Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV. Вальтер Скотт
Читать онлайн книгу.
House of Holstein Gottorp, and was, moreover, Alexander's brother-in-law. This state of Oldenburg had been studiously excepted from the changes made in the North of Germany, after the treaty of Tilsit, which made the present confiscation of its territory an act of more marked slight towards the court of Russia. A formal expostulation being transmitted to Napoleon, he proposed to repair the injury of the Duke of Oldenburg, by assigning to him the town and territory of Erfurt, with the lordship of Blankenheim. But the duke felt himself too strongly supported to be under the necessity of surrendering his dominions, and receiving others in exchange. The offer of indemnity was haughtily rejected; France persevered in her purpose of usurping Oldenburg; and the Emperor Alexander, in a protest, gravely but temperately worded, a copy of which was delivered to every member of the diplomatic body, intimated that he did not acquiesce in the injury done to a prince of his family, although he continued to adhere to that great line of political interest which had occasioned the alliance between France and Russia.
The real truth was, that Napoleon, secure of the friendship of Austria by the late alliance, had not, it would seem, regarded Russia as any longer worthy of the same observance which he had originally found it politic to pay to the Emperor Alexander. The Czar himself felt this; and the very large proportion of his subjects, composing the party of Old Russians, as they termed themselves, who were favourable to the English alliance, and detested the connexion with France, improved the opportunity by pointing out the evils which all classes in the country endured, from the Czar's having, in complaisance to the plans of Napoleon, decreed the abolition of English commerce. They showed that this compliance with the views of France had been attended with great detriment to his own subjects, who could neither sell their commodities, and the produce of their estates, for which Britain always offered a market, nor acquire the colonial produce and British manufactured goods, which the consumption of Russia almost peremptorily demanded.
An ukase was issued on the 31st of December, 1810, which was drawn up with considerable art; for while in words it seemed to affirm the exclusion of British manufactures from the empire in general, it permitted importations to be made at Archangel, Petersburgh, Riga, Revel, and five or six other seaports, where various articles of merchandise, and, in particular, colonial produce, unless proved to belong to Britain, might be freely imported. So that, while appearing to quote and respect the Continental System, Napoleon could not but be sensible that Russia virtually renounced it. But as Alexander had not ventured to avail himself of the seizure of Oldenburg as a reason for breaking off his alliance with France, so Napoleon, on his part, though the changed tone of Russian policy could not escape him, paused, nevertheless, in coming to a final rupture with an enemy so powerful, upon the subject of the ukase of December 1810.
Meantime, the French Emperor became probably sensible that peace with England was the surest ground upon which he could secure his throne. In the month of April, 1810, some attempt at obtaining terms of pacification had been made during the mission of Mr. Mackenzie, who was sent to Morlaix as agent on the part of the British Government. It had been not the least cruel peculiarity of this inveterate war, that no cartel for exchange of prisoners had been effected on either side, and, of course, that those unhappy persons whom chance had thrown into the power of the enemy, had no visible alternative but to linger out their lives in a distant and hostile country, or at least remain captives till the conclusion of hostilities, to which no one could presume to assign a date. The original impediment to such an exchange, which has in all civilized countries been considered as a debt indispensably due to soften the rigours of war and lessen the sufferings of its victims, was a demand of Napoleon that the persons possessing no military character, whom he had made prisoners contrary to the law of nations at the commencement of hostilities, should be exchanged against French sailors and soldiers. The British ministers for a long time resisted so unusual an application, to which policy, indeed, forbade them to accede. At length, however, the sufferings of individuals, and of their families, induced the British government to allow the French Emperor the advantage of his oppressive act in detaining these unfortunate persons, and agree that they should be included in the proposed cartel. But when the commissioners met at Morlaix, Mr. Mackenzie found himself as far from approaching an agreement as ever. The number of French prisoners in Britain was more by many thousands than that of the British in France; and Buonaparte, who seldom made a bargain in which he did not secure the advantage to himself, insisted that the surplus of French prisoners should be exchanged for Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, or others who should be captive in France.
This was readily agreed to, so far as regarded foreign troops in British pay; but it was equally unreasonable and contrary to usage to require that we should restore to France her native subjects, whose services she might use to augment her military force, while we received in exchange foreigners, unconnected with us by service or allegiance, and who, perhaps, when set at liberty, might be as apt to join the French ranks, as those of the nation in whose name they had obtained freedom.
After much wrangling and dispute, Mr. Mackenzie, to show the sincere desire which the British government entertained of releasing the prisoners on both sides, made a proposal that the exchange should commence by liberating as many French prisoners as could be balanced by British captives in the French prisons; that after this, captives of every nation should be exchanged indifferently on both sides; and whatever number of prisoners might remain on either side, after the general balance had been struck, should also be set at liberty, upon an engagement not to serve till regularly exchanged. To this proposal – a more liberal one could hardly be made – the French only answered by starting new demands, and making new objections. Among these, perhaps, it will scarcely be believed, that Moustier, the French commissioner, had the modesty to propose that Lord Wellington and his army, lying in the lines at Torres Vedras, should be reckoned as French prisoners in the proposed cartel! Mr. Mackenzie answered with becoming spirit, that he would neither be the medium through which his Government should be insulted by such a proposal, nor would he proceed in the negotiation until this impertinence were atoned for.
It is needless to proceed farther in the elusory detail of a treaty, which Napoleon had previously determined should be brought to no useful issue. He had calculated which country could best support the absence of their prisoners, or rather to whom their services were of most consequence. He felt that he himself, by the conscription, as well as by the auxiliary troops which he could summon at pleasure from his neighbours or dependents, could always command a sufficiency of men even for his gigantic undertakings; while to Britain, whose soldiers could only be obtained by a high bounty, the deliverance of her prisoners was proportionally more valuable. Whatever was his view in establishing the negotiation, which was probably only to satisfy the French army, by evincing a seeming interest in the unfortunate portion of their brethren in arms who were immured in English prisons, they gave way to the consideration, that while things remained as they were, Britain suffered more in proportion than France.
Some proposals for a general peace had been made during the conferences at Morlaix; and the British Government had stated three different principles, any of which they expressed themselves willing to admit as a basis. These were, first, the state of possession before the war; or, secondly, the present state of possession; or, thirdly, a plan of reciprocal compensations. But none of these principles suited the French Government to act upon; so that the treaty for a general peace, and that for restoring, taking into calculation the prisoners on both sides, upwards of a hundred thousand human beings to liberty, their country, and their home, proved both of them altogether nugatory.
The note of defiance was therefore resumed, so soon as it had been ascertained that Britain would reject any terms of peace which were not founded on equal and liberal principles. An oration of Count Semonville demonstrated, that it was all owing to the persevering ambition of England that Buonaparte had been obliged to possess himself of the sea-coast of Europe – that all his encroachments on the land were the necessary consequences of her empire of the seas. He then demanded, in prophetic fury, to know what in future would be the bounds of possibility. "It is the part of England," he said, "to reply. Let her turn her eyes on the past, and learn to judge from thence the events of the future. France and Napoleon will never change."
CHAPTER LIV
View of Napoleon's gigantic Power – The Empress Maria Louisa delivered of a Son – Criticism on the Title given him, of King