FRANCE. (HISTORY.) 



immediate causes of the war witli Russia in 1812. 

 In the treaty of March 16, 1810, between France and 

 Holland, the latter liad been obliged to cede to 

 France Dutch Brabant, Zealand, with the island of 

 Schowen, and the part of Guelders on the left bank 

 of the Waal, for which the attack of the British on 

 Holland, in 1809, had given a pretext. The king of 

 Holland having resigned the crown in favour of his 

 son (July 1, 1810), the kingdom was incorporated 

 with France, by the decree of Rambouillet, July 9, 

 1810. But Britain persevered in maintaining the 

 orders in council, and Napoleon declared it was neces- 

 sary that the whole coast of the North sea should be 

 placed under his immediate inspection. The mouths 

 of the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, with the Hanse 

 towns (about 12,714 square miles, and more than 

 1,000,000 inhabitants), were therefore arbitrarily 

 incorporated with France (December 10, 1810) . The 

 Valais had already (November 12, 1810) experienced 

 the same fate, for the securing of the road over the 

 Simplon.* The tariff of Trianon, which was designed 

 to prevent the use of colonial articles on the conti- 

 nent, by the imposition of enormous duties, was forced 

 on all the federative states, while the decree of Fon- 

 tainebleau ordered all articles of British manufac- 

 ture found in France and the dependent states to be 

 burned. This order was strictly observed in France, 

 whilst means were taken to promote the production 

 of certain important articles, such as sugar, tobacco, 

 indigo, in the country. The importation was also 

 permitted by licenses to the advantage of the govern- 

 ment. But the union of Northern Germany with the 

 empire liad injured some of the princes of the con- 

 federacy. The indemnifications which had been pro- 

 mised to them could not overcome the odium of this 

 step. The principal of these injured princes was 

 the duke of Oldenburg, a near relation of the Rus- 

 sian emperor ; and the continuance of peace had 

 already become problematical. But, before these 

 apprehensions were realized, the birth of the king 

 of Rome gave the emperor new hopes. In 1809, 

 when Napoleon declared the papal territory a pro- 

 vince of France, and Rome a city of the empire, 

 he determined that the heir apparent of France 

 should bear the title of king of Rome, and that the 

 emperor of France should be crowned in Rome 

 within the ten first years of his government. The 

 state of things in Spain, the inhabitants of which 

 opposed the French with unexpected firmness, and 

 the daily increasing prospect of an approaching war 

 with the North, which refused to co-operate any 

 longer in the views of France (although the friendly 

 relations hitherto maintained with the court of 

 St Petersburg were not yet formally broken off, and 

 the prince of Ponte-Corvo, the near connexion of 

 Joseph, the brother of the emperor, had been elected 

 successor to the throne of Sweden), did not promise 

 favourably for the future. The British also carried 

 on an important commerce with Russia, in colonial 

 produce, through Gothenburg and the ports of the 

 Baltic, of whicli complaint was made to the courts 

 of Stockholm and Petersburg. The commercial 

 policy of Russia in 1810 and 1811, and its disappro- 

 bation of the treatment of the duke of Oldenburg, 

 had excited the distrust of Napoleon. He was con- 



At this time, the French empire, under Napoleon, con. 

 sistfcl of 130 departments. The territory annexed to the 

 crown, from the commencement of the subjection of the 

 great crown vassals, and the expulsion of the English from 

 France, to the close of the conquests of Napoleon, who 

 nearly restored the ancient empire of Charlemagne, com- 

 prised 82 of these departments, of which the German em- 

 pire had furnished 39, with 12,000,000 inhabitants; theDutrh, 

 *4; Italy, 18; and Spain, 1. The kinrsof France had con. 

 quered 38 ; the French arms until 1799, 17; and the empe- 

 ror -a. 



fident of a declaration of wnr against Britain by the 

 United States, with whom he had been reconciled, 

 and he felt that he might speak the language of 

 offended confidence towards Russia. The conse- 

 quence was a war, which commenced in July, 1812, 

 and in which, besides the states of the confederation 

 of the Rhine and the duchy of Warsaw, Austria, and 

 Prussia were allies of France. (Concerning this war, 

 which rolled back from the Kremlin, where Napo- 

 leon had his head-quarters amidst the smoking ruins 

 of Moscow, across the battle-field of Leipsic, to the 

 heights of Montmartre, see the article Russian-Ger- 

 man war from 1812 to 1815). The immense pre- 

 ponderance of the French empire, and ite endless 

 wars and exactions, had exhausted the patience of 

 the nations of Europe ; and princes and people rose 

 together to throw off the load. (The disappointment 

 of the expectations held out to the people of Europe, 

 when they made common cause with the princes 

 against Napoleon, this is not the place to discus%). 

 An army of 812,000 men, to which, according to the 

 agreement made at Trachenburg, in Silesia (July 12, 

 1813), Austria had furnished 262,000 men, Russia, 

 249,000, Prussia, 277,000, and Sweden, 24,000, 

 destroyed the French empire, and the trophies or" 

 twenty years of victory, in nine months. On March 

 31, 1814, the allied troops entered Paris, and Alex- 

 ander declared, in the name of the allied sovereigns, 

 that they would not negotiate with Napoleon Bona- 

 parte, nor with any of his family ; that they acknow- 

 ledged the right of France only to the territory 

 embraced within its ancient limits under its kings ; 

 and, finally, that they would acknowledge and 

 guarantee the government which the French nation 

 should adopt. They therefore invited the senate to 

 establish a provisory government for the administra- 

 tion of the country and the preparation of a constitu- 

 tion. Accordingly the senate assembled April 1, 

 under the presidency of Talleyrand, whom, with four 

 other members, they charged with the provisory 

 government. On the next day, it declared that 

 Napoleon and his family had forfeited the throne of 

 France. The legislative body ratified this decree, 

 which the provisory government published, and soon 

 after made known the recall of Louis XVIII. (q. v.) 

 to the throne of France. Meanwhile (April 11,) 

 Napoleon had resigned the crown unconditionally in 

 favour of his son, at Fontainebleau. A treaty was 

 concluded the same day ceding to him the island of 

 Elba. 



III. History of France, from the Restoration of the 

 Bourbons, to the Declaration of Louis-Philip, King 

 of the French; from 1814 to 1830. The Bourbons 

 were restored to the throne of France. But did the 

 nation receive them with joy? Those, no doubt, 

 who had nothing to expect but from a change ; 

 those who wished for a return of the feudal times ; 

 those who still cherished a sort of religious attach- 

 ment to the old dynasty ; the greater part of the 

 clergy, and those who desired the restoration of the 

 ancient ecclesiastical establishment ; and, finally, 

 those who were sick of war, and hoped for peace 

 under the Bourbons, these welcomed their return ; 

 but the nation at large received them with reluc- 

 tance, chiefly for three reasons : 1. because they had 

 been placed on the throne by foreign arms (Louis 

 XVIII. openly acknowledged that he owed his 

 throne to the British) ; 2. because, while they had 

 been absent from France, it had undergone a total 

 change, and they had thus become strangers to the 

 country, in which the principles of the revolution 

 were permanently established; 3. because they 

 brought back with them an obsolete noblesse, opposed 

 to the whole spirit and tendency of modern French 

 politics. The Bourbons were, in fact, in a situation 



