Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [65]
This dissatisfaction was to have repercussions later. In the meantime, only the Ottoman Empire and Britain remained for Napoleon to deal with. Of these, the Turks were impossible to knock out of the war, although Napoleon did his best to lure them into peace negotiations. Even so, they were not much of a threat: not only were they preoccupied with a series of internal disorders, but on 20 March 1800 an army they had sent to reconquer Egypt by land had been heavily defeated at Heliopolis. With the Turks effectively out of the battle, the French were free to concentrate on Britain. In order to ensure that Egypt hung on as long as possible - although Napoleon had hinted to the Turks that he might evacuate the province, in reality he hoped to keep it - troop reinforcements were dispatched to Alexandria and the Army of the Orient encouraged to fight to the death. Meanwhile, the pressure on London was increased by getting Spain to launch an attack on Portugal - Britain’s last ally in Europe - in May 1801. This conflict, the so-called War of the Oranges, was less than satisfactory from Napoleon’s point of view. According to the original plan, large areas of Portugal were to have been occupied and held as bargaining counters that could be exchanged for Malta and the various colonial territories and other possessions that Britain had seized from France, Spain and Holland. Fifteen thousand French troops were to be involved in the fighting. These were to be sent across the Pyrenees and by early May had got as far as the border fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo. And, finally, Portugal’s ports were to be closed to British shipping (a major blow, for Lisbon was a vital port-of-call for the Royal Navy and Portugal an important trading partner for British merchants). At the same time, the First Consul would be assured of a further slice of military glory at a time when his arms elsewhere in Europe were at rest. Setting aside the minor bait thrown to the Spaniards, the British would be left with no option but to disgorge one of the keys to Napoleon’s schemes in the east.
In the event these plans were all foiled. Much concerned at the prospect of a strong French presence in the Iberian Peninsula, King Charles IV and his court favourite, Manuel de Godoy, joined with the Portuguese in securing a rapid end to the war before Napoleon’s plans could be put into practice. After some token skirmishes Lisbon agreed to cede a small slice of Extremadura to Spain, to pay an indemnity to France and to close her ports to Britain, but in exchange the Spaniards withdrew from Portugal and eschewed any further threat to her territorial integrity. For reasons of his own, the First Consul’s personal representative, Lucien Bonaparte, went along with this arrangement, but Napoleon was enraged. Determined to secure his original goals, he refused to ratify the resultant treaty of Badajoz, and ordered a resumption of hostilities, but Godoy refused point-blank to give way and even went so far as to threaten a separate peace with Britain. Utterly furious, Napoleon demanded to know whether the Bourbons had tired of reigning. But in the end the affair blew over, as by the autumn of 1801 the international situation had changed enormously.
Before looking at this fresh situation, it is worth considering what we know of Napoleon’s war aims as they stand revealed by the events of
. If one thing is clear, it is that his aims were not just limited to retaining France’s natural frontiers, together with the sphere