A Short History of Napoleon the First by Sir John Robert Seeley

Author:Sir John Robert Seeley [Seeley, Sir John Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789121643
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Friedland Books
Published: 2018-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

Annexation of Holland—Dissolution of the Alliance of Tilsit Invasion of Russia

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 Schönbrunn, 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.

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