CHAPTER IV
The Frankfort Proposals[4]
Importance of the Battle of Leipsic — Decline of Napoleon's Powers — His Gentler Side — Disintegration of Napoleon's Empire — The Coalition and the Sentiment of Nationality — Reasons for the Parley at Frankfort — Insincerity of the Proposal — Napoleon and France — The Revolution and the Empire — Hollow Diplomacy.
The battle of Leipsic is one of the most important in general history. Apparently it was only the offset to Austerlitz, as the Beresina had been to Friedland. In reality it was far more, because it gave the hegemony of continental Europe to Prussia. French imperialism in its death-throes wiped out the score of royal France against the Hapsburgs; Austria was not yet banished from central Europe to the lower courses of the Danube, but, what was much the same thing, Prussia was launched upon her career of military aggrandizement. Three dynasties seemed in that battle to have celebrated a joint triumph; as a matter of fact, the free national spirit of Germany, having narrowly escaped being smothered by Napoleonic imperialism, had chosen a national dynasty as its refuge. The conflict is well designated by German historians as "the battle of the nations," but the language has a different sense from that which is generally attributed to it. The seeds of Italian unity had been sown, but they were not yet to germinate. The battle of Leipsic seemed to check them, yet it was the process there begun under which they sprang up and bore fruit. France was destined to become for a time the sport of an antiquated dynastic system. The liberties which men of English blood had been painfully developing for a century she sought to seize in an instant; she was to see them still elude her grasp for sixty years, until her democratic life, having assumed consistency, should find expression in institutions essentially and peculiarly her own. Though the conquering monarchs believed that revolutionary liberalism had been quenched at Leipsic, its ultimate triumph was really assured, since it was consigned to its natural guardianship, that of national commonwealths. The imperial agglomeration of races and nationalities was altogether amorphous and had been found impossible; that form of union was not again attempted after Leipsic, while another—that, namely, of constitutional organic nationalities—was made operative. The successive stages of advance are marked by 1813, 1848, and 1870.
The Saxon campaigns display the completion of the process in which the great strategist, stifled by political anxieties, became the creature of circumstances both as general and statesman. The Russian campaign was nicely calculated, but its proportions and aim were those of the Oriental theocrat, not of the prosaic European soldier. With the aid of the railroad and the electric telegraph, they might possibly have been wrought into a workable problem, but that does not excuse the errors of premature and misplaced ambition. The Saxon campaigns, again, are marked by a boldness of design and a skill in combination characteristic of the best strategy; but again the proportions are monstrous, and, what is worse, the execution is intermittent and feeble. As in Russia, the war organism was insufficient for the numbers and distances involved, while the subordinates of every grade, though supple instruments, seemed mercenary, self-seeking, and destitute of devotion. Bonaparte had ruled men's hearts by his use of a cause, securing devotion to it and to himself by rude bonhomie, by success, and by sufficient rewards; Napoleon, on the other hand, quenched devotion by a lavishness which sated the greediest, and lost the affections of his associates by the demands of his gigantic plans.
As the world-conqueror felt the foundations of his greatness quivering, he became less callous and more human. Early in 1813 he said: "I have a sympathetic heart, like another, but since earliest childhood I have accustomed myself to keep that string silent, and now it is altogether dumb." His judgment of himself was mistaken: throughout the entire season he was strangely and exceptionally moved by the horrors of war; his purse was ever open for the suffering; he released the King of Saxony from his entangling engagements; in spite of his hard-set expression on the retreat from Leipsic, he forbade his men to fire the suburbs of the city in order to retard the pursuit of their foes, and before he left Mainz for St. Cloud he showed the deepest concern, and put forth the strongest effort, in behalf of the dying soldiery.
The immediate effects of Leipsic were the full display of that national spirit which had been refined, if not created, in the fires of Napoleon's imperious career. An Austrian army under Hiller drove Eugène over the Adige. The Italians, not unsusceptible to the power in the air, felt their humiliation, and, turning on their imperial King in bitter hate, determined, under the influence of feelings most powerfully expressed by Alfieri, that they would emulate northern Europe. But though they had for years been subject to the new influences, enjoying the equal administration of the Code Napoléon, and freed from the interference of petty local tyrants, they were neither united nor enlightened in sufficient degree. After an outburst of hatred to France, they were crushed by their old despots, and the land relapsed into the direst confusion. The Confederation of the Rhine was, however, resolved into its elements: the Mecklenburgs reasserted their independence; King Jerome fled to France; Würtemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Baden followed Bavaria's example; Cassel, Brunswick, Hanover, and Oldenburg were craftily restored to their former rulers before Stein's bureau could establish an administration. Holland recalled the Prince of Orange, Spain rose to support Wellington, and Soult was not merely driven over the Pyrenees—he was defeated on French soil, and shut up in Bayonne.
Even the three monarchs, as they sedately moved across Germany with their exhausted and battered armies, were aware of nationality as a controlling force in the future. In a direct movement on Paris they could, as Ney said, "have marked out their days in advance," but they halted at Frankfort for a parley. There were several reasons why they should pause. They had seen France rise in her might; they did not care to assist at the spectacle again. Moreover, the coalition had accomplished its task and earned its pay; not a Frenchman, except real or virtual prisoners, was left east of the Rhine. From that point the interests of the three monarchs were divergent. As Gentz, the Austrian statesman, said, "The war for the emancipation of states bids fair to become one for the emancipation of the people." Alexander, Frederick William, and Francis were each and all anxious for the future of absolutism, but otherwise there was mutual distrust. Austria was suspicious of Prussia, and desired immediate peace. In the restoration of Holland under English auspices, Russia saw the perpetuation of British maritime and commercial supremacy, to the disadvantage of her Oriental aspirations, and the old Russian party demanded peace. On the other hand, Alexander wished to avenge Napoleon's march to Moscow by an advance to Paris; and though Frederick William distrusted what he called the Czar's Jacobinism, his own soldiers, thirsting for further revenge, also desired to prosecute the war; even the most enlightened Prussian statesmen believed that nothing short of a complete cataclysm in France could shake Napoleon's hold on that people and destroy his power. Offsetting these conflicting tendencies against one another, Metternich was able to secure military inaction for a time, while the coalition formulated a series of proposals calculated to woo the French people, and thus to bring Napoleon at once to terms.
Ostensibly the Frankfort proposals, adopted on November ninth, were only a slight advance on the ultimatum of Prague: Austria was to have enough Italian territory to secure her preponderance in that peninsula; France was to keep Savoy, with Nice; the rest of Italy was to be independent. Holland and Spain liberated, France was to have her "natural" boundaries, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the ocean, and the Rhine. Napoleon was to retain a slight preponderance in Germany, and the hope was held out that in a congress to settle details for a general pacification, Great Britain, content with the "maritime rights" which had caused the war, would hand back the captured French colonies. The various ministers present at Frankfort assented to these proposals for Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia respectively; but Alexander and Frederick William were dissatisfied with them, and when Castlereagh heard them, he was as furious as his cold blood would permit at the thought of France retaining control of the Netherlands, Antwerp being the commercial key to central Europe.
Such a humor in three of the high contracting parties makes it doubtful whether the Frankfort proposals had any reality, and this doubt is further increased by the circumstances of the so-called negotiation. St. Aignan, the French envoy to the Saxon duchies, had in violation of international law and courtesy been seized at Gotha and held as a prisoner. He was now set free and instructed to urge upon Napoleon the necessity of an immediate settlement. To his brother-in-law, the pacific Caulaincourt, who was soon to displace Maret as minister of foreign affairs, he was to hand a private and personal letter from Metternich. In the course of this epistle the writer expresses his conviction that any effort to conclude a peace would come to nothing. Not only, therefore, were the pretended negotiations entirely destitute of form, they were prejudged from the outset. Still further, the allies refused what Napoleon had granted after Bautzen, an armistice, and insisted that hostilities were to proceed during negotiation. All possible doubt as to the sincerity of the proposals is turned into assurance by Metternich's admission in his memoirs that they were intended to divorce Napoleon from the French nation, and in particular to work on the feelings of the army. He says that neither Alexander nor Frederick William would have assented to them had they not been convinced that Napoleon would "never in the world of his own accord" resolve to accept them. Yet the world has long believed that Napoleon, as he himself expressed it, lost his crown for Antwerp; that had he believed the honeyed words of the Austrian minister, and opened negotiations on an indefinite basis without delay, he might have kept France with its revolutionary boundaries intact for himself and his dynasty, and by the sacrifice of his imperial ambitions have retained for her, if not preponderance, at least importance in the councils of Europe.
Neither Napoleon nor the French nation was deceived; a peace made under such circumstances could result only in a dishonorable tutelage to the allied sovereigns. France abhorred the dynasties and all their works, believing that dynastic rule could never mean anything except absolutism and feudalism. The experiment of popular sovereignty wielded by a democracy had been a failure; but the liberal French, like men of the same intelligence throughout Europe, did not, for all that, lose faith in popular sovereignty; they knew there must be some channel for its exercise. Outside of France, as in it, the most enlightened opinion of the time regarded Napoleon as the savior of society. The Queen of Saxony bitterly reproached Metternich for having deserted Napoleon's "sacred cause." This was because the Emperor of the French seemed to have used the people's power for the people's good. His giant arm alone could wield the popular majesty. It is said that the great mass of the French nation, on hearing of the Frankfort proposals, groaned and laughed by turns. Being profoundly, devotedly imperialist and therefore idealistic, they were outraged at the thought of Hapsburgs, Romanoffs, or Hohenzollerns, the very incarnations of German feudality, as leaders of the new Europe. It seemed the irony of fate that civil and political rights on the basis, not of privilege, but of manhood, the prize for which the world had been turned upside down, should be intrusted to such keepers. Welded into a homogeneous nationality themselves, the French could not understand that the inchoate nationalities in other states had as yet nothing but dynastic forms of expression, or foresee that during a century to come the old dynasties would find safety only in adapting royalty to national needs.
Napoleon seems to have been fully aware of French sentiment. In addition, he understood that not merely for this sufficient reason could he never be king of France in name or fact, but also that, having elsewhere harried and humiliated both peoples and dynasties in the name of revolutionary ideals, the masses had found him out, and were as much embittered as their rulers, believing him to be a charlatan using dazzling principles as a cloak for personal ambition. In May, 1813, the Emperor Francis, anxious to salve the lacerated pride of the Hapsburgs, produced a bundle of papers purporting to prove that the Bonapartes had once been ruling princes at Treviso. "My nobility," was Napoleon's stinging reply, "dates only from Marengo." He well knew that when the battle should be fought that would undo Marengo, his nobility would end. In other words, without solid French support he was nothing, and that support he was fully aware he could never have as king of France. If the influence of what France improperly believed to be solely the French Revolution were to be confined to her boundaries, revolutionary or otherwise, not only was Napoleon's prestige destroyed, but along with it would go French leadership in Europe. An imperial throne there must be, exerting French influence far abroad. What happened at Paris, therefore, may be regarded as a counter-feint to Metternich's effort at securing an advantageous peace from the French nation when it should have renounced Napoleon. It was merely an attempt to collect the remaining national strength, not now for aggressive warfare, but for the expulsion of hated invaders.
Having received no formulated proposition for acceptance or rejection, and desiring to force one, the Emperor of the French virtually disregarded the letter of Metternich's communication, and sent a carefully considered message to the allies. Making no mention in this of the terms brought by St. Aignan, he suggested Caulaincourt as plenipotentiary to an international congress, which should meet somewhere on the Rhine, say at Mannheim. Further, he declared that his object had always been the independence of all the nations, "from the continental as well as from the maritime point of view." This communication reached Frankfort on November sixteenth, and, whether wilfully or not, was misinterpreted to mean that the writer would persist in questioning England's maritime rights. Thereupon Metternich replied by accepting Mannheim as the place for the proposed conference, and promised to communicate the language of Napoleon's letter to his co-allies. How far these co-allies were from a sincere desire for peace is proven by their next step, taken almost on the date of Metternich's reply. A proclamation was widely posted in the cities of France, which stated, in a cant borrowed from Napoleon's own practice, that the allies desired France "to be great, strong, and prosperous"; they were making war, it was asserted, not "on France, but on that preponderance which Napoleon had too long exercised, to the misfortune of Europe and of France herself, to which they guaranteed in advance an extent of territory such as she never had under her kings." Napoleon's riposte was to despatch a swarm of trusty emissaries throughout France in order to compose all quarrels of the people with the government, to strengthen popular devotion in every possible way—in short, to counteract the possible effects of this call. The messengers found public opinion thoroughly imperial, but profoundly embittered against Maret as the supposed instigator of disastrous wars. Maret was transferred to the department of state, and the pacific Caulaincourt was made minister of foreign affairs. On December second, at the earliest possible moment, the new minister addressed a note to Metternich, accepting the terms of the "general and summary basis." This, said the despatch, would involve great sacrifices; but Napoleon would feel no regret if only by a similar abnegation England would provide the means for a general, honorable peace. Metternich replied that nothing now stood in the way of convening a congress, and that he would notify England to send a plenipotentiary. There, however, the matter ended, and Metternich's record of those Frankfort days scarcely notices the subject, so interested is he in the squabbles of the sovereigns over the opening of a new campaign. It was the end of the year when they reached an agreement.
CHAPTER V
The Invasion of France[5]
Amazing Schemes of Napoleon for New Levies — Attitude of the People toward the Empire — The Disaffected Elements — Napoleon's Armament — Activity of the Imperialists — Release of Ferdinand and the Pope — Napoleon's Farewell to Paris — His Strategic Plan — France against Europe — The Conduct of Bernadotte — Murat's Defection — Conflicting Interests of the Allies — Positions of the Opponents at the Outbreak of Hostilities.
1813-14
What happened in France between the first days of November, 1813, when Napoleon reached St. Cloud, and the close of the year, is so incredible that it scarcely seems to belong in the pages of sober history. Of five hundred and seventy-five thousand Frenchmen, strictly excluding Germans and Poles, who had been sent to war during 1812 and 1813, about three hundred thousand were prisoners or shut up in distant garrisons, and a hundred and seventy-five thousand were dead or missing; therefore a hundred thousand or thereabouts remained under arms and ready for active service. By various decrees of the Emperor and the senate, nine hundred and thirty-six thousand more were called to arms: a hundred and sixty thousand from the classes between 1804 and 1814, whether they had once served or not; a hundred and sixty thousand from the class of 1815; a hundred and seventy-six thousand five hundred were to be enrolled in the regular national guard, and a hundred and forty thousand in a home guard; finally, in a comprehensive sweep from all the classes between 1804 and 1814 inclusive, every possible man was to be drawn. This, it was estimated, would produce three hundred thousand more.
It is easy to exaggerate the significance of these enormous figures, for to the layman they would seem to mean that every male capable of bearing arms was to be taken. But this was far from being the case; contrary to the general impression, the population of France had been and was steadily increasing. In spite of all the butcheries of foreign and civil wars, the number of inhabitants was growing at the rate of half a million yearly, and the country could probably have furnished three times the number called out. Moreover, less than a third of the nine hundred and thirty-six thousand were ever organized, and not more than an eighth of them fought. This disproportion between plan and fulfilment was due partly to official incapacity or worse, partly to a popular resistance which was not due to disaffection. It speaks volumes for the state of the country that even the hated flying columns, with their thorough procedure, could not find the men, especially the fathers, husbands, and only sons, who were the solitary supports of many families. The fields were tilled by the spades of women and children, for there were neither horses to draw nor men to hold the plows. Government pawn-shops were gorged, and the government storehouses were bursting with manufactured wares for which there was no market; government securities were worth less than half their face, the currency had disappeared, and usury was rampant. Yet it seems certain that four fifths of the people associated none of these miseries with Napoleonic empire. The generation which had grown to maturity under Napoleon saw only one side of his activities: the majestic public works he had inaugurated, the glories of France and the splendors of empire during the intervals of peace, the exhaustion and abasement of her foes in a long series of splendid campaigns—all this they associated with the imperial rule, and desired what they supposed was a simple thing, the Empire and peace.
The other fifth was, however, thoroughly aroused. When the legislature convened on December nineteenth, and the diplomatic correspondence was so cleverly arranged and presented as to make the allies appear implacable, an address to the throne was passed, amid thunderous applause and by a large majority, which virtually called for a return to constitutional government as the price of additional war supplies. In sober moments even the most ardent liberals were ashamed, feeling that this was not an opportune moment for disorganizing such administration as there was by calls for the reform of the constitution. Only one question was imperative, the awful responsibility they had for the national identity. The general public was so outraged by the spectacle that the deputies reconsidered their action, and by a vote of two hundred and fifty-four to two hundred and twenty-three struck out the obnoxious clause. But this did not appease Napoleon, who made no attempt to conceal his rage, and prorogued the chamber in scorn. His support was ample in the almost universal conviction that at such a moment there was no time for parleying about abstract questions of political rights; but every cavilling deputy had some friends at home, and in a crisis where the very existence of France was jeopardized there were agitations by the reactionary radicals. The royalists kept silent then, and for months later, contenting themselves with biting innuendos or witty double meanings; drinking, for instance, to "the Emperor's last victory," when the newspapers announced "the last victory of the Emperor."
The first conscription from the classes of 1808-1814 was thoroughly successful, the second attempt to glean from them was an utter failure; the effort to forestall the draft of 1815 met with resistance, and was abandoned. It was impossible to organize the home guards and reserves, for they rebelled or escaped, and local danger had to be averted by local volunteers who were designated as "sedentary" because they could not be ordered away. By the end of January not more than twenty thousand men had been secured for general service from all classes other than the first—at least that was approximately the number in the various camps of instruction. In order to arm and equip the recruits, Napoleon had recourse to his private treasure, drawing fifty-five million francs from the vaults of the Tuileries for that purpose. The remaining ten were transferred at intervals to Blois. But all his treasure could not buy what did not exist. The best military stores were in the heart of Europe; the French arsenals could afford only antiquated and almost useless supplies. The recruits were armed, some with shot-guns and knives, some with old muskets, the use of which they did not know; they were for the most part without uniforms, and wore bonnets, blouses, and sabots. There were not half enough horses for the scanty artillery and cavalry. Worse than all, there was no time for instruction in the manual and tactics. On one occasion a boy conscript was found standing inactive under a fierce musketry fire; with artless intrepidity he remarked that he believed he could aim as well as anybody if he only knew how to load his gun!
Napoleon in 1813
From a painting by Aimable-Louis-Claude Pagnest.
The disaffected, though few, were powerful and active, suborning the prefects and civic authorities by every device, issuing proclamations which promised anything and everything, and procuring plans of fortified places for the allies. Talleyrand began to utter oracular innuendos about the vindictiveness of the allies, the desertion of Murat, the sack of Paris, and various half-truths more dangerous even than lies. The air was so full of rumors that, although there was no widespread revolutionary movement, there were now and then serious panics; the town of Chaumont surrendered to a solitary Würtemberg horseman. But when the populace of the country at large began to wonder who the coming Bourbon might be, and what he would take back from the present possessors of royal and ecclesiastical estates, they were staggered. People in the cities heard with some satisfaction the strains of the "Marseillaise," which by order of imperial agents were once again ground out around the streets by the hand-organs. Napoleon walked the avenues of Paris without escort, and was wildly cheered; the Empress and her little son were produced on public occasions with dramatic success, and popular wit dubbed the boy conscripts by the name of "Marie Louises." The little men showed a grim determination and eventually a sublime courage, but they never could acquire the veteran steadfastness which wins battles. Journals, theaters, music-halls, and public balls were all managed in the interest of imperial patriotism; imperial tyranny dealt ruthlessly with suspicious characters. Yet the imperialists had their doubts, and many, like Savary, threw an anchor to windward by storing treasure at distant points, and sending their families to safe retreats. On the whole, the balance of public opinion at the opening of 1814 was overwhelmingly imperialist both in the cities and in the country. Men ardently desired peace, but they wanted it with honor and under the Empire.
That the Empire desired peace seemed to be proved by steps for the release of its two most important prisoners, the King of Spain and the Pope. Wellington thought that if the former had been despatched directly into his kingdom on December eighth, the day on which the conditions between himself and the Emperor were signed, England would have found the further conduct of the war impossible. Talleyrand, already deep in royalist plots, must have been of the same opinion, for he did not advise haste, but craftily suggested to his prisoner that the provisional government of Spain might refuse to accept him as king unless the treaty of release had been previously ratified by the Cortes. Accordingly it was referred to them, and, since the liberals desired the assent to their new constitution of a king not under duress, by their influence it was rejected. It was not until March, 1814, that Ferdinand was unconditionally released, and this delay proved fatal to Napoleon's interests in Spain. The liberals could no longer fight for free institutions, because it was then clear that the dynastic conservatism of Europe was to win a temporary victory. In about six months King Ferdinand undid the progressive work of six years, and Spain relapsed into absolutism and ecclesiasticism, with all their attendant evils. Nevertheless, France interpreted the conduct of the Emperor as indicating an earnest desire for peace, and this feeling had been strengthened by the absolutely unconditional release of the Pope on January twenty-second. This apparently gracious concession was effective among the masses, who did not know, as the Emperor did, that the allies were already on French soil.
The very next day Napoleon performed his last official act, which was one of great courage both physical and moral. The national guard in Paris had been reorganized, but its leaders had never been thoroughly loyal, many of them being royalists, some radical republicans, and the disaffection of both classes had been heightened by recent events. But the officers were nevertheless summoned to the Tuileries; the risk was doubled by the fact that they came armed. Drawn up in the vast chamber known as that of the marshals, they stood expectant; the great doors were thrown open, and there entered the Emperor, accompanied only by his consort and their child in the arms of his governess, Mme. de Montesquiou. Napoleon announced simply that he was about to put himself at the head of his army, hoping, by the aid of God and the valor of his troops, to drive the enemy beyond the frontiers. There was silence. Then, taking in one hand that of the Empress, and leading forward his child by the other, he continued, "I intrust the Empress and the King of Rome to the courage of the national guard." Still silence. After a moment, with suppressed emotion, he concluded, "My wife and my son." No generous-hearted Frenchman could withstand such an appeal; breaking ranks by a spontaneous impulse, the listeners started forward in a mass, and shook the very walls with their cry, "Long live the Emperor!" Many shed tears, and felt, as they withdrew in respectful silence, a new sense of devotion welling up in their hearts. On the eve of his departure, the Emperor received a numerously signed address from the very men whose loyalty he had hitherto had just reason to suspect.
It was four in the morning of January twenty-fifth when Napoleon left for Châlons. From that moment he was no longer Emperor. During the long winter nights just past he had wrought with an intensity and a feverish activity which he had never surpassed, sparing neither himself nor others, displaying no consideration for prejudice or honest opposition, calling on every Frenchman to sacrifice everything for France, to which, as he vehemently asserted, he himself was more necessary than she to him. If he had come honestly to believe what millions of others believed, it was little wonder; he had thenceforth but one aim—to prove that he was, as of yore, the first general of France, the only one able to save the country in an hour when all her glories were falling in wreck about her. His strategic plans, immense and intricate as was his task, were complete and excellent. The first was intended to prevent invasion by way of Liège, the most direct line and that which Prussia preferred. The second, which was partly defensive, was the one eventually used against the clumsy form of advance actually chosen by the invaders. Of the two, the former was the more brilliant, but the second was almost as clever. By it the Rhine bank was divided into three parts for purposes of defense. Macdonald was stationed at Cologne to protect the lower course; Marmont was to guard the central stretch, and they two divided between them the remnants of the army which had been swept out of Germany; Victor was stationed on the upper course to command the garrisons of the great frontier fortifications and strengthen himself by the new levies; Bertrand remained as a sort of rear post on the right bank of the river at Kastel, opposite Mainz. All told, these generals had at first only fifty thousand men.
The allies no sooner obtained possession of central Europe than they outdid its recent master in every species of exaction. The countries which had formed the Confederacy of the Rhine were compelled almost to double the number of the contingents they had raised for France, and to organize every fencible man into either the first or second line of reserves, called by the old feudal terms of ban and arrière-ban. At the same time the allies demanded and obtained new subsidies both of money and arms from Great Britain. In the three armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, as they stood on the Rhine, there were ready by January first about two hundred and eighty-five thousand men. By the end of February the army-lists of France, excluding the national guards, displayed a total of six hundred and fifty thousand men; the coalition, including England, had registered nearly a million. Deducting forty per cent. as ample to cover all shortcomings, we may say that France, with three hundred and ninety thousand in the ranks, men and boys, faced Europe with six hundred thousand full-grown men. These figures include the French armies of Catalonia, of the Pyrenees, of Italy, and of the Netherlands, together with the garrisons in all the strong places then held by France on both sides of the Rhine; they also include the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian reserves, with the national armies of Holland, Spain, and Italy.
Aside from the centrifugal forces inherent in the coalition, there was one which threatened its disintegration: the erratic character of the great Gascon who represented Sweden. Bernadotte's first care, after the battle of Leipsic, was to move north and secure the long-coveted prize of Norway. Ever mindful of the hint about a French crown, which Alexander had thrown out as still another bait at Abo, he gave as his parting admonition the transparent advice that the coming campaign should be confined to a frontier invasion of France, and at Hamburg he actually offered Davout, as the price of surrender, a safe return for himself and his army to their native land! This was too much; Alexander was furious, and the schemer was peremptorily ordered to leave a sufficient investing force before the city and return with the rest of his army to the lower Rhine. There he was suffered to remain in idleness, the task assigned to him being that of watching the Netherlands; two of his best corps were withdrawn from him and assigned to Blücher.
Nor was Napoleon free from his thorn in the flesh. In a bulletin published by him after the retreat from Moscow was a passage which implied some censure of Murat for his lack of stability. This both the King of Naples and his spouse bitterly resented, the latter roundly abusing her brother in their correspondence. This was an excellent pretext for desertion when the general crash appeared imminent, and at Erfurt the dashing and gallant, but weak and testy, monarch decamped. Hastening south, he entered at once into alliance with Austria, and then, putting himself at the head of eighty thousand Neapolitans, set out for Rome, waging a terrific warfare of proclamations. Eugène, too,—and this was an elemental disaster,—was virtually checkmated by the defection of his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, which opened the Tyrol to the allies. All Italy was consequently lost. Augereau, whose feeble loyalty to Napoleon was already at the vanishing-point, had been appointed to take forty thousand conscripts, collect any straggling soldiers he could find in southeastern France, and keep open the door out of Italy for some or all of Eugène's veterans, with whose assistance it was hoped the marshal could form an army for the defense of the Vosges Mountains. But Eugène, having fought the indecisive battle of Roverbello, and finding himself in a sorry plight from both the military and political points of view, could send no reinforcements until April, when finally he concluded an armistice releasing his army. Augereau therefore found himself opposite Bubna at Geneva with an ineffective force, and with very little heart to wield what he had. This ended Napoleon's grand scheme for uniting the forces of Italy, Naples, Switzerland, and France.
Prussia was now the ablest as well as the bitterest of Napoleon's foes, Stein, Blücher, Gneisenau, and their friends aiming at nothing short of annihilating the Napoleonic power. This was, no doubt, due in part to a thirst for revenge; but in the main it was due to the longing for such a leadership in Germany as would spread abroad the new doctrines of liberal and constitutional monarchy, in order to restrain Austria's ever-increasing influence. The councils of the allies presented an amusing spectacle. The Prussians urged an immediate advance by the best line for invasion, that, namely, from Liège and Brussels; but the Austrians, except Radetzky, drew back, fearing Prussia almost equally with France. The Czar held the balance, but his scales were very sensitive, inclining often toward Prussia, but settling in the end to a compromise suggested by Schwarzenberg and Metternich. Having imitated Napoleon in his practice of war requisitions, the allies now determined to imitate him in contempt for international law, and to violate Swiss neutrality. The plan which they adopted was to throw their main army into France by way of Basel, and thus turn the line of frowning fortresses behind the Rhine, as well as the Vosges Mountains. Blücher was to cross the middle Rhine, and Bülow, with thirty thousand men, was to coöperate with the English troops under Graham in the Netherlands. The whole scheme was unmilitary, but it exactly suited Metternich, who, having on January thirteenth first learned of Bernadotte's understanding with the Czar about the crown of France, was very uneasy. Both he and Schwarzenberg desired to end the war on the frontier, if possible; Prussia's power and Alexander's ambitions for European preponderance were far more dangerous to Austria than a Napoleonic empire confined to France.
Blücher, leaving twenty-eight thousand men before Mainz, crossed the Saar on January ninth with forty-seven thousand; Schwarzenberg, with the main army arrayed in four columns, two hundred and nine thousand strong, crossed the Rhine at or near Basel and moved toward Langres. The thin, straggling French columns began to retreat concentrically toward Châlons on the Marne. At the opening of the second stage in the campaign Blücher had invested the Mosel fortresses, and was advancing, with less than thirty thousand men, toward Arcis on the Aube; Schwarzenberg was in and about Langres; and the French were concentrated on a line from Vitry-le-François to St. Dizier. Napoleon reached Châlons on the twenty-sixth, having left Joseph to represent him in Paris. The wily strategist, feeble as was his strength, had momentarily secured the advantage over his unwieldy foe, having wedged himself between the invading armies, and being quite strong enough, with the forty thousand soldiers in his ranks, to cope with Blücher.
CHAPTER VI
Napoleon's Supreme Effort[6]
The Fertility of Genius — The Battles of Brienne and La Rothière — The French Retreat — Victory at Champaubert — Victory at Montmirail — Victory at Vauchamps — Success Engenders Delusion — Insincerity of the Allies — Their Clashing Interests — The Congress of Châtillon — Napoleon's Procrastination — French Victory and French Diplomacy.
1814
The year 1814 is the most astonishing of Napoleon's military life. He first conceived a plan for combining the resources of Italy, Switzerland, Naples, and France. This failed by Augereau's sloth and Murat's ingratitude. Nothing daunted, the fertile brain then outlined schemes for meeting the quick advance of the allies through the Netherlands, for defending the Rhine frontier, and for a levy en masse of the French people to hurl back invasion under the walls of Paris. After taking the field, the daring of his conceptions, the rapidity of his movements, the surprises he prepared for his enemy, the support he wrung from an exhausted land, the devotion he received from a panting, ill-clothed army at bay—all are so remarkable that by contrast the allies appear to be a lumbering, stupid mass. With another antagonist they would have appeared in a very different light; Gneisenau's clear head, Blücher's daring, Radetzky's good sense and courage, together with the valor of the forces at their back, would have won the goal far more easily with an ordinary, or even an extraordinary, combatant in Napoleon's plight. The Emperor of the French had not merely a prestige worth a hundred thousand men, as he was fond of reckoning: he had an activity of mind and body, a reservoir of resources, which made his single blade cover the whole circumference of defense like the whirling spokes of a fiery wheel.
After a skirmish for the possession of St. Dizier, the campaign opened at Brienne, where Blücher, hurrying to gain touch with the main army of the allies, was caught on January twenty-ninth. The conflict probably did not recall to Napoleon his mock conflicts when a schoolboy near the same spot. The terrific struggle began late in the afternoon, and lasted in full fury until midnight, when the Prussian general, narrowly escaping capture, abandoned the town and hurried toward Trannes. Thoroughly beaten, he needed not touch alone, but actual union with the Austrians, and this he gained near Bar on the Aube, whence Schwarzenberg was passing on toward Auxerre. Ignorant of this success, Napoleon now drew up his line with its center at La Rothière, hoping in the first place to hold the bridge over the Aube at Lesmont, and thus secure the moral effect of his victory at Brienne, and in the second to bring on another engagement with Blücher, whom he believed to be still isolated. Marmont was at Montierender, Mortier was summoned from before Troyes. This stand of Napoleon's was a desperate attempt to overawe the allied sovereigns, for strategically it was fatal, since in the case of either victory or defeat the French army was in danger of being outflanked by Schwarzenberg's advance, and thus cut off from Paris. On February first, Blücher, reinforced by twelve thousand of the Russian guard, attacked. The battle lasted, with fluctuating success for the allies, during two days, and at its close Napoleon safely retreated over the Aube to make another stand at Troyes. The various conflicts were terrific; in the end Blücher lost six thousand dead and wounded, the French about four thousand. The odds against the latter were never less than two to one, sometimes more. Had the allies first thrown their full strength into the contest, and had they then followed up their victory by a well-organized pursuit, the campaign would have ended there. As it was, they paused, permitted a disorganized, feeble enemy to escape, and gained nothing from the bloody conflict except an ill-founded self-confidence. Blücher wrote on the evening of the battle that they would be in Paris within eight days. To General Reynier, who was to be liberated by an exchange of prisoners, the Czar said: "We shall be in Paris before you." A council of war was called which decided for an advance on the French capital in two columns; to Blücher, as the conqueror of La Rothière, was assigned the shortest line, that down the Marne.
For several days the allied lines moved onward, slowly, widely scattered, and carelessly. Napoleon was as calm and undaunted as if he had been the victor. Retreating on the defensive with careful deliberation, he strengthened his forces by well-chosen periods of rest, and by hurrying in reinforcements from the various depots about and beyond Paris. On the afternoon of February ninth, when leaving Nogent for Sézanne, he wrote to his brother Joseph, whom he had left to represent his interests at Paris, that he could now reckon, all told, on between sixty and seventy thousand men, including engineers and artillery; that he estimated the Silesian army under Blücher at forty-five thousand, and the main army under Schwarzenberg at a hundred and fifty thousand, including Bubna and the Cossacks. "If I gain a victory over the Silesian army, and put it out of account for some days, I can turn against Schwarzenberg, reckoning on the reinforcements you will send, with from seventy to eighty thousand men, and I think he cannot oppose me at once with more than from a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty thousand. If I find myself too weak to attack, I shall be at least strong enough to hold him in check for a fortnight or three weeks, and this would give me the opportunity for new combinations." To hold Schwarzenberg temporarily, Oudinot with twenty-five thousand men was stationed on the line from Provins to Sens, and Victor with fourteen thousand was sent to Nogent. The Emperor himself, with the old guard, about eight thousand strong, with Ney and Marmont each commanding six thousand infantry, and with ten thousand cavalry under Nansouty and Doumerc, set out from Sézanne to try his fortunes with Blücher.
This was the last of Napoleon's great strategic schemes which was destined to be crowned with success. It had but a single drawback. While Napoleon was still the boldest man in war that ever lived, as at St. Helena he declared himself to be, his marshals were uneasy and depressed; Marmont, in this moment of infinite chance, as it seemed to him, fell into a panic. The marshal's fears were not justified, for his Emperor's daring was not foolhardy. It was calculated on the myriad chances of his enemy's opportunity and his enemy's ability, and in this case it was perfectly calculated. Blücher, in spite of Gneisenau's continuous warnings, was over-confident. Having dispersed his detachments more than ever, he had for two days been moving swiftly in the hope of cutting off Macdonald by a dashing feat of arms. In his haste he had not taken up two Russian corps which had been separated from his main line, but on the contrary he had left them so far out that they were beyond support. By a blunder of the Czar's, reinforcements which had been promised were still a long distance in the rear. Schwarzenberg's movements were marked by an over-confident deliberation as characteristic of him as overhaste was of Blücher. Accordingly when on the tenth Marmont advanced from Sézanne, he found the corps of Olsusieff, about forty-five hundred strong, virtually isolated at Champaubert. His own numbers were slightly superior, and with a swift rush he annihilated the unready Russians. Napoleon was beside himself with joy, and began to talk of the Vistula once more; but he stopped when he saw how sour the visages of Marmont and the other marshals grew at the very mention of such an idea. Nevertheless, if the process begun at Champaubert could be continued, victory and ultimate recovery of something more than French empire were assured. He therefore hurried Nansouty and Macdonald on toward Montmirail for a second stroke of the same kind.
The affair at Montmirail was more of a battle than that at Champaubert, for Blücher had been able to gather in the divisions of Sacken, York, Kleist, and Kapzewitch. The battle opened about an hour before noon on the eleventh by a fierce artillery fire from the French, behind which Napoleon manœuvered so as to concentrate his own force against the Russians, and separate them from York with his Prussians. At two o'clock Napoleon attacked the Russians, Mortier engaging the Prussians separately. The plan succeeded, and by nightfall the enemy was in full retreat for Château-Thierry, where was the nearest bridge over the Marne. Napoleon had hoped that Macdonald would arrive from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in time to seize the bridge, cut off the retreat, and make the victory decisive. But in spite of heroic exertion, that marshal could not or did not move with sufficient rapidity over the heavy dirt roads. The flying allies sacked the town with awful cruelty, and destroyed the bridge without any molestation except from the inhabitants, who wreaked their vengeance on numerous stragglers. On the thirteenth the French occupied the place, repaired the bridge, and crossed to the right bank. Next morning Marmont started in pursuit of Blücher.
Somewhat flushed by such success, Napoleon deliberated whether he should not now turn and attack Schwarzenberg. The Emperor thought these victories might give pause to a mediocre Austrian, ever mindful of the terrific blows his country had received once and again from France. He was mistaken; Schwarzenberg had moved, though slowly, yet steadily forward. On the twelfth Victor abandoned the bridge at Nogent, and Napoleon sent Macdonald with twelve thousand men to join Victor at Montereau. Early on the fourteenth came news that Blücher had driven Marmont back to Fromentières. By noon Napoleon had effected a junction with this marshal near Étoges, making a famous and successful flank march over a marshy country, a manœuver which is justly considered worthy of his great genius. Advancing then to the neighborhood of Vauchamps, his infantry attacked in front, while the cavalry, under Grouchy, outflanked the enemy's line and fell on the rear. Blücher was apparently doomed, for he had only three regiments of cavalry, and while facing one powerful enemy he would be forced to break the ranks of another in order to open a line of retreat. He solved the problem, but at enormous cost. Forming his troops into a line of solid squares, one stood to support the artillery and receive the onset in front, while the others dashed at Grouchy's horsemen, each square standing and retreating behind the next alternately as the bloody retreat went on. At last the butchery ceased, and Blücher fled to Bergères. The French pursued only as far as Étoges. Napoleon had hoped to follow all the way to Châlons, annihilate what was left of Blücher's army, and then to return and throw himself on Schwarzenberg. He was arrested by the news that the Seine valley, as far as Montereau, was in the hands of the Austro-Russians; that Oudinot and Victor had been driven back to Nangis; in short, that Paris was seriously menaced.
It was long asserted that in the three actions just recorded the French far outnumbered their opponents, and that Napoleon's generalship was consequently inferior to his high average. The sufficient answer to this is in the facts now universally accepted. At Champaubert there were four thousand eight hundred and fifty French against four thousand seven hundred Russians; at Montmirail there were twenty-two thousand seven hundred Russians and Prussians against twelve thousand eight hundred French; and in the third engagement, near Étoges, Blücher had twenty-one thousand five hundred to ten thousand three hundred. It is therefore natural to compare these three victories with those at Montenotte, Millesimo, and Dego. But they were far greater. At forty-four Napoleon displayed exactly the same boldness, steadfastness, and skill which he had displayed in youth; but in addition he overcame the stolid enmity of winter, of variable weather, of roads almost impassable, of swampy fields that were almost impassable by reason of overflowing ditches and half-frozen morasses. He overcame, too, the resisting power created by his own example; for here were the choicest soldiers of the Continent, commanded by men inured for eighteen years to the hardships, the shifts, the rapidity of warfare as he himself had taught the art. Momentarily Napoleon seems to have wondered whether allied and co-allied Europe had learned nothing in half a generation, and whether an army twice and a half larger than his own, under veteran generals, was to withdraw again behind the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, perhaps the Vistula. It is hard to believe that he dreamed such dreams as we read the prosaic, scientific, hard common sense of his military correspondence between January twenty-sixth and February fourteenth. Yet there is certainly an appearance of self-deception and vacillation in his political and diplomatic plans, due apparently to the intoxication of success, as when he spoke of the Vistula to Marmont after Champaubert.
The innermost thoughts of Metternich, and of the diplomats associated with him, are very hard to fathom. For two generations the world believed that after Leipsic, Napoleon, in his sanguine conceit, rejected offer after offer from the allies, and finally perished utterly because of a folly which made him believe he could recover his predominance. There is now every reason to believe the contrary, and to suppose that Napoleon clearly understood the situation. The war was one of extermination on the part of the allies; in the interest of their dynasties they intended not only to destroy Napoleon, but also thereby to root out the ideas for which he was supposed to stand. By the light of recent memoirs, especially those of Metternich himself, we seem forced to the conclusion that in all the offers after Leipsic there was, if anything, far less of reality and sincerity than in those between the armistice of Poischwitz and the battle. When Castlereagh arrived at the allied headquarters early in January, 1814, he found them established in Basel. Schwarzenberg had found no difficulty in crossing Switzerland. Geneva surrendered its keys without a struggle, and generally the Swiss seemed indifferent to the violation of their neutrality. As the advance continued, it appeared that the French were equally apathetic. Bubna was driven from before Lyons by Augereau, but Dijon surrendered to a squad of cavalrymen which, at the request of the conscientious mayor, made a show of force to oblige him. It was not difficult under such circumstances for the sovereigns and their ministers to convince themselves that any peace with Napoleon would be nothing but a "ridiculous armistice," and that the Emperor of the French must, in any case, be utterly overthrown.
In response to the Frankfort proposals, the pacific Caulaincourt had promptly arrived to conduct negotiations. The invaders had almost at once suggested that they must abandon the Frankfort proposals, and confine France to her royal limits; that is, refuse her Belgium with the great port of Antwerp. So far they were agreed, but there the unanimity ceased. The Czar desired first to conquer France, and then leave her to choose her own government; he intended to take the whole of Poland, and give Alsace to Francis in return for Galicia, thus checking Austria by both Prussia and France, so that he could work his will in the Orient. Metternich wished the old balance of power, and had determined on the restoration of the Bourbons. Francis was writing to his daughter that he would never separate her cause and that of her son from France. The Prussian king and ministers desired only such an arrangement as would secure to their country what she had regained. Stein and his associates wished the utter humiliation of their foe. Castlereagh spoke with the authority of a paymaster; he was determined to keep the Netherlands from falling under French influence, to restore the Bourbons, and to establish so nice an equilibrium in Europe that Great Britain would be unhampered elsewhere in the world. There was to be no mention of colonial restitution or neutral rights. Being a second-rate statesman, he was much influenced by Metternich, and the two sought to form an impossible alliance between constitutional liberty and feudal absolutism.
A so-called congress was opened at Châtillon on February fifth.[7] It must be remembered that the treaty of Reichenbach was still a secret. That agreement was the reality behind the congress of Prague, the Frankfort proposals, and the meeting at Mannheim. None of those gatherings consequently was serious; that at Châtillon was even less so. The memoirs of Metternich explain all the facts: Swiss neutrality was violated by Austrian influence in order to restore the aristocratic constitution of Bern and the ascendancy of that canton; Alexander, posing still as a liberal, was angry at this violation of international law, and forbade the restoration of Vaud to its old master. Schwarzenberg's deliberate movements were due primarily to timidity, but they stood in good stead Metternich's desire to restore the Bourbons. It has been asserted, and there is much probability in the conjecture, that not only the plan adopted for invading France, but the slowness of the Austrians in advancing toward Langres, toward Troyes, across into the Seine valley, together with the spurious activity they displayed before Montereau, Sens, and Fontainebleau, was part of a scheme to wear out but not to exhaust France, and then compel her to take back her dynastic rulers. Blücher, who wanted glory and revenge, and the Prussian liberals, who desired so to crush France that Prussia might be free to slough off her militarism and build up a constitutional government, were alike furious at being chained to the frontier. All these cross-purposes and bitterness were mirrored in the ostentatious proceedings of the congress of Châtillon. Napoleon, either divining the facts, or, more probably, informed by spies, seemed indifferent, and refused at first to give full powers to Caulaincourt; finally the marshals, terrified at the prospect of indefinite war opened by the unlucky mention of the Vistula, made their influence so felt that the Emperor yielded.
Maret's name was long held up to detestation as the instigator of Napoleon's procrastinating policy at Dresden, the line of conduct which seemed to have made it possible for Austria to join the coalition. Among the papers of that minister is an account of his relations with Napoleon during the congress at Châtillon, which displays the evident motive of an attempt to prove how pacific his nature really was. He declares that after the defeat at La Rothière, Caulaincourt wrote a panic-stricken letter demanding full authority to treat. Maret handed it to the Emperor, beseeching him to yield. Napoleon seemed scarcely to heed, but indicated a passage in Montesquieu's "Grandeur and Fall of the Romans," which he happened to be reading: "I know nothing more magnanimous than the resolution taken by a monarch who ruled in our time, to bury himself under the ruins of the throne rather than to accept proposals which a king may not entertain. He had a soul too lofty to descend lower than his misfortunes had hurled him." "But I, sire," rejoined the secretary—"I know something more magnanimous—to cast aside your glory in order to close the abyss into which France would fall along with you." "Well, then, gentlemen, make your peace," came the reply. "Let Caulaincourt make it; let him sign everything necessary to obtain it. I can support the disgrace, but do not expect me to dictate my own humiliation." Maret informed Caulaincourt, but the latter recoiled before the responsibility, and asked for particular instructions. The Emperor persistently refused, but wrote giving the minister "carte blanche" to take any measure which would save the capital. Again Caulaincourt begged for details, and again Napoleon refused, persisting until Bertrand joined his supplications to those of Maret, whereupon he consented to abandon Belgium, and even the left bank of the Rhine.
The formal despatch containing these concessions was to be signed next morning, on February eighth, but in the interval came news of Blücher's movements. Maret found the Emperor buried in the study of his map. "I have an entirely different matter in hand," was the greeting; "I am at present occupied in dealing Blücher a blow in the eye." The signature was indefinitely postponed. On the tenth Alexander suspended the congress on the plea of Caulaincourt's refusal to state his own or accept the offered terms. Then followed the three victories, and Napoleon, on the night of the twelfth, wrote to Châtillon demanding the Frankfort proposals. Caulaincourt urgently besought the allies for an armistice, and begged Napoleon to be less exacting. Prussia and Austria were eager for the armistice, but Alexander obstinately refused to reopen the congress until the eighteenth, when everything seemed changed, and all the allies really desired peace. Caulaincourt, warned by Napoleon's letter of the twelfth, refused to treat without full instructions, and as he had none he began to procrastinate. In the end he bore the blame for not having used the carte blanche when he had it in order to save his country, for subsequently he had no opportunity.
CHAPTER VII
The Great Captain at Bay[8]
Victor's Failure at Montereau — Schwarzenberg's Ruse — The French Advance and the Austrian Retreat — Napoleon's Effort to Divide the Coalition — Vain Negotiations — The Treaty of Chaumont — Blücher's Narrow Escape — The Prussians Defeated at Craonne — Napoleon's Determination to Fight — His Misfortunes at Laon — Dissensions at Blücher's Headquarters — Napoleon at Soissons — Rheims Recaptured — Another Phase in Napoleon's Eclipse.
The eagerness of the Prussians and the Austrians to grant an armistice was at first due to the belief that Caulaincourt's request was a confession of exhaustion; the Czar's assent to reopening the congress on the eighteenth was wrung from him by the military operations between the fourteenth and that date. Convinced that Paris was menaced, Napoleon left Marmont to hold Blücher, and starting for La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the fifteenth, covered fifty miles with his army in a marvelous march of thirty-six hours, arriving on the evening of the sixteenth with his men comparatively fresh. Next morning the French began to advance, and the Austrians to withdraw toward the Seine. Victor was to seize Montereau that same day and hold the bridge. Compelled to drive an Austrian corps out of Valjouan, the marshal did not reach his goal until six or seven in the evening, and finding it beset by the Crown Prince of Würtemberg with fourteen thousand Germans, he merely drove in the outposts and then halted for the night. His ardor was far from intense, and though, like Macdonald at Château-Thierry, he might feel that he had done all that could be demanded, yet he lost the opportunity of annihilating a considerable portion of the enemy's force. Simultaneously Macdonald had now advanced until he stood before Bray, while Oudinot on the left was before Provins. Thus far Napoleon's advance had been a front movement to cover Paris, but that same day, the seventeenth, he drove Wittgenstein from Nangis, and then expected by a rush over the bridge at Montereau to prevent Schwarzenberg from extending his flank to Fontainebleau, a move which would surround the French right. As a matter of fact, strange riders speaking curious outlandish tongues, Cossack scouts in other words, had appeared for the first time that very day in Nemours and Fontainebleau, terrifying the inhabitants. It seems highly probable that if Napoleon's force could have made a quick push from Montereau early on the eighteenth, it would have cut off a considerable portion of Schwarzenberg's left. In any case the Emperor was deeply incensed by what he considered Victor's slackness, and degraded him. The humbled marshal confessed his fault, displaying profound contrition, and was speedily restored to partial favor, being intrusted with the command, under Ney, of a portion of the young guard.
This was the third of the marshals—Augereau, Macdonald, Victor, each in turn—who since the opening of the campaign had shown a physical and moral exhaustion disabling them from rising to the heights of Napoleon's expectation. "We must pull on the boots and the resolution of '93," wrote the Emperor to Augereau; he was quite right: nothing short of the unsapped revolutionary vigor of France could have saved his cause. On the eighteenth, after a six hours' struggle, the French under Gérard and Pajol seized Montereau. Napoleon had halted at Nangis, and there Berthier received by a flag of truce a letter from Schwarzenberg, declaring that he had ceased his offensive march in consequence of news that preliminaries of peace had been signed the day previous at Châtillon. This was probably as base a ruse as any ever practised by Napoleon's generals. It is likely that all the Austrian marches and countermarches for ten days past had been but a bustling semblance calculated for diplomatic effect. Be that as it may, before Napoleon's advance the Austrian commander had quailed, and, with the French at Montereau, his columns were already moving back to Troyes, where they were drawn up in battle array. Napoleon wrote indignantly to Joseph that the ruse was probably preliminary to a request for an armistice, and that he would now accept nothing short of the Frankfort proposals. "At the first check the wretched creatures fall on their knees." Meanwhile he led his army over the river to Nogent, and prepared to attack Schwarzenberg.
But Blücher had not been idle; by superhuman exertions he had collected and strengthened his army at Châlons, and on the twenty-first he appeared at Méry on the Seine, threatening Napoleon's left flank in case of an advance toward Troyes. By this time the flames of French patriotism were rekindled in town and country, and, the soldiers being flushed with victory, it was clearly the hour to strike at any hazard. Oudinot was despatched with ten thousand men to hold Blücher, and this task he actually accomplished, capturing that portion of Méry which lay on the left bank of the river, and fortifying the bridge-head against all comers. Marmont being at Sézanne with eight thousand men to cover Paris, and Mortier at Soissons with ten thousand to prevent the advance of York and Sacken, Napoleon marched on Troyes. It was late in the evening when his main army was drawn up, and in order to leave time for his rear to come in, he postponed operations until the morning. Schwarzenberg had seventy thousand in line, but at four in the early dawn of the twenty-second, leaving in place a front formation sufficient to mask his movements, he decamped with his main force and withdrew behind the Aube.
Arrived at Bar, the Austrian commander wrote on the twenty-sixth an admirable letter of justification for the course he had taken. Defeat would have meant a retreat, not behind the Aube, but the Rhine. "To offer a decisive battle to an army fighting with all the confidence gained in small affairs, manœuvering on its own territory, with provisions and munitions within reach, and with the aid of a peasantry in arms, would be an undertaking to which nothing but extreme necessity could drive me." This retreat put a new aspect on the diplomacy of Châtillon. On the nineteenth Caulaincourt received a despatch from Napoleon revoking the carte blanche entirely; the same day Napoleon received an ultimatum from the congress, written several days before, to the effect that he was to renounce all the acquisitions of France since 1792, and take no share in the arrangements subsequent to the peace. This last clause being a covert suggestion of abdication, the recipient flew into a passion; when finally he was soothed by the pleadings of Berthier and Maret, he gave such a meaningless reply as would enable negotiations to proceed, but his counter-project he addressed directly to the Emperor Francis. It was a refusal to give up Antwerp and Belgium, and an emphatic recurrence to the Frankfort proposals. "If we are not to lay down our arms except on the offensive conditions proposed at the congress, the genius of France and Providence will be on our side."
Napoleon's missive suggested to his father-in-law, as was its intention, that a continental peace on the Frankfort basis would leave France free to recuperate her sea power and continue the war with England alone. This was the wedge which for some time past the writer had been proposing to drive into the coalition so as to separate Austria from Russia. Castlereagh was very uneasy as to the possible effect of the message, and there was much anxiety among all the diplomats. Their first step was to send a pacific reply and renew their request for an armistice. Napoleon consented, but stipulated that hostilities should proceed during the preliminary pourparlers, and that in the protocol a clause should be inserted declaring that the plenipotentiaries were reassembled at Châtillon to discuss a peace on the basis proposed at Frankfort. A commission to arrange the terms of the armistice met on the twenty-fourth. That they were not in earnest is shown by Frederick William's despatch of the twenty-sixth to Blücher, saying, "The suspension of arms will not take place." That very day, also, in a council of war held by the allied generals, it was determined to form an invading army of the south. Blücher was authorized to make a diversion in favor of the main army—a move which he had really begun the day before by a march to the right. Napoleon, leaving Macdonald and Oudinot, with forty thousand men, to follow Schwarzenberg, hurried after Blücher with his remaining force. On the twenty-eighth the commission adjourned its sessions with a formal reiteration of the ultimatum already made by the allied powers.
The reason was that by that time its members believed Napoleon to be elsewhere engaged. Schwarzenberg's army had checked Oudinot, and as his troops recuperated their strength the leader recovered partial confidence. Blücher being off for Paris, with Napoleon on his heels, the main army of the allies had then turned on the forces of Macdonald and Oudinot, and had driven them westward until in the pursuit it reached Troyes, where it halted, ready, in case of Blücher's defeat, to recross the Rhine. The congress of Châtillon was formally reopened on March first, and continued its useless sessions until the nineteenth, when it closed. During this second period none of the important dignitaries, except Schwarzenberg and the King of Prussia, attended; the rest withdrew to Chaumont, where, on March ninth, the three powers signed a treaty with England, dated back to March first, binding themselves, in return for an annual subsidy of five million pounds sterling equally divided, that each would keep a hundred and fifty thousand men in the field, for twenty years if necessary, provided Napoleon would not accept the boundaries of royal France—a futile stipulation. This treaty was the precursor of that iniquitous triple alliance between Russia, Austria, and Prussia which was destined not merely to hamper England herself so seriously in the subsequent period of history, but to stop for some time the progress of liberal ideas throughout Europe.
Blücher crossed the Marne on February twenty-seventh with half his force, and then attempted to cross the Ourcq in order to attack Meaux from the north. But he was checked by Marmont and Mortier, with the sixteen thousand men they already had, and then, after six thousand new recruits came in from Paris, he was forced to retreat. Should Napoleon arrive in time he would be annihilated. Accordingly he hastened up the valley of the Ourcq with his entire force. Napoleon arrived on the Marne too late to attack Blücher's rear, and after some hesitation as to whether he should not return to complete his work with Schwarzenberg, he finally determined that, inasmuch as the fortress of Soissons was secure, and Blücher must therefore retreat to the eastward, he could himself deliver an easy but staggering blow on the Prussian flank when they should cross the Aisne at Fismes. Accordingly, on March third the worn-out columns of the French passed over the Marne. Unfortunately, Soissons had been left by Marmont in charge of an inexperienced commander, who had surrendered almost without resistance when, on March second, Bülow and Wintzengerode, having come in from the Netherlands, suddenly appeared before the place. This stroke of good fortune enabled Blücher not merely to find a city of refuge for his exhausted and disorganized force, but to recruit it by the two victorious and elated corps which thenceforth served him as an invaluable rear-guard. Napoleon, thwarted again, gave no outward sign of the despair he must have felt, but crossed the Aisne on March fifth, and occupied Rheims, in order at least to cut Blücher off from any connection with Schwarzenberg. He then turned to join Marmont and Mortier in order to drive Blücher still farther north, so that, as he wrote to Joseph, he might gain time sufficient to return by Châlons and attack Schwarzenberg.
In spite of all his discouragements, Blücher had no intention of retreating without a blow. There was constant friction between the Prussian commander and his subordinates, so that dissension prevented prompt action. Nevertheless, after much delay the army was got in motion to resume the offensive, the general plan being to move eastward instead of withdrawing due north, to cross the plateau of Craonne, and, descending into the plain north of Berry, to attack the French in force as they advanced to Laon. Napoleon had expected to meet his foe under the walls of that city; his quick advance was as much of a surprise to Blücher as Blücher's was to him. The first shock of battle, therefore, occurred at Craonne on the sixth, when neither army was in readiness. But Blücher secured the advantage of position. Though he had only a portion of his force, the troops he did have were on a commanding plateau above the enemy when the action began. The skirmishes of the first day, however, were indecisive. Napoleon's knowledge of the district being defective, he sought to secure the best possible information from the inhabitants. Some one mentioning incidentally that the mayor of a neighboring town was named de Bussy, Napoleon recalled, with his astounding memory, that in the regiment of La Fère he had had a comrade so named. The mayor turned out to be the sometime lieutenant, and, with superserviceable zeal, the former friend poured out worthless information which led the Emperor to believe that on the morrow there would be only Blücher's rear-guard to disperse. But it was not so. Blücher struggled with his utmost might to gather in his cavalry and artillery, while Sacken, with the Russians, stood like a wall, repelling the successive surges of Ney and Victor the whole day through. At nightfall the Prussian commander, finding it impossible to assemble guns or horsemen over the icy fields, gave orders for retreat, and his army passed on to Laon.