CHAPTER NINETEENBy I8o8 Napoleon controlled an army of 8oo,ooo men and an empire that
stretched from the Russian frontier to the Atlantic. In theory his ships
had access to the Baltic and the North Seas, the Mediterranean and the
Aegean. It has been customary ever since to make a threefold distinction
in the Napoleonic Empire: there were the lands within the 'natural
frontiers', the so-called pays reunis; the states ruled by other members of
the Bonaparte family, otherwise known as the pays conquis; and the
nominally independent satellite states or pays allies.
This neat classification conceals many rough edges. In the first place,
many lands annexed by Napoleon and ruled directly from metropolitan
France were not within the natural frontiers. Whereas in I803 Napoleon
possessed Belgium, Nice, Savoy, Piedmont and the left bank of the Rhine
- following the logic of a policy laid down by the Revolution - two years
later he added Genoa, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla and Tuscany. In I8o8
he acquired Rome, in I 809 Holland, the V alais, parts of Hanover and
Westphalia, plus the Hanseatic towns - Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck;
Oldenburg was added in I8Io and Catalonia in I8Iz. Ever the centralizer,
Napoleon managed to increase the I803 figure of Io8 departments and 33
million people of his tightly administered domain to I 30 departments and
44 million people by I 8 I I.
The states ruled by other members of the Bonaparte family included
the Swiss territory of Neuchatel, ruled by Marshal Berthier; Tuscany
ruled by Elisa Bonaparte; the Kingdom of Italy under the aegis of the
Emperor's viceroy and stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais; Naples under
the Murats; Spain theoretically ruled by Joseph; Holland under the
benevolent sway of Louis Bonaparte; and the crossbreed kingdom of
Westphalia, fo rmed in I807 from Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick and parts of
Hanover and Prussia, which had the misfortune to have Jerome
Bonaparte as king. However, there was also a group of territories under
military or direct Napoleonic rule that stopped short of formal
annexation, such as Portugal, the Ionian islands, Slovenia, Dalmatia and
parts of Croatia and Germany (Berg is a good example).