These changes destroyed all that remained of the political life of France. Jacobinism had been eradicated in Nivose; republicanism and royalism were paralysed now. Henceforth there was no power in France but Bonaparte; upon his absolute will a great nation and an unparalleled military force waited. He had undertaken to settle a dispute in which France had been engaged throughout the eighteenth century; he had undertaken to humble the might of England. Would not, then, ordinary prudence suggest to him the expediency of postponing any aggressive designs he might have on the Continental Powers? He had done much since Brumaire to reconcile Europe to his government; it now became more obviously politic to tread the path of conciliation, while he assembled the forces of Europe under his leadership against the tyrant of the seas. Strange to say, he pursued the opposite course, and at the very time when his grand stroke against England was in suspense extended his power so recklessly in Italy, behaved with such insolence to the German Powers, and shocked public feeling by acts so Jacobinical, that he brought upon himself a new European coalition. It was the great mistake of his life. He was not, in the long run, a match for England and the Continent together; he made at starting the irremediable mistake of not dividing these two enemies. he seems indeed to have set out with a monstrous miscalculation which might have ruined him very speedily, for he had laid his plan for an invasion of England and a war in Europe at the same time. If we imagine the invasion successfully begun, we see France thrown back into the position of 1799, her best general and army cut off from her by the sea, while Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia pour their armies across the Rhine; but we see that the position would have been far worse than in 1799, since France without Bonaparte in 1805 would have been wholly paralysed. As it was, the signal failure of his English enterprise left room for a triumphant campaign in Germany, and Ulm concealed Trafalgar from the view of the Continent.
    The European Coalition had been disarmed since Brumaire by the belief that Bonaparte's government was less intolerably aggressive than that of the Directory; this belief gave place in 1803 to a conviction that he was quite as aggressive and much more dangerous. England therefore might hope to revive the Coalition, and in the spring of 1804 she recalled Pitt to the helm in order that he might do this. The violent proceedings of Bonaparte on the occasion of the rupture, his occupation of Hanover, his persecution of the English representatives in Germany,--Spencer Smith at Stuttgart, Drake at Munich, Sir G. Rumbold at Hamburg,--created an alarm in the cabinets greater than that of 1798, and the murder of D'Enghien shocked as much as it alarmed them. Positive conquest and annexation of territory too now went on as rapidly and as openly as in 1798. The new empire compared itself to that of Charlemagne, which extended over Italy and Germany, and on December 2, 1804, a parody of the famous transference of the empire took place in Notre Dame, Pope Pius VII appearing there to crown Napoleon, who however took the crown from his hands and placed it himself upon his own head. Meanwhile the Italian republic was changed into a kingdom, which at first Bonaparte intended to give to his brother Joseph, but in the end accepted for himself. In the spring of 1805, fresh from the sacre in Notre Dame, he visited Italy and received the iron crown of the Lombard kings at Milan (May 26). A little later the Ligurian republic was annexed, and a principality was found for his brother-in-law Baciocchi in Lucca and Piombino. By these acts he seemed to show himself not only ready but eager to fight with all Europe at once. It was not his fault that in the autumn of 1805, when he fought with Austria and Russia in Germany, he was not also maintaining a desperate struggle in the heart of England; it was not his fault that Prussia was not also at war with him, for his aggressions had driven Prussia almost to despair, and only once--that is, in the matter of Sir G. Rumbold--had he shown the smallest consideration for her. And yet at first fortune did not seem to favour him.
    Had public opinion been less enslaved in France, had the frivolity of the nation been less skilfully amused by the operatic exhibitions of the new court and the sacre in Notre Dame, it would have been remarked that, after most needlessly involving France in a war with England, Bonaparte had suffered half the year 1803, all the year 1804, and again more than half the year 1805 to pass without striking a single blow, that after the most gigantic and costly preparations the scheme of invasion was given up, and that finally France suffered a crushing defeat at Trafalgar which paralysed her on the side of England for the rest of the war. In order to understand in any degree the course he took, it seems necessary to suppose that the intoxication of the Marengo campaign still held him, that as then, contrary to all expectation, he had passed the Alps, crushed his enemy, and instantly returned, so now he made no doubt of passing the Channel, signing peace in London, and returning in a month with a fabulous indemnity in his pocket to meet the Coalition in Germany. To conquer England it was worth while to wait two years, but his position was very critical when, after losing two years, he was obliged to confess himself foiled. He retrieved his position suddenly, and achieved a triumph which, though less complete than that he had counted on, was still prodigious,--the greatest triumph of his life. At the moment when his English scheme was ending in deplorable failure, he produced another, less gigantic but more solid, which he unfolded with a rapid precision and secrecy peculiar to himself. In the five years which had passed since Marengo his position for the purposes of a Continental war had improved vastly. Then he had no footing either in Germany or Italy, and his new office of First Consul gave him a very precarious control over the armies which themselves were in a poor condition. Now his military authority was absolute, and the armies after five years of imperialism were in perfect organisation; he had North Italy to the Adige; and since the Germanic revolution of 1803 Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden had passed over to his side. Therefore, as the Coalition consisted only of Austria, Russia, and England, he might count upon success, and the more confidently if he could strike Austria before the arrival of the Russian army. It is strange that in this estimate it should be unnecessary to take Prussia into account, since the Prussian army (consisting of 250,000 men) was at that time supposed to be a match by itself for the French. But for ten years Prussia had striven to hold a middle course, almost equally distrustful of France on the one side and of her old rival Austria, or her powerful neighbour Russia, on the other. She still clung convulsively to her strange system of immovable neutrality, and in this war both sides had to put up with the uncertainty whether the prodigious weight of the army of Frederick would not be thrown suddenly either into its own or the opposite scale. It was at the end of August 1805 that Napoleon made his sudden change of front. At the beginning of the month he had been still intent on the invasion of England; ever since March maritime manoeuvres on an unparalleled scale had been carried on with the object of decoying the English fleets away from the Channel, and so giving an opportunity for the army of invasion to cross on a flotilla under the protection of French fleets. But in spite of all manoeuvres a great English fleet remained stationary at Brest, and Nelson, having been for a moment decoyed to Barbados, returned again. In the last days of August Admiral Villeneuve, issuing from Ferrol, took alarm at the news of the approach of an English fleet, and instead of sailing northward faced about and retired to Cadiz. Then for the first time Napoleon admitted the idea of failure, and saw the necessity of screening it by some great achievement on another quarter. He resolved to throw his whole force upon the Coalition, and to do it suddenly. Prussia was to be bribed by the very substantial present of Hanover.
 
 

    Five years had passed since Napoleon had taken the field when the second period of his military career began. He now begins to make war as a sovereign with boundless command of means. For five years, from 1805 to 1089, he takes the field regularly, and in these campaigns he founds the great Napoleonic empire. By the first he breaks up the Germanic system and attaches the minor German states to France, by the second he humbles Prussia, by the third he forces Russia into an alliance, by the fourth he reduces Spain to submission, by the fifth he humbles Austria. Then follows a second pause, during which for three years Napoleon's sword is in sheath, and he is once more ruler, not soldier.
    It is to be observed that he sets out with no distinct design of conquest, but only because he has been attacked by the Coalition. Fortune then tempts him on from triumph to triumph, and throughout he has no other conscious design but to turn all the force of the Continent against England.
    Napoleon's strategy always aims at an overwhelming surprise. As in 1800, when all eyes were intent on Genoa, and from Genoa the Austrians hoped to penetrate France, he created an overwhelming confusion by throwing himself across the Alps and marching not on Genoa but upon Milan, so now he appeared not in front of the Austrians but behind them and between them and Vienna. the wavering faith of Bavaria had caused the Austrians to pass the Inn and to advance across the country to Ulm. It was intended that the Russians should join them here, and that the united host should invade France, taking Napoleon, as they fondly hoped, by surprise. It is to be remarked that of all the coalitions this seems to have been the most loosely combined, owing chiefly to the shallowness and inexperience of Alexander. Austria was hurried into action, and found herself unsupported at need by the Russians, and disappointed altogether of the help of Prussia, upon which she had counted. Moreover, so often unfortunate in her choice of generals, she had this time made the most unfortunate choice of all. Mack. Who at Naples in 1799 had moved the impatient contempt of Nelson, now stood matched against Napoleon at the height of his power. He occupied the line of the Iller from Ulm to Memmingen, expecting the attack of Napoleon, who personally lingered in Strasbourg, in front. Meanwhile the French armies swarmed from Hanover and down the Rhine, treating the small German states half as allies half as conquered dependants, and disregarding all neutrality, even that of Prussia, till they took up their positions along the Danube from Donauworth to Ratisbon far in the rear of Mack. The surprise was so complete that Mack, who in the early days of October used the language of confident hope, on the 17th surrendered at Ulm with about 26,000 men, while another division, that of Werneck, surrendered on the 18th to Murat at Nordlingen. In a month the whole Austrian army, consisting of 80,000 men was entirely dissolved. Napoleon was master of Bavaria, recalled the elector of Munich, and received the congratulations of the electors of Wurtemberg and Baden (they had just at this time the title of electors). It was a stroke of Marengo repeated, but without a doubtful battle and without undeserved good luck.
    After Marengo it had been left to Moreau to win the decisive victory and to conclude the war; this time there was no Moreau to divide the laurels. The second part of the campaign begins at once; on October 28 Napoleon reports that a division of his army has crossed the Inn. He has now to deal with the Russians, of whom 40,000 men have arrived under Kutusoff. He reaches Linz on November 4, where Gyulai brought him the emperor's proposal for an armistice. He replies by demanding Venice and Tyrol, and insisting upon the exclusion of Russia from the negotiations, conditions which, as he no doubt foresaw, Gyulai did not think himself authorised to accept. But Napoleon did not intend this time, as in 1797 and in 1800, to stop short of Vienna. Nothing now could resist his advance, for the other Austrian armies, that of the archduke John in Tyrol and that of the archduke Charles on the Adige, were held in play by Ney and Massena, and compelled at last, instead of advancing to the rescue, to retire through Carniola into Hungary. On November 14 he dates from the palace of Schonbrunn; on the day before Murat had entered Vienna, which the Austrian emperor, from motives of humanity, had resolved not to defend, and the French also succeeded by an unscrupulous trick in getting possession of the bridges over the Danube. So far his progress had been triumphant, and yet he was now in an extremely critical position. The archduke Charles was approaching from Hungary with 80,000 Austrians; another Russian army was entering Moravia to join Kutusoff, who had with great skill escaped from the pursuit of Murat after the capture of Vienna. Napoleon, though he had brought 200,000 men into Germany, had not now, since he was obliged to keep open his communications down the valley of the Danube, a large army available for the field. But, what was much more serious, he had recklessly driven Prussia into the opposite camp. He had marched troops across her territory of Ansbach, violating her neutrality, and in consequence on November 3 (while Napoleon was at Linz) she had signed with Russia the treaty of Potsdam, which practically placed 180,000 of the most highly drilled troops in the world at the service of the Coalition. Such had been Napoleon's rashness, for his audacious daring was balanced indeed by infinite cunning and ingenuity, but was seldom tempered by prudence. In this position, it may be asked, how could he expect ever to make his way back to France? What he had done to Mack Prussia would now do to him. The army of Frederick would block the Danube between him and France, while the Russians and the Austrians, united under the archduke, would seek him at Vienna.
    As at Marengo, fortune favoured his hazardous strategy. The allies had only to play a waiting game, but this the Russians and their young Czar, who was now in the Moravian headquarters, would not consent to do. He was surrounded by young and rash counsellors, and the Russians, remembering the victories of Suwaroff in 1799, and remarking that almost all Napoleon's victories hitherto had been won over Austrians, had not yet learned to be afraid of him. Napoleon became aware of their sanguine confidence from Savary, whom he had sent to the Czar with proposals; he contrived to heighten it by exhibiting his army as ill prepared to Dolgorouki, sent to him on the part of the Czar. The end was that the Russians (80,000 men, aided by about 15,000 Austrians) rushed into the battle of Austerlitz (December 2 1805), which brought the third Coalition to an end, as that of Hohenlinden had brought the second. Nowhere was Napoleon's superiority more manifest; the Russians lost more than 20,000 men, the Austrians 6,000. The former retired at once under a military convention, and before the year 1805 was out the treaty of Pressburg was concluded with Austria (December 26) and that of Schonbrunn with Prussia (December 15).
    It was a transformation scene more bewildering than even that of Marengo, and completely altered the position of Napoleon before Europe. To the French indeed Austerlitz was not, as a matter of exultation, equal to Marengo, for it did not deliver the state from danger, but only raised it from a perilous eminence to an eminence more perilous still. But as a military achievement it was far greater, exhibiting the army at the height of its valour and organisation (the illusion of liberty not yet quite dissipated), and the commander at the height of his tactical skill; and in its historical results it is greater still, ranking among the great events of the world. For not only did it found the ephemeral Napoleonic empire by handing over Venetia to the Napoleonic monarchy of Italy, and Tyrol and Vorarlberg to Napoleon's new client Bavaria; it also destroyed the Holy Roman Empire, while it divided the remains of Hither Austria between Wurtemberg and Baden. In the summer of 1806 the Emperor of Austria (he had this title since 1804) solemnly abdicated the title of Roman emperor; the ancient diet of Ratisbon was dissolved, and a new organisation was created under the name of Confederation of the Rhine, in which the minor states of Germany were united under the protectorate of Napoleon, much in the same way as in former times they had been united under the presidency of Austria. Bavaria and Wurtemberg at the same time were raised to kingdoms. In all the changes which have happened since, the Holy Roman Empire has never been revived, and this event remains the greatest in the modern history of Germany.
    But Austerlitz was greater than Marengo in another way. That victory had a tranquillising effect, and was soon followed by a peace which lasted more than four years. But the equilibrium established after Austerlitz was of the most unstable kind; it was but momentary, and was followed by a succession of the most appalling convulsions; the very report of the battle hastened the death of William Pitt. A French ascendancy had existed since 1797, and Napoleon's Government had at first promised to make it less intolerable. Since 1803 this hope had vanished, but now suddenly the ascendancy was converted into something like a universal monarchy. Europe could not settle down. The first half of 1806 was devoted to the internal reconstruction of Germany, and to the negotiation of peace with the two great belligerents who remained after Austria and Prussia had retired, viz., England and Russia. But these negotiations failed, and in failing revived the Coalition. On the side of England, Fox showed unexpectedly all the firmness of Pitt; and the Czar refused his ratification to the treaty which his representative at Paris, D'Oubril, had signed. Everything now depended on Prussia, and again Napoleon adopted the strange policy by which a year before he had armed all Europe against himself. Instead of detaching Prussia from the Coalition by friendly advances, he drives her into it by his reckless insolence. At a moment when he found herself almost shut out of the German world by the new Confederation, Napoleon was found coolly treating with England for the restoration of Hanover to George III. In August 1806, just at the moment of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, Prussia suddenly mobilised her army, and about the same time Russia rejected the treaty. This amounted practically to a new Coalition, or to a revival of the old one with Prussia in the place of Austria. On September 10 he writes, 'The Prussians wish to receive a lesson.' No one knew so well as Napoleon the advantage given by suddenness and rapidity. The year before he had succeeded in crushing the Austrians before the Russians could come up; against Prussia he had now the advantage that she had long been politically isolated, and could not immediately get help from Russia or England, - for the moment only Saxony and Hessen-Cassel stood by her - while his armies, to the number of 200,000 men, were already stationed in Bavaria and Swabia, whence in a few days they could arrive on the scene of action. The year before Austria had been ruined by the incapacity of Mack; Prussia now suffered from an incapacity diffused through the higher ranks both of the military and civil service. Generals too old, such as Brunswick and Mollendorf, a military system corrupted by long peace, a policy without clearness, a diplomacy without honour, had converted the great power founded by Frederick into a body without a soul. There began a new war, of which the incidents are almost precisely parallel to those of the was which had so lately closed. As the Austrians at Ulm, so now Napoleon crushed the Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt (October 14) before the appearance of the Russians; as he entered Vienna, so now her enters Berlin (October 27); as he fought a second war in Moravia, in which Austria played a second part of Russia, so now from November 1806 to June 1807 he fights in East Prussia against the Russians aided with smaller numbers by the Prussians; as he might then, after all his successes, have been ruined by the intervention of Prussia, so now, had Austria struck in, he might have found much difficulty in making his way back to France; as at Austerlitz, so at Friedland in June 1807 the Russians ran hastily into a decisive battle, in which they ruined their ally but not themselves; as Austria at Pressburg, so Prussia at Tilsit signed a most humiliating treaty, while Russia, as before, escaped, not this time by simply retiring from the scene, but by a treaty in which Napoleon admitted her to a share in the spoils of victory.
    Here was a second catastrophe far more surprising and disastrous than that which it followed so closely. The defeat of Austria in 1805 had been similar to her former defeats in 1800 and 1797; Ulm had been similar to Hohenlinden, the treaty of Pressburg to that of Luneville. But the double repulse of Jena and Auerstadt, which threw two armies back upon each other, and so ruined both, dissolved for ever the military creation of the great Frederick; and it was followed by a general panic, surrender of fortresses, and submission on the part of civil officials, which seemed almost to amount to a dissolution of the Prussian state. The defence of Colberg by Gneisenau and the conduct of the Prussian troops under Lestocq at Eylau, were almost the only redeeming achievements of the famous army which, half a century before, had withstood for seven years the attack of three Great Powers at once. This downfall was expressed in the treaty of Tilsit, which was vastly more disastrous to Prussia than that of Pressburg had been to Austria. Prussia was partitioned between Saxony, Russia and a newly established Napoleonic kingdom of Westphalia. Her population was reduced by one-half, her army from 250,000 to 42,000 (the number fixed a little later by the treaty of September 1808), and Napoleon contrived also by a trick to saddle her for some time with the support of a French army of 150,000 men, She was in fact, and continued till 1813 to be, a conquered state, Russia, on the other hand, came off with more credit, as well as with less loss, than in the former campaign. At Eylau in January 1807 she in part atoned for Austerlitz. It was, perhaps, the most murderous battle that had been fought since the wars began, and it was not a defeat. Friedland too, was well contested.
    Another great triumph for Napoleon! But he might reflect at a later time that he had converted Prussia, which for ten years had been the most friendly to France of all the great Powers, into her most embittered enemy. On April 26, by the treaty of Bartenstein, Prussia had joined in all form the European Coalition.
 
 

    In the two years between August 1805 and the treaty of Tilsit Napoleon had drifted far from his first plan of an invasion of England. But he seemed brought back to it now by another route. England had marshalled Europe against him; might he not now marshal Europe against England? Austria was humbled, Prussia beneath his feet. Why should Russia for the future side with England against him? From the outset her interest in the wars of the West had been but slight; under Catherine it had been hypocritically feigned, in order to divert the eyes of Europe from her Eastern conquests; and perhaps Alexander, in 1805 and 1806, had not been free from a similar hypocrisy. The Russians themselves felt this so much that after Friedland they forced Alexander to abandon the new coalition so recently arranged at Bartenstein, and to make peace. But as Paul, when he left the Second Coalition, had actually joined France, Napoleon now saw the means of making Alexander so the same. England's tyranny of the seas had been attacked by the great Catherine and again by Paul; on this subject, therefore, Russian policy might co-operate with Napoleon, and, if its real object was only to obtain freedom in Turkey, this could be gained as well by a direct understanding with Napoleon as by giving occupation to his arms in Germany. Such was the basis of the treaty of Tilsit, negotiated between Napoleon and Alexander on a raft in the river Niemen, with which treaty commences a new phase in the struggle between Napoleon and England. Russia not only abandons England, but combines with France to humble her. Hitherto we have heard of coalitions against France, of which England has been the soul or at least the paymaster. At Tilsit Napoleon founds a European coalition against England.
    A pause occurs after Friedland, during which Europe begins slowly to realise her position, and to penetrate the character of Napoleon. It took some time to wear out his reputation of peace-maker; at his breach with England in 1803 he had appealed to that jealousy of England's maritime power which was widely spread; many thought the war was forced upon him, and as to the war of 1805, it could not be denied that Austria and Russia had attacked him. His absolute control over the French press enabled him almost to dictate public opinion.
    But the conquest of Germany, achieved in little more time than had sufficed to Bonaparte ten years before for the conquest of Italy, put him in a new light. He had already passed through many phases ; he had been the invincible champion of liberty, then the destroyer of Jacobinism and champion of order, then the new Constantine and restorer of the church, then the pacificator of the world, then the founder of a new monarchy in France. Now suddenly, in 1807, he stands forth in the new character of head of a great European confederacy. It has been usual to contrast the consulate with the empire, but the great transformation was made by the wars of 1805-7, and the true contrast is between the man of Brumaire and the man of Tilsit. The empire as founded in 1804 did not perhaps differ so much from the consulate after Marengo as both differed, alike in spirit and form, from the empire such as it began to appear after Pressburg and was consolidated after Tilsit. Between 1800 and 1805 Napoleon, under whatever title, was absolute ruler of France, including Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy and Nice, and practically also ruler of Holland, Switzerland, and North Italy to the Adige, which states had a republican form. The title emperor meant in 1804 little more than military ruler. But now emperor has rather its mediaeval meaning of paramount over a confederacy of princes. Napoleon has become a king of kings. This system had been commenced in the consulate, when a kingdom of Etruria under the consul's protection was created for the benefit of his ally, the King of Spain; it was carried a stage further on the eve of the war of 1805, when the kingdom of Italy was created, of which Napoleon himself assumed the sceptre, but committed the government to Eugene Beauharnais as viceroy. But now almost all Italy and a great part of Germany are subjected to this system. The Bonaparte family, which before had contended for the succession in France, so that Joseph actually refuses, as beneath him, the crown of Italy, now accept subordinate crowns. Joseph becomes King of Naples, the Bourbon dynasty having been expelled immediately after the peace of Pressburg; Louis becomes King of Holland; Jerome, the youngest brother, receives after Tilsit a kingdom of Westphalia, composed of territory taken from Prussia, of Hanover and of the electorate of Hessen-Cassel, which had shared the fall of Prussia; somewhat earlier Murat, husband of the most ambitious of the Bonaparte sisters, Caroline, had received the grand-duchy of Berg. By the side of these Bonaparte princes there are the German princes who now look up to France, as under the Holy Roman Empire they had looked up to Austria. These are formed into a Confederation in which the Archbishop of Mainz (Dalberg) presides, as he had before presided in the empire. Two of the princes have now the title of kings, and, enriched as they are by the secularisation of church lands, the mediatisation of immediate nobles, and the subjugation of free cities, they have also the substantial power. A princess of Bavaria weds Eugene Beauharnais, a princess of Wurtemberg Jerome Bonaparte. At its foundation in 1806 the Confederation had twelve members, but in the end it came to include almost all the states of Germany except Austria and Prussia.
    A change seems to take place at the same time in Napoleon's personal relations. In 1804, though the divorce of Josephine was debated, yet it appears to be Napoleon's fixed intention to bequeath his crown by the method of adoption to the eldest son of Louis by Hortense Beauharnais. But this child died suddenly of croup on May 5, 1807, while Napoleon was absent in Germany, and the event, occurring at the moment when he attained his position of king of kings, probably decided him in his own mind to proceed to the divorce.
    It was impossible to give crowns and principalities to the Bonaparte family without allowing a share of similar distinctions to the leading politicians and generals of France. He was therefore driven to revive titles of nobility. To do this was to abandon the revolutionary principle of equality, but Napoleon always bore in mind the necessity of bribing in the most splendid manner the party upon whose support ever since Brumaire he had depended, and which may be described shortly as the Senate. When in 1802 he received the life-consulate, he had proceeded instantly to create new dotations for the senators; now he feels that he must devise for them still more splendid bribes. His first plan is to give them feudal lordships outside France. Thus Berthier, his most indispensable minister, becomes sovereign prince of Pontecorvo, Talleyrand sovereign prince of Benevento. Especially out of the Venetian territory, given to France at Pressburg, are taken fiefs (not less than twelve in all), to which are attached the title of duke. These innovations fall in 1806, that is, in the middle of the period of transformation. But after Tilsit, when Napoleon felt more strongly both the power and the necessity of rewarding his servants, he created formally a new noblesse, and revived the majorat in defiance of the revolutionary code. In the end, besides the three sovereign princes just mentioned, he created four hereditary princes (Berthier is in both lists) and thirty-one hereditary dukes. There were also many counts and barons. The system was prodigiously wasteful. Of public money Berthier received more than 50,000l. a year, Davoust about 30,000l., nine other officials more than 10,000l. and twenty-three others more than 4,000l.
    After Marengo he had seen the importance of reconciling Europe to his greatness by making peace. After Tilsit it was still more urgently necessary that he should dispel the alarm which his conquests had now excited everywhere. But this time he made no attempt to do so; this time he can think of nothing but pushing his success to the destruction of England; and Europe gradually became aware that the evil so long dreaded of a destruction of the balance of power had come in the very worst form conceivable, and that her destiny was in the hands of a man whose headlong ambition was an unprecedented as his energy and good fortune.
    As in 1805 he had been drawn into the conquest of Germany in the course of a war with England, so now he assails all the neutral powers, and shortly afterwards violently annexes Spain, not so much from abstract love of conquest as in order to turn against England the forces of all the Continent at once. As he had left Boulogne for Germany, he now, as it were, returns to Boulogne. His successes had put into his hands two new instruments of war against England, instruments none the less welcome because the very act of using them made him master of the whole Continent. He had hinted at the first of these when the war with England began in 1803, by saying that in this war he did not intend that there should be any neutrality. What he meant was explained in 1806 by the edict issued from Berlin. In addition to that limited right, which the belligerent has by international law, to prevent by blockage the trade of a neutral with the enemy and to punish the individual trader by confiscation of ships and goods, Napoleon now assumed the right of preventing such commerce without blockade by controlling the neutral governments. English goods were to be seized everywhere, and the harbours of neutrals to be closed against English ships under penalty of war with France. Such a threat, involving a claim to criticise and judge the acts of neutral governments, and to inflict on them an enormous pecuniary fine, was almost equivalent to the annexation at one stroke of all the neutral states. The other instrument had a similar character. The French fleet having been crippled at Trafalgar, he proposed now to reinforce it by all the other fleets in Europe, and to get possession of all the resources of all the maritime states. His eyes therefore become now fixed on Denmark, Portugal and Spain.
    Such is Napoleon as king of kings, and such are his views. This unique phase of European history lasted five years, reckoning from the treaty of Tilsit to the breach with Russia. Europe consists now of a confederacy of monarchical states looking up to a paramount power (like India at the present day). The confederacy is held together by the war with England, which it puts under an ineffective commercial blockade, suffering itself in return a more effective one. But Napoleon feels that Spain and Portugal must be brought under his immediate administration, in order that their maritime resources may be properly turned against England.
    It cannot be necessary to point out that this method of attacking England was essentially ill-judged, however marvellous the display of power to which it gave rise. The confederacy was held together by the weakest of bonds, viz. by sheer force. What was unsatisfactorily achieved by the miracles of Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, might have been accomplished far better without them by diplomacy acting on the wide-spread jealousy and dislike of England. Napoleon's confederacy might always be suspected of wishing to pass over to the side of England, as at last it did. Austria begins to meditate to a new war on the morrow of Pressburg, and Prussia is humbled so intolerably that she is forced into plans of insurrection. Throughout these five years a European party of insurrection is gradually forming. It has two great divisions, one scattered through Germany, at the head of which Austria places herself in 1809, the other in Spain and Portugal, which is aided by England. In Germany this movement is successfully repressed until 1813, but in the Peninsula it gains ground steadily from 1809. After 1812 both movements swell the great Anti-Napoleonic Revolution which then sets in.