hurrying on the crisis which led to his fall. His oppressions in North Germany had established military despotism in that quarter. The last vestiges of freedom were suppressed by a formidable state-police, which threatened every suspected person with persecution and imprisonment. The place of popular rights was usurped by arbitrariness, passion and despotism. Friendly states were burdened with restrictions on trade, oppressive taxation and military conscriptions; while the hostile states. suffered the calamities of war, military exactions and the quarterings of troops. In the meantime the civil war in Egypt continued to rage between the Turks and the Mamelukes; and in 1811 Mehemet Ali, the powerful Pasha of Egypt, caused the Mameluke chiefs to be treacherously assassinated at an entertainment to which he had invited them for the pose. The British navy was complete mistress of the seas, and took the island of Java, in the East Indies, from the Dutch in 1811. pur His Despotism. Civil War in Massacre of the Mamelukes. Assassin ation of Spencer Perceval. Ministry In March, 1812, Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by a merchant named Bellingham, who imagined that the government had neglected his just claims. The assassin was tried at the Old Bailey and was executed, but he manifested little remorse for the horrible deed which he had committed. This crime led to the fall of the Tory Ministry, and the Prince Regent sought to recall the Whigs to power, but he failed in the effort, and the old Tory Ministry was restored to power under the guidance of the Earl of Liverpool, a man of no great abilities, but temperate, well-informed, and endowed with a singular gift of holding discordant colleagues together. The Ministry of the Earl of Liverpool remained in office for fifteen years, 1812-1827. British aggressions upon neutral commerce and the enforcement of Britishthe British "right of search" against American vessels led to a war between Great Britain and the United States, in June, 1812-a war which lasted two and a half years and which will be fully described in the volume of this work relating to United States history. of the Earl of Liverpool. American 1812. SECTION XI.-NAPOLEON'S DISASTROUS RUSSIAN WAR OF 1812. We have already seen that by the Peace of Tilsit, in 1807, the French and Russian Emperors became friends and allies and that they united in the maritime war against Great Britain. It soon became evident that this friendship could not be permanent, and the unconcern which Alexander exhibited in the war against Austria in 1809 increased the growing coldness between him and Napoleon. From the moment Napoleon's strained Relations with Russia. His of Napoleon's alliance with the House of Hapsburg, Alexander perceived that it would be impossible to avoid hostilities with Napoleon: and in 1811 the diplomacy between the French and Russian Cabinets began to assume a most angry character. The measures of Napoleon for destroying the trade of Great Britain and the closing of the Russian ports against British vessels had inflicted great injury upon Russian commerce. The complaints of the Russian merchants induced Alexander to open the ports of his dominions to British vessels upon certain conditions, and a heavy tariff was laid upon French goods. These proceedings provoked the anger of the French Emperor. The aggrandizement of Napoleon in Central Europe and the annexation of the possessions of the Duke of Oldenburg, a near relative of Alexander, to the French Empire destroyed the last tie of friendship between the two Emperors; and in the spring of 1812 both began to prepare earnestly for war. The threatened establishment of a French maritime arsenal at Aggres- Lübeck, the continued occupation of the Prussian fortresses by French garrisons and the concentration of French troops between the Oder and the Vistula, along with the attempt to unite Denmark, Sweden and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw into a Northern Confederation under Napoleon's protection—all indicated an intention of violating the Treaty of Tilsit whenever it should suit Napoleon's convenience to dispense with it. The Czar Alexander I. prepared for resistance by stationing an army of ninety thousand men at the exposed points upon the western Russian frontiers. His Final Rupture with Sweden and Russia. His Great Aims. Russia's war with the French Emperor was hastened by the influence of Sweden. Bernadotte, as Crown Prince of Sweden, disapproved of Napoleon's Continental System, which was ruining Swedish commerce; and the admission of English goods into Pomerania soon led to hostilities between France and Sweden. The French seized Swedish vessels in German harbors and sent their crews to Antwerp in irons. The cruel Marshal Davoust, the French commander in Northern Germany, occupied Pomerania, imprisoned the Swedish officials at Hamburg and appointed Frenchmen in their places. Bernadotte, who ruled Sweden during the illness of King Charles XIII., appealed to the Czar of Russia for aid; and, in answer to this appeal, the Czar Alexander I. formed alliances with Sweden and Great Britain, having just concluded the Peace of Bucharest with Turkey, through the mediation of Great Britain, May 28, 1812. Napoleon's great object in his war against Russia was to destroy that great power and to unite all Europe into one universal empire under his own dominion. Said he: "I must make one nation out of all the European states, and Paris must be the capital of the world. There must be all over Europe but one legislative code, one court of appeal, one currency, one standard of weights and measures.” On the 16th of May, 1812, Napoleon held a meeting with the Emperor of Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Naples, Westphalia and Würtemberg and the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine at Dresden. After this grand assemblage of princes had lasted ten days, Napoleon went to assume the command of the Grand Army, which he had assembled in Poland for the invasion of Russia. Napoleon had concluded a treaty with Austria, by which that power agreed to furnish him with thirty thousand men, under the command of Prince Schwarzenberg; and Prussia, by a similar treaty, agreed to furnish him with twenty thousand men. The Grand Army now numbered more than five hundred thousand men and was composed of French, Austrians, Prussians, Germans, Italians and Poles. Of this immense host eighty thousand were cavalry. The whole number of horses belonging to the army amounted to almost one hundred and ninety thousand. The Russian forces, under Barclay de Tolly, Prince Bagration and other generals, which were assembled in Poland and the western Russian provinces, amounted to three hundred thousand men. His Grand Army. Napoleon's Invasion On the 22d of June, 1812, Napoleon issued a declaration of war against Russia; and on the 24th he crossed the Niemen and invaded the Russian dominions. The Russians, in accordance with the plan of of Russia. their generals, avoided battles, retreated before the advancing French forces and laid waste the country through which they passed, so that the French army might find no subsistence from it. Napoleon, with the main body of the Grand Army, pursued the retreating Russians, and reached Wilna on the 28th, where he remained until the middle of August, when he continued his advance toward Moscow in pursuit of the retreating Russians. Already the effects of the destructive policy of the Russians began to be felt in the French army; as twenty-five thousand sick and dying men filled the hospitals and ten thousand dead horses strewed the road to Wilna, while one hundred and twenty-five pieces of artillery had been abandoned. Smolensk. At Smolensk, on the 17th of August, 1812, thirty thousand Russians Battle of made a stand against the French. Three furious assaults upon this strongly-fortified town were repulsed by the Russians; but during the night the inhabitants set fire to the town, which was soon reduced to ashes, and fled with the army. The Russians continued to retreat toward Moscow, pursued by the French. The mode of warfare pursued by the Russian general, Barclay de Tolly, was not approved by his soldiers, who were anxious for a battle with the invaders of their country. For this reason the Emperor Alexander removed Barclay de Tolly and appointed General Barclay de Tolly Super seded by Kutusoff. |