NAPOLEONIC EUROPE (1799-1815)
Coalitions
and a Brief Peace (1795-1803)
When the powerful and
populous France fell under the control of radical revolutionaries, the old regimes in the other countries of
Europe had good reason to be scared. For that reason, they
made several attempts to band together to face the French Revolutionary threat.
The first of these had been the First Coalition of 1792-1797, which started
collapsing as early as 1795. In that year, Britain recalled its army from the
European continent. Also in 1795, Prussia, concerned with Russia's looming
presence, made peace with France. Spain, ruled by a Bourbon King but extremely
concerned with British sea power, allied with France (which had killed its
Bourbon king). And in 1797, after Napoleon led the successful Italian campaign
against Austria, the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed, creating the Cisalpine
Republic and spelling the final end of the First Coalition.
During Napoleon's ill-fated
Egyptian campaign, Admiral Nelson's British fleet demolished the French fleet
at the Battle of Aboukir (The Battle of the Nile) in 1799. This rare triumph
over France led to the formation of a Second Coalition against France, which
lasted from 1799 to 1801. When, after getting demolished at the battle of
Marengo, the Austrians signed the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, the Second
Coalition fell apart. Soon after, the 1802 Peace of Amiens secured peace
between the British and French. A period of Europe-wide peace ensued from
1802-1803, the only time during Napoleon's rule that no two European nations
were at war. Of course, during this brief European peace, there still were
conflicts going on in other parts of the world: notably, France was desperately
trying to control the situation in Saint-Domingue (today Haiti), where
Toussaint l'Ouverture was disobeying Napoleon's orders. In 1803, Napoleon sold
the Louisiana Territory to the US for 80 million francs (15 million dollars).
Meanwhile, in Europe,
Napoleon went ahead and made himself the official President of the new
"Italian Republic", which had formerly been the Cisalpine Republic.
Northern Italy had previously been a French-controlled puppet. Now, French
dominance was stated outright. Napoleon also changed the name of the
French-dominated "Helvetic Republic" to the "Confederation of
Switzerland", himself ruling as the "mediator" of this
"new" state. Furthermore, Napoleon carefully monitored events in the
German principalities of Holy Roman Empire, as the rulers of these petty states
competed for Napoleon's favor.
Commentary
Even as the other European
powers tried to unify against France, they were torn apart by suspicion of each
other. In the period of the First Coalition, Austria and Prussia were so afraid
of Russia at their Eastern flank that they kept most of their armies at home
and did little to threaten France.
During the French
Revolution, Toussaint l'Ouverture led the slaves on the French half of modern
Haiti to rebel, and proclaimed himself for the revolutionary Republic, which
made him lieutenant governor. In 1801, despite Napoleon's orders not to do so,
l'Ouverture encouraged a revolt on the Spanish half of the island, freeing the
Spanish slaves and creating a united Haiti. Although he had been involved in a
slave revolt, Toussaint encouraged white landowners to return to running their
plantations, but with wage instead of slave labor. He established a Haitian
constitution and started making foreign policy by negotiating with the US. Napoleon
would have none of this and sent General Charles Leclerc to take French power
back in Haiti. Napoleon's forces fought a bloody struggle to depose Toussaint,
who was very popular in Haiti, but they finally succeeded. In 1803, Toussaint
died in a French jail. The mission Napoleon sent to Haiti to put down Toussaint
l'Ouverture, though capturing Toussaint, ended up being expensive and difficult
In 1800, Spain had sold
Louisiana to France, and Napoleon had envisioned Louisiana as a
"breadbasket" for a vast French world empire. Toussaint's resistance
in Haiti, however, turned him off to the idea of commitments in the New World,
which would only be a drain on his European affairs. Furthermore, he
increasingly realized that Britain's dominance at sea would allow them to
harass his communication lines and trade routes with any New World colonies.
The takeover of Haiti by the British in 1803 just reconfirmed his desire to get
rid of New World holdings, and since US President Jefferson had expressed a
interest in the Louisiana Territory, Napoleon decided simply to sell it rather
than to get embroiled in a distant conflict, where his supply and communication
ships would be vulnerable to the powerful British navy.
In Europe in the early
nineteenth century, there existed no "Germany" except in the loose
sense that there was German language and a vaguely German culture. What is
today the German nation was then mostly contained either in Prussia, or in a sprawl
of numerous squabbling tiny kingdoms, principalities, electorates, and duchies
called The Holy Roman Empire (a hollow and grandiose name for this loose and
ineffectual confederation). The Treaty of Campio Formio, passed in 1797, and
reaffirmed by the Treaty of Luneville in 1802, had given France the left bank
of the Rhine, and allowed Napoleon to reorganize the states on the right bank.
Hoping to get extra territory by the realignments, the rulers of many of these
Holy Roman Empire states competed with each other in endearing themselves to
the French. Talleyrand, for instance, took so many bribes from Holy Roman
Empire princes that he quickly made millions. Through this process, many of the
German states of the Holy Roman Empire were already becoming French satellites.
REFERENCE
Bergeron, Louis, et al. France Under Napoleon. Princeton University Press: 1981.
Chapman, Tim. The
Congress of Vienna : Origins, Processes and Results. Routledge: 1998.
Durant, William James, et al. The Age of Napoleon: A History of
European Civilization from 1789 to 1815. Simon
& Schuster: 1975
James, Cyril Lionel Robert. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint
L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. Vintage Books: 1989.
Rothenberg, Gunther E. Art of Warfare in the Age of
Napoleon. Indiana University
Press: 1981.
Tone, John Lawrence. The Fatal Knot: The Guerilla War in
Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain. University of North Carolina Press:
1994.
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