranged all Napoleon’s plans, and forced him to turn southward the reserves destined to feed the ‘Grand Army.’ It was clear that such a condition of affairs must never be allowed to recur, and we should naturally expect to find that, the moment the war of 1806-7 was ended, Napoleon would turn against Spain, either to dethrone Charles IV, or at least to demand the dismissal from office of Godoy. He acknowledged this himself at St. Helena: the right thing to have done, as he then conceded, would have been to declare open war on Spain immediately after Tilsit[9].

After eight years of experience of Bonaparte as an ally, the rulers of Spain ought to have known that his silence during the campaigns of Eylau and Friedland boded them no good. But his present intentions escaped them, and they hastened to atone for the proclamation of Oct. 5 by a servile obedience to all the orders which he sent them. The most important of these was the command to mobilize and send to the Baltic 15,000 of their best troops [March, 1807]. This was promptly done, the depleted[p. 6] battalions and squadrons being raised to war-strength, by drafts of men and horses which disorganized dozens of the corps that remained at home[10]. The reason alleged, the fear of Swedish and English descents on the rear of the Grand Army, was plausible, but there can be no doubt that the real purpose was to deprive Spain of a considerable part, and that the most efficient, of her disposable forces. If Godoy could have listened to the interviews of Napoleon and Alexander of Russia at Tilsit, he would have been terrified at the offhand way in which the Emperor suggested to the Czar that the Balearic Isles should be taken from Spain and given to Ferdinand of Naples, if the latter would consent to cede Sicily to Joseph Napoleon[11]. To despoil his allies was quite in the usual style of Bonaparte—Godoy cannot have forgotten the lot of Trinidad and Ceylon—but he had not before proposed to tear from Spain, not a distant colony, but an ancient province of the Aragonese crown. The project was enshrined in the ‘secret and supplementary’ clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit, which Napoleon wished to conceal till the times were ripe.

It was only when Bonaparte had returned to France from his long campaign in Poland that the affairs of the Iberian Peninsula began to come seriously to the front. The Emperor arrived in Paris at the end of July, 1807, and this was the moment at which he might have been expected to produce the rod, for the chastisement which the rulers of Spain had merited by their foolish proclamation of the preceding year. But no sign of any such intention was displayed: it is true that early in August French troops in considerable numbers began to muster at Bayonne[12], but[p. 7] Bonaparte openly declared that they were destined to be used, not against Spain, but against Portugal. One of the articles of the Peace of Tilsit had been to the effect that Sweden and Portugal, the last powers in Europe which had not submitted to the Continental System, should be compelled—if necessary by force—to adhere to it, and to exclude the commerce of England from their ports. It was natural that now, as in 1801, a French contingent should be sent to aid Spain in bringing pressure to bear on her smaller neighbour. With this idea Godoy and his master persisted in the voluntary blindness to the signs of the times which they had so long been cultivating. They gave their ambassador in Lisbon orders to act in all things in strict conjunction with his French colleague.

On August 12, therefore, the representatives of Spain and France delivered to John, the Prince-Regent of Portugal (his mother, Queen Maria, was insane), almost identical notes, in which they declared that they should ask for their passports and leave Lisbon, unless by the first of September the Regent had declared war on England, joined his fleet to that of the allied powers, confiscated all British goods in his harbours, and arrested all British subjects within the bounds of his kingdom. The prince, a timid and incapable person, whose only wish was to preserve his neutrality, answered that he was ready to break off diplomatic relations with England, and to close his ports against British ships, but that the seizure of the persons and property of the British merchants, without any previous declaration of war, would be contrary to the rules of international law and morality. For a moment he hoped that this half-measure would satisfy Napoleon, that he might submit to the Continental System without actually being compelled to declare war on Great Britain. But when dispatches had been interchanged between the French minister Rayneval and his master at Paris, the answer came that the Regent’s offer was insufficient, and that the representatives of France and Spain were ordered to quit Lisbon at once. This they did on September 30, but without issuing any formal declaration of war.

On October 18, the French army, which had been concentrating at Bayonne since the beginning of August, under the harmless name of the ‘Corps of Observation of the Gironde,’ crossed the Bidassoa at Irun and entered Spain. It had been placed under[p. 8] the orders of Junot, one of Napoleon’s most active and vigorous officers, but not a great strategist after the style of Masséna, Soult, or Davoust. He was a good fighting-man, but a mediocre general. The reason that he received the appointment was that he had already some knowledge of Portugal, from having held the post of ambassador at Lisbon in 1805. He had been promised a duchy and a marshal’s baton if his mission was carried out to his master’s complete satisfaction.

It is clear that from the first Napoleon had intended that Portugal should refuse the ignominious orders which he had given to the Prince-Regent. If he had only been wishing to complete the extension of the Continental System over all Southern Europe, the form of obedience which had been offered him by the Portuguese government would have been amply sufficient. But he was aiming at annexation, and not at the mere assertion of his suzerainty over Portugal. The fact that he began to mass troops at Bayonne before he commenced to threaten the Regent is sufficient proof of his intentions. An army was not needed to coerce the Portuguese: for it was incredible that in the then condition of European affairs they would dare to risk war with France and Spain by adhering too stiffly to the cause of England. The Regent was timid and his submission was certain; but Napoleon took care to dictate the terms that he offered in such an offensive form that the Portuguese government would be tempted to beg for changes of detail, though it sorrowfully accepted the necessity of conceding the main point—war with England and the acceptance of the Continental System. The Prince-Regent, as might have been expected, made a feeble attempt to haggle over the more ignominious details, and then Napoleon withdrew his ambassador and let loose his armies.

Shortly after Junot had crossed the Bidassoa there was signed at Fontainebleau the celebrated secret treaty which marks the second stage of the Emperor’s designs against the Peninsula. It was drawn up by Duroc, Napoleon’s marshal of the palace, and Eugenio Izquierdo, the agent of Godoy. For the official ambassador of Spain in Paris, the Prince of Masserano, was not taken into the confidence of his master[13]. All delicate matters were conducted by the favourite’s private representative, an obscure but astute personage, the director of the Botanical Gardens at Madrid, whose[p. 9] position was legitimized by a royal sign-manual giving him powers to treat as a plenipotentiary with France. ‘Manuel is your protector: do what he tells you, and by serving him you serve me,’ the old king had said, when giving him his commission.

The Treaty of Fontainebleau is a strange document, whose main purpose, at a first glance, seems to be the glorification of Godoy. It is composed of fourteen articles[14], the most important of which contain the details of a projected dismemberment of Portugal. The country was to be cut up into three parts. Oporto and the northern province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho were to become the ‘Kingdom of Northern Lusitania,’ and to be ceded to a Bourbon, the young King of Etruria, whom Napoleon was just evicting from his pleasant abode at Florence. All Southern Portugal, the large province of Alemtejo and the coast region of Algarve, was to be given as an independent principality to Godoy, under the title of ‘Prince of the Algarves’[15]. The rest of Portugal, Lisbon and the provinces of Beira, Estremadura and Tras-os-Montes were to be sequestrated till the conclusion of a general peace, and meanwhile were to be governed and administered by the French. Ultimately they were to be restored, or not restored, to the house of Braganza according as the high contracting parties might determine.

Instead therefore of receiving punishment for his escapade in the autumn of 1806, Godoy was to be made by Napoleon a sovereign prince! But Spain, as apart from the favourite, got small profit from this extraordinary treaty: Charles IV might take, within the next three years, the pompous title of ‘Emperor of the Two Americas,’ and was to be given some share of the transmarine possessions of Portugal—which meanwhile (treaties or no) would inevitably fall into the hands of Great Britain, who held the command of the seas, while Napoleon did not.

It is incredible that Bonaparte ever seriously intended to carry out the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau: they were not even[p. 10] to be divulged (as Article XIV stipulated) till it was his pleasure. Godoy had deserved badly of him, and the Emperor was never forgiving. The favourite’s whole position and character (as we shall presently show) were so odious and disgraceful, that it would have required an even greater cynicism than Napoleon possessed, to overthrow an ancient and respectable kingdom in order to make him a sovereign prince. To pose perpetually as the regenerator of Europe, and her guardian against the sordid schemes of Britain, and then to employ as one’s agent for regeneration the corrupt and venal favourite of the wicked old Queen of Spain, would have been too absurd. Napoleon’s keen intelligence would have repudiated the idea, even in the state of growing autolatry into which he was already lapsing in the year 1807. What profit could there be in giving a kingdom to a false friend, already convicted of secret disloyalty, incapable, disreputable, and universally detested?

But if we apply another meaning to the Treaty of Fontainebleau we get a very different light upon it. If we adopt the hypothesis that Bonaparte’s real aim was to obtain an excuse for marching French armies into Spain without exciting suspicion, all its provisions become intelligible. ‘This Prince of the Peace,’ he said in one of his confidential moments, ‘this mayor of the palace, is loathed by the nation; he is the rascal who will himself open for me the gates of Spain[16].’ The phantom principality that was dangled before Godoy’s eyes was only designed to attract his attention while the armies of France were being poured across the Pyrenees. It is doubtful whether the Emperor intended the project of the ‘Principality of the Algarves’ to become generally known. If he did, it must have been with the intention of making the favourite more odious than he already was to patriotic Spaniards, at the moment when he and his master were about to be brushed away by a sweep of the imperial arm. That Napoleon was already in October preparing other armies beside that of Junot, and that he purposed to overrun Spain when the time was ripe, is shown in the Treaty itself. Annexed to it is a convention regulating the details of the invasion of Portugal: the sixth clause of this paper mentions that it was the emperor’s intention to concentrate 40,000 more troops at Bayonne—in case Great Britain should threaten an armed descent[p. 11] on Portugal—and that this force would be ready to cross the Pyrenees by November 20. Napoleon sent not 40,000 but 100,000 men, and pushed them into Spain, though no English invasion of Portugal had taken place, or even been projected. After this is it possible to believe for a moment in his good faith, or to think that the Treaty of Fontainebleau was anything more than a snare?

Those who could best judge what was at the back of the emperor’s mind, such as Talleyrand and Fouché, penetrated his designs long before the treaty of Fontainebleau had been signed. Talleyrand declares in his memoirs[17] that the reason for which he was deprived of the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in August, 1807, was that he had disliked the scheme of invading Spain in a treacherous fashion, and warned his master against it. No improbability is added to this allegation by the fact that Napoleon at St. Helena repeatedly stated that Talleyrand had first thought of the idea, and had recommended it to him ‘while at the same time contriving to set an opinion abroad that he was opposed to the design.’ On the other hand, we are not convinced of the Prince of Benevento’s innocence merely by the fact that he wrote in his autobiography that he was a strenuous opponent of the plan. He says that the emperor broached the whole scheme to him the moment that he returned from Tilsit, asseverating that he would never again expose himself to the danger of a stab in the back at some moment when he might be busy in Central Europe[18]. He himself, he adds, combated the project by every possible argument, but could not move his master an inch from his purpose. This is probably true; but we believe it not because Talleyrand wrote it down—his bills require the endorsement of some backer of a less tarnished reputation—but because the whole of the Spanish episode is executed in the true Napoleonesque manner. Its scientific mixture of force and fraud is clearly the work of the same hand that managed the details of the fall of the Venetian Republic, and of the dethroning of Pope Pius VII. It is impossible to ascribe the plot to any other author.