• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2431 0

and French commerce raiders based in ports as widely spaced as Brest and Mauritius raided the sea lanes and on occasion achieved considerable success. Serious peace negotiations, however, were in place, and, although these soon broke down, it is difficult to see how anything comparable to the campaign of 1805 could have been revived. Neither the Talents nor any other British administration could possibly have committed themselves to major land operations on the Continent without the support of at least one of the great powers, and in the wake of Austerlitz this seemed a long way away. Austria was out of the fight; Prussia in the French camp; and Russia at best resolved on a defensive policy. Yet, in a development that was expected by nobody, and, least of all it seems, Napoleon, the autumn saw the Continent once more plunged into full-scale military operations and a resumption of coalition warfare. Pushed to the limit by the emperor, Prussia went to war against France and, like Austria before her, secured the active support of Russia. But the results were no better than in 1805. In a series of operations that took the grande armée to the very frontiers of Russia, the emperor broke one enemy army after another and truly made himself master of Europe. At no moment, indeed, was the power of the French imperium greater, and Napoleon’s sense of exaltation knew no bounds. As he proclaimed to his army on 22 June 1807:

Frenchmen! You have been worthy of yourselves and of me. You will return to France covered with laurels after having obtained a glorious peace which carries with it the guarantee of its duration. It is time our country should live at rest, secure from the malignant influence of England.1

As we shall see, these were hollow words. Even before the fresh round of fighting broke out, it could be argued that Napoleon had committed a cardinal error in reorganizing Germany in a manner hostile to the interests of Austria or Prussia. But far more damaging were the events that followed in the course of the next twelve months. Not content with the challenge he was already mounting to Russia in the Balkans, Napoleon established a Polish state and thereby struck at the very heart of Russia’s pretensions to be a great European power. And in the Continent as a whole the emperor conscripted each and every one of its inhabitants into a great self-denying ordinance that sought to close its ports to British trade and in the end bankrupt London into surrender. As Fouché observes, this was a man who was giddy with triumph: ‘The delirium caused by the wonderful results of the Prussian campaign completed the intoxication of France . . . Napoleon believed himself the son of destiny, called to break every sceptre. Peace . . . was no longer thought of . . . The idea of destroying the power of England, the sole obstacle to universal monarchy, became his fixed resolve.’2

The long-term consequences of these developments - in essence, a guarantee of further conflict and, more particularly, direct police action on the part of France - will be looked at in due course. What is of concern here is why Prussia should suddenly have opened hostilities on her own when a year earlier she could have done so in the company of a powerful coalition. In brief, Frederick William suddenly discovered the limits of Napoleon’s friendship. Trouble began with the very agreement that Haugwitz had signed with Napoleon after Austerlitz at Schönbrunn. In the first place, there was the issue of Prussia’s international obligations, for under the terms of the treaty of Basel of 1795 Prussia was actually a guarantor of Hanoverian independence. In the second there was Prussia’s neutrality, the latter’s restoration clearly being of the utmost importance. And in the third instance there was that of the future: if Hanover was to be taken over by Prussia, the British subsidies that might one day become necessary to Prussia would clearly not be forthcoming. Amidst much anger, then, Haugwitz was sent back to Napoleon to suggest a number of amendments to the treaty, one