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(1806), after having maintained an existence, since its revival under Charlemagne, of almost exactly one thousand years. Reckoning from its establishment by Cæsar Augustus, it had lasted 1836 years. The Kingdom of Germany, which was created by the partition of the Empire of Charlemagne, now also passed out of existence, even in name.

Trafalgar (Oct. 21, 1805).- Napoleon's brilliant victories in Germany were clouded by an irretrievable disaster to his fleet, which occurred only two days after the engagement at Ulm. Lord Nelson having met, near Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain, the combined French and Spanish fleets, — Spain had become the ally of Napoleon, — almost completely destroyed the combined armaments. The gallant English admiral fell at the moment of victory. "Thank God, I have done my duty," were his last words.

This decisive battle gave England the control of the sea, and relieved her from all danger of a French invasion. Even the "wet ditch," as Napoleon was wont contemptuously to call the English Channel, was henceforth an impassable gulf to his ambition. He might rule the continent, but the sovereignty of the ocean and its islands was denied him.

Jena and Auerstadt (1806). — Prussia was the state next after Austria to feel the weight of Napoleon's power. Goaded by insult, the Prussian king, Frederick William III., very imprudently threw down the gauntlet to the French emperor. Moving with his usual swiftness, Napoleon overwhelmed the armies of Frederick in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, which were both fought upon the same day (Oct. 14, 1806). All Prussia was now trampled down by the French armies, which entered in triumph the capital, Berlin. Thus the great military power consolidated by the genius of Frederick the Great, was crushed and almost annihilated. What had proved too great an undertaking for the combined powers of Europe during the Seven Years' War, Napoleon had effected in less than a month. The sword of the great Frederick, with many treasures stolen from the museums and art galleries of Berlin, were carried as trophies to Paris.

Eylau and Friedland (1807). The year following his victories over the Prussians Napoleon led his Grand Army against the forces of the Czar, Alexander I., who had entered Prussia with aid for King Frederick. A fierce but indecisive battle at Eylau was followed, a little later in the same season, by the battle of Friedland, in which the Russians were completely overwhelmed (June 14, 1807). The Czar was forced to sue for peace. Napoleon arranged a series of meetings with him on a gayly decorated raft, moored midway in the Niemen, the frontier river of Russia.

Alexander seems to have been quite fascinated by the genius and address of his conqueror, who, on this occasion, played the part of a Black Prince with admirable tact and advantage. The outcome of the conferences was the Treaty of Tilsit, soon after signed, and a strange and romantic friendship and alliance between the French Emperor and the Czar.

By the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit Prussia was stripped of more than half of her former dominions, a part of which was made into a new state, called the Kingdom of Westphalia, with Napoleon's brother, Jerome, as its king, and added to the Confederation of the Rhine; while Prussian Poland, reorganized and clumsily christened the "Grand Duchy of Warsaw," was given to Saxony. What was left of Prussia became virtually a dependency of the French Empire.

The Continental System: the Berlin and Milan Decrees. — While Napoleon was carrying on his campaigns against Prussia and Russia, he was all the time meditating vengeance upon England, his most uncompromising foe, and the leader or instigator of the coalitions which were constantly being formed for the overthrow of his power. We have seen how the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar dashed all his hopes of ever making a descent upon the British shores. Unable to reach his enemy directly with his arms, he resolved to strike her through her commerce. By two celebrated imperial edicts, called from the cities whence they were issued the Berlin and Milan decrees, he closed all the ports of the continent against English ships, and forbade any of the European

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nations from holding any intercourse with Great Britain, all of whose ports he declared in a state of blockade.

So completely was Europe under the domination of Napoleon, that England's trade was by these measures very seriously crippled, and great loss and suffering were inflicted upon her industrial classes. We shall have occasion a little later to speak of the disastrous effects of the system upon the French Empire itself.

Beginning of the Peninsular Wars (1808). One of the first consequences of Napoleon's "continental policy" was to bring him into conflict with Portugal. The prince regent of that country presuming to open its ports to English ships, Napoleon at once deposed him, and sent one of his marshals to take possession of the kingdom. The entire royal family, accompanied by many of the nobility, fled to Brazil, and made that country the seat of an empire which has endured to the present day.

Having thus gained a foothold in the Peninsula, Napoleon now resolved to possess himself of the whole of it. Insolently interfering in the affairs of Spain, — the government of which, it must be confessed, was in a very distracted state, he forced the weakminded Bourbon king to resign to him, as "his dearly beloved friend and ally," his crown, which he bestowed at once upon his brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1808). The throne of Naples, which Joseph had been occupying, was transferred to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law. Thus did this audacious man make and unmake kings, and give away thrones and kingdoms.

1

But the high-spirited Spaniards were not the people to submit tamely to such an indignity. The entire nation, from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, flew to arms. Portugal also arose, and England sent to her aid a force under Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, and the hero of Waterloo. The French were soon driven out of Portugal, and pushed beyond the Ebro in Spain. Joseph fled in dismay from his throne, and Napoleon found it necessary to take the field himself, in order to restore the prestige of the French arms. He entered the Penin

1 Napoleon dethroned the Bourbons in Naples in 1805.

sula at the head of an army of 80,000 men, and scattering the Spaniards wherever he met them, entered Madrid in triumph, and reseated his brother upon the Spanish throne.

Threatening tidings from another quarter of Europe now caused Napoleon to hasten back to Paris.

Second Campaign against Austria (1809).-Taking advantage of Napoleon's troubles in the Peninsula, Francis I. of Austria, who had been watching for an opportunity to retrieve the disaster of Austerlitz, gathered an army of half a million of men, and declared war against the French Emperor. But Austria was fated to suffer even a deeper humiliation than she had already endured. Napoleon swept across the Danube, and at the end of a short campaign, the most noted battles of which were those of Eckmühl and Wagram, Austria was again at his feet, and a second time he entered Vienna in triumph. Austria was now still farther dismembered, large tracts of her possessions being ceded directly to Napoleon or given to the various neighboring states (1809).

The Papal States and Holland joined to the French Empire.— That Napoleon cared but little for the thunders of the Church is shown by his treatment of the Pope. Pius VII. opposing his continental system, the Emperor incorporated the Papal States with the French Empire (1809). The Pope thereupon excommunicated Napoleon, who straightway arrested the Pontiff, and dragged him over the Alps into France. He held him in captivity for four years, moving him from place to place, and part of the time limiting him to prison fare.

The year following the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire, Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, who disapproved of his brother's continental system, which was ruining the trade of the Dutch, abdicated the crown. Thereupon Napoleon incorporated Holland with France, on the ground that it was simply "the sediment of the French rivers."

Napoleon's Second Marriage (1810). — The year following his triumph over Francis I. of Austria, Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine, in order to form a new alliance, with Maria Louisa,