HISTORY OF EUROPE. 



203 



CHAP. XI. 



War on the Danube— in Italy — and the Tyrol. 



to discourage the Austrians by his 

 account of the state of affairs ia 

 Spain ; and to dishearten the Spa- 

 niards by precluding all hopes of 

 co-operation from the Austrians. 

 Having so uniformly and strongly 

 declared that the views and incli- 

 nations of Austria towards France 

 were wholly pacific, he was, when 

 on the very point of breaking out, 

 under the manifest dilemma of ei- 

 ther contradicting himself on this 

 subject, or of admitting that he 

 plunged both his French and Ita- 

 lian subjects and his vassals in Ger- 

 many deeper and deeper into the 

 gulph of war without necessity. He 

 made a distinction, therefore, be- 

 tween the will of theemperor Fran- 

 cis and even that of those most in 

 his confidence, as we have noticed 

 above, and the general spirit and 

 tone of the country, which, if notvi- 

 gorously counteracted, would draw 

 along with it both the emperor 

 and his ministers.* He derided, 

 in his journals, the Austrian pro- 

 ject of making war on France. 

 He said that the maintenance of 

 this must depend, as the prepara- 

 tions for it had done, on paper 

 money, which would soon fall to 

 an enormous discount, and at last 

 to nothing. But it was evident 

 to all the world, and to none more 

 manifest than to Buonaparte him* 



self^ 



" In this belief it is not improbable that Buonaparte was perfectly sincere. He 

 urced it in a conversation with Count ]Mettemich the Austrian ambassador with 

 aoegree of earnestness and emotion that could not well be counterfeited. Nor was 

 f>is reasoning on this occasion addressed to his own people, or to one of them for 

 •he purpose of being reported to the public. Dupatvh from Champagny to general 

 -^iidreofntj^al Vienna, Who/ AnguH 1808. 



IT is not the least remarkable 

 among the circumstances that 

 attract attention in the conduct 

 of Buonaparte that he thought it 

 worth while to have recourse to 

 the aid of excessive exaggeration, 

 fictions, or in plain term, lies. This 

 was a system which so profound a 

 calculator must have been well 

 aware could not maintain itself 

 long. But he calculated, no 

 doubt, that certain objects of im- 

 portance would be obtained be- 

 fore his lies should be detected. 

 At the same time that the corres- 

 pondence between count Metter- 

 nich and Champagny betrayed the 

 utmost jealousy and mistrust on 

 the part of both France and Aus- 

 tria, Buonaparte proclaimed daily 

 in his newspapers in France, Italy, 

 and Spain, that the most perfect 

 harmony and cordiality prevailed 

 between the courts of the Thuil- 

 leries and Vienna. And ia his 

 German and Polish newspapers 

 again, he represented the cause 

 of the Spanish insurgents, as he 

 called the patriots, as quite des- 

 perate; their tumultuous parties 

 as broken and dispersed. He 

 stated that Saragossa was reduced 

 some weeks before it actually sur- 

 rendered ; and that Lisbon, in the 

 beginning of 1809, was in the 

 hands of the French. He wished 



