The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (28 page)

And yet, in fact, those pressures were borne, chiefly because they were never applied long or consistently enough to take full effect. The revolution in Spain against French hegemony eased the 1808 economic crisis in Britain, just as Russia’s break with Napoleon brought relief to the 1811–1812 slump, allowing British goods to pour into the Baltic and northern Europe. Moreover, throughout the entire period large amounts of British manufactures and colonial re-exports were smuggled into the continent, at vast profits and usually with the connivance of bribed local officials; from Heligoland to Salonika, the banned produce traveled in circuitous ways to its eager customers—as it later
traveled between Canada and New England during the Anglo-American War of 1812. Finally, the British export economy could also be sustained by the great rise in trade with regions untouched by the Continental System or the American “nonintercourse” policy: Asia, Africa, the West Indies, Latin America (despite all the efforts of local Spanish governors), and the Near East. For all these reasons, and despite serious disruption to British trade in
some
markets for
some
of the time, the overall trend was clear: total exports of British produce rose from £21.7 million (1794–1796) to £37.5 million (1804–1806) to £44.4 million (1814–1816).

The other main reason that the British economy did not crumble in the face of external pressures was that, unfortunately for Napoleon, it was now well into the Industrial Revolution. That these two major historical events interacted with each other in many singular ways is clear: government orders for armaments stimulated the iron, steel, coal, and timber trades, the enormous state spending (estimated at 29 percent of gross national product) affected financial practices, and new export markets boosted production of some factories just as the French “counterblockade” depressed it. Exactly how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars affected the growth of the British economy
as a whole
is a complex and controversial topic, still being investigated by historians, many of whom now feel that the earlier notions of the swift pace of British industrialization in these decades are exaggerated. What
is
clear, however, is that the economy grew throughout this period. Pig-iron output, a mere 68,000 tons in 1788, had already soared to 244,000 tons in 1806 and rose further to 325,000 tons in 1811. Cotton, virtually a new industry before the war, expanded stupendously in the next two decades, absorbing ever more machinery, steam power, coal, and labor; by 1815, cotton goods had become Britain’s greatest export by far. A vast array of new docks and, inland, new canals, turnpikes, and iron rail tracks improved communications and stimulated further production. Regardless of whether this “boom” would have been even greater without the military and naval struggle against France, the fact remains that British productivity and wealth were still rising fast—and could help to bear the burdens which Pitt and his successors imposed in order to pay for the war. Customs and excise receipts, for example, jumped from £13.5 million (1793) to £44.8 million (1815), while the yield from the new income and property taxes rose from £1.67 in 1799 to £14.6 million in the final year of the war. In fact, between 1793 and 1815 the British government secured the staggering sum of £1.217 billion from direct and indirect taxes, and proceeded to raise a further £440 million in loans from the money markets without exhausting its credit—to the amazement of the more fiscally conservative Napoleon. In the critical final few years of the war, the government was borrowing more than £25 million annually, giving itself that decisive extra
margin.
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To be sure, the British were taxed way beyond the limits conceived of by eighteenth-century bureaucrats, and the national debt almost trebled; but the new wealth made such burdens easier to bear—and permitted them, despite their smaller size and population, to endure the costs of war better than the imposing Napoleonic Empire.

    The story of France’s economy between 1789 and 1815, and of its capacity to sustain large-scale war, is an even more complicated one for historians to unravel.
⁸²
The collapse of the
ancien régime
and the turmoil which followed undoubtedly caused a reduction in French economic activity for a while. On the other hand, the outpouring of public enthusiasm for the Revolution and the mobilization of national resources to meet foreign enemies led to a staggering increase in the output of cannon, small arms, and other military equipment, which in turn stimulated the iron and textile trades. In addition, some of the economic obstacles of the old order such as internal tariffs were swept away, and Napoleon’s own legal and administrative reforms aided the prospects for modernization. Even if the coming of the Consulate and the Empire led to the return of many of the features of the monarchical regime (e.g., reliance upon private bankers), this did not check a steady economic growth fueled naturally by population increases, the stimulus of state spending, enhanced tariff protection, and the introduction of certain new technologies.

Nevertheless, there seems no doubt that the rate of growth in the French economy was much slower than in Britain’s. The most profound reason for this was that the agricultural sector, the largest by far, changed very little: for the replacement of the seigneur by his peasants was not, of itself, an
agricultural
revolution; and such widely proclaimed policies as the development of sugar beets (in substitution for British colonial cane sugar) had limited results. Poor communications meant that farmers were still tied to local markets, and little stimulus existed for radical innovations. This conservative frame of mind could also be seen in the nascent industrial sector, where new machinery and large-scale enterprises in, say, iron production were the exception rather than the rule. Significant advances were made, of course, but many of them were under the distorting influence of the war and the British naval blockade. Thus, the cotton industry benefited from the Continental System to the extent that it was protected from superior British competition (not to mention the competition from neutral or satellite states, whose goods were excluded by the high French tariffs); and it also benefited from the enhanced domestic market, since Napoleon’s conquests of bordering lands increased the number of “Frenchmen” from 25 million in 1789 to 44 million in 1810. But this was offset by the shortage and high price of raw cotton, and by the slowdown in the introduction of new techniques from England. On the whole,
French industry emerged from the war in a distinctly
less competitive
state because of this protection from foreign rivals.

The impact of the naval blockade increased this turning inward of the French economy.
⁸³
Its Atlantic sector, the fastest-growing in the eighteenth century and (as had been the case in Britain) potentially a key catalyst for industrialization, was increasingly cut off by the Royal Navy. The loss of Santa Domingo in particular was a heavy blow to French Atlantic trade. Other overseas colonies and investments were also lost, and after 1806, even trade via neutral bottoms was halted. Bordeaux was dreadfully hurt. Nantes had its profitable French slave trade reduced to nothing. Even Marseilles, with alternative trading partners in the hinterland and northern Italy, saw its industrial output fall to one-quarter between 1789 and 1813. By contrast, regions in the north and east of France, such as Alsace, enjoyed the comparative security of land-based trade. Yet even if those areas, and people within them like winegrowers and cotton-spinners, profited in their protected environment, the
overall
impact upon the French economy was much less satisfactory. “Deindustrialized” in its Atlantic sector, cut off from much of the outside world, it turned inward to its peasants, its smalltown commerce, and its localized, uncompetitive, and relatively small-scale industries.

Given this economic conservatism—and, in some cases, definite evidence of retardation—the ability of the French to finance decades of Great Power war seems all the more remarkable.
⁸⁴
While the popular mobilization in the early to middle 1790s offers a ready reason, it cannot explain the Napoleonic era proper, when a long-service army of over 500,000 men (needing probably 150,000 new recruits each year) had to be paid for. Military expenditures, already costing at least 462 million francs in 1807, had soared to 817 million francs in 1813. Not surprisingly, the normal revenues could never manage to pay for such outlays. Direct taxes were unpopular at home and therefore could not be substantially raised—which chiefly explains Napoleon’s return to duties on tobacco, salt, and the other indirect taxes of the
ancien régime;
but neither they nor the various stamp duties and customs fees could prevent an annual deficit of hundreds of millions of francs. It is true that the creation of the Bank of France, together with a whole variety of other financial devices and institutions, allowed the state to conduct a disguised policy of paper money and thus to keep itself afloat on credit—despite the emperor’s proclaimed hostility to raising loans. Yet even that was not enough. The gap could only be filled elsewhere.

To a large if incalculable degree, in fact, Napoleonic imperialism was paid for by plunder. This process had begun internally, with the confiscation and sale of the property of the proclaimed “enemies of the Revolution.”
⁸⁵
When the military campaigns in defense of that revolution had carried the French armies into neighboring lands, it seemed
altogether natural that the foreigner should pay for it. War, to put it bluntly, would support war. By confiscations of crown and feudal properties in defeated countries; by spoils taken directly from the enemy’s armies, garrisons, museums, and treasuries; by imposing war indemnities in money or in kind; and by quartering French regiments upon satellite states and requiring the latter to supply contingents, Napoleon not only covered his enormous military expenditures, he actually produced considerable profits for France—and himself. The sums acquired by the administrators of this
domaine extraordinaire
in the period of France’s zenith were quite remarkable and in some ways foreshadow Nazi Germany’s plunder of its satellites and conquered foes during the Second World War. Prussia, for example, had to pay a penalty of 311 million francs after Jena, which was equal to half of the French government’s ordinary revenue. At each defeat, the Habsburg Empire was forced to cede territories
and
to pay a large indemnity. In Italy between 1805 and 1812 about half of the taxes raised went to the French. All this had the twin advantage of keeping much of the colossal French army
outside
the homeland, and of protecting the French taxpayer from the full costs of the war. Provided that army under its brilliant leader remained successful, the system seemed invulnerable. It was not surprising, therefore, to hear the emperor frequently asserting:

How, then,
could
Napoleon be brought down? Britain alone, lacking the military manpower, could not do it. And an attack upon France by any single continental opponent was always doomed to failure. Prussia’s ill-timed entry into the war in 1806 proved that point, although it did not stop the frustrated Austrians from renewing hostilities with France once again, early in 1809; yet while Austria fought with great spirit at the battles of Eckmühl and Aspern, its further losses at Wagram once more compelled Vienna to sue for peace and to cede additional lands to France and its allies. The French successes against Austria had, moreover, followed closely upon Napoleon’s drive into Spain to crush the revolt there. Thus it seemed that wherever opposition to the emperor’s will arose, it was swiftly dealt with. And although at sea the British showed a similar ruthlessness toward enemies, actual or potential, as in their Copenhagen attack (August 1807), they still tended to fritter away military resources in small-scale raids off southern Italy, in an inept attack upon Buenos Aires, and in the disastrous Walcheren operation in the summer of 1809.
⁸⁷

Yet it was precisely when Napoleon’s system seemed unbeatable that the first significant cracks in the imperial edifice began to appear. Despite the successive military victories, French casualties in these battles had been large—15,000 lost at Eylau and 12,000 at Friedland, 23,000 killed or surrendered at Bailen, a massive 44,000 casualties at Aspern, and another 30,000 at Wagram. Experienced troops were becoming rare, at least outside the exclusive Guard regiments; for example, of the 148,000 men of the Armée de l’Allemagne (exclusive of the Guard) in 1809,47,000 were underage conscripts.
⁸⁸
Although Napoleon’s army, like Hitler’s included many from the conquered territories and the satellites, French manpower stocks were clearly being eroded; whereas the unpredictable czar still had enormous reserves and, even after Wagram, the stubborn and resentful Austrians possessed a very considerable “army in being.” All this would have meaning in the near future.

Furthermore, Napoleon’s drive into Spain in late 1808 had not “decided” that campaign, as he fondly imagined. In dispersing the formal Spanish armies, he had inadvertently encouraged the local populace to resort to guerrilla warfare, which was altogether more difficult to suppress and which multiplied the logistical problems for the French forces. Denied foodstuffs by the local population, the French army was critically dependent upon its own precarious supply lines. Moreover, in making a battlefield of Spain and, still more, of Portugal, Napoleon had unintentionally chosen one of the few areas in which the still-cautious British could be induced to commit themselves, at first tentatively but then with growing confidence as they saw how Wellington exploited local sympathies, the geography of the peninsula, command of the sea, and—last but not least—his own increasingly professional regiments to contain and erode French
élan
. The 25,000 casualties suffered by Massena’s army in his fruitless march against Lisbon in 1810–1811 were an early sign that “the Spanish ulcer” could not be lanced, even when some 300,000 French troops had been dispatched south of the Pyrenees.
⁸⁹