IX

REVOLUTIO

Part II

A Continent in Turmoil c. 1770–1815

GUILLOTIN

DR JOSÈPHE-IGNACE GUILLOTIN (1738–1814) did not invent the guillotine. What he did was to urge France’s National Assembly to adopt the humanitarian execution machine invented by his colleague Antoine Louis. The proposal was adopted in April 1792, in good time for the Jacobin Terror, thereby raising Guillotin to the status of an eponym—‘a person after which something is (believed to be) named’.1 The revolutionary years produced many such eponyms. Among them was Jean BIGOT, Napoleon’s Minister for Religious Affairs, and the ultra-patriotic soldier NicolasCHAUVIN, who sang ‘Je suis français, je suis Chauvin’.

Many eponymous words have passed into the international vocabulary. Botany has been a fertile source, since scores of exotic plants were named after their discoverers, BEGONIA, which took its name from the botanist Michel Begon (d. 1710), was an early example, as were CAMELLIA, DAHLIA, FUCHSIA, and MAGNOLIA. The purple rock-plant AUBRIETIA was named after the French painter Claude Aubriet (1665–1742).

Physics has perpetuated the memory of its pioneers by allocating their names to universal units of measurement. The AMPERE, the metric unit of electric current, recalls André Ampère (1775–1836). Many others, from ANGSTROM to OHM, VOLT, and WATT fall within the same category.

Garments are a common source of eponyms. CARDIGAN and RAGLAN were both derived from British generals in Crimea. The fashionable LEOTARD derives from the acrobat Jules Léotard (1842–70). All wearers of PANTALOONS, PANTS, and PANTIES should remember the father of trouserdom, Pantaleone de’ Bisognosi, who figured in the Commedia dell’Arte.

Food produced many examples, BECHAMEL sauce derives from a steward to Louis XIV. The SANDWICH, after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–92), was an eighteenth-century concoction. The nineteenth century gave rise to CHATEAUBRIAND steak, MADELEINE cake, andPAVLOVA,recalling respectively a marquis, a pastry-cook, and a prima ballerina. Smoking after dinner offers a reminder of the sometime French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot (1530–1600).

Technical inventions often attracted the name of their inventors: hence SPINET and MANSARD, DIESEL, SHRAPNEL, and BIRO.

Many eponyms, however, are contested. Not all scholars accept that the painter Federigo Barocci (d. 1612) was the originator of the BAROQUE, nor that an Irish tearaway of Victorian London, Patrick Houlihan, was the original HOOLIGAN. But one thing cannot be contested: Europe’s present is filled with the verbal shades of Europe’s past.

Burke’s welcome for the ‘Polish Revolution’ ought to be as well known as his denunciation of events in France. In Holland, the Leyden Gazette wrote: ‘If there are miracles in this century, one has happened in Poland.’

The ‘happy wonder’ lasted for little more than a year. Russia was not prepared to tolerate a constitutional, let alone an independent, Poland on its doorstep. Just as Poland-Lithuania experienced the first round of revolutionary reform, it was also due to experience the first round of revolutionary war. As in France, the Polish reformers were driven from moderation to desperation. After the Constitution of 1791 was suppressed by Russian intervention and the Second Partition (see below), the national rising of 1794 took the field with still more radical proposals, only to see itself disintegrate amidst violence and terror. In France the revolutionary process was contained by its own internal reactions; in Poland it was destroyed by foreign force.

In the second phase, 1794–1804, which begins with Thermidor II, the French Revolution visibly halted in its tracks—to take breath and to take stock. Although executive instability continued, the blood-lust stopped. So, too, did the mania for legislation. (The National Convention passed 11,250 decrees in just over three years.) The revolutionaries had found a talent for war, and were absorbed in fighting their enemies. A series of political expedients were tried by politicians united only by the need to maintain order and to stem excess. After Robespierre’s fall the Thermidorians ruled for 16 months. In November 1795, thanks to yet another constitution and yet another, two-tier, assembly, a five-man executive ‘Directory’ came into being. In September 1797 (18 Fructidor V), the Directors muzzled the assembly. In November 1799, thanks to the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire VIII by the Directory’s most successful general, a three-man ‘Consulate’ was instituted, and confirmed by nation-wide plebiscite. In May 1802 the most successful general raised himself to the status of first Consul for life; in May 1804, to that of Emperor.

In the third, imperial phase, 1804–15, the Revolution found stability by locking itself to the cult of that general, the Empire’s creator, Napoleon Bonaparte. The doubts and divisions which still remained in France were submerged under the titanic operations of his mission to conquer the world. Bonapartism turned revolutionary war and conquest into ends in themselves, and military requirements into an absolute priority. A pseudo-monarchy headed pseudo-democratic institutions; and an efficient centralized administration ran on a strange cocktail of legislative leftovers and bold innovation. Success or failure was handed to the gods of the battlefield. ‘Success’, said Napoleon, ‘is the greatest orator in the world.’

Periodization arranged according to executive authority gives a slightly different result. In that case the phase of constitutional monarchy lasts from June 1789 to September 1792; the ‘first Republic’ from 1792 to November 1799; the dictatorship of Napoleon from ‘18 Brumaire’ to 1815 (see Appendix III, pp. 1286–7). The full range of revolutionary opinion became apparent in the early 1790s through the debates of the National Assembly and through the formation of political clubs.

The original constitutionalists, led by Count Honoré de Mirabeau (1749–91) and other liberal nobles such as General Lafayette, were responsible for the abolition of the absolute monarchy and of noble and clerical privilege. By the time of Mirabeau’s (natural) death in April 1791, they were becoming a hard-pressed minority. They met in the club of the Feuillants, and after the King’s flight to Varennes were left with the impossible task of delaying the demise of an unpopular monarchy. At one point Mirabeau had the idea of dedicating a monument to Louis XVI, the ‘founder of French liberty’.

The Girondins took their name from a group of deputies from Bordeaux, capital of the Gironde, headed by the eloquent lawyer Pierre Vergniaud (1753–93), who came together in the Legislative Assembly. They were the centrists of the early years, willing to co-operate with the King’s government but increasingly giving vent to democratic and republican sentiments. Their activities revolved round the salon of Mme Roland, and their influence reached its height in 1792, when they ran the King’s last government and pioneered the transition to the Republic.

The Jacobins, in contrast, la Société des Amis de la Liberté et l’Égalité, were advocates of unlimited democracy, of revolutionary dictatorship and violence. They took their name from the site of their Club in a former Dominican convent on the Rue Saint-Honoré. (The Dominicans of Paris were known as ‘Jacobins’ because of their earlier residence on the Rue Saint-Jacques.) They formed a tiny, iron-hard clique—perhaps 3,000 persons who perfected the art of gripping the throats of 20 million. Their members ranged from the Prince de Broglie and a couple of dukes—the Duke d’Aiguillon and the young Due de Chartres (the future King, Louis-Philippe)—to the rough-hewn Breton peasant, ‘Père’ Gérard. Gérard once told them, ‘I had thought myself in Heaven among you, if there were not so many lawyers.’ Their leaders included Georges Danton (1759–94), whom Carlyle called ‘a Man from the great fire-bosom of Nature herself’, Camille Desmoulins (1760–94), a firebrand journalist, who died beside him, Jean Marat (1743–93), the ‘sick physician’, editor of L’Ami du Peuple, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (1756–94), sometime Mayor of Paris, Antoine Saint-Just (1767–94), known as ‘the Archangel of the Terror’ and as ‘St John’ for his servility towards Robespierre, and Robespierre himself.

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94), the severe, the puritanical, the ‘incorruptible advocate of Arras’, was said to have refused a career as a judge before the Revolution rather than condemn a man to death. His power and influence assumed legendary proportions during the second Committee of Public Safety. He was the hero of the Paris mob, the devil incarnate to his opponents.

The Jacobins first surfaced in 1791, through the King’s risky politique du pire, based on the idea of promoting his wildest opponents in the hope of taming the rest. After Pétion was appointed Mayor of Paris with the King’s approval, they took an unshakeable hold on the capital’s municipal government, the Commune. Thereafter, having systematically eliminated their rivals and tamed the Convention, they decimated their own ranks until Robespierre alone remained alive. Danton’s watchword was ‘De l’audace, encore de Paudace, toujours de l’au-dace’ Saint-Just, attacking the monarchy, declared, ‘One cannot reign innocently.’ In proposing the redistribution of his enemies’ wealth, he said: ‘Happiness is a new idea in Europe.’ Robespierre once asked the Convention, ‘Citoyens, voulez-vous une Révolution sans révolution?’ (Citizens, do you want a Revolution without revolution?) The associated Club of the Cordeliers, la Société des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, whose membership overlapped with the Jacobins, met in a former Franciscan monastery in the Cordelier district of Paris. Their later leaders, the true enragés like J. R. Hébert (1757–94), were marked out for their militant atheism and the cult of reason. Hébert was executed on Robespierre’s orders for ‘extremism’, [GAUCHE]

If most of the Jacobins were professional lawyers and journalists, the majority of their active supporters were drawn from the anonymous proletarians of the Paris suburbs. These sansculottes contained elements that were still more radical than any of the groups and individuals that actually exercised power. They numbered among them Europe’s very first communists, socialists, feminists. Organized in meeting-houses in each of the Paris ‘sections’, obscure formations such as the Société Patriotique de la Section du Luxembourg or the Société Fraternelle des Deux Sexes du Panthéon-Français exercised an influence that has not always been properly assessed. Indeed, in terms of revolutionary motive power they may well have been more effective than the bourgeois who are usually given the credit. They supplied many of the revolutionary commissars of the Jacobin period. They forged a lasting tradition which contested established authority in each of the ‘revolutions’ of the nineteenth century.28

Opposition to the Revolution came in many forms and from all quarters. It can be classified as political, social, ideological, and regional. Initially it focused on the royal court, where the ‘ultras’ led by the Count of Provence (later Louis XVIII) aimed to restore the status quo ante. They were joined by the majority of dispossessed nobles, and by the formidable array of émigrés, high and low. They opposed not only the republicans and Jacobins but also the constitutionalists: the court’s contempt for General Lafayette, for example, knew no bounds. After 1790, when forbidden by the Pope to swear the oath of loyalty to the civil establishment, the clergy were forced either to submit or to defy. After 1792, when the Revolution took an atheistic and not merely an anticlerical turn, all Roman Catholics, and hence the great majority of the population, stood to be offended. This major source of counter-revolutionary feelings remained active until Bonaparte’s Concordat with the Papacy in 1801. The peasant masses, who were given their freedom in 1789, were long thought to be among the main beneficiaries of revolution. It is now generally recognized, however, that a gulf of non-comprehension separated the peasant ethos from that of the revolutionary leaders in Paris. The peasantry soon turned against the oppressions of a republican regime which many thought worse than its predecessors.

Intellectual opposition to revolutionary ideas was not fully formulated until after the Restoration. But nothing could be more hostile than the Considérations sur la France (1796) of the Savoyard magistrate Josèphe de Maistre (1753–1821), who took revolutionaries to be servants of Satan. He also opposed the strand of enlightened universalism which had found its way into revolutionary thought. He wrote that he had often met Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Russians—’But as for Man, I’ve never met one in my life.’ His contemporary, Antoine Rivarol (1753–1801), known as ‘le Comte de Rivarol’, who had written a famous discourse in praise of the French language, was forced to flee when he turned to counterrevolutionary pamphleteering. ‘One does not fire guns against ideas,’ he wrote.

Several French provinces remained staunchly royalist at heart, and repeatedly broke into open revolt. Royalist risings had to be suppressed even in Paris, notably on 13 Vendémiaire IV (1795). In some of the remoter departments, such as Le Gard, resistance continued right through to 1815.29The most determined resistance, however, was undoubtedly concentrated in the west. Popular fury had been rising there for several years, after an initially favourable reaction to the fall of the Ancien Régime. In 1792 many parishes supported the priests who refused to swear allegiance to the civil establishment. They were often rewarded by gangs of urban republicans who toured the countryside, smashing churches and assaulting the ‘refractories’. In 1793 the same villages were hardest hit by the introduction of universal male conscription. They were specially offended by the exemptions that were frequently granted to the sons of republican administrators and professionals: it seemed that Catholic peasants were being ordered to die for an atheist Republic which they had never wanted in the first place. In May 1792 Danton was informed of a plot supposedly being hatched by the Marquis de la Rouairie in Brittany. The plot was nipped in the bud; but it was the precursor of two interrelated instances of mass rebellion, the rising of the Vendèe and the wars of the Chouans, that were to grip the west for more than a decade.

The rising in the Vendèe engendered civil warfare that lasted for nearly three years. It broke out in March 1793 at St Florent-sur-Loire, but soon spread throughout the villages of the bocage. It was started by peasants such as J. Cathelineau, a hawker from Pin-en-Mauges, and J. N. Stofflet, a gamekeeper from Monlévrier, who had refused the draft; but it soon passed under the command of the local gentry—the Marquis de Bonchamps, the Marquis de Lescure, ‘Monsieur Henri’ de La Rochejacquelin, General Gigot d’Elbée, the Prince de Talmont. The ‘Royal and Catholic Army of Saints’ was armed with scythes, pitchforks, and fowling-pieces. It marched under a white standard spangled with lilies and the device of ‘Vive Louis XVII’. Its fighters wore a scapulary round their necks, together with the badge of the Sacred Heart and Cross in flames. They fought twenty-one pitched battles, triumphed on the bloody field of Cholet, captured Angers, laid siege to Nantes, and broke into the provinces of Maine and Anjou. Their desperate courage was caught in the orders of‘Monsieur Henri’:

Si j’avance, suivez-moi! Si je recule, tuez-moi! Si je meurs, vengez-moi!’

(If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!)

In October 1793 the Vendeans embarked on their most ambitious and (as it proved) their most foolhardy gambit. Some 30,000 armed men, followed by several hundred thousand civilians of all ages, crossed the Loire and wended their way towards the coast of Normandy. Their destination was the little port of Granville, where they had been led to believe that a British fleet and an army of émigrés would be waiting to greet them. But they were cruelly deceived: Granville was sealed. Rochejacquelin’s attacks were beaten off; there was no sign of British ships. So the retreat began. As the columns straggled back along 120 miles of winter roads, they fell prey to every form of misfortune and violence. Refused entry to the towns, they had to fight every inch of the way. Fifteen thousand died in the streets of Le Mans. They perished of cold and hunger. They were mercilessly robbed, raped, and hunted down by roving Republican forces. Those who reached the Loire found the bridges blockaded and the boats burned. Their fighters were split up and killed. The defenceless civilians could then be massacred with impunity. The end came at Savenay near Nantes, two days before Christmas. General Westermann, a client of Danton, reported to the Convention:

The Vendeé is no more … I have buried it in the woods and marshes of Savenay … According to your orders, I have trampled their children beneath our horses’ feet; I have massacred their women, so they will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop… Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment.30

The retreat of the Vendeans is known as ‘la Virée de Galerne’. In the sheer scale of loss of life, it was not dissimilar to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

By then the heartland of the Vendèe was being harried by General Kléber and a Republican army transferred from the Rhine. Throughout 1794 the ‘infernal columns’ of the Republic wreaked hateful revenge on the rebel villages. Tens of thousands were shot, guillotined, burned in their barns or their churches. At the harbour of Rochefort, several thousand non-juror priests were slowly starved to death on the decks of prison hulks. At Angers, thousands of prisoners were shot out of hand. At Nantes, thousands more were systematically drowned. Later, to contain resistance, a huge military fortress was planted in the centre of the troubled region with a garrison of 20,000. (First named Napoléon-Vendèe when completed in 1808, it was renamed Bourbon-Vendée in 1815, and is now called Roche-sur-Yon.) Nearby, in the open fields, stands a cross to the memory of the last stand of the last commander of the Vendeans, the Chevalier de la Charette de la Contrie, who, expiring before the firing squad at Nantes, uttered one last cry of ‘Vive le Roi!’, [NOYADES]

Thanks to the propaganda of the victorious RepubUc, ‘Vendéeism’ has been widely identified with peasant ignorance, religious superstition, and the rule of tyrannical priests. This picture is unfair. It is true that some of the Vendeans were driven in extremis to forms of mystical martyrdom, and also to excesses of their own. But their rebellion was not irrational. They had been subjected to many real assaults and humiliations, including the fashion for public mockery of religion. In any other country of Europe, their devotion to their traditional way of life would have been widely admired. Their moral integrity was well illustrated when the dying Bonchamps pardoned all his 5,000 prisoners. Their tragedy was to have taken up arms during the phase of extreme Jacobin fanaticism. Their enemies did not hesitate to employ genocidal measures, and then to cover the victims with calumny. Napoleon called them ‘giants’. It has taken the best part of 200 years for France to come to terms with this terrible story ofpopulicide* of genocide franco-français.31

NOYADES

IN the spring of 1794, French Republican officers in Nantes had so many I rebels from the Vendèe to kill that they didn’t know how to do it. They had unleashed the ‘infernal columns’; they had starved and massacred their captives; and they had been shooting batches of prisoners by the thousand. But it was not enough. They then hit on the idea of drowning. Nantes was an Atlantic slave port; and a fleet of large, shallow hulks was to hand. By sinking a loaded hulk in the river at night, and then refloating it, they devised an efficient and inconspicuous system of reusable death chambers. These were the terrible noyades. Necessity proved the mother of invention in the technology of death.1

A century and a half later, Nazi officers in occupied Poland faced a similar problem. They had so many Jews to kill that they couldn’t cope. They had unleashed the Einsatzgruppen; they had starved Jews in crowded ghettos: at Sobibór, they had driven their victims round the countryside in railway wagons packed with quicklime.2 But it was not enough. Then they hit on gassing. Initial trials using carbon monoxide in mobile vans proved unsatisfactory. But early in 1941, experiments using capsules of Zyklon-B in sealed chambers, together with advice from the leading German designers of crematoria,3 promised a vast increase in capacity. Within a year, the Nazi SS was able to embark on a programme of industrialized genocide in purpose-built facilities.4

An eye-witness from the death-camp at Treblinka would later describe the process for interrogators at the Nuremberg Tribunal:

[RAJZMAN] Transports arrived there every day; sometimes three, four or five trains filled exclusively with Jews. Immediately after their arrival, the people had to line up on the platform—men, women and children separately. They were forced to strip immediately … under the lashes of German whips. Then they were obliged to walk naked through the street to the gas chambers. What did the Germans call that street?
Himmelfahrtstrasse [the way to heaven].
Please tell us, how long did a person live after arrival?
The whole process of undressing and the walk down to the gas chambers lasted for the men eight to ten minutes, and for the women some fifteen minutes, because the women had to have their hair shaved off….
Please tell us, what was the subsequent aspect of the station of Treblinka?
The Commander of the camp, Kurt Franz, built a first-class railroad station with signboards. The barracks where the clothing was stored had signs reading ‘Restaurant’, ‘Ticket Office’, ‘Telegraph’, and so forth …
A kind of make-believe station?… And tell us, how did the Germans behave when killing their victims?
They brought an aged woman with her [pregnant] daughter to this building. Several Germans came to watch the delivery … the grandmother begged to be killed. But of course, the newborn baby was killed first, then the child’s mother, and finally the grandmother.…
Tell us, witness, how many persons were exterminated in the camp on an average, daily.
On an average, from ten to twelve thousand persons daily.5

A view might conceivably be entertained that the Nazi gas-chambers reflected a ‘humane approach’, akin to that of a well-regulated abattoir. If the sub-humans had to die, it was better that they die quickly rather than in protracted agony. In practice, there is no evidence that Nazi logic knew any such considerations. The operation of the Nazi death-camps was characterised by totally heartless efficiency and gratuitous bestiality.

The ‘death-factory’ at Jasenovac in Croatia was operated by the Fascist Ustaša from 1942 to 1945. It became the object of intense propaganda in post-war Yugoslavia; and the official count of ‘700,000 victims, mainly Serbs’ has since been called into question.6 But there can be little doubt about the total absence at Jasenovac both of mercy and of modern technology. Sensational stories abound. But shooting or gassing might have been regarded as a blessed reprieve from death by mass clubbings, by immersion in boiling cauldrons, or by decapitation with handsaws.

The ‘Chouanneries’ of 1793–1801 shared many of the basic motives of the Vendée rising; and they overlapped with it geographically. On the other hand, they were much more widespread, embracing the greater part of Brittany, Normandy, and Anjou; and, since they took to guerrilla warfare, they were much more prolonged. The Chouans took their name from the chat-huant or ‘catcalling’ which was the favourite means of communication between peasant lads in the woods. Their first recognized leader, Jean Cottereau, a ranger from St Ouen-des-Toits near Le Mans, took the sobriquet of ‘Jean Chouan’. To the Republican authorities they were simply ‘brigands’; but they sustained three lengthy campaigns against all the forces which the Republic could muster.

The first campaign (October 1793 to April 1795) was sparked off by the passage of the Vendeans through western Normandy, where 5,000 Chouans joined their ranks. It was eventually suspended by a truce whereby the Directory ordered an end to the prosecution of non-juror priests. The second campaign (June 1795 to April 1797) began with a daring raid on a republican arsenal at Pont-de-Buis in Brittany. It promised to become a war of regular armies when a royalist force was landed from British ships on the nearby Quiberon peninsula. But General Hoche proved more than equal to his task: after annihilating the landing force, he gradually pacified the countryside by combining religious toleration with ruthless military measures. The third campaign (September 1797 to July 1801) was provoked by the Directory’s decision to annul the electoral results in all thedépartements of the north and west where monarchist candidates had swept the board. It was marked by the renewed persecution of non-juror priests, and by a series of murderous local conflicts between Chouans and ‘Bleus’. In 1799, under Georges Cadoudal (1771–1804) of Kerleano in Morbihan, the insurgents were able to coordinate their activities and briefly to occupy several cities, including Redon, Le Mans, Nantes, and St Brieuc. But their successes came to an end with the Consulship of Napoleon, who followed a similar strategy to that of Hoche. General hostilities ceased after the religious settlement introduced by the Concordat of 1801; but local bands of rebels continued to roam the backwoods until Cadoudal was caught and executed in 1804.32 [CHOUAN]

No accurate account of the ‘Counter-Revolution’ can fail to take note of the rapidly shifting bench-marks. Constitutionalists who led the Revolution in 1789 were already counted among the ‘reactionaries’ by 1792. One of the most determined waves of resistance, which sparked insurrections in Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and elsewhere in June 1793, was launched in support of the Girondins, who until recently had been the Jacobins’ closest partners. Even the sansculottes, who won the right to a vote and to cheap bread, turned in time against their Jacobin patrons. Bonaparte, who was seen to have betrayed both the Bourbons and the Republic, attracted the hatred of both ‘Whites’ and ‘Reds’. The explosion of an ‘infernal machine’ in Paris on 24 December 1800, which aimed to assassinate Bonaparte on his way to the opera, was the work of royalistémigrés, but it was used to justify the execution of Jacobin and republican opponents. Any unsuccessful opponent could be condemned as ‘reactionary’, [ROUGE]

CHOUAN

FOR most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the local politics of the western region of the Département of the Sarthe, beyond Le Mans, was dominated by a solid right-wing, anti-republican tradition. It stood in marked contrast to the region to the east, dominated by an equally solid left-wing, anti-clerical and pro-republican block, la zone rouge, which in the 1960s was still voting Communist. The pattern could not be attributed to social, landholding, or religious factors. According to France’s leading rural historian, it can only be explained by the lingering trauma of the revolt of the Chouans of 1793–9. This is all the more remarkable since the cahiers de doléances of 1789 show that the most militant protests against tithe and clergy emanated from the west, not the east. The conduct of the revolutionary Republic was apparently so extreme that it converted its original supporters into implacable enemies. Electoral behaviour in the Fifth Republic was still being influenced by the mistakes of the First. ‘It is impossible’, wrote Le Roy Ladurie, ‘to explain the present by the present.’ If this is true of one department of France, how much more does it apply to Europe as a whole?

Violence is the one feature of the Revolution which its critics have always found most repulsive. It took many forms. Mob rule and lynching occurred from the start on 14 July 1789, when the heads of the Bastille’s governor, du Launay, and of fellow victims were paraded round Paris on pikes. Wanton attacks against the persons and property of priests and nobles were commonplace. There were random massacres, such as the slaughter in the Paris prisons in September 1792; there were many assassinations, such as that of Marat; and there were terrible revenge killings, such as were perpetrated in Marseilles after the fall of the Jacobins. None of these events was unique. But two aspects of revolutionary violence had no precedent: one was the sheer scale of military casualties that arose from the use of mass conscript armies; the other was the cold-blooded reign of political terror unleashed by the Jacobins. In the realm of mass psychology, both these phenomena were connected to the vast energies which sent a despondent and bankrupt nation on a twenty-year spree of enthusiastic conquest. They were both avoidable.

The Reign of Terror was conceived by the (second) Committee of Public Safety and carried out as a deliberate instrument of policy. It was not confined to the destruction of the Revolution’s active opponents. It was designed to create such a climate of fear and uncertainty that the very thought of opposition would be paralysed. Its twin weapons were to be found on the one hand in the Law of Suspects of Prairial and, on the other, in the Revolutionary Tribunal. The former required all citizens to denounce anyone who might be suspected of harbouring ill will towards the authorities. Linked to the Law of Maximum Prices, which turned the whole economic sphere into a source of potential crime, it exposed every French family to the possibility of sudden, baseless catastrophe. The latter law, which rarely issued anything but a summary death sentence, fed the guillotine with a constant supply of innocents. The total tally in Paris ran into tens of thousands. In the provinces, it was backed by military force. It is a sobering thought to realize that for every victim of the Terror killed in Paris there were ten who were killed in the Vendèe.

Yet the ethos of the Terror does not cease to amaze. It produced a climate of spies, informers, and unlimited suspicion. It produced the scenes of crowded tumbrils carting the condemned through hate-filled streets, of men and women facing death, alternately serene or wretchedly broken, of the ghoulish tricoteuses knitting away beside the guillotine as severed heads dropped into the nearby basket. Through the dire extremity of the circumstances, it produced a large repertoire of grim humour. Danton, when asked for his name and abode, replied: ‘I am Danton, a name tolerably well known. My abode is Le Néant [Annihilation]; but I shall live in the Pantheon of History/ Desmoulins, when asked for his age, said, ‘My age is that of the bon sansculotte Jesus: a fatal age for revolutionaries.’ He was 38. Louis XVI on the scaffold started an unfinished speech: ‘I die innocent, and Iforgive my enemies,’ he began, ‘I wish that my blood …’ Danton, in the same straits, said, ‘Danton, no weakness’; then: ‘Executioner, show them my head; it’s worth showing.’ Robespierre, who had earlier taken a pistol shot through the jaw, could only shriek incoherendy.

ROUGE

THE tricolour of 1789 was made up from the white of France’s royal standard and the red and blue ensign of Paris. It was destined to become the flag of the French Republic. The same colours, arranged horizontally, were adopted by the Batavian Republic in 1794, in succession to the similar but much older flag of the United Provinces.

But it was the red flag which the revolutionaries soon adopted. In Roman times, the red flag had signified war. Red was the colour of blood, fire, and magic. By tradition its modern career began in 1791, when the crowd attacking the Tuileries picked up a blood-soaked royal standard. Henceforth, ‘red’ and ‘white’ were the accepted colour codes for revolution and counter-revolution. Stendhal used the variant of Le Rouge et le Noir for his depiction of the struggle between the radicals and the clerical reaction under the Restoration.

The colour-coding of political movements has deep connotations. Red was taken up by Garibaldi’s ‘Thousand’, by socialists, and most fervently by the Communists. Green, the colour of the land (and once of the Merovingians), was adopted by peasant parties, by Irish patriots, and much later by the environmentalists. ‘True blue’, once a Spanish epithet for aristocratic blood, suited British Tories and other conservatives. The Unionists preferred [ORANGE] and the Liberals yellow. The Nazis, from the SA uniforms, were first known as ‘Browns’. Later, from the uniform of the SS, they were associated with black, which for others was the traditional European colour for evil, death, and piracy. In their concentration camps, they forced prisoners to wear colour patches according to the scheme of Red = political; green = criminal; black = antisocial; pink = homosexual; violet = Jehovah’s Witness; brown = gypsy; yellow = Jew.1

Ambiguities abound. In Catholic symbolism, red stands for martyrdom and cardinals, white for purity and chastity, blue for hope and for the Virgin Mary, and black for grief, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits. In the age of racial consciousness and political correctness, ‘black is beautiful’; ‘whites’ are as unwelcome as ‘dead males’, ‘redskins’ have to be changed to ‘cardinals’; and the favourite metaphor is the rainbow.

Many of the perpetrators of revolutionary violence, like Robespierre, met a violent death themselves. Westermann, the ‘Butcher of the Vendèe’, died on the same scaffold as Danton. The Directory initiated trials which punished some of the more notorious sadists.

Legislative reform followed the same broad trends as the Revolution itself, passing through constitutional, republican, and imperial phases. The effect was immensely confusing. The institutions of the old order were abolished, and replaced by abortive or short-lived expedients, which the Empire then overturned or modified for its own purposes. The eventual offspring often consisted of strange hybrid creatures, neither ancien fish nor revolutionary fowl. Hereditary nobility, for example, was abolished in 1789, together with the other social estates. Under the Republic, all people were reduced to the one rank, citoyen or citoyenne (citizen). Bonaparte introduced the idea of advancement by merit, la carrière ouverte awe talents; and the Empire adopted a hierarchical system of new ranks and titles, an aristocracy of princes, dukes, and counts, based on state service. TheLegion d’Honneur (1802) was Napoleon’s own idea for an order of merit.

In religion, the civil establishment of the clergy (1790) turned all priests into salaried state officials, and sequestrated all Church property. The Republic persecuted the non-jurors, disestablished the constitutional Church, de-christianized public life by inventing its own secular Calendar and its own secular cults, such as the Worship of the Supreme Being in 1794 or the Theophilanthropy of 1796. Bonaparte, after humiliating the Papacy, officially reintroduced Roman Catholicism. The Concordat of July 1801 recognized it as the religion of most French people, whilst leaving Church appointments, salaries, and property at the disposition of the State. Pope Pius VII attended the Emperor’s coronation at Notre Dame on 2 December 1804, but was too slow when Bonaparte placed the crown on his own head. Rightly or wrongly, Jean Bigot de Préamenau (1747–1825), Napoleon’s minister of cults, gave his name to religious intolerance. [GUILLOTIN]

In education, the former monopoly of Church schools was broken. Under the Empire, the system of centralized state schooling based on the Ministry in Paris and on lycées in all major towns gave French life one of its most characteristic institutions.

In regional government, the old provinces were destroyed, together with their historic privileges and assemblies. The 83 smaller départements or districts, of 1790, usually named after rivers or mountain ranges, were retained under the Empire and greatly increased in number. Their internal organization was remodelled by Napoleon, who set up the office of departmental Prefect.

In the economic sphere, the Revolutionary regimes worked their way through a long series of experiments. In 1790 the Constituent Assembly, having abolished the old revenues, was forced to invent a number of new land, income, and property taxes. It financed the nationalization of Church property by issuing the famous assignats or state bonds, which steadily deteriorated into a highly devalued form of paper money. In 1793 the Jacobins adopted an economic programme designed to meet the demands of a mass army, of the Terror, and of their own social ideology. Their doctrine of ‘a single will’ was applied to economics no less than politics, and produced a state-run armaments industry; rigorous price control through the Law of the Maximum, and the cancellation of all peasant debts. After 1795 the Directory looked increasingly to plunder and tribute as a substitute for economic policy. Napoleon added the outlook of an old-fashioned Colbertian mercantilist. Grandiose public projects were made possible by the priority given to the regular inward flow of cash.

Both the Republic and the Empire were opposed to free trade, and the long struggle with the British over the control of commercial shipping began during the first Coalition. In November 1806 Napoleon’s Berlin Decree formally declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade. ‘I wish’, he said, ‘to conquer the sea by the power of the land.’ The British response came in the Order in Council of 1807 forbidding all neutrals to trade with France, except under licence. This in turn provoked Napoleon’s Milan Decree of December 1807, threatening dire retribution on anyone following the British rules. The resultant Continental System was enforced in all countries occupied by the French, and was made a condition for Napoleon’s co-operation with other countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. It gave Europe its first taste of a united economic community; but it also generated much of the resentment which undermined the French position.

Taxation endured many vicissitudes. The old hated taxes and exemptions disappeared. The constitutional regime aimed at equitable and universal taxation for all; whilst the Jacobins excised the requirement whereby the franchise was limited to taxpayers. The Directory moved back towards a democracy of property-owners. Under the Empire, although centralized land taxes were more efficiently run, the tax burden, especially on the peasants, was enormous.

The torrent of legislation in the 1790s caused a log-jam which could only be sorted out by systematic review and codification. Work started by the Convention in 1792 culminated in the towering Civil Code (1804), soon to be renamed the Code Napoléon. The Code replaced the 360 local codes in force in 1789, and drove a middle path between the Roman law of the south and the customary law of the north, between the egalitarian principles of 1789 and the authoritarian, propertied reaction of the Directory. (Common law lost its place in the civil sphere.) The universal rights of citizenship, and of equality before the law, were confirmed. In family law, civil marriage and divorce were retained; but the equal division of property was limited to male heirs. Married women were judged ‘incapable’ of making contracts. This Code has profoundly influenced the social development of at least thirty countries.

In the long run the Revolution probably had its greatest impact in the realm of pure ideas. Much of this detailed legislation was due for further revision after 1815, or was applicable only in France. But many of the basic ideas, and ideals, remained in existence for all the world to contemplate, even where they found no immediate form of practical expression. Republicanism, for example, was defeated in France long before the restoration of the monarchy in 1814–15. But it remained alive to feed a tradition which reasserted itself in 1848–51, and took permanent hold of the country after 1871. Since monarchy was still the predominant mode of government in nineteenth-century Europe, the memory and example of the first French Republic of 1792–9 could not fail to offer powerful attractions.

The idea of revolution itself was irrepressible, even where particular revolutionary movements were repressed. Prior to 1789 most Europeans held a static view of the political and social order, where change could at best be limited and gradual. After 1789 everyone knew that the world could be turned upside down, that determined men could mobilize the social forces and psychological motors which underlay the surface of the most tranquil society. This realization aroused widespread panic and, in some quarters, hope. It also gave a powerful spur to the growth of the social sciences. Henceforth, revolution was to be distinguished from all lesser forms of rebellion, jacquerie, or putsch.

Counter-revolution, too, took flight. Henceforth, revolutionary creeds were to be balanced by their opposite numbers. Burke’s Reflections (1790) in the English-speaking world and Goethe’s in the German world were to have lasting influence. The theocentric Considérations (1796) of De Maistre, who saw the Revolution as the wrath of God, were to have a long progeny, stretching through the generations to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. All of them would share Burke’s instinctive reaction against ‘the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow’.

The concept of human rights, if not invented by the French revolutionaries, was certainly given its strongest modern impetus. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen carried forward constructs contained in England’s Bill of Rights of 1689 and the fundamental declarations surrounding the independence of the USA. Battered and bruised, it survived as a lasting monument to the early idealism of the Revolution. Passed on 26 August 1789, ‘in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being’, it consisted of a Preamble, in the style of its American predecessor, and of seventeen Articles listing Mankind’s ‘natural, inalienable and sacred rights’:

I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on public utility.

II. The purpose of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of men. These rights are liberty, property, and safety from, and resistance to, oppression.

III. The principle of all sovereignty resides in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can exercise authority which does not emanate directly therefrom.

IV. Liberty consists in the ability to do anything which does not harm others.

V. The Law can only forbid actions which are injurious to society…

VI. The Law is the expression of the General Will… It should be the same for all, whether to protect or to punish.

VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained except in those instances which are determined by law.

VIII. The Law should only establish punishments which are strictly necessary. No person should be punished by retrospective legislation.

IX. Every man [is] presumed innocent till found guilty…

X. No person should be troubled for his opinions, even religious ones, so long as their manifestation does not threaten public order.

XI. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of men’s most precious rights. Every citizen, therefore, can write, speak, and publish freely, saving only the need to account for abuses defined by law.

XII. A public force is required to guarantee the [above] rights. It is instituted for the benefit of all, not for the use of those to whom it is entrusted.

XIII. Public taxation is indispensable for the upkeep of the forces and the administration. It should be divided among all citizens without distinction, according to their abilities.

XIV. Citizens… have the right to approve the purposes, levels, and extent of taxation.

XV. Society has the right to hold every public servant to account.

XVI. Any society in which rights are not guaranteed nor powers separated does not have a constitution.

XVII. Property being a sacred and inviolable right, no person can be deprived of it, except by public necessity, legal process, and just compensation.33

Social convention held that the ‘Rights of Man’ automatically subsumed the rights of women. But several bold souls, including Cordorcet, disagreed, arguing that women had simply been neglected. In due course the original Declaration was joined by new ideas, notably about human rights in the social and economic sphere. Article XXI of the revised Declaration of June 1793 stated:

Public assistance is a sacred obligation [dette]. Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens, whether in finding work for them, or in assuring the means of survival of those incapable of working.34

Slavery was outlawed in 1794. Religious toleration was guaranteed, [FEMME]

Naturally, the French version of human rights was greatly circumscribed by the dictatorial practices both of the Republic and of the Empire. After 1815 it continued to struggle against a strong, centralized, bureaucratic state. But its influence across Europe was far greater than the Anglo-Saxon version partly because French culture in general was more influential at this time and also because French soldiers had carried it all over the Continent in their knapsacks. Not for the first time did the agents of repression scatter the seeds of another liberation.

Geographical variations in the patterns of revolution are often missed. Paris, though dominant, was not France. In Toulon, which was occupied by an Anglo-Spanish naval force in 1793, the port and the city were the scene of bitter fighting between royalists and republicans. At Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Lyons also, extended civil wars were fought, with the Red Terror of the Jacobins being matched by the ‘White Terror’ of 1794–5. In many areas royalist sentiment would probably have commanded majority support if only it could have been effectively organized. In the event the revolutionaries carried the day, partly through their superior and centralized military capacity and partly through the outbreak of war, which effectively tied the defence of the Revolution to the defence of France. Nowhere is this coincidence of patriotic and revolutionary fervour more evident than in the Chant de Guerre de l’Armée du Rhin (1792), the ‘Battle-Song of the Army of the Rhine’ alias La Marseillaise, which was destined, eighty years later, to become the national anthem of the French Republic, [STRASSBURG]

The concept of the modern state, in the sense of a centralized administration applying common laws uniformly to all citizens over the whole territory, received an enormous boost. Its elements had been growing for centuries, and not only in France. But ferocious levelling by the Jacobins and the energetic dictatorship of the Empire made greater inroads into French particularism in twenty years than absolute government had done in so many decades. What is more, by sweeping aside the entire museum of antiquated state structures in Europe, from the Holy Roman Empire to the Republic of Venice, the revolutionary armies cleared much of the ground for the administrative reforms of the nineteenth century. Again, nationalism was not created whole by the French Revolution (see Chapter X); but both the ideology of the nation and the consciousness of nationality were immensely strengthened in all those countries where the old order was overturned.

Militarism—the belief that military force is a valid and effective instrument of policy—inevitably gained ground. Eighteenth-century warfare possessed rather limited objectives; and the greatest of its practitioners won more territory through diplomacy than on the battlefield. The French revolutionary armies, in contrast, came together after 1792 at a juncture when mass conscript armies, a war economy, and the enthusiasm of a nation in arms, could deliver results on a completely different scale. Although their eventual defeat may also have demonstrated the limitations of militarism, their seemingly invincible progress for almost a quarter of a century showed how much war could accomplish. This was the legacy of Lazare Carnot (1753–1823), the military engineer and administrator who was hailed the ‘organizer of victory’ under the Committees of Public Safety, the Directory, the Empire, and above all, Bonaparte. ‘War is a violent condition,’ wrote Carnot; ‘one should make it à l’outrance or go home.’

Revolutionary War, 1792–1815

The prospect that revolution would provoke first civil and then international war was present from the start. Despite the formal renunciation of wars of conquest by France’s Constituent Assembly in May 1790, there was not a monarch who could listen in comfort to the cries of ‘Mort aux Tyrans’, ‘Death to the Tyrants’, which echoed ever more loudly from the streets of Paris. Equally, there was not a revolutionary who slept easily amidst the hostile plots of the émigrés and the monarchists. The wilful flaunting of authority created a general climate of unease. In 1791 the Pope openly condemned the Revolution. The challenge was taken up on the one hand by the Girondin J.-P. Brissot, who called for a people’s crusade against ‘the despots’, and on the other by the Emperor Leopold, Marie Antoinette’s brother, who, after meeting the Prussian and Saxon monarchs at Pillnitz, called for a league of princes ‘to restore the honour of his Most Christian Majesty’.

FEMME

OLYMPE DE GOUGES (1748–93). a butcher’s daughter from Montauban, came to Paris as a young widow. Born Marie Gauzes, she refused to accept her married name, and invented her pen-name when she aspired to a literary career. She was writing plays and political pamphlets from the earliest days of the Revolution. Incensed by the exclusion of women from the Constitutional Assembly, she published Les Droits de la Femme et du Citoyen (1791) as a counterblast to the Rights of Man:

I. Woman is born free, and remains equal to man in rights …

II. The aim of all political associations is to preserve the natural and inalien able rights of Woman and Man. These are: liberty, ownership, safety, and resistance to oppression.

III. The principle of sovereignty resides in essence in the Nation, which is nothing other than the conjunction of Woman and Man.

IV. … The exercise of Woman’s natural rights has no limit other than the tyranny of Man’s opposing them.

V. The laws of nature and reason forbid all actions harmful to society …

VI. The law must be the expression of the General Will; all citizens, female and male, should concur in its formation. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, must be equally eligible for all honours, positions, and posts … with no distinction other than those of their virtues and talents.

VII. … Women obey the rigours of the law as men do.

VIII. No one may be punished except by virtue of a law which was promulgated prior to the crime, and which is applicable to women.

IX. Any woman found guilty will be dealt with in the full rigour of the law.

X. No one should be persecuted for fundamental opinions. Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.

XI. … Any citizen may freely say ‘I am the mother of your child’ without any barbarous prejudice forcing her to hide the truth.

XII. The guarantee of women’s rights entails absolute service …

XIII. The contributions of Woman and Man to the upkeep of public services are equal.

XIV. Female and male citizens have the same right to ascertain the need for taxes.

XV. All women, united by their contributions with all men, have the right to demand an account of their administration from all public officials.

XVI. Any society in which rights are not guaranteed, and powers not separated, has no constitution.

XVII. Property is shared or divided equally by both sexes …1

This text, the founding charter of feminism, remained little more than a curiosity. After publicly daring to oppose Robespierre’s Terror, its author met the guillotine.

Anne-Josèphe Thérouingue de Méricourt (1758—1817), ‘the Amazon of Liberty’, came to Paris from Liège to advocate a more militant brand of feminism. She held that women should fight for the Revolution, to which end she organized a ferocious legion of female militia. ‘Needles and spindles’, she wrote in Les Françaises devenues libres (1791), ‘are not the only weapons which we know how to handle.’

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) came to Paris from London, where in her Vindication of the Rights of Man (1791) she had attacked Burke’s Reflections. Her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) enlarged on the rationalist position of Olympe de Gouges. She was married to the political writer William Godwin, and died giving birth to a daughter who grew up to be the wife of the poet Shelley.

The views of these radical feminist pioneers evoked little sympathy in leading revolutionary circles. Rousseau, who had set the tone, proposed a gender role combining the self-denying heroism of Roman matrons with a femininity that would encourage men to be more manly. The likes of de Gouges, Thérouangue de Méricourt, Mme Roland, Charlotte Corday, or Cécile Renaud no more impressed Robespierre than the March of the Women to Versailles had impressed the King. In June 1793, women were expressly excluded from citizenship.2

The rulers of Russia, Austria, Sweden, Prussia, Saxony, and Spain were all in favour of active intervention. Their plans were strongly encouraged by Catherine the Great, who expressed the view that ‘the affairs of France were the concern of all crowned heads’. Their ringleader, Gustavus III, masterminded the ill-starred flight to Varennes. He was already receiving subsidies from Russia when he was assassinated at a masked ball in Stockholm on 16 March 1792. Yet their greatest obstacle lay in the ambiguous position of Louis XVI, whose public pronouncements contradicted his secret correspondence, and who was simultaneously opposing and co-operating with the Revolution. In the event, the divided counsels of Louis’s would-be rescuers caused sufficient delay for the revolutionaries to take the initiative into their own hands. In April 1792, with the King’s acquiescence, they declared war on Austria and Prussia, [STRASSBURG]

The descent into war must be traced to one of the most dire decisions of Louis XVI’s politique du pire. In the spring of 1792 it so happened that the court party and the extreme radicals were both bending the King’s ear in favour of war. The Queen wanted war so that the Revolution could be defeated by her brother’s international rescue force. The radicals wanted war so that the Brissotin faction might exploit a military triumph. So Louis took them at their word, spurning the advice both of his more moderate Girondin ministers and of the Jacobins. On 20 April 1792 ill-prepared French troops were ordered to cross the frontier and to invade the Austrian Netherlands. The results of Louis’s gamble were not as any of its promoters had hoped. There was no immediate military confrontation. The Queen’s rescue force was slow to materialize. The Brissot faction did not gain any lasting advantage, being overtaken during the summer by the Jacobins. Europe gradually lost all hope of a peaceful settlement. The King himself lost all credibility, his deposition was in progress before the first major battle took place at Valmy in September.

STRASSBURG

ON 24 April 1792 news reached the French army at Strasbourg that war had been declared against the First Coalition. That night, during revels in the house of the Mayor of Strasbourg, a Captain of Engineers from the Jura, Claude-Josèphe Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836), improvised both the words and the music of ‘Le Chant de Guerre pour l’Armeé du Rhin’ (The Battle Song for the Army of the Rhine). Its rousing stanzas would soon be sung wherever the revolutionary cause was in danger:

Allons, enfants de la Patrie!

Le jour de gloire est arrivé.

Contre nous de la tyrannie

L’étendard sanglant est levé, [bis]

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes

Mugir ees féroces soldats?

lis viennent jusque dans nos bras

Égorger nos fils et nos compagnes

Aux armes, Citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!

Marchons, marchons!

Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

(Forward, children of the Fatherland! | The day of glory has arrived. | Tyranny’s bloody standard has been raised against us. | [Repeat] Do you hear those ferocious soldiers bellowing in the countryside? | They are coming right into our embrace | To slaughter our sons and daughters. | To arms, citizens! Form up in your battalions! f Come on, let’s march! | To water our furrows with tainted blood.)

To be sung in Strasbourg, the song had to be translated into German as the Strassburgerlied. By the summer, as La Strasbourgeoise, it had reached the Midi. On the evening of 22 June it was sung at a banquet in Marseilles by a medical student from Montpellier, François Miroir. It proved so seductive that it accompanied a battalion of volunteers from Marseilles all the way to Paris. When they entered the capital on 30 July, singing their song, it was immediately called ‘The Hymn of the Massilians’, or simply La Marseillaise. There is no doubt about its subsequent career. But there is some doubt whether that battalion of volunteers from the Midi could actually have spoken French.1

La Marseillaise quickened the step of the revolutionary armies as they marched round Europe. It was translated and sung in many languages, from Italian to Polish. It was formally adopted by a decree of the Convention on 26 Messidor III (14 July 1795), thereby initiating the custom of national as opposed to royal anthems (like ‘God Save the King’). La Marseillaise, Napoleon used to say, was the Republic’s greatest general.

As for Rouget de Lisle, he was arrested in 1793 for royalist sympathies; survived; and died in poverty. His monument stands in Lons-le-Saunier.

Russia alone showed no hesitation. The Empress Catherine was cramped by her Turkish war, which did not end until the Treaty of Jassy in January 1792. But after that she immediately turned her gaze to the West. Her contribution to the anti-revolutionary crusade was to be directed against the Polish Constitution, ‘which she could not for one minute accept’:

The Polish Constitution was in no sense Jacobinical. But to Catherine there was not, in spring 1791, much to choose between revolutionary Poland and revolutionary France … [She] sensed the revolutionary undercurrent in Poland… and she crushed the Revolution where she could most easily reach it.35

Summoning a bogus confederation of traitorous Polish notables to St Petersburg, and pressing the King of Prussia to drop his Polish sympathies or else, she ordered the Russian army to march at precisely the time that Louis XVI was ordering the French army to do the same. Thus the revolutionary wars began simultaneously in East and West. Twenty years were to pass before the initiators, France and Russia, were to meet in the decisive trial of strength.

The Russo-Polish War of 1792–3, therefore, was an integral part of the revolutionary panorama. It largely determined the balance of forces which were later to be waiting for Napoleon in the East. The outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Commanded by the King’s nephew Józef Poniatowski, and by the veteran of the American wars Tadeusz Kościuszko, founder of West Point Academy, the fledgeling Polish army acquitted itself with distinction. A masterly victory was achieved at Zielence in Podolia on 18 June 1792, one month after Russian forces had crossed into Polish Ukraine. The Polish position continued to look tenable until surrounded by the Prussians from the rear. In the end, the matter was resolved by the King’s capitulation rather than by force of arms. Joining the Russian-backed Confederation of Targowica to end the shedding of blood, Stanislaw-August accepted the terms of the Second Partition, signed in St Petersburg on 4 January 1793, and undertook to put them into effect. Six months later the last Sejm of the Republic’s history met at Grodno in Lithuania, under the shadow of Russian guns. Representatives of the nobility, threatened with sequestration, gave legal form to their country’s humiliation. The Constitution of Third May, duly reviled, was annulled. Russia annexed a swathe of territory half the size of France. Prussia took Danzig (which promptly rebelled), [TOR]

TOR

THE Brandenburger Tor was built as one of the nineteen gates of Berlin’s old walled city in 1793, the year that the Kingdom of Prussia entered the revolutionary wars. Its elegant Doric colonnade was modelled on the Propyleia in Athens. Surmounted by its Auriga—a group of giant bronze figures portraying ‘the Chariot of Victory’—it was destined to preside over Germany’s modern tragedies and triumphs. It saw Napoleon’s grand entry into Berlin in 1806, and all the other military parades which crashed and boomed their way along the avenue of Unter den Linden for King, Kaiser, President, and Führer. In 1871, it welcomed the victorious troops returning from the Franco-Prussian War to a city still described as ‘insanitary’ and ‘irreligious’—an event which spurred the first rebuilding of Berlin as Germany’s imperial capital. In 1933, it hosted Chancellor Hitler. During the Battle for Berlin in April-May 1945, it stood on the dividing-line between the rival Byelorussian and Ukrainian ‘Fronts’ commanded by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev. On the day when two Russian sergeants from Zhukov’s army planted a red banner atop the nearby Reichstag, its ruins received a red-and-white pennant from soldiers of the 1st Polish Army fighting under Koniev. In 1953, it towered over the fatal protest march of East German workers. From August 1961 until November 1989, it formed the captive centrepiece of The Berlin Wall.

Across the centuries, the Auriga has been seen as an unwitting weathercock of the political climate. In 1807 it was carried off to Paris. Restored in 1814, it was re-erected with the Chariot facing west. In 1945 it was destroyed only to be replaced in 1953 with new sculptures cast from the original moulds. This time the Communist authorities allegedly set the Chariot facing east. At all events, as the third rebuilding of Berlin began in 1991, in preparation for the government of a re-united Germany, the Auriga was firmly facing westwards. Its stance marked the condition, not only of relations between the two halves of Berlin, but of the two halves of Europe.1

Symbolic gestures in bronze or stone can be found in many places. In Zagreb, for example, the statue of the Croatian champion, General Jelacič;, was first erected in the late 19th century with his accusing finger pointing unmistakably towards Budapest. In 1991, it was re-aligned to point towards Belgrade. In 1993, reports stated that it had been turned once more to point towards Knin, the capital of the self-styled Serbian Republic of Krajina.

In the West, the revolutionary wars grew into a titanic complex of conflicts engulfing almost the whole Continent. The campaign of 1792 gave France a thorough scare which spurred the revolutionary leaders first to depose the King and then to organize an open-ended war effort. The initial French incursion into Austrian territory was soon reversed by the advance of Prussian and Austrian columns into France. But the vigorous political manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick was not accompanied by vigorous military action. The Prussians moved so slowly that Goethe, who was travelling with the detachment from Weimar, had time to set up his experiments on the psychological effects of cannon-balls. They were still in the Forest of Argonne, within twenty miles of the frontier, when, at the Battle of Valmy on 20 September 1792, they were repulsed by the famous ‘revolutionary cannonade’. After that, war fed off the Revolution, and the Revolution fed off a successful war. Before the year was out the revolutionary armies were back in the Netherlands and had seized Savoy. They marched on and on and on, for nearly twenty years.

The progress of the revolutionary wars is often described in terms of the three great coalitions mounted against France in 1793–6,1799–1801, and 1805–14. This is misleading, partly because each of the coalitions tended rapidly to disintegrate, and partly because fighting often continued in the intervals between the coalitions. The interests of the Continental powers which supplied the backbone of the coalitions’ forces—Austria, Prussia, and Russia—did not always coincide with those of the coalitions’ principal organizers, the British, and their great war minister, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806). According to varying criteria, there were not just three but five, six, or seven coalitions. Britain’s coalition partners repeatedly suffered invasion and occupation; the British, on their impregnable islands, did not. The conflict assumed important economic as well as military dimensions. On several occasions it spread beyond the confines of Europe, and showed signs of global, intercontinental strategy.

The First Coalition, 1793–6, demonstrated how difficult it was to hold the allies together. Russia made little contribution, being preoccupied with the digestion of Poland. Prussia dropped out in 1795 for the same reason. Austria was left exposed to devastating French attacks both in the Netherlands and in northern Italy. In 1795–6 Spain changed sides, and Britain was left alone, with only the navy staving off disaster. The French, whilst destroying the Counter-Revolution at home, began to manufacture revolutionary regimes abroad. The Batavian Republic (1794) in the Dutch Netherlands was the first of many. The French also began to field youthful generals of astonishing skill and energies. Of these, the first was General Lazare Hoche (1769–97), who conquered the Rhine, crushed the Chouans, and once set out to capture Ireland.

In the East, despite the Second Partition, Poland-Lithuania still refused to surrender. Early in 1794 Tadeusz Kosciuszko returned from exile, and on 24 March, on the old Market Square of Cracow, read out the Act of Insurrection, ‘for national self-rule… and for the general liberty’ In May he issued a manifesto granting emancipation to the serfs. The victory of his peasant scythemen over a professional Russian army at Raclawice (4 April) echoed the Vendeans’ triumph at Cholet. Yet in Warsaw and Wilno the mob went on the rampage. Popular courts sentenced bishops, Russian agents, and confederates to death. Here at last was open revolution: the monarchs had to act. Warsaw was besieged by Prussians in the west. Two Russian armies advanced from the east. On 10 October, at Maciejowice, a wounded Kosciuszko fell from his horse, and was (wrongly) reported as crying ‘Finis Poloniae’. Suvorov stormed Warsaw’s eastern suburb of Praga, and put the inhabitants to the sword. He sent a three-word report to St Petersburg—HURRAH, PRAGA, SUVOROV, and received a three-word reply—BRAVO FIELDMARSHAL, CATHERINE. [METRYKA]

On this occasion the Third Partition proceeded on the assumption that the Poles and their Republic no longer existed; so, no consent was sought. The Prussians took Mazovia and Warsaw and called it ‘New South Prussia’. The Austrians took another huge slice and called it ‘New Galicia’. The Russians contented themselves with a slice the size of England. The final treaty, signed in St Petersburg, was followed by a secret protocol:

In view of the necessity to abolish everything which could revive the memory of the existence of the Kingdom of Poland … The high contracting parties are agreed … never to include in their tides the name or designation of the Kingdom of Poland, which shall remain suppressed as from the present and forever.36

By that time, with Bonaparte already on the march, no one in Western Europe could spare a thought for the injustices of Poland’s fate. Russia had established its reputation as the most unbending opponent of revolution, the champion of monarchy. The Poles had been cast in their role as the most obdurate opponents of sound government. They were to supply the largest of numerous foreign contingents who fought in the French ranks throughout the revolutionary wars.

The Italian campaign of 1796–7 was launched by the Directory against the possessions of an Austria already isolated by the collapse of its coalition partners. It was notable for the international debut of General Bonaparte, one year younger than Hoche. In the course of a few weeks the ragged French army on the frontier of the Maritime Alps was transformed into an invincible force. ‘Soldiers of the Army of Italy’, the youngster told them, ‘I will lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. You will find honour, glory and riches. Will you be wanting in courage?’ Within twelve months the whole of northern Italy was overrun. Bonaparte’s tactical mastery, first demonstrated on 10 May 1796 at the Bridge of Lodi, delivered him strategic domination. Milan was liberated; Mantua was reduced by siege; Austrian resistance was broken at Rivoli. The road was opened into Carinthia, and Vienna itself was awaiting attack, [GRILLENSTEIN]

Bonaparte showed an interest in all matters contiguous to war. Revolts and mutinies were repressed with swift and purposeful brutality. On entering the territory of the Duke of Parma, he demanded the instant surrender of all art treasures. This policy was to make the Louvre pre-eminent among art collections. On entering into the negotiations preceding the Peace of Campo Formio (October 1797) he insisted on dictating the terms without reference to Paris. This sort of conduct was to give him the upper hand over the politicians at home.

METRYKA

IN 1795, after suppressing the Republic of Poland-Lithuania, the Russian army carried off the state archives of the conquered countries to St Petersburg. Their haul included the Metryka Koronna or ‘Crown Register’ of the Kingdom of Poland, containing copies of all acts, statutes, and charters issued by the royal chancery since the Middle Ages, together with similar collections from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Duchy of Mazovia. Since the catalogues and.indexes were also taken, no one in Warsaw knew exactly what was lost. Polish historians could not study the history of their country in the way that Prussians or Russians were doing throughout the nineteenth Century. The impression was created abroad that Poland’s place in European history was as marginal as its role in the present.

Attempts to identify, to reconstitute, and, if possible, to recover Poland’s lost archives have been in progress for 200 years. Some parts were returned after 1815, and more after the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Other parts were pieced together from copies scattered far and wide. The Soviet Army reappropriated everything of interest in 1945, and only released selected items in the 1960s. No independent researchers were ever allowed to search for themselves unsupervised through the Tsarist or Soviet archives.1 [LOOT]

A detailed account of the fate of the Lithuanian Register, the Metryka Litewska, which dates from 1440, was only established by an American scholar in the 1980s. Working on an authorized survey of the Soviet archives for the benefit of Western scholars, and armed with a partial copy of the catalogues made in Warsaw by the invading Swedes in the seventeenth century, she painstakingly traced most of the constituent collections which Russian archivists had repeatedly relabelled, reassigned, and relocated.2 Yet two centuries after it was stolen, the main part of the Lithuanian Register remained in St Petersburg. Appeals by the governments of Lithuania and Belarus’ passed unheeded as the Russian Federation laid formal claim to all documents relating to ‘the history of Russia’ in the archives of the former RSFSR ‘regardless of their place of preservation and their form of ownership’.3

Western historians have been trained to stress the principle of consulting documentary sources. This is sound advice wherever the documentary sources are accessible. They forget a still more important principle which the Russian authorities have well understood for centuries—namely, whoever controls the documents can also control their use and interpretation.

GRILLENSTEIN

IN 1797 a son was born to a family of peasant weavers in the village of I Grillenstein, parish of Gmünd, in Austria’s Waldviertel district. The name of the family is not given, but their life cycle has been reconstructed from the parish records (see Appendix III, p. 1292). In 1817, at the age of twenty, the son married a woman six years older than himself, and by December at the latest the newly-weds had a baby son of their own. At that point the household appeared to constitute a perfect example of the classic ‘stem-family’ as posited by Le Play—a patriarchal, three-generational unit headed by the 51-year-old grandfather, [GROSSENMEER]

Very soon, however, the picture changed. In the following year (1818), the grandfather went into retirement (Ausnahm), taking his wife and two unmarried teenage daughters with him and handing the headship of the household to his son. He continued to live somewhere on the farm for a further twelve years until, following his wife’s death, he himself remarried and left.

From 1818, therefore, the household bore very little resemblance to the stem-family model. For a dozen years the son took charge, free of parental authority but with his retired parents in the background. His family was increased by the births of three more children, but afflicted by the deaths of his elder son (1821), his mother (1826), and his younger, newborn daughter (1827). After the departure of his father and unmarried sisters (1830), he could only cope with the losses by taking in a series of weavers and their families plus a number of servants. By 1841, when his eldest surviving child reached twenty-one, the household contained three separate, unrelated families—the head’s family and the families of two older weavers, who had just replaced two single women and their illegitimate sons. One can imagine the troubles.1

This one example was chosen by historians who wished to demonstrate the danger of generalizing from standard sociological models whilst observing the dynamic changes which occur over time. The family life cycle, which reveals the ebb and flow of fortune, is a vital concept for understanding peasant life throughout Europe and throughout the ages.

The Egyptian campaign of 1798–9 was designed by the Directory to disrupt Britain’s colonial and commercial supremacy. By establishing a French presence in the Middle East, it would have weakened British links with India and prepared the way for French domination of the whole Mediterranean. It began with the capture of Malta, and the landing of 40,000 troops at Alexandria. Despite the military defeat of the ruling Mamelukes, it was undermined by Admiral Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet at Aboukir Bay (1799) and by a strategic alliance between Russia and the Ottomans. It was the predecessor of similarly abortive schemes to outflank the British in the Caribbean (1802), in America by the knockdown sale of Louisiana (1803), and even in Australia (1804). Nothing came to fruition, since the Royal Navy proved as invincible at sea as Bonaparte was on land. Bonaparte left Egypt in August 1799 to execute the Coup of 18 Brumaire, and to take the reins of power in France.

Nabulione Buonaparte (1769–1821)—like Hitler and Stalin—was a foreigner in the land which he came to dominate. He was born at Ajaccio in Corsica, one year after Louis XV had bought the island from Genoa. When he was sent to France for military education as a boy cadet, he had no personal wealth, no social connections, no competent command of the French language. He grew into a small, surly, assertive young man, with more than a hint of the native vendetta not far beneath his sallow skin. But France was ‘a rebel mare’, waiting to be tamed:

O Corse à cheveux plats! Que la France était belle
Au grand soleil de messidor!
C’était une cavale indomptable et rebelle
Sans frein d’acier ni renes d’or.

(Oh, lank-haired Corsican! How fair was France I In the summer sun of Messidor! I She was a mare, rebellious and untameable, I With no steel bridle, nor reins of gold.)

The ‘lank-haired Corsican’ owed everything to the Revolution, which had made him a general of artillery at the age of 24. He had personally watched the shambles at the storming of the Tuileries. But he then took French leave to help his brothers in Corsica, and might well have stayed if the family had not been driven out by the local troubles. In 1794, having served at Toulon with Robespierre’s brother, he was briefly arrested by the Thermidorians, and applied in vain for a commission with the Ottoman Sultan. Yet in 1795 he was on hand in Paris during the royalist riots of October, when he saved the Convention with the timely ‘whiff of grapeshot’.

After that, the once-suspect artilleryman could do no wrong. In 1796 he was given command of the ragged Army of Italy. He turned himself with equal speed into the master of his political superiors, correctly sensing that the fate of the government in Paris rested on good news from the battle-front. His support was openly courted by the faltering Directors, and his absence in Egypt during 1798–9 only strengthened his hand. The coup of 18 Brumaire, which made him the virtual dictator of France, was carried off without a hitch. It was the sort of feat which could only have been pulled off by a total outsider. From then on, through the consulships and the Empire, through the sea of blood of the forty battles which he claimed to have fought in self-defence, Napoleon never looked back. Surrounded by similar upstart marshals—Berthier, Masséna, Macdonald, Murat, Soult, and Ney—and by similar brilliant ministers—Talleyrand, Gaudin, Fouché, and Clarke—he rode the French mare unerringly.

And when France had been bridled by its Corsican rider, he saddled her by the rules of Corsican kinship with the whole tribe of Bonapartes: with Joseph, King of Naples and Spain; with Lucien, Prince of Canino; with Louis, King of Holland; with Jerome, King of Westphalia; with Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline—duchess, princess, and queen. He only stumbled on his own dynastic path. His marriage with Josephine de Beauharnais, a Creole from Martinique and the widow of an executed nobleman, produced no heir and ended in divorce. His Polish mistress, Maria Walewska, produced a son who was not recognized. His second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, gave birth in 1811 to Napoleon II, King of Rome. By that time the clouds were gathering over ‘the Sun of Messidor’. The first ruler of all Europe was already considering the invasion of Russia. According to Tocqueville, Napoleon was ‘as great as a man can be without virtue’, [CORSICA]

The Second Coalition, 1799–1801, was made possible by a new Tsar, Paul I, who was eager to play a more active role. Suvorov’s Russian army recovered most of Austrian Italy before Bonaparte reappeared to restore the balance. But Paul I was assassinated; the Continental allies lost heart; and again Britain was left facing France alone. The allies’ Treaty of Lunéville (1801) was matched by Britain’s Peace of Amiens (1802).

After the collapse of the second Coalition, Bonaparte could take stock from a position of strength. He made further conquests in Italy, including Piedmont, Parma, and Piacenza. He sent an unsuccessful expedition to crush the revolt of Haiti; he invaded Germany, provoking the demise of the Holy Roman Empire: and he began collecting the Armée de l’Angleterre at Boulogne. He even began to scheme once again for the strategic encirclement of his principal adversaries. On 30 March 1805 he wrote to the Shah of Persia:

Bonaparte, Emperor of the French to Feth Ali, Shah of the Persians, Greeting!

I have reason to believe that the Jinn who preside over the destinies of states wish me to support the efforts which you are making to uphold the strength of your empire.

Persia is the noblest country in Asia, France the premier empire of the West…

But there also exist upon the earth, empires… [where] men are by birth restless, greedy, and envious. Tired of their deserts, the Russians trespass on the fairest parts of the Ottoman realm. The English, who are cast on an island that is not worth the smallest province of your empire… are establishing a Power in India, that grows more redoubtable every day. Those are the states to watch and fear…38

Napoleon’s high regard for the countries of Asia was not entirely insincere. During the Egyptian campaign, he had once said, ‘Europe is a molehill. All great empires and revolutions have been in the Orient’.39 But European affairs soon intervened.

The Third Coalition, 1805–14, Pitt’s final diplomatic masterpiece, was organized with the intention of a decisive showdown. Yet the showdown was slow in coming. At sea, the British victory off Cape Trafalgar (21 October 1805) ensured the total naval supremacy which would deny the French any chance of invading Britain. On land, in contrast, Napoleon utterly destroyed each of his enemies in turn. In 1805 Austerlitz ensured the total defeat of Austria and the retreat of Russia; in 1806 Jena and Auerstadt ensured the total crushing of Prussia; in 1807 Eylau and Friedland ensured the total withdrawal of all Russian troops. Within 18 months Vienna, Berlin, and Warsaw were all occupied. By the time that Napoleon made his peace with Russia and Prussia, aboard a raft on the River Niemen at Tilsit (July 1807), Britain stood alone for the third time, [SLAVKOV]

SLAVKOV

SLAVKOV, ‘place of fame’, is a small town 15 miles east of Brno in Moravia. On 2 December 1805, under its German name of Austerlitz, it provided the setting for the ‘Battle of the Three Emperors’, the most dramatic of Napoleon’s victories.

Napoleon, falling back before the advance of the combined forces of Austria and Russia, had drawn them on. Three allied columns marched against the French right in the dawn mists. ‘Whilst they march to turn my right,’ Napoleon had proclaimed, ‘they present me with their flank.’

Marshal Davout, whose men had just covered the 90 miles from Vienna in 48 hours, held off the main attack throughout the day against four times their number. At 10 a.m. the mist lifted, and the famous ‘soleil d’Austerlitz’ began to shine. The French seized the commanding height of the Pratzen plateau, from which they could rake all sectors of the field with cannon and cut the enemy forces in two. After the French Imperial Guard repulsed their Russian counterparts, the retreat began. By breaking the ice on the lakes in the valley, the French artillery cut the main line of escape. Amidst 20,000 dead from 150,000, and as many prisoners, Napoleon savoured his finest hour. ‘II vous suffira de dire’, he told the survivors, ‘j’étais à Austerlitz.’ (It will be enough for you to say: ‘I was at Austerlitz’.)

The battle was painted by Gros, Vernet, Callet, Gerard. It was exalted in poetry. But no description matches that of Leo Tolstoy in Book III of War and Peace:

When the sun broke through … and the fields and mist were aglow with dazzling light… he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a signal with it to his marshal, and ordered the action to begin.2

Nowadays Austerlitz, like Waterloo, is a railway station, serving France’s south-west. Military historians are less concerned to recount the plans of the generals than the emotions and experiences of the soldiers.3 None the less, it was the great battles which decided who was to be the master of all sorts of other things which constitute the past.

Britain’s activities, however, were more than enough to keep the wars alive. Through the Royal Navy’s blockade, Britain was waging commercial war against all the countries recruited to Napoleon’s Continental System (see below). What is more, by sending an army to northern Spain in 1808, thereby opposing Napoleon’s recent takeovers both of Spain and Portugal, she internationalized the civil wars of the Iberian Peninsula, creating an ‘Iron Duke’ from the young Arthur Wellesley, and an important diversion that Napoleon could never muster the time or resources to subdue.

One by one, and with painful delays, each of the members of the moribund Coalition began to revive. In 1808 parts of Italy joined Spain in rebelling against French rule. In 1809 Austria repudiated its agreement with Napoleon, only to be comprehensively crushed once more at Wagram (1809), within sight of Vienna. In 1810–12 Prussia started to stir, initially through secret, underground resistance. In the same period Russia grew tired of the French connection, fearful of Napoleon’s plans for Poland-Lithuania, and irked, like everyone else, by the strictures of the Continental System. Napoleon was approaching the peak of his power, [VIOLETS]

In the twenty years from 1792 to 1812, the map of Europe, and the system of states, was widely remodelled. The French Revolutionary armies introduced territorial and political changes of three sorts.

VIOLETS

IN one year, 1810, Napoleon ordered 162 bottles of his favourite neroli-based cologne water from the parfumier Chardin. In a famous letter, he once begged Josephine not to bathe for two weeks before they met, so that he could enjoy all her natural aromas. When she died, he planted violets on her grave, and wore a locket made from them for the rest of his life.1 He was an unabashed odomane.

Smell, ‘the mute sense’, ‘the olfactory dimension’, was present throughout history, though much ignored by historians.2 According to one theory, the male sex drive is spurred by the female odour of ‘herring-brine’, and by the urge to swim back into the primordial ocean.3 Natural perfumes, such as ambergris, castoreum, civet, and musk, formed one of the most expensive sectors of the luxury trade from ancient times. The Middle Ages were filled with perfumed rushes and with incense, by the 165 petals of the rosary, the Virgin’s flower. The French Revolution was pervaded by the whiff of the open sewers of Paris, the twentieth century by the stench of corpses in the trenches and the camps, the age of modernism by industrial pollution and by the arrival of the first artificial aldehyde, Chanel No. 5, in 1922.

First, and at various times, they vastly extended the territory of France itself, by directly annexing large parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. By 1810 the 83 departments of the Republic had been increased to the 130 departments of the Empire, with a population of 44 million. To the series of Aisne, Allier, Aude … were added such novelties as ‘Bouches de l’Elbe’ (Hamburg), ‘Simplón’, and ‘Tibre’. The Frenchness of the French Empire was diminishing with every annexation. (See Map p. 1291.)

Secondly, a whole panoply of new states was erected, each closely tied to France and each possessing its own model constitution and French-style administration. These states included the Batavian Republic (1795–1804), transformed into the Kingdom of Holland (1804–10), the Kingdom of Etruria (1801–5), the Confederation of the Rhine (1806–13), the Grand Duchy of Berg (1806–13), the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807–13), the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (1806–13), five Italian republics, and the so-called Kingdom of (northern) Italy (1805–14). [ILLYRIA]

Thirdly, after Napoleon’s later conquests, a number of old-established states were allowed to survive, but with severely modified frontiers and with tightly controlled internal arrangements. These included Austria, Prussia, Spain, Naples, and Portugal.

The only parts of Europe to escape the revolutionary remodelling of Napoleon’s enlightened despotism were the British Isles, Scandinavia, Russia, and the Ottoman domains. With those exceptions, the whole of Europe was subject to radical changes that swept away the traditional order, giving its people, however briefly, a taste for something entirely different, [BOUBOULINA]

The degree to which the local population either welcomed or initiated the changes is a matter of some complexity. In some places they obviously rejoiced. There were deep-rooted republican elements in Holland and in Switzerland, for example, who had sought French intervention in advance; and there were good reasons why certain cities such as Brussels, Milan, or Warsaw should have manifested great enthusiasm. Elsewhere, the reception of the French must be graded from mixed to hostile. Napoleon was strong on the rhetoric of liberation but weak on its practical application. The benefits of emancipation for the serfs, and of republican rule, had to be weighed against the burdens of increased taxation and of merciless conscription. In several countries, and in Spain in particular, the arrival of the French provoked vicious civil strife. Many people in Europe who supported the Revolution in theory found it to be immensely oppressive in practice.

The Napoleonic Netherlands led the way with France’s foreign experiments. The Batavian Republic (1794) gave way for a Kingdom of Holland (1806) under Louis Bonaparte, before the whole of the Netherlands were directly annexed to the French Empire. Revolutionary ideas about the rights of nations affected Walloons, Flemings, and Dutch alike. They were due to surface in subsequent decades.

Napoleonic Italy took form over several years in the course of complicated swings of fortune. Bonaparte’s initial arrangements of 1797 were overthrown by the Second Coalition, but were reinstated and extended in subsequent campaigns. Five local republics formed in 1797–9—the Cisalpine in Lombardy, the Ligurian in Genoa, the Parthenopaean in Naples, and the Republics of Lucca and Rome— were flagships of the revolutionary order. They were joined by other transient entities such as the Principality of Piombino and the Kingdom of Etruria, until merged after 1805 either into the French Empire or into the Kingdom of Naples or into the Kingdom of (northern) Italy created for Napoleon’s stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais. The abolition of the Papal States, and the maltreatment of the Popes, was specially shocking to contemporary opinion, particularly in Catholic countries. Pius VI (1775–99), who condemned the Rights of Man, was deprived of his temporal powers, and died in French custody at Valence. Pius VII (1800–23), who had once declared that Christianity was not incompatible with democracy, ended up for five years under French arrest for excommunicating all (unnamed) ‘robbers of Peter’s patrimony’. The Napoleonic experience greatly enhanced national sentiments in Italy, whilst preparing a sharp confrontation between frightened conservatives and a new generation of liberals.

ILLYRIA

LIKE many of the ephemeral creations of the Napoleonic Era, the lllyrian . Provinces of 1809–13 continued to exert their spell long after their formal disbandment. Attached to the French-run Kingdom of Italy, they included a long section of the Adriatic coast from Trieste to Dubrovnik as well as important parts of Carinthia, Carniola, Istria, Slovenia, Slavonia, and Kraina. Their French governor resided in the capital city of Ljubljana (Laibach). The brief interval of freedom from Habsburg rule was sufficient to fire both a long-lasting ‘lllyrist’ movement among the Slovenes and Croats, and a long-running Italian irredentist campaign for the return of Trieste and Fiume (Rijeka). (See Appendix III, p. 1231)

After 1815, the special character of the region was underlined when Habsburg rule was restored within a separate ‘Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia’. This experiment came to an end in its turn amidst the troubles of 1848–9, when the Ban of Croatia, General Jelacic, took his army into battle against the forces of the Hungarian National Rising. With some delay Croatia was rewarded with extensive autonomy within the Habsburgs’ Kingdom of Hungary.

‘Illyrism’ first gained momentum in the 1830s as a movement to protect all South Slavs in the Habsburg dominions from the mounting effects of foreign cultural domination.1 It was strengthened by an attempt to impose Magyar as the official language of Croatia-Slavonia. From the mid-19th century, however, the national revival of the Slovenes based on Ljubljana, steadily diverged from that of the Croats based on Zagreb (Agram). The Slovenes, who found themselves after 1867 in the Austrian sector of the Dual Monarchy, cultivated and systematized their own distinct Slovenian language, which had possessed a fixed literary form since the Reformation.2 The Croat leaders, in contrast, chose to join a group of Serbian cultural activists, and with them to create a common literary language known as ‘Serbo-Croat’. They based it on the so-called ‘shtokavsky’ dialect, which uses sto as opposed to ca or kaj as the word for ‘what’. At the same time, they fortified their separate national identity by emphasizing their attachment to Roman Catholicism (as opposed to Serbian Orthodoxy) and by writing Serbo-Croat in the Latin alphabet.3 By 1918, both Slovenes and Croats had emerged as discrete but allied nationalities within the South Slav Movement. They both played a prominent role in the formation of the Yugoslav state4 (see p. 979). [CRAVATE] [MAKEDON] [SARAJEVO]

After 1945, though the reconstructed Federation of Yugoslavia was completely subordinated to Tito’s communists, Slovenia and Croatia aspired to autonomous status within the Federation alongside Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia. Slovenia, the smallest and wealthiest component, possessed a per capita GNP similar to that of Austria. In 1992, it led the field in gaining its independence. Croatia was less fortunate. Despite the support of the European Union, its declaration of sovereignty precipitated first a war with the Serbian-led rump of the Yugoslav Federation and then the violent fragmentation of Bosnia (see p. 1124). Only time will tell whether the fledgeling republics of Slovenia and Croatia will prove any less ephemeral than the long-forgotten lllyrian Provinces to which they had once belonged.

Germany, like Italy, was built and unbuilt several times during the revolutionary wars. In the 1790s major changes were afoot owing to Prussian gains from the last two Partitions of Poland. Under Frederick-William II (r. 1786–97), Prussia had even risked an alliance with Poland-Lithuania. But the logic of Russian power soon brought him back into line. By 1795, Berlin had acquired both Danzig and Warsaw, and found itself ruling over a population that was 40 per cent Slav and Catholic, with a very large number of Jews. One-fifth of Prussia’s population were of immigrant origin. The brief reign in Warsaw of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), did not pass without trace. The author of the Phantasiestücke (1814) or ‘Fantastic Tales’, as chief administrator of New South Prussia, was personally responsible for inventing the frequently fantastic German surnames for Europe’s largest Jewish community. Had Prussia been allowed to develop without interruption, it is hard to imagine what course German history might have taken. As it was, old Prussia was overwhelmed by Napoleon, and the new Prussia, which reappeared in 1815 on a reconstructed territorial basis was a very different beast.

Napoleonic Germany emerged in consequence of determined French efforts to break up the Holy Roman Empire in the period after the Second Coalition. The process began in 1803, with the secularization of the ecclesiastical states, and the reallocation of 112 other imperial cities and principalities to the benefit of Baden, Prussia, Württemberg, and Bavaria. In 1804 350 imperial knights lost their independent status, whilst several of the more important princes upgraded their titles. Francis of Habsburg assumed the rank of Emperor of Austria, whilst his colleagues of Bavaria and Württemberg declared themselves kings. In 1806 sixteen princes of southern and western Germany formed a Confederation of the Rhine which was duty-bound to provide Napoleon with military assistance. Their leader, the Fürstenprimas, was Karl Theodor, Freiherr von Dalberg (1744–1817), Archbishop of Mainz and Grand Duke of Frankfurt. Since all these developments contravened the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Empire’s standing was damaged beyond repair. Napoleon found no difficulty in arranging its final liquidation in August 1806. In that same year, following Jena, Prussia collapsed, the King retiring to Königsberg. Saxony joined the Confederation of the Rhine. In 1807, after the Peace of Tilsit, a Kingdom of Westphalia was carved out of Prussia’s western possessions for Napoleon’s brother Jérôme; and Danzig was turned into a Free City. The rest of Prussia, including Berlin, remained under French occupation. Apart from the Nuremberg bookseller J. W. Palm, shot by the French for his pamphlet ‘On Germany’s Deepest Humiliation’, and the Prussian major of hussars, Ferdinand von Schill, who led his regiment in a premature revolt in 1809, there were few martyrs.

BOUBOULINA

IN 1801 a young widow from the island of Hydra near Athens married I Demetrios Bouboulis, a shipowner from the neighbouring island of Spetses. Her father had been arrested by the Ottomans after the Russian-backed rebellion of Count Orlov, and she herself was to be connected with the secret Philiki Etaireia or ‘Company of Friends’ based in the Greek suburb of Phanari in Istanbul. She came from a group of islands where Albanian was spoken, but where the Orthodox Church gave a sense of Greek identity. When Bouboulis was murdered by pirates, Laskarina Bouboulina (1771–1825) became a wealthy businesswoman in her own right, and a prominent patron of the Greek national movement.1

During the war of independence, Bouboulina plunged into the fray in person. She built a battleship, the Agamemnon, which took part in many actions. Dubbed ‘the Captain’, she fearlessly rode her white horse onto the battlefields, dispensing bullets, food, and encouragement. At the siege of Naphlion, she led the force which blockaded the castle and massacred the Ottoman garrison. But she has not escaped criticism. Unsympathetic historians have suggested that this idol of bourgeois nationalism ordered Turkish and Jewish women to be slaughtered for their jewellery, and that she melted down the cannons of Naphplion for profit.

Greece’s national struggle produced many stories of women’s patriotism. The village of Souli in Epirus is specially venerated. After their menfolk were taken prisoner by the Ottomans in 1801, the women and children of the village gathered on the edge of a cliff to perform the dance of Zallongos. Each of the women led the swirling circle in turn, before leaping over the cliff to her death, till none were left. Modern Greek schoolgirls re-enact the dance, leaping off the stage onto a pile of mattresses, and singing the Zallongos song:

Fish can’t live on land,
And flowers can’t blossom on sand;
The women of Souli can’t understand
Life without freedom.

National heroines like Bouboulina have many counterparts. Her Polish contemporary, Emilia Plater (1806–31), a noblewoman, died fighting the Russians disguised as a man. Such figures are now seen as a diversion from the main feminist concerns.

Bouboulina did not live to see Greek Independence. She was killed, not by Turks, but by an irate neighbour, who pushed a musket through his window during a row and shot her through the heart.

But the Napoleonic experience, by destroying so many older particularisms, prepared the ground for Germany’s unified national identity. Napoleon had commented cynically that Germany was always in the process of ‘becoming, not being’. But he did much to change matters. The University of Berlin, founded in 1810 during the French occupation, nourished the new thinking. Its first rector was the philosopher J. G. Fichte (1762–1814), author of the patriotic Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808). The ‘War of Liberation’ of 1813–14 proved specially exhilarating. The words of a song, ‘Was ist das deutsche Vaterland?’, written by the poet and historian Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860), were on everyone’s lips. Arndt, whose Geist der Zeit (1806) had first called for resistance, supposedly answered his own question: ‘Germany is there wherever the German language resounds and sings hymns to God in Heaven.’ In those same years the exiled Prussian Baron von Stein, who had visited St Petersburg and denounced Napoleon as ‘the enemy of mankind’, was inventing a precocious scheme for the federal union of the German peoples. ‘Germany must assert itself’, he wrote, ‘in its strategic position between France and Russia.’ Here was the kernel of the concepts both of Gross Deutschland and of Mitteleuropa. [CAUCASIA]

Napoleonic Spain descended into a quagmire of disorder. The original French expedition of 1807 merely aimed to punish Portugal for its British ties. But anger was aroused in Spain by the presence of French garrisons and by the imposition of Napoleon’s brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. From then, the tribulations of the French party multiplied. With the Portuguese entrenched behind the lines of Torres Vedras and the British sallying forth from their base at Corunna, with Madrid and many provincial centres in the hands of the opposition and much of the countryside in the grip of guerrilla warfare, the French found the costs of holding Spain steadily mounting. In 1808–9 flagging French fortunes were temporarily restored by Napoleon’s personal intervention. But he had to leave; and every victory of his deputies, Soult and Masséna, only served to increase the complications. In 1812 the anti-French liberals, besieged in Cadiz, succeeded in passing a liberal Constitution for the restoration of a limited monarchy. In 1813 the pro-French party succeeded in restoring the original monarch, Ferdinand VII. But it was all rather superfluous: by then Wellington was well on his way to the conquest of the whole Peninsula, [GUERRILLA]

CAUCASIA

THE notion that all the peoples of Europe belonged to one white race which originated in the Caucasus can be traced to a learned professor at Göttingen, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). Though patently false, it was destined to have a long career.

Europeans brought up on the Bible and the classics had long been conditioned to look to the Caucasus for stories of their origins. The account of the Flood in the Book of Genesis states that ‘the ark rested … upon the mountains of Ararat’ (Genesis 8: 4)—Ararat being a biblical name for Armenia. The legends of the Golden Fleece and of Prometheus were both Caucasian. But the ethnic and racial composition of the peoples of the Caucasus is complicated in the extreme (see Appendix III, p. 1298). There is no reason whatsoever to look to them as a source of racial purity. None of the more prominent sub-types from the Caucasus, such as the so-called Armenoid group, are well represented elsewhere in Europe.

Blumenbach, a pioneer of comparative anatomy, and especially of craniometry or ‘skull analysis’, is generally credited with the invention of the ‘five-race scheme’. It emerged from his study of an extensive skull collection that was published over a thirty-year period starting in 1798;1 and it has passed into the realm of conventional wisdom. According to Blumen-bach’s system, Caucasians represent the European and the highest racial type within the human species. Whilst the professor was studying ethnology, he was supplied with a skull from the Caucasus region, and considered it the finest standard of the human type.2 Given this background, it is extraordinary to find that some governments still use the Caucasian category in their formulation of social policy and statistics. In South Africa, the spurious concept of a white race informed the oppressive and discriminatory legislation of apartheid until 1991.

Apart from the white ‘Caucasian race’, Blumenbach identified a brown ‘Malayan race’, a yellow ‘Mongolian race’, a black ‘Negro race’, and a red ‘American race’. His fivefold classification gained wider acceptance than the simpler white, brown, and yellow scheme of Baron G. L. Cuvier (1769–1852), another comparative anatomist working at the College de France.

Somewhat later, the colour-coded classification of races was augmented by the notion of a complete racial hierarchy, within which white-skinned peoples of European origin occupied the top position. This development was first promoted in the work of Victor Courtet (1813–67), although the most influential exposition was made in the Essai sur l’iné-galité des races humaines (1855) by Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (1816–82). ‘History shows’, he wrote, ‘that all civilisation derives from the white race, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble race that created it.’ Interracial intercourse was equivalent to degeneracy. ‘Peoples degenerate only in consequence of the various admixtures of blood which they undergo.’

Gobineau, who wrote a history of Persia, was also responsible for propagating the mistaken coincidence between the ‘white race’, which he saw as the progeny of the ancient Aryans or ‘Iranians’, and the Indo-European linguistic family. In this way he turned the spurious Aryan label into a partner and a rival for the older but equally spurious Caucasian one.

‘White’, ‘Caucasian’, ‘Aryan’, and ‘Europoid’ all reflect the protracted search for an exclusive, and therefore non-existent, common denominator in the racial make-up of Europe’s population. They form part of a wider vocabulary of doubtful terms including ‘Black’, ‘Asian’, ‘Semitic’, and ‘Hispanic’, where physical, geographical, and cultural criteria are hopelessly confused.

The great variety of physical types which exist within Europe’s population has inspired many attempts to fix the boundaries of its constituent or regional subgroups. The flaxen-haired ‘Nordic’ (adopted by Nazi ideology), the ‘Ibero-Celtic’, the ‘Atlanto-Baltic’ (which lumps the English with the Dutch and the north Germans), the ‘Central European’ (which includes both the majority of Germans and the majority of Russians), and the swarthy ‘Indo-Mediterranean’ can all be encountered in current reference works. These are only slightly less fanciful than the once fashionable practice of putting each modern nationality into its own racial group (see p. 817). Even so, phrases such as ‘the Island Race’, ‘German genes’, or ‘Polish Blood’ have not yet passed from popular parlance, not to mention the ‘Daneskin’ and the ‘red-haired Irish’, or the ‘black dogs’ and ‘white ladies’ with which European folklore abounds.

Modern genetic science has progressed far beyond the methods and conclusions of the nineteenth-century pioneers. In this, the crucial step came with the demonstration of the workings of DNA in 1953. Generally speaking, the advances have emphasized the overwhelming mass of genetic material which all members of the human race hold in common and the immense number of characteristics that are encoded in the genes.5 In a series of declarations between 1956 and 1964, UNESCO condemned the principal racial myths that had prevailed since the days of Blumenbach and Gobineau.6 Racial and kinship differences have not been discounted. But the field has been cleared for a greater emphasis on cultural, religious, and socio-economic factors, for sophisticated genetic analysis based on proven scientific principles, and for the final dismissal of the old obsession with skins and skulls.

Napoleonic Poland was a land of fervent enthusiasms and deep disillusionment. Napoleon’s arrival in December 1806, and the creation of the self-governing Grand Duchy of Warsaw, aroused great excitement; but the changes fell very short of the expected restoration of the late Republic. In 1809 the second defeat of the Austrians delivered Cracow to the Duchy; but no help was forthcoming for the recovery either of Danzig or of Lithuania and the provinces absorbed by Russia. Polish volunteers served in every stage of the Revolutionary wars, from the legions of Italy in 1796. But vicious financial exactions symbolized by the so-called Bayonne Sums, and the constant toll of conscripts, dead, and mutiles swelled popular resentments. Napoleon never revealed his ultimate intentions for Poland, even in 1812, when he briefly controlled almost the whole of historic Polish territory. His legend fared better in the Romantic times after his death than during his lifetime. When his most faithful lieutenant, Marshal Poniatowski, spurred his charger into the waters of the Eister at the end of the ‘Battle of the Nations’, he was expressing the despair of an exceedingly deceived and weary people.

GUERRILLA

IN June 1808, laden with spoils after sacking Cordoba, the French General Dupont retreated towards Andujar and the passes of the Sierra Morena. He then found himself surrounded not only by the regular Army of Andalusia but also by armed bands of Andalusian peasants harrying his retreat from the rear. His surrender with 22,000 men gave notice that holding Spain would prove much more difficult than invading it.

Throughout the Peninsular War, the French Army faced two sorts of conflict—one, the main military campaigns against Spanish, Portuguese, and British formations, and the other, the guerrilla or ‘little war’ against roaming bands of peasants. The second form of warfare proved specially vicious. The guerrilla bands avoided open battle, specializing instead in ambushes, night raids, and surprise attacks on isolated outposts. They provoked the French into murderous, collective reprisals on civilians. And they bequeathed their name to all who have emulated their methods. They showed how small bands of determined fighters could contest the overwhelming force of a professional army.

The guerrillas of Napoleonic Spain have had many heirs, not least in the popular heroes of colonial wars and the backwood revolutionaries of Latin America. But they have had their disciples in Europe as well—in the Russian anarchists, in the partisans and maquisards of the Anti-Nazi Resistance Movement, and, with the IRA or ETA, in the ‘urban guerrillas’ of modern political terrorism.1

The only major dispute is one of precedence. In French historiography, the pride of place is not given to the Spanish guerrillas but to ‘Jean Chouan’ and his followers, that is, to Frenchmen who defied the might of the Republic more than a decade before French armies entered Spain.2

Great Britain, though free from French occupation, was shaken to its roots by the revolutionary wars. Indeed, whilst the external foe was repelled, there were moments when internal revolution loomed. In 1797–8 the coincidence of naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore with the revolt of Wolfe Tone’s United Irishmen was particularly menacing. Certainly the prosecution of almost constant war with France inhibited political reform. The Union of Great Britain with Ireland, for example, which came about in 1801 in consequence of Tone’s defeat was marred by the postponement of promised Catholic emancipation for the best part of thirty years. At the same time the sense of British solidarity was greatly enhanced by the run of naval victories, and by the threats of French invasion, which on one occasion in 1798, in the remote extremity of Ireland, actually materialized. The prestige of Parliament was strengthened by the magnificent tussle between Pitt the Younger and his eloquent rival, Charles lames Fox (1749–1806). All the while, Britain’s commercial, colonial, and economic strength continued to accrue. The tally of French, Spanish, and Dutch colonial prizes grew longer and longer. At home, the General Enclosure Act (1801) greatly accelerated the tempo of social change. The Caledonian Canal (1803–22) was constructed despite the war. And in 1811 the first of the Luddite attacks on machinery took place, in Nottingham. In that same year the old King was finally declared permanently insane, and was succeeded by his son, the Prince Regent. The Regency, 1811–20, proved to be one of the most splendid intervals in British architecture, patronage, and high society.

Scandinavia, too, escaped the Revolution, but not the associated turbulence. Sweden was twice involved with wars against Russia. In 1788–90, after the naval victory at Svenskund, she came through unscathed. In 1808–9 she lost Finland and, in the ensuing debacle, her King, Gustav IV Adolphus (r. 1792–1809). The constitution of 1809 introduced a limited monarchy, and one of Napoleon’s ex-marshals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1763–1844), was invited to accept the throne as Charles XIV. He entered the anti-French coalition, participated in the war of liberation in Germany, and hived off Norway from Denmark, [NORGE]

Denmark, on the other hand, had desperately tried to maintain a policy of neutrality, which twice earned her ruthless retaliation from Britain. Under the great reformer C. D. F. Reventlow (1748–1827), the Danish Enlightenment achieved many things, including the emancipation of the serfs, Jewish civil rights, free trade, and a free press. But it did not save the country from her neighbours. In April 1801 the Danish fleet was sunk at Copenhagen on the occasion when Nelson reputedly put the telescope to his blind eye and refused the signal to desist. In September 1807 Copenhagen was invested by the British and forced to capitulate. After that the Danes went over wholeheartedly to the French connection, for which they were duly punished by Bernadotte and by the Congress of Vienna.

NORGE

AT the end of the Napoleonic Wars, when Denmark had clearly backed the losing side, Norway’s leaders made their break from 400 years of Danish rule. On 17 May 1814 an assembly was convened at Eisvold, near Christiania, to declare Norway a sovereign, constitutional monarchy. The constitution was largely modelled on that of Spain (1812). The Danish governor of the country, Prince Christian Frederick, was unanimously acclaimed Norway’s first king since 1389.

The assembly at Eisvold, however, had not reckoned either with Sweden or with the King of Denmark. Ever since their loss of Finland in 1809, the Swedes had sought to acquire Norway in compensation; and the Danish King had unilaterally conceded their claim. Moreover, the Swedish army, under the heir to the throne, Bernadotte, was already on the march to enforce the agreement. After a fortnight’s war, the Norwegians were obliged to accept a bargain whereby they could retain their constitution, and their separate Storthing or parliament, but not their king, within a joint Suedo-Norwegian realm. This settlement was enshrined in an Act of Union and confirmed at the Congress of Vienna.

Henceforth, Norway’s national movement was directed in the cultural sphere against Danish domination but in the political sphere against the union with Sweden. No amount of pressure could persuade the Norwegians to forgo their constitution; and ninety years of wrangles over foreign policy, over national flags, and, above all, over the powers of the Swedish king, soured the union. At one point the entire Norwegian cabinet was arraigned before the country’s constitutional court, and the premier fined, for exceeding their rights. Finally, the Swedish government resigned itself to Norway’s second declaration of independence. The Danish Prince Charles was unanimously elected king, and entered his capital on 25 November 1905. The King took the name of Haakon VI, and the capital returned to its ancient name of Oslo. With some delay, the will of the assembly of Eisvold had finally prevailed.1

The Balkans lay beyond the sphere of direct French influence. The only region to be held and administered by the French were the so-called Illyrian Provinces— mainly modern Slovenia and Croatia, [ILLYRIA] But the breath of revolutionary and national ideas blew into all corners. Greece was strongly affected. In 1799 the ‘Septinsular Republic’ was set up with Russian assistance [HEPTANESOS]; and when the larger part of the Parthenon frieze was carried off from Athens, there was an immediate outburst of national sentiment, [LOOT] In Serbia, two risings against Ottoman rule in 1804–13 and 1815–17 also received Russian support. In the Romanian principalities, the Russian occupation of 1806–12, and the consequent cession of Bessarabia, caused resentments which only served to fuel national feelings, [BOUBOULINA]

The Russian Empire under Alexander I (r. 1801–25), grandson of Catherine the Great, experienced one of the most liberal eras of its history/Alexander’s father Paul I (r. 1796–1801) had bordered on insanity: his internal policy was moved by vicious whims such as the reintroduction of corporal punishment for nobles and civil servants, and his external policy by personal flights of fancy. He left the Second Coalition in 1799 because of his desire to possess the Order of Malta; and in 1801 broke with Great Britain for no sound reason. He was murdered by drunken officers. After that, Alexander settled down to the long confrontation with Napoleon. Guided by his boyhood companion and chief minister, Prince Adam Czartoryski (1770–1861), a Polish nobleman once taken hostage by Catherine, he took a serious and intelligent interest in the political and social problems of the day. He had broad visions for the reconstruction of Europe, and showed genuine concern for the advantages of a constitutional monarchy.40 He incorporated Finland as an autonomous Grand Duchy, liberated the landless serfs of the Baltic provinces; and for a couple of decades turned the western region annexed from Poland-Lithuania into the scene of a liberal social and cultural experiment centred on the University and educational district of Wilno.41 He was responsible for the foundation of a state school system, and of the (advisory) Council of State which remained a central organ of Tsarist government thereafter. Russia was hardly amenable to the application of radical ideas; but a generation of Russian soldiers who were brought into direct contact with Poland, Italy, and eventually Paris itself could not fail to be a source of ferment.

The Napoleonic Wars did not hinder Russia’s territorial expansion eastwards. From 1801 the sixty-year conquest of the Caucasus began with the annexation of Georgia. In 1812, at the very time that Napoleon was approaching Moscow, a Russian expedition planted the tiny colony of Fort Ross on the coast of northern California—more than thirty years before American pioneers had reached the area.42 [GAGAUZ]

With time, the strains of France’s Continental System began to tell, as did the effects of the British blockade. They underlay the Tsar’s alliance in March 1812 with Sweden, and the deployment by Napoleon of a Grande Armee of some 600,000 on the Tsar’s western frontier. They equally provided the main bone of contention for the inglorious war of 1812–14 between Britain and the United States. American shipping was long trapped between the contradictory regulations of the British and the French; and in 1807 the boarding of the USS Chesapeake by a party from HMSLeopard gave grave offence. President Jefferson introduced his own regulations regarding ‘peaceful coercion’ and ‘non-intercourse’, but then gave way to the demands of the ‘war hawks’ of the Twelfth Congress. American forces failed to win any significant territory in Canada; and the British failed to reassert control over their former colonies. From a later perspective, it is ironic to reflect that the Continental System led both to the burning of the Executive Mansion in Washington, from 1814 known as the White House, and to the burning of Moscow.

HEPTANESOS

IN March 1799 the French garrison on Corfu capitulated to a joint Russo-Turkish expeditionary force under Admiral Ushtakov. Corfu was the largest of the Heptanesos, the seven Ionian Islands, which the Treaty of Campo Formio had handed to France from the late Venetian Republic. (Its capture was the outcome of a rare example of Russo-Turkish co-operation inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.) Once established, the Russians shed their Ottoman allies and created a model ‘septinsular republic’ with its own parliament and a constitution (1803) designed by Tsar Alexander’s chief minister, Prince A. J. Czartoryski.1 The aim of their largesse was to outbid the ‘revolutionary’ French and to create the nucleus of a future Greek state. The arrangements lasted for only four years. The Ionian Islands reverted to French possession by the Treaty of Tilsit (see p. 733), only to be picked off one by one by the British Fleet from 1809 onwards.

The British regime proved rather less liberal than its Russian-sponsored predecessor. An imposed constitution gave overriding powers to the governor. A handful of notables ran both the consultatory assembly and the oppressive colonia system of landholding. During the Greek War of Independence, the main British aim was to frustrate the islanders’ desire to join Greece. In 1848 and 1849, Cephalonia was the scene of agrarian revolts, which the Governor, Sir Henry Ward, suppressed with mass arrests, floggings, and executions. At the very time that Palmerston was condemning the Austrians as ‘the greatest brutes that ever called themselves the undeserved name of civilized men’, and when General Heynau was unceremoniously dumped into a London horse-trough, Governor Ward was described in the House of Commons as ‘the bloody Heynau of the Ionian Islands’. But to no avail. It was a fitting prelude to Palmerston’s rough handling of the Don Pacifico Affair.2 Union with Greece was ruled out as late as 1859, on the advice of the British commissioner, W. E. Gladstone. But it was conceded in 1864 as a face-saving gesture in the general settlement with Greece. During the crisis Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh had been offered and had rejected the Greek throne. It was a nice irony that the British monarchy would eventually also concede the defunct title of Duke of Edinburgh to an exiled Greek prince born on Corfu.[GOTHA]

LOOT

IN 1799, the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, Lord Elgin, visited Athens and acquired the finest sections of the Parthenon Frieze. The Parthenon had been used as an arsenal: much of it had been demolished by an explosion: and no one was trying to repair it. Elgin could argue that his deal with the Ottoman authorities was both legal and public-spirited. But the Athenians objected. One of the Greek leaders opposed to Ottoman rule had warned against selling Greece’s treasures to the ‘Europeans’. ‘After all,’ he wrote later, ‘that is what we fought for.’

The ‘Elgin Marbles’ constitute one of the prize exhibits of the British Museum; and some people consider them part of the British Heritage.2 (If large chunks of Stonehenge had been legally transported to Athens, one might equally consider them part of the ‘Heritage of Greece’.)

Many European galleries and museums have been built on the proceeds of national or private loot. In the 17th century, the Swedes extracted vast quantities of art and valuables from Germany, Bohemia, and Poland. Napoleon was the Louvre’s most ardent patron (see p. 722). Much of his archaeological loot from Egypt was looted in turn by the British. Much of the core collections of Russia’s state libraries and museums was carried off from Poland. In the year that Lord Elgin was in Athens, General Suvorov’s army was accompanied to Italy by trained teams of cultural procurers. Heavyweight political power has usually been accompanied by light fingers.

In the twentieth century, the Nazis were generally considered the master art thieves. Goering thought himself a connoisseur; and Hitler, the ex-art student, was planning the world’s largest art centre in his home town of Linz. Cracow, Paris, Florence, Ghent, and Amsterdam, and many lesser centres, were comprehensively robbed. Trainloads of loot reached the Reich from the East. At the end of the war, thousands of Europe’s greatest art treasures were found in a disused salt-mine at Alt Aussee in Austria.3

Nazi plunder, however, represents less than half the story. The Nazis had nothing to teach the Russians about looting. Fifty years after the war, hoards of old masters and other Nazi booty, which the Red Army had plundered from the German plunderers, started to come to light in Russia. The so-called golden ‘Mask of Agamemnon’ from Mycenae, for example, and the 16,000 items of ‘Priam’s Treasure’ from Troy, once brought to Berlin by Schliemann, were all located in 1991 in Moscow.4 Unknown except to the KGB and a handful of conservationists, these ‘trophies’ and ‘special finds’ had been secretly held for half a century in the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum and the monastery at Zagorsk. For the most part they derived from private collections such as those of Herzog and Hatvany in Budapest, of Franz Koenigs in Amsterdam, or of the Krebs Foundation in Mannheim. The talk was of a million works of art. The problem, as with the British Museum, was to persuade the Russian finders that finding is different from keeping.

Not that the other Allies were beyond suspicion. Berlin’s collection of Mozartiana, which had been taken to Poland during the war for safety, did not return from the University Library in Cracow. In 1990, priceless items from the ‘Ouedlingburg Treasure’, including a ninth-century illuminated German Bible in jewel-encrusted binding, were found in a Texas garage once owned by an ex-US Army lieutenant.5

Needless to say, the legal concept of ‘cultural property’, as enshrined in the Hague Convention of 1954, is a relatively recent innovation.6

The Russian campaign of 1812 was, as he later admitted, Napoleon’s greatest mistake. He called it his ‘Polish War’, since most of the action took place on traditional Polish territory and since a successful outcome would inevitably have raised the question of restoring Poland-Lithuania. The frontier which the Grande Armée crossed on 22 June 1812 had only recently become the frontier of the Russian Empire. In the eyes of the local inhabitants, it was the historic border linking Poland with Lithuania, [MIR] Napoleon was faced with a clear choice between a political campaign, in which he could have used the army to liberate the serfs and to mobilize the anti-Russian sentiments of the population, or a purely military campaign, in which the outcome was left exclusively to the fortunes of war. He noticed that the Poles of Lithuania were rather different from the Poles of Warsaw. So, like Charles XII before him, and Hitler later, he chose to ignore local conditions and paid the price. Keeping all thoughts of the political future to himself, he pressed on through Lithuania to the heart of Muscovy. At Borodino, at the gates of Moscow, he suffered the most costly of all his victories. Moscow was occupied, but burned together with much of its stores. The Tsar simply refused to negotiate, and ordered his army to avoid any major engagement. In November, with starvation pending, the retreat was sounded. The columns of the Grande Armee, stretched out over 500 miles, fell victim to the Russian winter, to marauding Cossacks, and to the unseasonal floods of the Berezina. Napoleon fled by sledge to Warsaw, and on to Paris. As for his men, of the 600,000 who had crossed the Niemen in June barely one in twenty survived to tell the terrible tale. As the Emperor once remarked, ‘All empires die of indigestion’, [MALET] [SPA-SIT’EL]

GAGAUZ

SHORTLY after the Russian conquest of Bessarabia in 1812, the Tsar’s new province attracted a wave of immigration. Among the migrants came a group of Balkan Christians known as Gagauz. They came from an area of what is now northern Bulgaria, and they settled in the district of Komrat, in what is now Moldavia. Their language belongs to the Ghoz branch of Turkic, and has counterparts in Central Asia. Their religious allegiance was to Slavic Rite Bulgarian Orthodoxy. It is an open question whether they left their ancestral homeland more from hope than from fear. A number of Gagauz communities, which were Moslem, stayed behind under Ottoman rule in Bulgaria.

There are two views about the earlier history of the Gagauz. One maintains that they were medieval Turks who had been partially bulgarized. The other holds that they were turkicized Bulgars, who kept their religion when they lost their language. Neither really fits the facts.1

The Gagauz were just one of several such minorities in eastern Europe who straddled the Christian-Muslim divide.2 The Muslim Tartars of the Volga contained a baptised minority, the Kryeshens, who had adopted the religion of their Russian conquerors. The Chechens of the North Caucasus, though mainly Moslem, also included some Christians. The Abkhazians were in a similar position [ABKHAZIA], Albanian Muslims, though a majority both in Albania and in Serbia’s Kossovo province (see Appendix III, p. 1310), form an important minority in Macedonia.[MAKEDON] [SHQIPERIA]

On either side of the Rhodope Mountains, on the borders of Bulgaria and Greece, there lives a substantial community of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims known as Pomaks. They have outlying relations in parts of Macedonia and Albania. Their existence in Greece is not officially admitted. In 1876, it may have been the local Pomak militia rather than the professional Ottoman army which perpetrated what Mr Gladstone denounced as ‘the Bulgarian Horrors’. If so, they were amply repaid amidst the horrors of the subsequent Balkan Wars. But they never left.3

In Bosnia, religion is the only criterion to divide the Bosnian Muslims from Orthodox ‘Serbs’ and Catholic ‘Croats’. All speak the same ‘Serbo-Croat’ language, and all are Slavs. The Bosnian Muslims (44 per cent of the population in 1991) are often viewed by nationalistic neighbours as renegades who abandoned Catholicism or Orthodoxy in favour of the religion of the ruling Ottomans. In fact, it is likely that prior to adopting Islam many such Bosnian families had been Patarenes. [BOGUMIL]

In the late 20th century these little-known peoples repeatedly hit the European headlines. In the mid-1980s, Bulgaria’s fading communist regime made a last desperate attempt to maintain control by launching an ultra-nationalist campaign called ‘the Process for Rebirth’. Mosques were destroyed; and Bulgaria’s Muslim minorities—Gagauz, Pomaks, and Turks—were forced to choose between changing their names or emigrating. Many chose to emigrate. In 1991, when Moldavia declared independence, the Gagauz of Komrat, by then some 200,000 strong, were reluctant to participate. The Chechens defiantly raised the standard of independence from Russia by proclaiming their own national republic in Grozny, whilst the Volga Tatars in Kazan prepared for ‘Tatarstan’.

In 1992, amidst the rapid disintegration of Yugoslavia, the Government of Bosnia declared itself independent in the hope of maintaining the integrity of a multinational republic. It received international recognition, but no significant international aid or protection. The presence of Western charities and of token UN peace-keeping forces did nothing to restrain the orgy of land-grabbing, communal massacres, and ‘ethnic cleansing’ which ensued. A self-styled Serbian Republic of Bosnia based at Pale mirrored the self-styled Serbian Republic of Krajina based at Knin, which had been set up in the lands of the old Habsburg military frontier in Croatia. Within a year, Serbs representing 31 per cent of the population had seized 77 per cent of the territory. Sarajevo, like several other enclaves, was besieged. Croat attacks drove Muslims from mixed western districts like Mostar, whilst Serbs fled the Muslim-dominated districts in the centre. Perhaps a quarter of a million people perished. World leaders whistled whilst Bosnia burned. In the absence of decisive statesmanship, the dissolution of Communism was having the same sort of effect as the Ottoman retreat nearly two hundred years before.4 [SARAJEVO]

The terminal campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were decided as much by logistics as by performance in battle. Although Napoleon’s forces were comprehensively overwhelmed at the three-day ‘Battle of the Nations’ near Leipzig in October 1813, he continued to win the great majority of subsequent engagements. But he was facing the collective will of peoples whose sense of nationality he had helped to arouse, as well as the determination of the dynasts to restore their supremacy. The advance of the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians from the east, and of Wellington from the south, could not be stemmed. The toll of young French lives was inexorable. In those last two years Napoleon lost over a million men, even though he had failed to trap his foes into another concerted combat. The moment came when the Emperor was told that the soldiers would fíght no more. In April 1814, with the British, Russians, and Prussians encamped in Paris, Napoleon abdicated. The Revolutionary wars, and the Revolution, were over. Or so it appeared.

MIR

IN July 1812, as General Platov withdrew into Byelorussia before the I Grande Armee, his Cossacks placed barrels of gunpowder under the castle walls of Mir and blew them to pieces. Jerome Napoleon, King of Westphalia, used the place as his HO for a few days on his way to Moscow. But on 10–11 November, when the Tsar’s army returned, a desperate fight with the retreating French compounded the damage.1

Mir had long been one of the great fortresses of the Polish-Lithuanian borders, one of the most easterly feudal castles in Europe. Once a stronghold of the grand dukes of Lithuania, it passed into private hands in 1434. The massive fortifications were completed c.1500 under Jerzy I lllinicz, Marshal of Lithuania, and his son Jerzy II, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Five lofty bastions in red brick were joined by a battlemented wall. They were protected by a horseshoe barbican and surrounded by ditch and moat. From 1569, the central keep was turned by Prince M. K. Radziwitt into a grand Renaissance palace in finished stone. Until 1812, it served with neighbouring Nieéwiez as one of the Radziwills’ two principal seats.

In its long life Mir saw many military actions. It was plundered by the Teutonic Knights in 1395, twice raided by Tartars in the fifteenth century, captured by the Swedes in 1655, burned by Charles XII in 1706, and stormed by the Russians in 1794.

The great days of Mir came with Prince Karol Radziwiii, ‘Panie Kochanku’ (1734–90), who restored the palace after the depredations of the Swedish wars. It was the ‘key’ property in a huge complex of estates worked by thousands of Byelorussian serfs. The Catholic church and the Greek Catholic (Uniate) church adjoined the Jewish synagogue and Tartar mosque. The annual horse-fair was run by a large community of gypsies whose ‘king’ was traditionally crowned by the Prince. In 1761 the palace hosted a stupendous orgy during a session of the Grand Duchy’s Tribunal. In 1785 it saw a grand reception for the last King of Poland. Russian rule began at the Second Partition in 1793. The gypsies promptly migrated en masse to Moldavia. The Radziwills left for their properties in Prussia. After 1812, only the ruins remained.

Mir lived on, however, immortalized by the epic poem, Pan Tadeusz, of Adam Mickiewicz. The poet had the palace of Mir in mind when he described Lithuania’s ‘Last Supper’. Filled with hope and goodwill at the prospect of liberation by Napoleon, the local nobles gathered for a dazzling banquet. Lords and ladies danced the polonez. They were entertained on the cymbals by Jankiel the Jew, ‘who loved his country like a Pole’. At the end they raised their glasses to the old Polish toast, Kochajmy Sie! ‘Let us love one another!’

MALET

AT 3 a.m. on 23 October 1812, a man wearing the full dress uniform of an . imperial general arrived at the Popincourt barracks in Paris and demanded an urgent interview with the Commandant of the National Guard. Introducing himself as General Lamotte, the new Military Governor, he announced that Napoleon had been killed in Moscow, that an emergency session of the Senate had declared a Provisional Republic, and that the National Guard must assemble forthwith in the Place Vendóme. Handing the Commandant a certificate of promotion, he ordered him to take charge of other units and then to secure the release of two state prisoners, Generals Guidal and Ladurie. His instructions were supported by an impressive file of decrees.

For several hours the plan proceeded smoothly. ‘General Lamotte’ did the rounds of the Paris garrison without opposition. So did General Ladurie. General Guidal settled for a good meal in a restaurant. But no fewer than thirteen senior officers took the orders of the non-existent Provisional Republic. The officer commanding the Luxembourg Palace, where the emergency session of the Senate had supposedly taken place, saw nothing amiss.

Things only went wrong when a large part of the National Guard was already drawn up in the Place Vendóme. At a private interview with General Hulin, whom Lamotte was replacing, ‘Lamotte’ was challenged to produce his own orders. Instead, he shot Hulin through the head. Shortly after, meeting another group of officers, he was recognized by a former comrade, who shouted, ‘That’s not Lamotte, it’s Malet’. Overpowered, the chief conspirator was disarmed and unmasked.

Claude-François Malet (1754–1812), a native of the Jura, was a brigadier-general with strong Jacobin convictions. Long removed from active service, he had been held in detention for ill-concealed hostility to Napoleon. He had laid his plans with the help of a fellow detainee, the Abbé Lafon, an ultramontane royalist, who forged the documents. His wife hired the uniforms from a theatrical outfitter. The real Lamotte was a republican general living in exile in the USA.

Malet and Lafon had climbed the wall of their gaol at midnight. Malet went home to dress up, before heading for Popincourt. Lafon disappeared until after the Restoration. At the court martial Malet took sole responsibility, but could not save those who had fallen for his ruse. His last request was to give the order to his own firing-squad.1

The Malet incident revealed the truth about Napoleon’s Empire. Malet had calculated correctly that the Empire’s fate hung on one man’s life. The minute that Napoleon was assumed dead, no one thought of the King of Rome or the Napoleonic succession. As a result, France was very nearly returned to the Republic with only one shot fired. ‘Minor incidents’ can have the potential to make major changes to the course of history.

One might have thought that the result of the Revolutionary wars was plain enough. Yet in the eyes of the historian who studied the subject most exhaustively, the Allies did” not achieve outright victory. ‘The European coalition did triumph in the end over the French armies,’ he wrote; ‘yet one cannot say that France was defeated by the struggle.’ He was thinking no doubt of the maintenance of France’s territorial integrity, of the continuing force of Revolutionary ideas, and of the surprises still to come.

Everyone accepted that the fate of a whole continent had been at stake. Napoleon loved to talk of’Europe’. When he mentioned it at Tilsit, the Tsar had picked it up. ‘Europe,’ asked Alexander I, ‘what’s that?’ Then he gave his own answer: ‘Europe is us’ (meaning, presumably, the ruling princes). In the spring of 1814, when he was riding towards Paris, he said, ‘I have come to reconcile France with Europe.’ That reconciliation took rather longer than expected.

SPASIT’EL

IN 1812, to celebrate Russia’s salvation from Napoleon, Alexander I I decreed that Moscow be adorned by a church dedicated to Christ the Saviour. The project was brought to fruition by a committee convened by Nicholas I. Works began on the riverside, close to the Kremlin, in 1837. The design, by Konstanty Ton, an architect of railway stations, envisaged a colossal cruciform basilica surmounted by five domes, a giant bronze cupola, and a soaring pinnacle cross. The interior was gilded with 422 kilograms of pure gold. The belfry housed the largest bells in Russia. The exterior was clad with sheets of Podolian marble and Finnish granite. After forty-five years’ labour, the Khram Khristusa Spasit’yel’ya or ‘Saviour’s Temple’ was consecrated in the presence of Tsar Alexander III on 26 May 1883.

On 18 July 1931 Pravda announced that a committee headed by V. Molotov had decided to build a ‘Palace of the Soviets’ beside the Moscow River. Five months later, the Saviour’s Temple was dynamited. In 1933 Stalin commissioned a design by Yofon and Shchusev which envisaged an edifice 415 metres high, and six times more capacious than the Empire State Building. It was to be surmounted by a figure of Lenin three times taller than the Statue of Liberty, with an index finger 6 metres long.

The Palace was never built. The marble slabs from the demolished temple were used to decorate Moscow subway stations. After thirty years’ delay, Nikita Khrushchev decreed that the hole by the river be turned into an open-air, all-weather swimming pool.1 Inevitably, after the fall of Communism, plans reappeared to redevelop the site once again, and to restore the Saviour’s temple to its former glory.

Wednesday, 20 April 1814, Fontainebleau. Napoleon Bonaparte, King of Elba, was bidding farewell to the Imperial Guard before leaving France for his new kingdom. In the lobby of the chateau he greeted the members of his remaining entourage, and the gaggle of Allied commissioners. From there he passed to the doorway at the head of the Horseshoe Staircase, whose marble balcony overlooked the spacious Courtyard of the White Horse. Some 5,000 troops of the Old Guard were drawn up. The senior officers stood at the front in a semicircle with the colour party and the orchestra. The carriages for his journey were waiting by the gate. As he appeared on the parapet, cavalry trumpeters sounded the Fanfare de l’Empéreur:

The standard which was paraded that day has survived in the Musée de l’Armée. It is a square tricolour with vertical stripes of blue, white, and red, embroidered in gold. The front border was adorned with the imperial emblems— two crowns in the top corners, two circles with the monogram ‘N’ on the sides, two eagles in the bottom corners, a sheaf surrounded by bees in the upper centre. The inscription reads: GARDE IMPèRIALE—L’EMPèREUR NAPOLèON AU 1er RèGIMENT DES GRENADIERS ß PIED. The reverse is covered with the regiment’s battle honours: Marengo, Ulm, Austerlitz, lena, Eylau, Friedland, Eckmuhl, Essling, Wagram, Smolensk, Moskowa, Vienne, Berlin, Madrid, Moscou. The honours of 1813–14—at Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Leipzig, Hanau, Champaubert, Montmirail, Vauchamps—were still to be added.

Napoleon’s personal entourage had been reduced to under twenty men. It included General Drouot, ‘the Sage of the Grand Army’, who would one day pronounce the Emperor’s funeral oration, General Bertrand, who would bring back the Emperor’s ashes to France, and the Duke of Bassano, his foreign minister. The civilian staff included the aides-de-camp Belliard, Bussy, and Montesquion; and the Barons Fait and Lorgne d’Ideville and the Chevalier Jouanne, members of the secretariat. Among the military staff was Count Kossakowski, commander of the maison militaire, Count d’Ornano, commander of dragoons, two colonels of the ordnance, Gourgaud and La Place, Col. Atthalin of the topographic service, and Col. Vauzovits (Wasowicz), the Polish interpreter. The commander of the Old Guard, Marshal Lefebvre-Desnoëttes, Duke of Danzig, waited on horseback at the head of the cavalrymen who would accompany his carriage to Briare. Apart from him, none of the Marshals of the Empire was present, nor a single representative of the imperial family.

Map 21. Revolutionary Paris

General Petit, heading the colour party, ordered the presentation of arms. The drums beat ‘Aux Champs’. Napoleon descended the staircase and plunged into the midst of the assembled troops. The Emperor’s exact words were not recorded, but General Petit was well placed to remember:

Officiers, sous-officiers, soldiers of my Old Guard! I am bidding you farewell. For twenty years, I have been pleased with you. I have found you always on the path of glory.

The Allied Powers have armed the whole of Europe against me. Part of the Army has betrayed its duties and France itself… With you and with other brave men, who have remained faithful, I could have carried on the war for another three years. But that would have made France miserable, and would be contrary to my declared aims. So, be faithful to the new sovereign which France has chosen. Do not abandon this dear Patrie, so long unhappy.

Do not regret my fate. I shall always be content if I know that you are content also. I could have died… But, no. I chose the honourable way. I shall write of everything that we have done.45

At this point General Petit raised his sword and shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur’, to a thunderous echo.

I cannot embrace you all, so I shall embrace your general. Approchez, General Petit…

Having enveloped the general, he then said, ‘Bring me the Eagle’. He kissed the hem of the standard three times with the words, ‘Dear Eagle, may these kisses reverberate in the heart of all the brave.’ Finally: ‘Adieu, mes enfants.’ ‘Those grizzled warriors, who many a time had watched unmoved while their own blood ran, could not hold back their tears.’ Napoleon strode to the carriage, took his seat briskly, and was driven off.

The Château of Fontainebleau, 37 miles to the south-east of Paris, was Napoleon’s favourite residence. Built by Francis I round the tower of a medieval hunting-lodge, it dated from 1528 and represented one of the earliest breaths of the Renaissance in France. Surrounded by the oaks and pines of its dense forest, it offered true escape and relaxation. Less forbidding than Versailles, it was free of the shades of anyone else’s glory. Its buildings were arranged round a series of courtyards—la Cour Ovale, la Cour des Princes, la Cour de la Fontaine, la Cour des Offices, le Jardín de Diane. La Cour du Cheval Blanc, which has been known since the events of April 1814 as ‘La Cour des Adieux’, was realized under Louis XIII. The interior, which contained artistic treasures such as Rosso’s frescos in the Galerie Francois Ier, was designed with a touch of splendour, but not on a gigantic scale. The decorations and fittings, mainly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been supplemented by Napoleon’s own collection of Empire furniture. The chateau had been used as a gilded cage for Pope Pius VII, but had also seen the happiest days of Napoleon and Josephine. ‘The Forêt de Fontainebleau is my English garden’, he once said; ‘I want no other.’ To leave it was no small wrench.

The Imperial Guard embodied the essence of two military terms—corps d’élite and esprit de corps. Formed in November 1798 as the Consular Guard, it was steadily expanded until it became an army within the army. In 1805 it numbered some 5,000 men from all four arms—infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers. In 1809 it was split into the Old Guard, an élite of veterans within the élite, and the Young Guard, drawing on recruits and transferees. By 1813, at its height, it possessed nearly 60 different regiments, almost 50,000 men.

The Guard accepted only the finest applicants. They had to be 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) tall, 25 years old, literate, and had to have fought in three campaigns: They were given resplendent uniforms, generous pay, special training, and top commanders with direct access to the Emperor. They had the right to be addressed as ‘Monsieur’ by all other soldiers. Every week when possible, their Tondu—the ‘shorn one’—would inspect his moustaches and his grognards, his ‘invincibles’ and ‘immortals’. In due course the core of veterans, ‘the oldest of the Old’, had served 17, 20, or even 22 years. Joking with the Emperor was accepted form. One trooper once called out to ask why he had not yet received the Legion d’Honneur. ‘Why so?’ ‘Because I gave you a melon in the Egyptian desert!’ ‘A melon, non, non ...’ ‘Yes, a melon, and eleven campaigns and seven wounds—at Areola, Lodi, Castiglioni, the Pyramids, Acre, Austerlitz, Friedland…’. Before he had finished, he was a chevalier of the Empire with a payment of 1,200 francs. The Guard included many exotic foreigners. Two of the four regiments of ‘grognards’ were Dutchmen. There were whole ‘Velite’ formations of Italians. The cavalry included a regiment of scimitar-wielding Mamelukes, the German ‘Landers de Berg’, the Tartar Horse from Lithuania, and the three regiments of Polish Lancers, the ‘truest of the true’.

For many years Napoleon had been notoriously reluctant to sacrifice his guardsmen in battle, except for lightning strikes at critical points. At Borodino he had held them back with the words: ‘I will not have the Guard destroyed 300 leagues from Paris!’ But then, in the later campaigns, as the supply of trained men dwindled amidst the floods of raw recruits, he spared them nothing. In the brilliant fighting retreat of 1814, they had marched and bled every step of the way.48

Napoleon had reached Fontainebleau three weeks before, still confident of defeating the allied armies. From his defensive position in Champagne, he had planned to turn in his tracks and to strike deep into the enemy’s lines of communication. But marauding Cossacks had captured one of his couriers, and had discovered his intention of ‘drawing the enemy from Paris’.49 In the last week of March, therefore, he found that the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians, instead of advancing to fight him, had made a sudden concerted lunge against the weakly defended capital. The Russians advanced on Romainville. The Prussians set up batteries on Montmartre. The Austrians advanced up the Seine to Charenton. Two-hundred-thousand allied troops surrounded the capital’s defensive lines. The defenders under Marshal Marmont, Duke of Ragusa, stood their ground. The gallant Duroc, who had lost a leg in Russia, refused to surrender: ‘I’ll give up my positions when you give me back my leg.’ But the politicians had little stomach for a siege. The citizens feared to share the fate of Moscow. Talleyrand had put out feelers to the Tsar. Napoleon’s brother Joseph left the city with the Empress on the 30th.

Racing back from St Dizier in his flying barouche, Napoleon covered the 120 miles in a single day. As on his lightning sleigh ride from Moscow two years before, he was accompanied by his Foreign Minister, the loyal Caulaincourt. At 11 p.m. on the 31st, he was changing horses at theCour de France inn at Juvisy-sur-Orge, only eight miles from Notre Dame, when he met a French officer and heard that Paris had capitulated. The news was premature. The Emperor set off on foot in the direction of Paris; but then, meeting more men in retreat, he saw that he was too late to intervene. He withdrew to Fontainebleau to regroup, arriving exhausted at 6 a.m. Three days later, on 3 April, Palm Sunday, he reviewed the Guard at Fontainebleau. 10,000 infantrymen and 4,600 sabres heard him say, ‘In a few days I shall march on Paris. Am I right?’ They roared in approval. ‘Á Paris! Vive l’Empereur.’

However, the reeling Emperor was soon forced to abandon all active plans. The first blow was to learn that the Imperial Senate had approved a provisional government without him, and was proposing to restore the Bourbons. Then he learned that Marmont’s corps had defected, thereby rendering further resistance almost impossible. The French language received a new verb—raguser, to betray. The third blow was to hear from his marshals that they advised abdication in favour of his infant son. Marshal Macdonald had told him that to draw the sword against fellow-Frenchmen was unthinkable. Marshal Ney announced: ‘The Army will not march. The Army will obey its chiefs.’ The ‘bravest of the brave’ had lost the will to fight. Finally, the Emperor found that the Allies would no longer accept the terms of his first abdication, effected on 4 April. For a terrible week he writhed under the growing realization that exile alone would suffice. The dégringoladey the ‘disintegration’, was complete.

The bitterest cup was handed him by his wife, Marie-Louise. Ignoring his tender and courageous letters, the Empress repaid all his earlier neglect and disloyalties with interest. She responded with indecision, and then with callous disregard. The initial assumption was that she would join him either at Fontainebleau, or perhaps at some stage on their road to a shared exile. Then it was agreed that she should travel to meet her father, the Emperor Francis, to plead her husband’s cause. It emerged that she had no such intentions. She was going to Vienna, but to break with her husband for ever.

The Army had to be released from its oath of allegiance. The formula chosen by Marshal Augerau was specially wounding. ‘Soldiers,’ he declared, ‘you are released from your oaths by the abdication of a man who, after sacrificing millions of victims to his cruel ambition, did not have the courage to die the death of a soldier.’ The tricolour was replaced by the white cockade.

The one fixed point in all these shifting sands lay with the Imperial Guard. On the night after the first abdication, they massed in the streets of Fontainebleau, torches in hand, to cries of‘Vive l’Empereur.’ He had to order them to barracks. He also received a heart-warming letter from Count Wincenty Krasiński, the senior general of the Polish contingent. ‘The marshals are deserting. The politicians betray you … But your Poles remain …’ But even the Polish regiments were divided. One-third of the chevau-légers-lanciers stayed on. But another third, mainly Frenchmen, broke up. The remaining 1,384 set off for Poland, led by the hero of Somosierra. Resplendent and perfumed on his black Arab charger, Kozietulski took leave of the emperor for the last time:

Sire, We lay at Your Imperial Majesty’s feet the arms which no man could take from us by force … We have served as Poles the most amazing man of the century… Accept, Sire, the homage of our eternal loyalty… to an unfortunate prince.53

The politicking in Paris was led by Talleyrand, Chairman of the Senate, who emerged as the President of the Provisional Government. Talleyrand was behind the anonymous signals that had urged the Allied armies to attack; and he was now entertaining the Tsar in his own house. Royalistémigrés were streaming back, and the stock of the Bourbons was rising daily. The Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII), now 59 years old, was returning home. He had spent twenty-three years in exile, at Coblenz, Verona, Blankenberg, Calmar, Mittau in Courland, Warsaw, and the last five years in England. He was packing his bags at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire in the same week that Napoleon was packing at Fontainebleau. He was determined to underline his hereditary right by rejecting a constitution prepared by the Senate, but also to grant a liberal constitutional charter of his own making. Dubbed punningly Louis des Huîtres, ‘the oyster-eater’, from his gourmet reputation, he was a man of conciliation who had no intention of replacing the entire imperial establishment. Napoleon’s marshals and ministers awaited the restoration with equanimity. The Russians were camped in the Champs Elysées. The Emperor Francis was at Rambouillet, Frederick-William of Prussia at The Tuileries. The Parisians went out to see the exotic sights—veteran Prussian grenadiers in pigtails, colourful Croats and Hungarians, Circassians in chain-mail, mounted Bashkir bowmen.

As France wrestled with its ex-Emperor, the rest of Europe adjusted to the consequences of his fall. News in 1814 travelled slowly. Neither Wellington nor Soult were aware that Napoleon had already abdicated when they fought the last battle of the Peninsular campaign near Toulouse on 10 April. The imperial garrison on Corfu did not know about it until a British frigate called on them to surrender in June. Elsewhere, the main pieces of the Napoleonic Empire had already fallen apart. In the East, the Duchy of Warsaw had been occupied by the Russians for over a year. The Prussian and Austrian monarchies were resurgent. The Confederation of the Rhine had dissolved. In Switzerland, the old constitution had been revived. In Spain, Ferdinand VII had just been restored. In the Netherlands, William of Orange had just returned. In Scandinavia, Norway had just rebelled against its transfer from Denmark to Sweden. In Italy, the Napoleonic states had been overrun by the Austrians. Pope Pius was on his way back to Rome, where he would revive the Index and the Inquisition.

Britain, immune from the Continental fighting, was basking in the glow of the victorious Regency. Nash was rebuilding the Brighton Pavilion in fantastic pseudo-oriental style. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, said of Napoleon, ‘He will soon be forgotten.’ Sir Walter Scott published the first of the Waverley novels. George Stephenson was perfecting the first effective steam locomotive at Killingworth Colliery near Newcastle. The English language later received from Mrs Margaret Sanger the term ‘birth control’. The Marylebone Cricket Club opened its first season at Lord’s. Popular discontent from the post-war recession was brewing. The war with the United States had died down, but had not yet been terminated.

In the arts, 1814 was a year when the Classical still vied with the rising Romantic. This was the year of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Phantasiestücke, his fantastic ‘Tales’. In painting, Goya, Ingres, and Turner were all active. In music, the young Schubert wrote The Erlking, Beethoven completed his only opera, Fidelio. J. G. Fichte died; Mikhail Lermontov was born.

France’s political crisis came to a head during Holy Week. Allied Commissioners arrived at Fontainebleau on 6 April to administer the revised act of abdication, which Napoleon duly signed.

The Allied Powers, having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the only obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces for himself and his heirs the thrones of France and of Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even of life itself, that he is unwilling to make in the interests of France.54

Further negotiations led to the Treaty of Fontainebleau, concluded on the 11th, whereby Napoleon was to retain his title, a pension of 2 million francs, the Isle of Elba as his personal realm, and a personal staff and escort.

The British Commissioner, Sir Neil Campbell, spent many hours talking to the stricken Emperor at this time:

I saw before me a short active-looking man who was rapidly pacing the apartment like some wild animal with epaulets, blue pantaloons, and red topboots, unshaven, uncombed, with fallen particles of snuff scattered profusely over his upper lip and breast…55

They discussed Wellington’s campaigns in the Peninsula. Then the Emperor reportedly said, ‘Your nation is the greatest of all… I have tried to raise up the French nation, but my plans have failed. It is fate.’

The ex-Emperor’s psychological crisis came to a head when the negotiations were completed. He was convinced that he was deserted by his family as well as by the marshals. Giving command of the Guard to Marshal Ney, he had been assured: ‘We are all your friends.’ To which he replied bitterly, ‘Aye, and Caesar’s friends were also his murderers!’ His messengers to the Empress had the greatest difficulty crossing the Allied lines. At Orleans, where the Young Guard stood at her side, the imperial paymaster was hiding the remains of the Emperor’s treasure under a pile of horse manure in the bishop’s stables. On the nth, Napoleon ate a desultory evening meal with Caulaincourt, who had been acting as his go-between with the senators in Paris. He found that his valet had emptied the powder from the brace of pistols which he always kept by his bed. But he still had a phial of opiate that he had carried ever since his near-capture by Cossacks in Russia two years before. He retired to his room, and swallowed the contents. The poison had faded. It was strong enough to set him screaming from stomach cramps and convulsions, but not to kill him. Caulaincourt brought a doctor. The Emperor recovered by the morning. He said ‘How difficult it is to die in one’s bed!’ (The secret was concealed until the publication of Caulaincourt’s private memoirs in 1933.)

On the 13th, Napoleon bade farewell to James Macdonald, Duke of Taranto, the last of his Marshals to stay by his side. The devoted Scotsman, son of an exiled Jacobite family, had joined Coulaincourt in the recent abdication talks with the Allied powers. He could not fail to notice that a Campbell had arrived as the Macdonald was about to leave. But his task was done. Napoleon presented him with the ceremonial sword of Murad Bey, a memento of the campaign in Egypt in 1799: ‘Receive this in remembrance of me and of my friendship.’

Preparations for the journey to Elba began as soon as the Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed. The Emperor was to be escorted to the south of France by the four Allied commissioners—Colonel Campbell, Count Shuvalov, Baron von Koller, and Count Trachsess von Waldburg. They were to travel via Lyons and Avignon to a port on the Riviera, where a British frigate would be waiting for the five-day passage to Elba. A team of grooms and wagoners were hard at work at the depot of Rosnières in the Forest of Fontainebleau, cleaning and greasing the eight carriages of the convoy, painting out the imperial armorials, packing stores into the twenty vehicles of the baggage train, preparing the 101 saddle and carriage horses that were needed. A hundred wagon-loads of the Emperor’s furniture and personal effects were to follow later. The heaviest items would be sent in advance to Briare, in the south, where they would be joined by the Emperor and his escort at the end of the first day. The advance party moved off on the morning of the 14th down the Montargis road.

The selection of the escort was left to the Emperor. He was allowed a staff of thirty officers, and a garrison of 600 men. The cavalry detachment was formed under General Jerzmanowski from a squadron of Polish lancers into which a handful of Frenchmen and Mamelukes were also admitted. There was a crew of marines, an artillery battery with 100 gunners, and one infantry battalion made up from three companies of grenadiers and three of chasseurs. The men of the battalion were to be picked out in person at the final review.

On the last Saturday, Napoleon tried to settle accounts with the women of his Ufe. To Josephine, he wrote:

In my exile, I will replace the sword with the pen … They’ve betrayed me one and all… Adieu, ma bonne Joséphine. Learn resignation as I have learned it, and never banish from your memory the one who has never forgotten you, and will never forget you.59

To Marie-Louise, his Empress, he used the formal vousr.

My dear wife, Providence … has given its verdict against me. I congratulate you on the course you have taken … I hardly think that Destiny will bring us together again… Of all my punishments, my separation from you is the most cruel. I make only one reproach. Why not exercise the empire on my heart that motherhood conferred on you? You feared me, and you loved me…60

The letters were not sent. They were found in his desk at Fontainebleau some days later, unsigned.

After that, there was nothing left but to await the day of departure fixed for the following Wednesday. Napoleon recovered his spirits. He caused as much trouble as possible. He flew once or twice into his customary rages. And he spoiled the Commissioners’ dinner, by telling his valet to announce his arrival at their table and making them stand, then remaining in his room.

As a soldier, Napoleon had contemplated death and oblivion many times. On one occasion he had questioned Marshal Segur about what the people would say after he was gone. The minister recited a paean of grief and eulogy. ‘Non,’ said Napoleon, wringing his wrist in the Gallic fashion, ‘ils diront “Ouf”’ (No, they’ll just say ‘Phew’).61

On the Wednesday morning, Napoleon dressed simply for the farewell ceremony. He was the grand master of theatricality, and of timing. He had once explained that history was made up of time and space. ‘One always has a chance of recovering lost ground,’ he remarked, ‘but lost time—never.’ He must have savoured the chance to stage what historians were to dub the ‘Last Supper’ of Napoleonic iconography. According to conflicting accounts, he either wore the undress uniform of the Chasseurs de la Garde,—a cut-away tunic in green over white waistcoat and breeches,—or a blue tunic with blue pantaloons. At all events, he wore thigh-length boots, a dress sword at his side, on his breast the single star of the Legion, and on his head the legendary black hat with upturned brim at the rear. At 11 a.m. exactly, or by other accounts on the stroke of i o’clock, he made for the lobby and stepped out onto the head of the marble staircase.

There are many moments in history when it appears that an era has finished, that some long-established regime or system has finally passed away. These are dangerous moments for all concerned, not least for historians who wish to cut their subject into tidy periods. For regimes and societies and economies rarely die overnight as individuals do. Even in times of apparently cataclysmic collapse, the forces of continuity and inertia will always contend with the motors of change. Napoleon was not dead. He had not yet passed into legend. He had bid his Guard ‘Adieu’, but not for the last time.

Map 22. Europe, 1815