Bonaparte had shown himself the greatest mas ter of the art of war, and one of the stn•ewdest of diplomats, when at thirty years of age he un dertook the ditties of a ruler, law-giver, and ad ministrator. His greatness lay in the univer sality of his genius and in his inordinate ca pacity for hard work. Further, he was able to comtnand the services of many men of extraor dinary ability, and to make their work his own. Ills reorganization of the Government of France was accomplished in a few months and comprised enough achievements of the first order to have established the enduring fame Of several states men. This tremendous activity so stirred and inspired his officials that they said "the gigantic entered into our very habits of thought." With Gaudin he reorganized the treasury department. regulated the assessment and collection of the taxes, and organized the Bank of France. With Chaptal he reorganized the local administration with the prefects and subprefeets responsilde to the central authority, the Council of State. The schism between the Catholic Church and the con stitutional clergy was healed and the Catholic Church restored to its old-time place in France, by the negotiation of the Concordat (q.v.) with Pius VII. in 1801. The Lutherans, the Calvinists, and ultimately even the .Jews were brought into similarly close relations with the State. The educational system was recon structed. especially in the matter of secondary schools and of technical education. The work was completed by the establishment in 1805 of the University of France, which comprised the whole tc:u•lling force of the Empire. The estab lishment of the Legion of Honor in Slay, 1802, provided a means of recognizing services to the State. The greatest triumph was the codification of the laws of France. (See CODE NArmr.f:ox.) All these acts revealed Bonaparte as a master workman who deftly joined together in a perfect whole the many parts which craftsmen had wrought out with difficulty in the days of the Revolution.
France had lost her colonial empire in the eighteenth century, and it was the fond hope of Bonaparte that Ile might restore it and tiros rival England in emnnterce and upon the seas. To this end he began a series of en terprises which embraced every quarter of the globe—No•tIi and South America. Africa, India and the East. and Australia. Ile secured the cession of Louisiana from Spain. and sent an army to recover Haiti, where the blacks had suc cessfully risen against their oppressors. In all these schemes he was checkmated by England.but on the Continent of Europe he NV:I.: hinderod IT nothing more serious than protests in reaping the fruit of the wars of the French Revolution. Ile ree.mstituted upon the n•w French lines the Entavian Republic, the Cisalpine Republic (which became the Italian Republie). and the Ligurian Republic (1501-02). Ile extended the bounds of France, which already had the Rhine, the Pyre nees. and the Alps as her frontiers, by the un justifiable atmexation of Piedmont and Parma in 1802. lie was actively concerned in the reorgan ization of Switzerland and of Germany in 1803. The Treaty of Aranjuez ()larch 21. 18011 bound Spain to France. while Portugal, the faithful all• of England. was humbled by the Treaty of Baulajoz (September 29. 1801).
Bonaparte's colonial schemes were frustrated by yellow fever, which destroyed General Leclerc and his army in 1lsJfJ and forced the Consul to sacrifice Louisiana to the United States (1803) and abandon his dream of em pire beyond the seas. Pique at this disappoint ment hastened Bonaparte into the predetermined rupture with England. A cosus LOH was found in the question of Malta, which England refused to surrender in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. Alortier occupied Ilanover, of which George III. was King. Gen. Gouvion Saint-Cyr was ordered to occupy the Kingdom of Naples, an ally of England, to offset the occupa tion of The French army was mobilized in six divisions and stationed along the Channel from Ostend to Brest. War existed from Slay 16, 1803, but actual hostilities did not begin until over two years later. In the meantime England recalled Pitt to office (Slay, 1804). Pitt's great service consisted in securing allies and in forming the Third Coalition against France. In this work he was aided by Bona parte's blunders, the most notable of which was the execution of the Due d'Enghien (Slarch 21, 1804), in retaliation for the Royalist plots of Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal. On the day
of Pitt's return to power, Bonaparte was offered the title of Emperor by the French Senate, and on December 2, 1804, he was crowned Emperor as Napoleon 1. at Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. On Slay 26th, 1805. he was crowned at Milan King of Italy. A few days later fol lowed the last of his series of aggressions, which provoked Austria and Russia into the alliance with England, the annexation to France of the Ligurian Republic (dune 4). A month later Russia and England signed their alliance against Napoleon, and on August 9th they were secretly joined by Austria. Sweden, Portugal, and Naples were practically, though not formally, parties to this coalition.
Fo• two years Napoleon had been dallying with a scheme for the invasion of England. In the camps along the Channel he had organized, equipped. and drilled his famous Grand Army, composed largely of veterans of the wars of the and at lionlogne special had toms been under way for an attack upon England. The summer of 1805 seemed the pro pitious time for the attack. and Napoleon made elaborate dispositions for obtaining naval eontrol of the Channel and for the transportation of an army of 160,000 men from Boulogne to the Kentish coast. The French fleet under Villeneuve, however. was outmanoeuvred and outfought by the English under Cornwallis, Calder, and Nel son. fly the middle of August. 1805. the scheme had become impossible of execution, Naltoleon, however, had foreseen this possi bility: his other acts hail already provided him with another chance to employ his artily, and he had worked out in his mind the plan of his most brilliantly successful ea mpaign, that of Austerlitz. On August 29th the Army of England was officially denominated the Grand Army and divided into seven corps under Berna dotte. Slarmont. Davont, Soult, La11111“:. Ney. and Augerean, with the eavalry under Slurat. and the imperial Guard under liessii‘res. in all about 220.000 men under the persona] command of the Emperor, with Berthier as chief of staff. War was declared against Austria on September 25th, and the next day the movement of the Grand Army into Southern Germany began. On the part of Austria, the Archduke Charles, with over 90,000 men, the best general and the largest army, was intrusted with operations in Italy, where 50.000 French troop: were under the command of Alass(Ina, while the smaller Austrian army under the command of the Archduke Ferdinand and General Mack, in vaded Bavaria and occupied the untenable line of the Danube and the 111er with headquarters at Uhn. This move left Austria almost bare of troops. Making a feint at repeating Moreau's tactics of 1796 in attempting to turn Nack's left, Napoleon ordered the actual attack to be made on the right. Bernadotte and Narmont occupied Munich, Payout and Souk seized Augs burg, while Ney and Lannes occupied Giinzburg and operated to the north of Ulm. Mack made three fruitless attempts to extricate himself, but after defeats at \\lettingen, Memmingen, and Elchingen (October 14th), he was forced to capitulate with 33,000 men on October 20th. Though the Archduke Ferdinand escaped. Napo leon's forces were thus able to advance directly to Vienna, which he occupied on November I3th. The Russian forces which had been advancing to support Mack were forced to fall back into Bohemia, where the various divisions were united under the command of KutusofF and joined by part of the Austrian forces. Napoleon marched northward to meet them, and on December 2d won his greatest victory, Austerlitz. The cam paign of LTIm and Austerlitz was won by Napo leon's knowledge of the value of time, the whirlwind rapidity of his movements, and the precision of his combinations. The battle of Austerlitz was won by a masterly use of artillery. The vanquished Emperor Francis 1. of Austria, humbled himself before Napoleon in the Treaty of Pressburg (December 26th) and consented to large cessions of territory. including the former Venetian dominions, Tyrol (which was given to Bavaria), etc. The overthrow of Austria re sulted in the formal dissolution of the old Holy Roman Empire (August 6. 1806).