Immediately after Tilsit Napoleon entered on his new course, which had been arranged with Russia in secret articles. In August he required the King of Denmark to declare war with England; but here England, seeing herself threatened by a Coalition of all Europe at once, interfered with desperate resolution. She required Denmark to surrender her fleet (consisting of twenty ships of the line and a number of frigates) in deposit, promising to restore it at the peace; in receiving a refusal she took possession of it by force. At the same time he formed an army under Junot for the invasion of Portugal, with which state, as the old ally of England, Napoleon used no ceremony. The feeble government consented to almost all of his demands, agreed to enter the Continental system and to declare was against England; only the regent had a scruple which restrained him from confiscating the property of private Englishmen. From this moment Portugal is doomed, and negotiations are opened with Spain concerning the partition of it. But out of these negotiations grew unexpected events.
    For more than ten years Spain had been drawn in the wake of revolutionary France. To Napoleon from the beginning of his reign she had been as subservient as Holland or Switzerland; she had made war and peace at his bidding, had surrendered Trinidad to make the treaty of Amiens, had given her fleet to destruction at Trafalgar. In other states equally subservient, such as Holland and the Italian Republic, Napoleon had remodelled the government at his pleasure, and in the end had put his own family at the head of it. After Tilsit he thought himself strong enough to make a similar change in Spain, and the occupation of Portugal seemed to afford the opportunity of doing this. By two conventions signed at Fontainebleau on October 27 the partition of Portugal was arranged with Spain. The Prince of the Peace was to become a sovereign prince of the Algarves, the King of Spain was to have Brazil with the title of Emperor of the two Americas, &c.; but the main provision was that a French army was to stand on the threshold of Spain ready to resist any intervention of England. The occupation of Portugal took place soon after, Junot arriving at Lisbon on November 30, just as the royal family with a following of several thousands set sail for Brazil under protection of the English fleet. At the same time there commenced in defiance of all treaties a passage of French troops into Spain, which continued until 80,000 had arrived, and had taken quiet possession of a number of Spanish fortresses. At last Murat was appointed to the command of the army of Spain. He entered the country on March 1, 1808, and marched on Madrid, calculating that the king would retire and take refuge at Seville or Cadiz. This act revealed to the world, and even to a large party among the French themselves, the nature of the power which had been created at Tilsit. The lawless acts of Napoleon's earlier life were palliated by the name of the French Revolution, and since Brumaire he had established a character for comparative moderation. But here was naked violence without the excuse of fanaticism; and on what a scale! One of the greater states of Europe was in the hands of a burglar, who would moreover, if successful, become king not only of Spain but of a boundless empire in the New World. The sequel was worse even than this commencement, although the course which events took seems to show that by means of a little delay he might have attained his end without such open defiance of law. The administration of Spain had long been in the contemptible hands of Manuel Godoy, supposed to be the queen's lover, yet at the same time high in the favour of King Charles IV. Ferdinand, the heir apparent, headed an opposition, but in character he was not better than the trio he opposed, and he had lately been put under arrest on suspicion of designs upon his father's life. To have fomented this opposition without taking either side, and to have rendered both sides equally contemptible to the Spanish people, was Napoleon's game. The Spanish people, who profoundly admired him, might then have been induced to ask him for a king. Napoleon, however, perpetrated his crime before the scandal of the palace broke out. The march of Murat now brought it to a head. On March 17 a tumult broke out at Aranjuez, which led to the fall of the favourite, and then to the abdication of the king, and the proclamation of Ferdinand amid universal truly Spanish enthusiasm. It was a fatal mistake to have forced on this popular explosion, and Napoleon has characteristically tried to conceal it by a suppositious letter, dated March 29, in which he tries to throw the blame upon Murat, to whom the letter professes to be addressed. It warns Murat against rousing Spanish patriotism and creating an opposition of the nobles and clergy, which will lead to a levee en masse, and to a war without end. It predicts, in short, all that took place, but it has every mark of invention, and was certainly never received by Murat. The reign of Ferdinand having thus begun, all that the French could do was to abstain from acknowledging him, and to encourage Charles to withdraw his abdication as given under duress. By this means it became doubtful who was king of Spain, and Napoleon, having carefully refrained from taking a side, now presented himself as arbiter. Ferdinand was induced to betake himself to Napoleon's presence at Bayonne, where he arrived on April 21; his father and mother followed on the 30th. Violent scenes took place between father and son : news arrived of an insurrection at Madrid and of the stern suppression of it by Murat. In the end Napoleon succeeded in extorting the abdication both of Charles and Ferdinand. It was learned too late that the insurrection of Spain had not really been suppressed.
    This crime, as clumsy as it was monstrous, brought on that great popular insurrection of Europe against the universal monarchy, which has profoundly modified all subsequent history, and makes the Anti-Napoleonic Revolution an event of the same order as the French Revolution. A rising unparalleled for its suddenness and sublime spontaneousness took place throughout Spain, and speedily found a response in Germany. A new impulse was given, out of which grew the great nationality movement of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile Napoleon, having first offered the throne of Spain to his brother Louis, who refused it, named Joseph king, retaining, however, a reversion to himself and heirs in default of male heirs of Joseph, who had only daughters. The royal council first, afterwards a junta of nobles assembled at Bayonne, accepted him on July 7. But it must have become clear to Napoleon almost at once that he had committed the most enormous of blunders. Instead of gaining Spain he had in fact lost it, for hitherto he had been master of its resources without trouble, whereas to support Joseph he was obliged in this same year to invade Spain in person with not less than 180,000 men. With Spain too he lost Portugal, which in June followed the Spanish example of insurrection, and had Spain henceforth for an ally and not for an enemy. Hitherto he had had no serious conception of any kind of war not strictly professional. He had known popular risings in Italy, La Vendee, and Egypt, but had never found it at all difficult to crush them. The determined insurrection of a whole nation of 11,000,000 was a new experience to him. How serious it might be he learned as early as July, when Dupont, with about 20,000 men, surrendered at Baylen in Andalusia to the Spanish general Castanos. In August he might wake to another miscalculation of which he had been guilty. An English army landed in Portugal, defeated Junot at Vimeiro, and forced him to sign the convention of Cintra. By this he evacuated Portugal, in which country the insurrection had already left him much isolated. This occurrence brought to light a capital feature of the insurrection of the Peninsula, viz. that it was in free communication everywhere with the power and resources of England.
    The Spanish affair is the best illustration of the insensate blindness which marks the imperial period of Napoleon. It shows him wedded to a system of violence which yields little gain when it is most successful, and causes prodigious loss when it is in any degree unsuccessful. On the whole, in 1808 he is not stronger than in 1803, but far weaker; for in 1803 he had in Italy, Germany, and Spain a prodigious ascendancy, which did not require to be supported everywhere by armies, and did not yet excite hatred, but was regarded in Spain with enthusiasm, in Prussia with friendly equanimity, even in Austria with resignation. All he has done since is to convert this ascendancy into actual government, but in the conversion more than half of it has escaped. Austria and Prussia are preparing for resistance to the death; Spain has begun it already, and has passed over to the English from the French coalition.
    Thus the monarchy of Tilsit suffered within a year the most terrible rebuff. Napoleon himself now appears upon the scene. His first step was to revive the memory of Tilsit by a theatrical meeting with Alexander, which was arranged at Erfurt in September. The power of the duumvirate was there displayed in the most imposing manner, and the alliance was strengthened by new engagements taken by Napoleon with respect to the Danubian principalities. At the same time he checked the rising spirit of resistance in Prussia by driving from office the great reforming minister Stein. At the beginning of November he was ready for the invasion of Spain. Joseph had retired to Vittoria, and the armies of the insurrection fronted him along the Ebro under the command of Blake, Castanos, and Palafox. Between November 7 and 11 the army of Blake was dissolved by Lefebvre, and Napoleon entered Burgos, which was mercilessly pillaged; on the 23rd Castanos was defeated at Tudela by Lannes; by December 2 Napoleon, having forced the mountain passes, was before Madrid, and on the 4th he was in possession of the town, where, endeavouring somewhat late to conciliate the liberalism of Europe, he proclaimed the abolition of the Inquisition and of feudalism, and the reduction of the number of convents to one-third. He remained in Spain till the middle of January 1809, but he was not allowed repose during the interval. Sir John Moore had advanced from Portugal as far as Salamanca, and determined in the middle of December to assist the insurrection by marching on Valladolid. Soult was at Carrion and was threatened by this advance, since the English force, after Moore had effected his junction with Baird, who arrived from Corunna, at Majorga, amounted to 25,000 men. Napoleon hoped to cut its communications, and so deal one of his crushing blows at the enemy with whom he was always at war, yet whom he never, except at Waterloo, met in the field. He set out on the 22nd with about 40,000 men, and marched 200 miles in ten days over mountains in the middle of winter. Moore saw the danger, retired to Benavente, and blew up the bridges over the Ezla. Napoleon advanced as far as Astorga (January 1); but he had missed his mark, and professed to receive information which showed him that he was urgently wanted at Paris. He returned to Valladolid, whence on January 17 he set out for France. The end of Moore's expedition belongs to English history.

    Another storm was indeed gathering. Austria had been reduced to despair by the blows she had received, first at Pressburg, then at Tilsit, and the fate of the royal house of Spain seemed like a warning to that of Austria. But the year that followed Tilsit offered her a chance, which she grasped as a last chance. Spain, which formerly had given Napoleon help, now swallowed up 300,000 of his troops, so that in the autumn of 1808 he had been obliged to withdraw from Prussia the large army which he had kept for more than a year quartered on that unhappy country. Napoleon could spare henceforth only half his force, and there was now no doubt that Prussia would be as hostile to him as she dared. True, the army of Frederick had ceased to exist, but the country was full of soldiers who had belonged to it, full of skilled officers, and Spain had filled all minds with the thought of popular war. Stein and Scharnhorst had been preparing a levee en masse in Prussia and an insurrection in the new kingdom of Westphalia. Moreover, the Austrian statesmen thought they saw an opposition to Napoleon rising at home under the leadership of Talleyrand, and they thought also that the Spanish affair had alienated Alexander. It was reported that Talleyrand had said to Alexander at Erfurt, ‘Sire, you are civilised and your nation is not; we are civilised and our Sovereign is not; you therefore are our natural ally.’ Such considerations and illusions caused the war of 1809, which may be called the First German War of Liberation, under the leadership of Austria. It was welcomed by Napoleon, who wanted new victories to retrieve his position. His superiority, though on the wane, was still enormous. Through the Confederation of the Rhine he had now a great German army at his disposal, which he placed under French generals. His frontier was most formidably advanced through the possession of Tyrol and Venetia. Russia was on his side, and, though he did not actively help him in the field, was of great use in holding down Prussia; England was against him, but could do little for an inland state such as Austria now was. In these circumstances the attitude of Austria had something heroic about it, like that of Spain, and the war throughout is like a somewhat pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. But Austria has what Spain had not, the advantage of organisation and intelligence. Since Pressburg she had passed through a period of reform and shown some signs of moral regeneration, Stadion and the archduke Charles doing for her, though not so effectively, what Stein and Scharnhorst did for Prussia. Few wars have begun with less ostensible ground, or more evidently from an intolerable position. Napoleon accused Austria of arming, of wanting war; Austria expostulated, but in vain; and war began. It began early in April, and the proclamation of the archduke Charles was addressed to the whole German nation. The watchword of Austria against France was now liberty and nationality. A good general conception of the war may be obtained by comparing it with that of 1805, which it resembles in certain large features. Again there is a short but decisive passage of arms in Bavaria; in five days’ struggle, celebrated for Napoleon’s masterly manoeuvres, the Austrians out of Ratisbon (April 23), and the way to Vienna is laid open. Again Napoleon enters Vienna (May 13). But the war in Italy this time beings farther east, on the Piave. Eugene Beauharnais, after an unfortunate commencement, when he was defeated at Sacile by the archduke John, makes a successful advance and being joined by Marmont, who makes his way from Dalmatia by way of Fiume, drives the Austrian army into Hungary, defeats them at Raab, and effects a junction with Napoleon at Bruck. Then, as before, the war is transferred from Vienna to the other side of the Danube. But the Austrian resistance is now far more obstinate than in 1805. From the island of Lobau Napoleon throws his troops across the river in the face of the archduke. A battle takes place which occupies two successive days (May 21, 22), and is sometimes called the battle of Marchfield, but is sometimes named from the villages of Gross-Aspern and Essling. It stands with that of Eylau in 1807 among the most terrible and bloody battles of the period. In all perhaps 50,000 men fell, among whom was Marshal Lannes, and the French were driven back into their island. Five weeks passed in inaction before Napoleon could retrieve this check, five weeks during which the condition of Europe was indeed singular, since its whole destiny depended upon a single man, and he, besides the ordinary risks of a campaign, was threatened by an able adversary who had recently brought him to the verge of destruction, and by outraged populations which might rise in insurrection round him. This is the moment of the glory of Hofer, the hero of the peasant war in Tyrol. Once more, however, Napoleon’s skill and fortune prevailed. On the night of July 4 he succeeded, under cover of a false attack, in throwing six bridges from Lobau to the left bank of the Danube, over which more than 100,000 men passed before morning, and were arrayed upon the Marchfield. The obstinate battle of Wagram followed, in which, by a miscalculation which became the subject of much controversy, the archduke John came too late to his brother’s help. The Austrians were worsted, but by no means decisively, and retired in good order.
    Austerlitz and Friedland had led at once to peace, because the principal belligerent, Russia, had little direct interest in the war; Wagram ought to have had no similar effect. Austria was engaged in a war of liberation; Tyrol was emulating Spain; there should therefore have been no negotiation with the invader. But Germany had as yet but half learnt the Spanish principle of war; in particular the Austrian Government and the archduke Charles himself belonged to Old Austria rather than to New Germany. In the campaign the archduke had fallen much below his reputation, having allowed it plainly to appear that Napoleon frightened him, and now, instead of appealing again to German patriotism, he signed at Znaim (July 11) an armistice similar to that which Melas had so unaccountably concluded after Marengo. But it was by no means certain that all was yet over. North Germany might rise, as Spain had risen and as Tyrol had risen. The archduke Ferdinand had marched into Poland and threatened Thorn, with the intention of provoking such a movement in Prussia, and England was preparing a great armament which the patriots of North Germany, who now began to emulate the Spanish guerilla leaders, - Schill, Dornberg, Katt, Brunswick, - anxiously expected. There seems little doubt that, if this armament had made Germany its object, Germany would at once have sprung to arms and have attempted, perhaps prematurely, what in 1813 it accomplished. What was expected in Germany had happened already in the Peninsula. Arthur Wellesley had landed at Lisbon on April 22, and in less than a month had driven Soult in confusion out of Portugal. In July he undertook an invasion of Spain by the valley of Tagus. Thus both the quantity and quality of resistance to Napoleon was greater than at any former time; but it was scattered, and the question was whether it could concentrate itself.
    England was unfortunate this time in her intervention. The armament did not set sail till August, when in Austria the war seemed to be at an end, and when Wellesley, after winning the battle of Talavera, had seen himself obliged to retire into Portugal, and it was directed not to Germany but against Antwerp. It was therefore a mere division, and as such it proved unsuccessful. It created indeed a great flutter of alarm in the administration at Paris, which saw France itself left unprotected while its armies occupied Vienna and Madrid, but by mismanagement and misfortune the great enterprise failed, and accomplished nothing but the capture of Flushing.
    And so the last triumph of Napoleon was achieved, and the treaty of Schonbrunn was signed on October 14. By this treaty, as by former treaties, he did not merely end a war or annex territory, but developed his empire and gave it a new character. He now brought to an end the duumvirate which had been established at Tilsit. Under that system his greatness had been dependent on the concert of Russia. He had had the Czar’s permission to seize Spain, the Czar’s co-operation in humbling Austria. Schonbrunn made his empire self-dependent and self-supporting, and thus in a manner completed the edifice. But he could not this discard Russia without making her an enemy, and accordingly the Russian war appears on the horizon at the very moment that the Austrian war is terminated. This transformation was accomplished by first humbling Austria, and then, as it were, adopting her and giving her a favoured place in the European confederacy. She lost population to the amount of 3,500,000, besides her access to the sea; she paid an indemnity of more than 3,000,000l., and engaged to reduce her army to 150,000. But, thus humbled, a high and unique honour was reserved for her. We cannot be quite certain whether it was part of Napoleon’s original plan to claim the hand of an archduchess, though this seems likely, since Napoleon would hardly break with Russia unless he felt secure of the alliance of Austria, and yet in the treaty of Schonbrunn he does not hesitate to offend Russia by raising the Polish question. What is certain is that after his return to France Napoleon proceeded at once to the divorce; that at the same time he asked the Czar for the hand of his sister; that upon this Austria, alarmed , and seeing her own doom in the Russian match, gave him to understand (as he may very well have calculated that she would do) that he might have an archduchess; and that upon this he extricated himself from his engagement to the Czar with a rudeness which he intended to make him an enemy. At the same time he refused to enter into an engagement not to raise the Polish question. We can understand the alarm of Austria, for the Russian match would perhaps have riveted most firmly the chains of Germany. In Napoleon’s conduct reappears the same peculiarity that he had shown in his treatment of Prussia and Spain. It seems less like statesmanship than some malignant vice of nature that he always turns upon an ally, even an ally who is most necessary to him. The sudden turn he took, apparently without any necessity, involved him in the Russian expedition, and caused his ruin.
    At an earlier period we saw Napoleon urged by his brothers to divorce Josephine, but refused steadfastly and apparently resolved upon adopting the eldest son of Louis and Hortense. He had now quite ceased to be influenced by his brothers, but at the same time he had risen to such greatness that he had himself come to think differently of the question. Fourteen years before he had been warmly attached to Josephine; this attachment had been an effective feature in the character of republican hero which he then sustained. Mme de Stael had been profoundly struck when, on being charged by her with not liking women, he had answered, ‘J’aime la mienne’. ‘It was such an answer’, she said, ‘as Epaminondas would have given!’ He is now equally striking in the part of an Oriental sultan, and when he discards his Josephine from motives of ambition he requires to be publicly flattered for his self-sacrifice by the officials, by Josephine herself, and even by her son Eugene Beauharnais!
    The archduchess Marie Louise, who now ventured to take the seat of Marie Antoinette, seems to have been of amiable but quite insignificant character. Her letters are childlike. She became a complete Frenchwomen, but, owing to a certain reserve of manner, was never specially popular. On March 20, 1811, she bore a son, who took the title of King of Rome, by which in the Holy Roman Empire the successor had been designated. France had thus become once more as monarchial as in the proudest days of Versailles; but the child of the empire was reserved for what his father called 'the saddest of fates, the fate of Astyanax’.

    Arrived now at the pinnacle, Napoleon pauses, as he had paused after Marengo. We are disposed to ask, What use will he now make of his boundless power? It was a question he never considered, because the object he had set before himself in 1803 was not yet attained; he was not in the least satiated, because, much as he had gained, he had not gained what he sought, that is, the humiliation of England. As after Tilsit, so after Schonbrunn, he only asks, How many new resources be best directed against England? Yet he did not, as we might expect, devote himself to crushing the resistance of the Peninsula. This he seems to have regarded with a mixed feeling of contempt and despair, not knowing how to overcome it, and persuading himself that it was not worth a serious effort. He persisted in saying that the only serious element in the Spanish opposition was the English army; this would fall with England herself; and England, he thought was on the point of yielding to the blockade of the Continental system. He devotes himself henceforth to heightening the rigour of this blockade. From the beginning it had led to continual annexations, because only Napoleon’s own administration could be trusted to carry it into effect. Accordingly the two years 1810-11 witness a series of annexations chiefly on the northern sea-coast of Europe, where it was important to make the blockade more efficient. But on this northern sea-coast lay the chief interests of Russia. As therefore in 1805 he had brought Austria and Russia on himself by attacking England, so in 1810 he presses his hostility to England to the point that it breaks the alliance of Tilsit and leads to a Russian war.
    The year 1810 is occupied with this heightening of the Continental system and the annexations which it involved. That he had long contemplated the annexation of Holland appears from the offer of the crown of Spain which he made to Louis in 1808, and the language he then used (‘La Hollande ne saura sortir de ses ruines’). He now took advantage of the resistance which Louis made to his ruinous exactions. Louis was driven to abdicate, and the county was organised in nine French departments (July 9). In August the troops of the king of Westphalia were forced to make way for French troops at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, and a few months later the whole coast between the Rhine and the Elbe was annexed. At the same time Napoleon began to make war on neutral commerce, especially American, affirming that in order to complete the destruction of English trade it was only necessary to prohibit it when it made use of neutral bottoms. So thoroughly in earnest was he with his Continental system; and indeed it is beyond dispute that great distress and discontent, nay, at last a war with the United States, were inflicted upon England by this policy.
    But the press of it was felt even more on the Continent, and the ultimate cause of the fall of Napoleon was this, that under the weight of the Continental system the alliance of Tilsit broke down sooner than the resistance of England. That alliance had been seriously weakened by the Austrian marriage, and by Napoleon’s refusal to give the guarantees which Russia required that Poland should never be restored. Indeed, Napoleon had seemed to take pleasure in weakening it, but perhaps he had only desired to make it less burdensome to himself without destroying it. At the end of 1810 measures were taken on both sides which conveyed the impression to Europe that it was practically at an end. Alexander refused to adopt Napoleon’s policy towards neutrals; Napoleon answered by annexing Oldenburg, ruled by a Duke of the Russian house; Alexander rejoined by an ukase (December 31) which modified the restrictions on colonial trade and heightened those on French trade.
    In 1811 the alliance of Tilsit gradually dissolves. Napoleon’s Russian expedition should not be regarded as an isolated freak of insane pride. He himself regarded it as the unfortunate effect of a fatality, and he betrayed throughout an unwonted reluctance and perplexity. ‘The was must take place’ he said, ‘it lies in the nature of things.’ That is, it arose naturally, like the other Napoleonic wars, out of the quarrel with England. Upon the Continental system he had staked everything. He had united all Europe in the crusade against England, and no state, least of all such a state as Russia , could withdraw from the system without practically joining England. Nevertheless, we may wonder that, if he felt obliged to make war on Russia, he should have chosen to wage it in the manner he did, by an overwhelming invasion. For an ordinary war his resources were greatly superior to those of Russia. A campaign on the Lithuanian frontier would no doubt have been unfavourable to Alexander, and might have forced him to concede the points at issue. Napoleon had already experienced in Spain the danger of rousing national spirit. It seems, however, that this lesson had been lost on him, and that he still lived in the ideas which the campaigns of 1805, 1806, and 1807 had awakened, when he had occupied Vienna and Berlin in succession, overthrown the Holy Roman Empire, and conquered Prussia. He makes a dispute about tariffs the ground for the greatest military expedition known to authentic history! In this we see a stroke of his favourite policy, which consisted in taking with great suddenness a measure far more decisive than had been expected; but such policy seems here to have been wholly out of place. He was perhaps partly driven to it by the ill success of his diplomacy. War with France meant for Russia, sooner or later, alliance with England, but Napoleon was not able to get the help of Turkey, and Sweden joined Russia. Turkey had probably heard of the partition schemes which were agitated at Tilsit, and was also influenced by the threats and promises of England. Sweden suffered grievously from the Continental system, and Bernadotte, who had lately become crown-prince, and who felt that he could only secure his position by procuring for Sweden some compensation for the recent loss of Finland, offered his adhesion to the power which would help him in acquiring Norway. Napoleon declined to rob his ally, Denmark, but Alexander made the promise, and Sweden was won. Against Russia, Sweden, and England (a coalition which formed itself but tardily) Napoleon assembled the forces of France, Italy, and Germany, and hoped to win, as usual, by rapid concentration of an overwhelming force. Austria and Prussia had suffered so much in the former wars of the period, and especially in 1805-07, from the insincere and delusive alliance of Russia, that they were driven this time to side at least nominally with Napoleon. The army with which he invaded Russia consisted of somewhat more than 600,000 men,--the French troops mainly commanded by Davoust, Oudinot, and Ney, the Italian troops by Prince Eugene, the Poles by Poniatowski, the Austrian contingent (33,000 men) by Schwarzenberg, the remaining German troops by Gouvion St Cyr, Reynier, Vandamme, Victor, Macdonald (who had the Prussian contingent), and Augereau. When we consider that the war of the Penninsula was at the same time at its height, and that England was now at war with the United States, we may form a notion of the calamitous condition of the world.
    Russia had been defeated at Austerlitz and Friedland, where it fought far from home for a cause in which it was but slightly interested. Against an invasion it was as invincible as Spain, being strengthened by a profoundly national religion and perfect loyalty to the government; in addition it had the strength of its vast extent, its rigorous climate, and the half-nomad habits of its people. By his prodigious preparations Napoleon provoked a new national war under the most difficult circumstances, and yet he appears to have desired peace, and to have advanced most reluctantly. His campaign runs the same course as against Austria in 1805 and 1809. There is the successful advance, the capture of the fortress (Smolensk), the great victory (at Borodino), the entry into the capital (Moscow); but all of this no result. No negotiation follows, and Napoleon suddenly finds himself helpless, as perhaps he would have done in 1805 and 1809 had the enemy shown the same firmness.

On May 16, 1812, he arrived with Marie Louise at Dresden, where for the last time he appeared as king of kings – the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, a multitude of German sovereigns, Metternich, and Hardenberg paying court to him. On the 28th he set out again, and travelled by Glogau, Thorn, Dantzic, Konigsberg, Gumbinnen, to Vilkowyski, where he arrived on June 21. On the 24th the mass of the army passed the Niemen at Kovno, and on the 28th Napoleon entered Vilna, which was evacuated by the Russians. Here he remained till July 16. In this long delay, as well as in other circumstances, the unwonted perplexity of his mind appears. Alexander, who has by this time gained greatly in decision of character, refuses to negotiate while the enemy stands on Russian territory; Napoleon, in conversation with Balacheff, shows an almost pathetic desire for an amicable arrangement. He is embarrassed again when a deputation from Warsaw, where a diet had met, bids him only say that ‘Poland exists, since his decree would be for the world equivalent to the reality.’ This word he declines to say, alleging his obligations to Austria. From his conversations with Narbonne (Villemain, Souvenirs) we find that he had deliberately considered and rejected what we may call the rational mode of waging war with Russia, that is, through the restoration of Poland. He admitted that he might indemnify Austria, and, if necessary, Prussia elsewhere, but he argued that he could not afford to open the floodgates of republicanism: ‘Poland must be a camp, not a forum.’ He had in fact – perhaps mainly since his second marriage – come to regard himself as the representative of legitimacy against the Revolution. It was thus with his eyes open that he preferred the fatal course of striking at Moscow. His judgement was evidently bewildered by the successes of 1805 and 1806, and he indulges in chimerical imaginations of delivering Europe once for all from the danger of barbaric invasion. It is to be observed that he seems invariably to think of the Russians as Tartars!
    In relating this war we have to beware of national exaggerations on both sides. On Napoleon’s side ht is absurdly said that he was only vanquished by winter, whereas it is evident that he brought the winter upon himself, first by beginning so late, then by repeated delays, at Vilna, at Vitebsk, and most of all at Moscow. On the other side, we must not admit absolutely the Russian story that he was lured onwards by a Parthian policy, and that Moscow was sacrificed by a solemn universal act of patriotism. Wellington’s policy of retrograde movements had indeed come into fashion among specialists, and an entrenched camp was preparing at Drissa on the Dwina in imitation of Torres Vedras. But the nation and the army were full of reckless confidence and impatience for battle; only their preparations were by no means complete. The long retreat to Moscow and beyond it was unintentional, and filled the Russians with despair, while at the same time it agreed with the views of some of the more enlightened strategists.
    As usual, Napoleon took the enemy by surprise, and brought an overwhelming force to the critical point. When he crossed the Niemen the Russians were still thinking of an offensive war, and rumours had also been spread that he would enter Volhynia. Hence their force was divided into three armies: one, commanded by the Livonian Barclay de Tolly, had its headquarters at Vilna; a second, under Prince Bagration, was further south at Volkowysk; the third, under Tormaseff, was in Volhynia. But the total of these armies scarcely amounted to 200,000 men, and that of Barclay de Tolly opposed little more than 100,000 to the main body of Napoleon’s host, which amounted nearly to 300,000. Hence it evacuates Vilna and retires by Svenziany to the camp at Drissa. Barclay arrives at Drissa on July 9, and here for the first time the emperor and the generals seem to realise the extent of the danger. Alexander issues an ukase calling out the population in the proportion of five to every hundred males, and hurries to Moscow, and thence to St Petersburg, in order to rouse the national enthusiasm. The Drissa camp is also perceived to be untenable. It had been intended to screen St Petersburg, and Napoleon is seen to look rather in the direction of Moscow. Barclay retires to Vitebsk, but is obliged, in order to effect his junction with Bagration, to retreat still further, and Napoleon enters Vitebsk on the 28th. The road to Moscow passes between the Dwina, which flows northward, and the Dneiper, which flows southward, Vitebsk on the one river and Smolensk on the other, forming, as it were, the two doorposts. We expect to find Napoleon at this point cutting the hostile armies in two, and compelling that of Bagration to surrender; he has a great superiority of numbers, and he might have had the advantage of a friendly population. But his host seems unmanageable, and the people are estranged by the rapacity and cruelty to which it is driven by insufficient supplies. Barclay and Bagration effect their junction at Smolensk on August 3, and now have a compact army of at least 120,000 men. They evacuate Smolensk also on the 18th, but only after an obstinate defence, which left Napoleon master of nothing but a burning ruin.
    Both at Vitebsk and Smolensk he betrayed the extreme embarrassment of his mind. Should he go into winter quarters? should be press forward to Moscow? It was a choice of desperate courses. His army was dwindling away; he had forfeited the support of the Poles; Germany was full of discontent; and yet a large part of his army was Polish or German; how could he delay? And yet if he advanced, since August was already running out, he must encounter the Russian winter. He determined to advance, relying on the overwhelming effect that would be produced by the occupation of Moscow. He would win, as after Austerlitz and Friedland, through the feebleness and fickleness of Alexander.
    Meanwhile his unresisted progress, and the abandonment by Barclay of one position after another, created the greatest consternation among the Russians, as well they might. Barclay was a foreigner, and might well seem another Melas or Mack. A cry arose for his dismissal, to which the Czar responded by putting old Kutusoff, who was at least a Russian, at the head of all his armies. This change necessarily brought on a great battle, which took place on September 7, near the village of Borodino. More than 100,000 men with about six hundred pieces of artillery were engaged on each side. It ended in a victory, but an almost fruitless victory, for the French. They lost perhaps 30,000 men, including Generals Montbrun and Caulaincourt, the Russians nearly 50,000, including Prince Bagration. Here again Napoleon displayed unwonted indecision. He refused to let loose his guard, consisting of 20,000 fresh troops, who might apparently have effected the complete dissolution of the hostile army, and materially altered the whole sequel of the campaign. He said, ‘At 800 leagues from Paris one must not risk one’s last reserve.’
    This battle, the greatest after Leipsic of all the Napoleonic battles, was followed by the occupation of Moscow on September 14, which, to Napoleon’s great disappointment, was found almost entirely empty. After a council of war Kutusoff had taken the resolution to abandon the old capital, the loss of which was held not to be so irreparable as the loss of the army. But, as with Old-Russian craft he had announced Borodino to the Czar as a victory, the sensation produced upon the Russian public by the fall of Moscow was all the more overwhelming. Nor did the next occurrence, which immediately followed, at first bring any relief. Fires broke out in Moscow on the night after Napoleon’s entrance; on the next night, by which time he was quartered in the Kremlin, the greater part of the city was in flames, and on the day following he was forced by the progress of the conflagration to evacuate the Kremlin again. But on the first intelligence of this catastrophe the destruction of Moscow was attributed in Russia to the French themselves, and was not by any means regarded as a crushing blow dealt at Napoleon by Russian patriotism.
    It is indeed not clear that this event had any decisive influence upon the result of the war. Nor does it seem to have been the deliberate work of the patriotism of Moscow. The beginner of it was one man, Count Rostopchin, governor of Moscow, who is shown by many public utterances to have brooded for some time over the thought, and is proved to have made preparations for carrying it into effect before leaving the town. It is, however, supposed that what was begun by him was completed by a rabble which had no object but plunder, and partly by French soldiers. The immediate effect of it was to deepen the alarm of the Russians, and, when this feeling passed away, to deepen their hatred of the French. Now came the critical moment. Would Alexander negotiate? That is, would he listen to certain timid courtiers about him such as Romanzoff, or would he be inspired by the patriotic ardour of his people and lean on his nobler counsellors, the German patriot Stein or Sir Robert Wilson? The pressure for a moment was great. We can imagine that had the Russian army been dissolved at Borodino, it might have been irresistible. But he stood firm; he refused to negotiate; and Napoleon suddenly found that he had before him, not the simple problem he had solved so often in earlier life, but the insoluble puzzle he had first encountered in Spain. His failures in Egypt and in Spain had been more of less disguised. He was now in danger of a failure which could not be concealed, and on a far larger scale; but had he retreated forthwith and wintered in Vilna, where he might have arrived early in November, the conquest of Russia might have seemed only to be postponed for a year. Instead of this he delayed five weeks in Moscow, and then complained of the Russian winter! After planning a demonstration on St Petersburg, weighing Daru’s scheme of wintering in Moscow (which he called ‘un conseil de lion’), and waiting in vain for the Czar’s submission, he set out on October 20, after blowing up the Kremlin. He marched southward to Kalugam hoping to make his way through a richer and unexhausted country. But while his forced had dwindled the Russian had increased. Peace with Sweden had released a Russian force in Finland; peace with Turkey released the army of the Danube; meanwhile levies were proceeding through the whole empire. Napoleon’s plan was frustrated by a check he received at Malojaroslavetz, and he had to turn northward again and return as he had come. He reached Smolensk on November 9, when he might have been at Vilna. He marched by Orcza to the Berezina, which he struck near Borisoff. Here Tchitchagoff at the head of the Danube army confronted him, and two other Russian armies were approaching. Napoleon on his side was joined by what remained of the corps of Oudinot and Victor, who had held the line of the Dwina. But what was the army of Napoleon which was thus reinforced?
    In July it had consisted of more than 250,000 men. It had suffered no decisive defeat, and yet it amounted now only to 12,000; in the retreat from Moscow alone about 90,000 had been lost. The force which now joined it amounted to 18,000, and Napoleon’s star had still influence enough to enable him to make his way across the Berezina, and so escape total ruin and captivity. But December came on, and the cold was more terrible than ever. On the evening of December 6 a miserable throng, like a crowd of beggars, tottered into Vilna.
    The corps of Macdonald, Reynier, and Schwarzenberg (among whom were included the Austrian and Prussian contingents) had escaped destruction, having been posted partly on the Polish frontier, partly in the Baltic provinces. For these we may deduct 100,000 from the total force; it then appears that half a million had perished or disappeared. They had perished not by unexpected cold; ‘the cold had but finished the work of dissolution and death almost accomplished by the enemy, by hardship, and especially by hunger’ (Charras); nor is cold unusual in Russia in November! Napoleon’s error was one which may be traced as clearly in the campaigns of 1805 and 1806, the error of making no provision whatsoever for the case of ill-success or even success less than complete.
    It was now the twentieth year that Europe was tearing herself to pieces. For some years past the pretence of revolutionary principles had been given up. There was now no pretext for war expected the so-called maritime tyranny of England; but yet the magnitude of wars had increased beyond all measurement. The campaign of 1812 left everything in civilised history far behind it. All the abuses of the old monarchy and all the atrocities of the Revolution put together were as nothing compared to this new plague, bred between the Revolution and the old monarchy, having the violence of the one and the vain-glory of the other, with a systematic, professional destructiveness peculiar to imperialism superadded.