rporated into
the Empire. Jerome was deprived of a portion of Hanover, which he had
received only in January, and the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married
that favorite sister of Alexander for whose hand Napoleon had
tentatively sued, was dethroned.

The same year Valais, the little commonwealth which had been separated
from Switzerland and made independent in order to neutralize the
highway into Italy, was likewise annexed. This new department, called
that of the Simplon, together with the four erected out of the
coast-line of the North Sea, brought the limits of Napoleonic empire
to their greatest extent. The Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Isles
were not under direct civil administration from Paris, being held as
military outposts. Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia were each
likewise held as military governments. Murat was made king of Naples,
Louis's infant son became grand duke of Berg, Elisa was already grand
duchess of Tuscany and princess of Lucca and Piombino. It will be
remembered that Pauline was duchess of Guastalla, Jerome king of
Westphalia, Joseph king of Spain, Berthier prince of Neuchatel,
Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Eugene viceroy of the kingdom of
Italy. These states, together with the Confederation of the Rhine, the
Helvetic Republic, Bavaria, Saxony, Wuertemberg, and Denmark, with
Norway, were all vassal powers. But Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence,
Siena, Leghorn, Osnabrueck, Muenster, Bremen, and Hamburg were now
capitals of actual French departments, the total number of which
reached one hundred and thirty. They were directly administered by a
central bureaucracy as autocratic as any military despotism.

Thus at last was carried out the program of the Revolution, whose
leaders had determined in 1796 to close the Continent to English
commerce. What republican idealism had imagined, imperial vigor at
least partially realized. According to the Trianon decree of August
fifth, 1810, and that of Fontainebleau, issued on October eighteenth
of the same year, French soldiers crossed the frontiers of the Empire,
seized every depot of English wares within a four-mile limit, and
burned all the contents except the sugar and coffee, which were
transported to the great towns, and sold at auction for the Emperor's
extraordinary expenses; the smugglers themselves were hunted down,
captured, and handed over to the tender mercies of a court created
especially to try them. From the Pyrenees to the North C