PROFESSOR SEELEY'S "NAPOLEON."* A " suorr history of Napoleon," in
which "everything is subordinated to clearness and unity," prefixed to an "Essay" on Napoleon which makes no "attempt either to analyse his character or estimate his genius," is Professor Seeley's own description of the volume before us. The "History" "incor- porates the substance" of an article published some years ago in the Encyclopcodia Brit (Tunica ; the "Essay" is "entirely new." Both are rather disappointing, and it may be that they are so because Professor Seeley "has not," he tells us, "studied Napoleon's life in order to write this little book ;" but he writes the book because he has "studied the Napoleonic age from many points of view, and in many countries.' For to one of those "points of view" he has given undue prominence; and in his study of the Napoleonic age he has neglected some important aspects of Napoleon himself. To prove this last assertion we should have to submit his " History " to a criticism far more minute and searching than we can possibly find room for. But this is a matter of secondary importance. It is of little conse- quence, for instance, that while disclaiming "to describe or esti- mate Napoleon as a military commander," Professor Seeley mis- represents some of Napoleon's most brilliant achievements. It is of even less consequence that while refusing professedly to draw upon the fund of anecdote which commonly lends to a biography its vividness, he has garnished his pages with certain anecdotes which we regard as irrelevant or apocryphal. The essence of this book, its raison d'etre, so to speak, is the " view " which the author has taken of Napoleon's foreign policy,—a " view " which he inculcates with persistent iteration in the "History" as well as in the " Essay ;" and on the correctness of that " view " the whole value of this contribution to Napoleonic literature will be found to depend. It is a "view," we may say at once, that has nothing paradoxical about it,—a "view," so to speak, in support of which chapter and verse may be quoted ; but it is a "view," for all that, which runs counter to current opinion, and on a question which current opinion has long, and, we believe, quite rightly, decided. Professor Seeley's view, then, of what he calls Napoleon's "plan" —as opposed to what we shall incidentally urge as the common view—is as follows :—" Napoleon pursued simply the ordinary objects of the French Foreign Office, and only failure and the impatience caused by failure led him to strain in such an unheard-of manner the resources of his Empire. His aim was to light out the great quarrel with England which had occupied France throughout the eighteenth century, to avenge and repair the losses France had suffered in Canada, in India, and on all the seas. This was what he promised to France; and being unable to accomplish his object by a direct attack, he
* A Short History of Napoleon I. By J. R. Seeley, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. London ; Seeley and Co. 1886.
but it altogether lacks the splendid rhythm and variety of forced all Europe into the war, conquering Europe in order to conquer England.'" This last phrase, evoked from Talleyrand's hint, in 1803, that "England might compel France to conquer Europe," is the key-note of Professor Seeley's book. He is never tired of repeating it ; yet the gloss surely is all his own. Tal- leyraud, we imagine, meant that France would have to conquer Europe, in order to prevent Europe from conquering France by the aid of England. And, however this may be, the aggressive attitude of England towards Napoleon, from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens onwards, is not sufficiently brought out by Pro- fessor Seeley ; nor, we may add, are the causes of that attitude. These were surely of a kind that left no opening for Napoleon to disarm England, as Professor Seeley suggests, by conciliation, or even to obtain her help by bribes, before he engaged the Continental Powers. They do not, however, now immediately concern us, and we merely refer to them as evidence that what Professor Seeley calls "the great mistake of Napoleon's life" was a mistake that Napoleon could hardly help making. He might, indeed, if his character had permitted him, have renounced all views of European conquest, and, by convincing England that he had done so, have made peace on firm and lasting terms with her. But it is idle to suppose that with Europe united at his back, he could have effected anything against England's maritime supremacy, or that he could have devised any bait to keep England on his side while he was conquering Europe. And he did conquer Europe ; and that, too, without much difficulty. Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland left him, with Russia for his ally, undisputed master of Western Europe. But had he "conquered Europe in order to conquer England"? Yes, says Professor Seeley, most emphatically ; "he marshalled all its forces against England. The enterprise was colossal, and the duel between a confederated Europe and the world-empire of England was an unparalleled spectacle." Unparalleled indeed ; yet we search the pages of history in vain for any vestiges of that tremendous encounter. It began, of course, with the establishment of the "Continental System," and it ended there, so far as we can see. Yet that " system " was a failure from the beginning, and very few years passed before Napoleon was himself aware that as an instrument for conquering England it was worthless. And it is precisely here that we join issue with Professor Seeley. His view is that in 1810-11—leaving Spain for the present out of consideration —Napoleon thought that England was on the point of yielding to his blockade. Annexation swiftly followed annexation during these years, "because only Napoleon's own adminis- tration could be trusted to carry that blockade into effect." Nay, more; so deadly in earnest was Napoleon with a system " upon which he had staked everything," that "he made a dis- pute about tariffs the ground for the greatest military expedi- tion known to authentic history," and "sacrificed half a million of men in Russia to his crotchet of a commercial system."
Before we examine these statements, it will be convenient to glance at Napoleon's Spanish policy. In one respect it is perfectly intelligible. Spain was a very weak joint in the Con- tinental System; and in 1807-8 there can be no doubt that Napoleon thought that he had discovered in that system an instrument for "conquering England." It was in the nature of things, therefore, for him to annex Spain ; but we do not follow Professor Seeley in his view that any hopes of coping with the English Fleet were involved in that annexation. And as to his idea that a French King of Spain would also, if successful, become "King of a boundless Empire in the New World," we must really take the liberty of calling that an hallucination. But the point which we wish to insist upon, the point, in fact, upon which the difference between Professor Seeley's view, and the common view of Napoleon's " plan " may be said to turn, is Napoleon's management of the Peninsula in 1810-11. Here Professor Seeley plainly finds his theory somewhat at fault. He, with consistent intrepidity, insists that Napoleon after Wagram only asked himself,—" How may the new resources be best directed against England ?" And he very frankly admits that what was to be expected was that Napoleon would, in that case, devote himself to crashing the resistance of the Peninsula. As Napoleon did nothing of the kind, "he seems," we are told, "to have regarded that resistance with a mixed feeling of contempt and despair, not knowing how to overcome it, and persuading himself that it was not worth a serious effort." We cannot accept this explanation ; but then, we do not believe that the question which Napoleon asked himself after Wagram was that which Professor Seeley supposes. We rather think that it was,—" How may I best now consoli- date the vast fabric of my Empire ?" For in 1809 Napoleon, as may be inferred from his language when Denon brought him the design of an eagle strangling a leopard, was fully alive to the fact that a direct attack upon England was no longer possible, even for the undisputed master of Europe ; and he was also, we believe, by no means blind to the fact that his "Conti- nental System," however much it might annoy, was powerless to injure the mistress of the seas. He ostensibly kept up that system for obvious reasons, but really because it afforded him a handy pretext for annexations. It is certainly hard to reconcile that " heightened vigour of the blockade," on which Professor Seeley lays so much stress, with the fact that Napoleon actually established a system of Custom-house regulations under which persons desirous to import English produce into France might purchase the Imperial licence for so doing. When, therefore, we find him invading Russia, and leaving France practically, and the Peninsula actually, open to English com- merce, we feel compelled to reject Professor Seeley's view that in striking at Moscow Napoleon was striking at England, or that he sacrificed half a million of men, and with them virtually the ascendancy he had won for himself and France in Europe, to his "crotchet of a commercial system." Ostensibly, no doubt, the ground openly avowed for the fatal invasion was the commercial system and the war with England. "La guerre de Russie," said Napoleon at St. Helena, " devenait une conse- quence necessaire du systeme continental, le jour èu l'Empereur Alexandre violait lea conventions de Tilsit et d'Erfurth ; mais nne consideration d'une importance bien plus grande y de- termina Napoleon." We can well believe it ; but what that " consideration " actually was we can only guess. It was a mere afterthought which made him say that " rEmpire Fran- cais avait cree par taut de victoires serait infailliblement demembre, is sa mort, et le sceptre de rEarope passerait dans lea mains d'un czar, s'il ne rejetait lea 'Lasses an delis du Borysthene, et ne relevait le train de Pologne, baniere naturelle de rempire." This, indeed, is what he might have done, and what he ought to have done, bat is far enough from expressing what he did. His downfall is traceable to the incredible way in which he mismanaged his famous expedition ; but with this, of course, we have nothing now to do. The question is why did he make the expedition at all ; and rejecting, as we do without scruple, his own mendacious explanation, and rejecting quite as decisively Professor Seeley's theory, we can find no answer but this. It was forced upon him by his inaction during 1810.11; and the "Spanish ulcer," which he might have cauterised had he swooped down upon Wellington immediately after Wagram, together with the "Austrian match," proved, as he said himself, his ruin. For, hampered by that match daring those fateful years, hampered, too, by dynastic arrangements, and perplexed in the extreme by a Continental system which was breaking and cracking in every direction, Napoleon had no alternative in 1812 but war with Russia. He was barred by his Austrian connection from raising that Polish Kingdom which he acknow- ledged too late to be the natural barrier of his Empire. He was unable to quell the Spanish tempest as it only could be quelled by his own personal intervention. Had he attempted to do so, had he even driven Wellington out of the Peninsula as he drove Sir John Moore, he would inevitably have been recalled by a rising in Germany, fomented and supported by Russia. There was nothing for him to do, then, bat to effectually cripple Russia before he seriously took Spain in hand, and the scale upon which he made his preparations for doing so leaves no doubt as to his in- tentions. How all those preparations came to grief, and how it came to pass that Napoleon at Moscow would have gladly accepted terms which would practically have left him in much the same position as he was before the war began, are matters of common knowledge. We cannot, however, bring ourselves to believe, with Professor Seeley, that those preparations had no other object originally but to bring Alexander back into a coalition against England,—a coalition, be it remembered, which had no other weapon to wield against its enemy but a discredited, and, as we hold, even in its author's eyes a disoredited "crotchet of a commercial system." To resume, and go back a little. Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland enabled Napoleon to vex England by a blockade, since Trafalgar had destroyed his hopes of "ships, colonies, and commerce" for France, or, as Professor Seeley puts it, of "fighting out the great quarrel with England which had. o3cupied France throughout the eighteenth century." Yet it can hardly be said that Napoleon won those victories in order to
establish that blockade. He established the blockade because he had gained those victories, and those victories placed Europe at his feet ; yet even so, we think that it is not quite correct to say that he "conquered Europe in order to conquer England." And as to his conquests and annexations and dynastic arrange- ments between Tilsit and Moscow, we cannot, for the reasons which we have given, accept Professor Seeley's favourite formula as adequately expressing Napoleon's "plan." What value, then, may be in the book before us, if we are right in our opinion about that formula, the reader must judge for himself.
We have no space left to dwell upon what we regard as grave defects in this volume. We can only say that although it may be read with amusement, and perhaps with profit, by those who are well acquainted with Napoleon's career and character, it will prove exceedingly misleading to those who are not. For, in addition to the drawback that it is written throughout in the spirit of one who is Bien, ;IseptrAceacildm, it is disfigured through- out by a curious vein of inaccuracy that is really surprising in a writer of Professor Seeley's undoubted good faith and un- questionable industry.
Previous page
