Napoleon's insight readily divined his true enemy; but Nelson's great sea fight put an end to all possibility of directly invading Eng land. On the Continent, however, victory fol lowed victory. After Austerlitz (1805), Aus tria gave up her remaining Italian and Illyrian territory and many o( her possessions in Ger many. After Jena (1807), humiliated Prussia was reduced half in size, thrust beyond the Elbe and bound to France by a shameful treaty. Less decisive conflict with Russia was followed by the diplomatic victory of Tilsit (1807). Em-. peror and Tsar entered into friendly alliance. France was to have a free hand in western Europe; Russia was to be permitted to aggran dize herself at the expense of Sweden, Turkey and Asia; and the two were to join in ruining England by enforcing Napoleon's °continental system." The refusal of Portugal to obey Napoleon's command for the confiscation of English com merce led to the seizure of that state. Then followed a like seizure of Spain, out of which grew the long Peninsular War, which, as Na poleon confessed afterward at Saint Helena, was really the canker that destroyed him. At the time, however, it seemed trivial, and for five years after Tilsit Napoleon was master of the Continent. At its greatest extent the huge bulk of France filled the space from the ocean to the Rhine, including not only France as we know it, but also Belgitnn, half of Switzerland and large strips of Germany, while from this central body two outward-curving arms reached toward the east, one along the North Sea to the Danish Peninsula, and the other down the coast of Italy past Rome. The rest of Italy and half the rest of Germany were under Napoleon's protection, ruled as a vassal states by his brothers and generals. Denmark and Switzerland were his willing allies and Prussia and Austria were unwilling ones. Sweden and Russia, though nominally his equals, were al lowed that dignity only because they upheld his policy. Only the extremities of the Continent the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and England, and the mountainous Spanish Peninsula — kept their independence, at the cost of wasting war.
The period was filled with important re arrangements for Europe, territorial, political and social. Many of these were designed in selfishness; but nearly all were to bear good In Germany, even the territorial rearrange ments paved the way for later national unity. Not only the 1,500 anarchic territories of the ulatights," but also the 300 petty, scattered, despotic ecclesiastical states and oligarchic city-republics (with a few excep tions) were absorbed in larger neighbors; so that the multitudinous, ill-governed states of the vanished °Empire)) were consolidated into less than 40. Most of these reorganized states, outside Austria and Prussia, were fur ther combined in the Confederation of the Rhine; and in this Confederation as well as in the German and Italian territory annexed to France, and in the various vassal states over Europe, serfdom and feudalism were abolished and civil equality and the Code Napoleon were introduced. The administration of justice was made cheap and simple, and the old clumsy and corrupt methods of government gave way to order and efficiency.
Most important of all, similar reforms were adopted in Prussia, not from French pressure, but by the influence of the Prussian Minister, Stein, who sought to make his country strong enough to throw off the French yoke and to regenerate Germany. Napoleon's insolence had
at last forced part of Germany into a new na tional patriotism; and that patriotism began to arm itself by borrowing weapons from the arsenal of the Revolution.
Napoleon's "continental system?' if embar rassing to England, was ruinous to Europe. Moreover, Tsar Alexander began to suspect Napoleon of intriguing against him in Finland and Turkey; and in 1811 he refused longer to follow Napoleon's commercial policy. Napo leon declared war. The destruction of his Grand Army amid Russian snows was the signal for the rising of the peoples of central Europe in the Wars of Liberation. Napoleon, like a desperate gamester, refused all terms, and finally was crushed and deposed. The Bourbon dynasty was restored to the throne of France, and the powers met in the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) to reconstruct the map of Europe.
The Congress of In its desires, that Congress stood for reaction. Says Fyffe, "It complacently set to work to turn back the hands of time to the historic hour at which they stood when the Bastille fell?" It ignored peoples, and considered only princes, Its work, therefore, had to be slowly undone through the next half-century.
Still, its power for restoration was less than its wish; and even its most selfish work con tained seeds of progress. Nobody thought of restoring the old ecclesiastical princes, nor of undoing the consolidation of Germany. That country was left in 38 states, and Italy in 12. Austria, which had lost territory in central Europe, received its compensation in Italy, so that its despotic energies were more than ever drawn away into Italian and Danubian ques tions. Renovated Prussia, in return for Slav lands, which it ceded for the tsar's new king dom of Poland, received German territory— half of Saxony, the Pomeranian sea coast and German provinces on the Rhine taken from France. Thus, reaching down into the heart of Germany, and with distant isolated districts to defend on the Rhine and on the Niemen, Prus sia stood forth the natural champion of Ger many against Slav and Gaul. In like manner, Sardinia's gain of Genoa was one more step in the consolidation of Italy. In return for the vast national debt incurred in supporting coali tions against Napoleon, England added still fur ther to her colonial supremacy by holding South Africa, Cyprus, Malta and other im portant stations. Despite its brief welcome to Napoleon at his return from Elba, France was wisely left with the boundaries she had when the Revolutionary wars began. The most seri ous disappointment to the liberals was the failure to secure a national union in Germany. Reactionary Austria secured instead the Ger manic Confederacy — a loose league under Austrian presidency, with a Diet which was merely a meeting of ambassadors °a polite and ceremonious means of doing nothing.° It was worth much to Europe merely to rec ognize that it had common interests which could be arranged by a peaceful congress. Even this gathering of despots was an advance from 18th century politics toward a better in ternational organization. Some of its work, moreover, was distinctly progressive, such as the declaration (secured by England) against the African slave trade, the opening to commerce of the rivers flowing between or through dif ferent countries, and especially the neutraliza tion of Switzerland under the protection of the powers.