Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/280

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NAPOLEON I. 238 NAPOLEON I. Bonaparte had shown himself tlc greatest mas- ter of the art of war, and one of tlie shrewdest of diplomats, when at thirty years of age he un- dertook the duties of a ruler, law-giver, and ad- ministrator. His greatness lay in the univer- sality of his genius and in his inordinate ca- pacity fur hard work. Further, he was able to conunand the services of many men of e.traor- dinary ability, and to make their work his own. His reorganization of the Government of France was accomplished in a few months and comprised enough achievements of the first order to have established the enduring fame of several .states- men. This tremendous activity so stirred and inspired his ollieials that they said "the gigantic entered into our very habits of thought." With Gaudin he reorganized the treasury department, regulated the assessment and collection of the taxes, and organized the Bank of France. With Chaptal he reorganized the local administration with the prefects and subprefects responsible to the central authority, the Council of State. The schism between the Catholic Church and the con- stitutional clergy was healed an<l the Catholic Church restored to its old-time place in France, by the negotiation of the Concordat (q.v.) with Pius VII. in 1801. The Lutherans, the Calvinists, and ultimately even the Jews were brought into similarly close relations with the State. The educational system was recon- structed, especially in the matter of secondary schools and of technical education. The work was completed by the establishment in 1808 of the Universit}' of France, which comprised the whole teaching force of the Empire. The estab- lishment of tiie Legion of Honor in Jlay, 1802, provided a means of recognizing services to the State. The greatest triumph was the codification of the laws of France. (See Code XapoliSon.) All these acts revealed Bonaparte as a master workman who deftly joined together in a perfect whole the many parts which numerous craftsmen had wnmght out with dirticulty in the days of the Revolution. France had lost her colonial empire in the eighteenth century, and it was the fonil ho|)e of Bonaparte that iie might restore it and thus rival England in commerce and upon the seas. To this end he began a series of en- terprises which embraced every quarter of the globe — Xorth and South America. Africa, India and the East, and Australia. He secured the cession of Louisiana from Spain, and sent an army to recover Haiti, where the blacks had suc- cessfully risen against their op|)ressors. In all these schemes he was checkmated by England, but on the Continent of Europe he was hindered by nothing more serious than protects in reaping the fruit of the wars of the French Hevolution. He reconstituted upon the new French lines the Bntavian Republic, the Cisalpine Repid)lic (which became the Italian Republic). an<l the Ligurian Republic (1801-02). He extended the boimds of France, which already had the Rhine, the Pyre- nees, and the Alps as her frontiers, by the im- jiistifiable annexation of Piedmont and Parma in 1802. He was actively concerned in the reorgan- ization of Switzerland and of Oermanv in ISO.?. The Treaty of .Xranjuez (March 21. 18(11) bound Spain to France, while Portugal, the faithful ally of Englanil. was humbled by the Treaty of Ba'dajoz ( September 20, 1801), Bonaparte's colonial schemes were frustrated by yellow fever, which destroyed General Leclere and his army in Haiti and forced the Consul to sacrifice Louisiana to the United States (1803) and abandon his dream of em- pire beyond the seas. Pique at this disappoint- ment hastened Bonaparte into the predetermined rupture with England. A casu.i belli was found in the question of Jlalta, which England refused to surrender in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. Mortier occupied Hanover, of which George III. was King. (Jen. Gouvion Saint-Cyr was ordered to occupy the Kingdom of Naples, an ally of England, to ollset the occupa tion of Malta. The French army was mobilized in six divisions and stationed along the Channel from Ostend to Brest. War existed from .May 10, 180ii, but actual hostilities did not begin imtil over two years later. In the meantime England recalled Pitt to office (May, 1804). Pitt's great service consisted in securing allies and in forming the Third Coalition against France. In this work he was aided by Bona- parte's blunders, the most notable of which was the execution of the Due d'Enghicn (March 21, 1804), in retaliation for the Royalist plots of Pichegru and (Georges Cadoudal. On the day of Pitt's return to power, Bonaparte was oflered the title of Emperor by the French Senate, and on December 2, 1804, he was crowned Emperor as Napoleon I. at Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. On May 2Gth, 1805, he was crowned at Milan King of Italy. A few days later fol- lowed the last of his series of aggressions, which provoked Austria and Russia into the alliance with England, the annexation to France of the Ligurian Republic (.lune 4). A month later Russia and England signed their alliance against Napoleon, and on August flth they were secretly joined by Austria. Sweden, Portugal, and Naples were practically, though not formally, parties to this coalition. For two years Napoleon had been dallying with a scheme for the invasion of England. In the camps alon^ the Channel he had organized, eqiipped, and drilled his famous (Irand Army, com]iosed largely of veterans of the wars of the Revolution, and at Boulogne special preparations had long been under way for an attack upon England. The summer of 1805 seemed the pro- pitious time for the attack, and Napoleon made elaborate dispositions for obtaining mival control of the Channel and for the transportation of an army of 100,000 men from Boulogne to the Kentish coast. The French fleet under Villeneuve, however, was outmann-uvrcd and oulfotight by the English under Cornwallis. (Wilder, and Nel- son. By the middle of August. 180.i, the scheme had become impossible of execution. Napoleon, however, had foreseen this possi- bility; his other acts had already provided him with another chance to employ his army, and he had worked out in his mind the plan of his most brilliantly successful campaign, that of Austerlitz. On' .Vugust 2nth the Army of England was officially denominated the Grand Army and divided into seven corps under Herna- dotte. Marmont, Davout, Soult. LanTics. Xey, and .ugereavi. with the cavalry- mder Miirat. anil the Imperial Guard luidcr Bessi^res, in all about 220.000 men under the personal command of the Emperor, with Herthier as chief of stalT. War was declared against .Au-^tria on September 2;')th, and the next dav the movement of the