Though Craonne was a victory, the losses of the French were proportionately greater than those of the enemy, and the pursuit, though spirited, gained no advantage. "The young guard melts like snow; the old guard stands; my mounted guards likewise are much reduced," were the words of Napoleon's private letter. Yet he pressed on. The night of the seventh he spent in a roadside inn under the sign of "The Guardian Angel." There Caulaincourt's last messenger from Châtillon found him. The congress was still sitting, but the warrior knew the fact meant and could mean nothing to him; though the allies had increased their demands in proportion to their victories, they had not lessened them in proportion to their defeats. Whatever terms he might accept, and whatever Metternich might say, this war he felt sure was one for his extermination. As he said then and there, it was a bottomless chasm, and he added, "I am determined to be the last it shall swallow up." So he made no answer, and spent the night completing his plans for battle at Laon.
That place stands on a terraced hill rising somewhat abruptly from the plain, and throughout the eighth Blücher arrayed his army in and on both sides of the city, which itself was of course the key. Napoleon, being a firm believer in such movements when on friendly soil, made a long night march. He reached the enemy's fore-posts early on the ninth, and drove them in. At seven Ney and Mortier began the battle under cover of a mist, and captured two hamlets at the foot of the hill. Marmont was on the right, and had already been cut off from the center by a body of Cossacks; but he attacked the village of Athies. After a long day's hard fighting, he succeeded in capturing a portion of it. Further exertion being impossible, his men bivouacked, while he himself withdrew to the comforts of Eppes, a château three miles distant. It was noon when Napoleon learned that Marmont had been severed from the line; at once he renewed his attack on Laon, but though he gained Clacy on his left, he lost Ardon, and was thus more completely cut off from Marmont. That night York fell upon Marmont's men unawares, and routed them utterly.
Napoleon heard of this disaster shortly after midnight. He was, of course, deeply agitated—did he dare risk being infolded on both sides, or should he brave his fate in order to mislead the enemy? He chose the desperate course, and when day broke stood apparently undismayed. Even when two fugitive dragoons arrived and confirmed in all its details the terrible news from Athies, he issued orders as bold as if his army were still entire. This was a desperate ruse, but it succeeded, for the pursuit of Marmont's men was stayed. At four the main French army began its retreat, and the next morning saw it at Soissons; six thousand had been killed and wounded. Again Napoleon's name had stiffened the allies into inactive horror, for they did not pursue. York was so disgusted with the dissensions at Blücher's headquarters that he threw up his command and left for Brussels. Blücher was literally at the end of his powers. "For heaven's sake," said Langeron, a French refugee in the Russian service, on whom the command would have devolved, "whatever happens, let us take the corpse along." "The corpse," with dimmed eyes and trembling hands, traced in great rude letters an epistle beseeching York to return, and this, indorsed by another from the Prince Royal of Prussia, brought back the able but testy refugee.
Meantime Rheims, intrusted to a feeble garrison, had been taken by Langeron's rear-guard under St. Priest, another French emigrant in the service of the allies. By this disaster communication between Schwarzenberg and Blücher had been reëstablished. In the short day Napoleon could spend at Soissons, he took up twenty-five hundred new cavalrymen, a new line regiment of infantry, a veteran regiment of the same, and some artillery detachments. It is not easy to conceive of recuperative power more remarkable than that which was thus exhibited both by France and her Emperor. These men had been sent forward from Paris in spite of the profound gloom now prevalent there. The truth was at last known in the capital; Joseph was hopeless; the Empress and her court were preparing for extremities. News had come that in the south Soult had been thrown back on Toulouse; that in the southwest royalist plots were thickening; that in the southeast Augereau had been forced back to Lyons; Macdonald was ready to abandon Provins at the first sign of advance by Schwarzenberg; and the sorry tale of Laon was early unfolded. Yet the administrative machinery was still running, and soldiers were being manufactured from the available materials. Those who had been sent to Soissons had been hastily gathered, equipped, and drilled almost without hope, but they were precious since they enabled Napoleon to refit his shattered battalions.
Marmont had unwisely abandoned Berry-au-Bac, and that in disregard of orders. But otherwise he had done his best to make good a temporary lapse, and had got together about eight thousand men at Fismes. His narratives give a graphic picture of the situation—of disorder, confusion, chaos among his troops, of artillery served by inexperienced sailors, of undrilled companies whose members had neither hats, clothes, nor shoes. There were plenty of captured uniforms and head-coverings, but they were so infested with vermin that the French, sorry as was their plight, refused to wear them, and clung to their old tatters. Marmont's men were heroes, he himself was not yet a traitor. Though overborne by a sense of Napoleon's recklessness, and therefore unfit for the desperate self-sacrifice which would have made him a fit coadjutor for his chief, he was prepared to atone for his disgrace at Athies. Early in the morning of the thirteenth the main French army moved from Soissons; at four in the afternoon Marmont opened the attack on Rheims. Napoleon himself had arrived, but his troops were slow in coming up, and there was no heavy artillery wherewith to batter in the gates. The struggle went on with desperate courage and gallantry on both sides. St. Priest was killed by the same gunner whose aim had been fatal to Moreau. "We may well say, O Providence! O Providence!" wrote Napoleon to his brother. At ten the beleaguered garrison began to sally and flee. Napoleon rose from the bearskin on which he had been resting before a bivouac fire, and storming with rage lest his prey should escape, hurried in the guns, which were finally within reach. Amid awful tumult and carnage the place fell; three thousand of the enemy were slain, and about the same number were captured. The burghers were frenzied with delight as the Emperor marched in, and the whole city burst into an illumination.
Next morning Napoleon and Marmont met. The culprit was loaded with reproaches for the affair at Athies, and treated as a stern father might treat a careless child. No better evidence of the Emperor's low state is needed. Marmont was now the hero of the hour; his peccadillos might well have been forgotten for the sake of securing his continued faithfulness. With Napoleon at his best, this would surely have been the case; but aware that at most the war could be a matter of only a few weeks, the desperate man overdid his rôle of self-confidence, being too rash, too severe, too haughty. Not that he was without some hope. Although for two years the shadow had been declining on the dial of Napoleon's fortunes, and although under adverse conditions one brilliant combination after another had crumbled, yet his ideas were as great as ever, the adjustment of plans to changing conditions was never more admirable. The trouble was that effort and result did not correspond, and this being so, what would have been trifling misdemeanors in prosperity seemed to him in adversity to be dangerous faults. The great officers of state and army, imitating their master's ambitions, had acquired his weaknesses, but had failed in securing either his strength or his adroitness. With him they had lost that fire of youth which had carried them and him always just over the line of human expectation, and so his nice adjustments failed in exasperating ways at the very turn of necessity. Hard words and stinging reproofs are soon forgotten in generous youth; they rankle in middle life; and even the invigorating address or inspiring word, when heard too often for twenty years, fails of effect. The beginning of the end was the loss of Soissons at the critical instant. Napoleon was uncertain and touchy; his marshals were honeycombed with disaffection; the populations, though flashing like powder at his touch, had nowhere risen en masse. Thereafter the great captain was no longer waging a well-ordered warfare. Like an exhausted swordsman, he lunged here and there in the grand style; but his brain was troubled, his blade broken. Some untapped reservoirs of strength were yet to be opened, some untried expedients were to be essayed, but the end was inevitable. The movement on Rheims was the spasmodic stroke of the dying gladiator.
CHAPTER VIII
The Struggles of Exhaustion[9]
The Allies Demoralized — Napoleon's Desperate Choice — The Battle at Arcis — The Correspondence of Caulaincourt and Napoleon — Panic at Schwarzenberg's Headquarters — Cross-purposes of the Allies — Napoleon's Determination Confirmed — His Over-confidence — The Resolution to Abandon Paris — The French Brought to a Stand — Their Masked Retreat — Inefficiency of Marmont and Augereau — Napoleon's March toward St. Dizier — His Terrible Disenchantment — How the Allies had Discovered Napoleon's Plans — Their Determination to Pursue — The Czar's Resolution to March on Paris — Successful Return of the Invaders.
Though unscientific as a military move and futile as to the ultimate result of the war, the capture of Rheims was, nevertheless, a telling thrust. On receipt of the news from Laon, Schwarzenberg had immediately set his army in motion against Macdonald, and Blücher, after waiting two days to restore order among his worried troops and insubordinate lieutenants, had advanced and laid siege to Compiègne. The capture of Rheims checked the movements of both Austrians and Prussians; dismay prevailed in both camps, and both armies began to draw back. The French halted at Nangis in their retreat before Schwarzenberg, and the people of Compiègne were released from the terrors of a siege. "This terrible Napoleon," wrote Langeron in his memoirs—"they thought they saw him everywhere. He had beaten us all, one after the other; we were always frightened by the daring of his enterprises, the swiftness of his movements, and his clever combinations. Scarcely had we formed a plan when it was disconcerted by him." Besides this, in obedience to Napoleon's call, the peasantry began an organized guerrilla warfare, avenging the pillage, incendiarism, and military executions of the allies by a brutal retaliation in kind which made the marauding invaders quake. Finally the momentary consternation of the latter verged on panic when the report reached headquarters that Bernadotte, lying inactive at Liège with twenty-three thousand Swedes, had permitted a flag of truce from Joseph to enter his presence. Could it be that the sly schemer, for the furtherance of his ambition to govern France, was about to turn traitor and betray the coalition?
But the consternation of the allies was the least important effect of the capture of Rheims by Napoleon.[10] It initiated certain ideas and purposes in his own mind about which there has been endless discussion. Many see in them the immediate cause of his ruin, a few consider them the most splendid offspring of his mind. Reinforcements from Paris, slender as they were, flowed steadily into his camp; and when he learned that both Schwarzenberg and Blücher had virtually retreated, he believed himself able to cope once more with the former. Accordingly he dictated to his secretary an outline of three possible movements: to Arcis on the Aube, by way of Sézanne to Provins, and to Meaux for the defense of Paris. The first was the most daring; the second would cut the enemy off from the right bank of the Seine, but it had the disadvantage of keeping the troops on miry cross-roads; the third was the safest. Of course he chose the way of desperation—all or nothing. Leaving Marmont with seven thousand men at Berry-au-Bac, and Mortier with ten thousand at Rheims and Soissons, he enjoined them both to hold the line toward Paris against Blücher at all hazards, and himself set out, on March seventeenth, for Arcis on the Aube. This he did, instead of marching direct to Meaux for the defense of Paris, because it would, in his own words, "give the enemy a great shock, and result in unforeseen circumstances."
Schwarzenberg's movements during the next three days awakened in Napoleon the suspicion, which he was only too glad to accept as a certainty, that the Austro-Russian army was on the point of retreating into the Vosges or beyond; and on the twentieth he announced his decision of marching farther eastward, past Troyes, toward the frontier forts still in French hands. This idea of a final stand on the confines of France and Germany haunted him to the end, and was the "will-o'-the-wisp" which intermittently tempted him to folly. But for the present its execution was necessarily postponed. That very day news was received within the lines he had established about Arcis that the enemy, far from retreating, was advancing. Soon the French cavalry skirmishers appeared galloping in flight, and were brought to a halt only when the Emperor, with drawn sword, threw himself across their path. A short, sharp struggle ensued—sixteen thousand French with twenty-four thousand five hundred of their foe. It was irregular and indecisive, but Napoleon held his own. The neighboring hamlet of Torcy had also been attacked by the allies, and before their onset the French had at first yielded. But the defenders were rallied, and at nightfall the position was recaptured. This sudden exhibition by Schwarzenberg of what looked like courage puzzled Napoleon; after long deliberation he concluded that the hostile troops were in all probability only a rear-guard covering the enemy's retreat. He was not very far wrong, but far enough to make all the difference to him. The circumstances require a full explanation.
Thanks to Caulaincourt's sturdy persistence, the congress at Châtillon was still sitting, and on the thirteenth the French delegate wrote a last despairing appeal to the Emperor. His messenger was delayed three days by the military operations; but when he arrived, on the sixteenth, Maret wrung from Napoleon concessions which included Antwerp, Mainz, and even Alessandria. In the despatch announcing this, and written on the seventeenth to Caulaincourt, Maret made no reservation except one: that Napoleon intended, after signing the treaty, to secure for himself whatever the military situation at the close of the war might entitle him to retain. The return of the messenger was likewise delayed for three days, and it was the twenty-first before he reached the outskirts of Châtillon. He arrived to find Caulaincourt departing; the second "carte blanche" had arrived too late. With all his skill, the persistent and adroit minister had been unable to protract negotiations longer than the eighteenth. His appeal having brought no immediate response, he had, several days earlier, despatched a faithful warning, and this reached Napoleon at Fère-Champenoise simultaneously with the departure of the messenger for Châtillon. The day previous the Emperor had received bad news from southern France: that Bordeaux had opened its gates to a small detachment of English under Hill, and that the Duke of Angoulême had been cheered by the people as he publicly proclaimed Louis XVIII King of France. Apparently neither this information nor Caulaincourt's warning profoundly impressed Napoleon; he knew his Gascons well, his "carte blanche" he must have believed to be in Châtillon, and it had been in high spirits that he hastened on to Arcis, determined to make the most of the time intervening until the close of negotiations.
When news of Napoleon's advance reached Schwarzenberg's headquarters in Troyes, there had at first been nothing short of panic; the commander himself was on a sick-bed, having entirely succumbed to the hardships of winter warfare. No sooner had he ordered the first backward step than his army had displayed a feverish anxiety for farther retreat. As things were going, it appeared as if the different corps would, for lack of judicious leadership, be permitted to withdraw still farther in such a way as to separate the various divisions ever more widely, and expose them successively to annihilating blows from Napoleon, like those which had overwhelmed the scattered segments of the Silesian army. The Czar and many others immediately perceived the danger. With faculties unnerved by fear, the officers foreboded a repetition with the Bohemian army of Montmirail, Champaubert, and Vauchamps. Rumors filled the air: the peasantry of the Vosges were rising, the Swiss were ready to follow their example; the army must withdraw before it was utterly surrounded and cut off. There was even a report—and so firmly was it believed that it long passed for history—of Alexander's having expressed a desire to reopen the congress.
Schwarzenberg's strange hesitancy in the initial stages of the invasion has been explained. Beyond his natural timidity, it was almost certainly due to Metternich's politics, which displayed a desire to ruin Napoleon's imperial power, but to save France either for the Bourbons or possibly for his Emperor's son-in-law. If the Austrian minister could accomplish this, he could thereby checkmate Prussian ambitions for leadership in Germany. But during the movements of February and March the actions of the Austrian general appear to have been due almost exclusively to cowardice. The papers of Castlereagh, of Metternich, and of Schwarzenberg himself aim to give the impression that during all the events which had occurred since the congress of Prague, everything had been straightforward, and that Austria had no thought of sparing Napoleon or acting otherwise than she did in the end. Yet the indications of the time are quite the other way: the Russians in Schwarzenberg's army were furious, and, as one of them wrote, suspicious "of what we are doing and what we are not doing." Alexander, in this crisis, was deeply concerned, not for peace, but for an orderly, concentrated retreat. With stubborn fatalism, he never doubted the final outcome; and during his stay in Châtillon he had spent his leisure hours in excogitating a careful plan for the grand entry into Paris, whereby the honors were to be his own.
Consequently, when on the nineteenth he hastened to Schwarzenberg's bedside, it was with the object of persuading the Austrian commander to make a stand long enough to secure concentration in retreat. This idea originated with the Russian general Toll, and the place he suggested for concentration was the line between Troyes and Pougy. But the council was terror-stricken, and though willing to heed Alexander's urgent warning, they at first selected a position farther in the rear, on the heights of Trannes. With this the Czar was content, but on second thought such a course appeared to the more daring among the Austrian staff as if it smacked of pusillanimity. Schwarzenberg felt the force of this opinion, and by the influence of some one, probably Radetzky, it was determined, without consulting the Czar, to concentrate near Arcis on the left bank of the Aube, in order to assume the offensive at Plancy. This independent resolution of Schwarzenberg's staff explains the presence of allied troops near Arcis and at Torcy. Alexander was much incensed by the news of the meeting, and declared that Napoleon's real purpose was to hold them while cutting off their connections on the extreme right at Bar and Chaumont. This was in fact a close conjecture. Napoleon, though surprised into action, was naturally confirmed in his surmise that the hostile troops were a retreating rear-guard; and in consequence he had definitely adopted the most desperate scheme of his life—the plan of hurrying toward the Vosges, of summoning the peasantry to rise en masse, and of calling out the garrison troops from the frontier fortresses to reinforce his army and enable him to strike the invaders from behind.
By his retreat to Troyes on February twenty-second, Schwarzenberg had avoided a decisive conflict, saving his own army, and leaving Napoleon to exhaust himself against the army of Silesia; by his decision of March nineteenth he had confirmed Napoleon in the conviction that the allies were overawed, and had thus led his desperate foe into the greatest blunder conceivable—this chimerical scheme of concentrating his slender, scattered force on the confines of France, and leaving open a way for the great army of invaders to march direct on Paris. Of such stuff are contemporary reputations sometimes constructed. But this was not enough: a third time the Austrian general was to stumble on greatness. Napoleon's movements of concentration had thus far met with no resistance, in spite of their temerity; and throughout the nineteenth the enemy's outposts, wherever found, fled incontinently. It appeared a certainty that the allies were abandoning the line of the Seine in order to avoid a blow on their flank. That evening Napoleon began to vacillate, gradually abandoning his notion of an offensive move near Troyes, and deliberating how best to reach Vitry for a further advance toward his eastern fortresses. To avoid any appearance of retreat, he rejected the safer route by way of Fère-Champenoise to Sommesous, and determined to follow the course of the Aube for a while before turning northward to Sommepuis. He might run across the enemy's rear-guard, but he counted on their pusillanimity for the probable retreat of the very last man to Troyes. When Ney and Sebastiani began on the twentieth to push up the south bank of the Aube, they expected no opposition. That very morning Napoleon had announced to his minister of war, "I shall neglect Troyes, and betake myself in all haste to my fortresses."
So far the Emperor had made no exhibition of the temerity about which so much was later to be said. But he had deceived himself and had taken a wild resolution. Moreover, it is amazing that he should have felt a baseless confidence in Blücher's remaining inert. This hallucination is, however, clearly expressed in a despatch to Marmont of the very same date. Yet, nevertheless, the alternative is not left out of consideration, for he ordered that marshal, in case Blücher should resume the offensive, to abandon Paris and hasten to Châlons. This fatal decision was not taken suddenly: the contingency had been mentioned in a letter of February eighth to Joseph, and again from Rheims emphatic injunctions to keep the Empress and the King of Rome from falling into Austrian hands were issued to the same correspondent. "Do not abandon my son," the Emperor pleaded; "and remember that I would rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of France. The fate of Astyanax, prisoner to the Greeks, has always seemed to me the unhappiest in history." The messenger had been gone but a few hours when word was brought that Blücher had resumed the offensive, and a swift courier was despatched summoning Marmont to Châlons. In this ultimate decision Napoleon showed how cosmopolitan he had grown: he had forgotten, if he had ever understood, the extreme centralization of France; he should have known that, Paris lost, the head of the country was gone, and that the dwarfed limbs could develop little or no national vitality.
This bitter lesson he was soon to learn. On the momentous afternoon of the twentieth, as has been related, about sixteen thousand French confronted nearly twenty-five thousand of the allies in the sharp but indecisive skirmishes before Arcis; the loss of the former was eighteen hundred, that of the allies twenty-seven hundred. In spite of the dimensions which these conflicts had assumed, Napoleon remained firm in the belief that he had to do with his retreating enemy's rear-guard; Schwarzenberg, on the other hand, was convinced that the French had a strength far beyond the reality. During the night both armies were strongly reinforced, and in the early morning Napoleon had twenty-seven thousand five hundred men—quite enough, he believed, to demoralize the retreating Austrians. It was ten o'clock when he ordered the attack, Ney and Sebastiani being directed to the plateau behind the town. What was their surprise and dismay to find Schwarzenberg's entire army, which numbered not less than a hundred thousand, drawn up in battle array on the plain to the eastward, the infantry in three dense columns, cavalry to right and left, with three hundred and seventy pieces of artillery on the central front! The spectacle would have been dazzling to any but a soldier: the bright array of gay accoutrements, the glittering bayonets, the waving banners, and the serried ranks. As it was, the audacious French skirmishers instinctively felt the incapacity of a general who could thus assemble an army as if on purpose to display its numbers and expose it to destruction. Without a thought they began a sort of challenging rencounter with horse-artillery and cavalry.
But the Emperor's hopes were dashed when he learned the truth; with equal numbers he would have been exultant; a battle with odds of four to one he dared not risk. Sebastiani was kept on the heights to mask the retreat which was instantly determined upon, and at half-past one it began. This ruse was so successful, by reason of the alarms and crossings incident to the withdrawal of the French, that the allies were again terror-stricken; even the Czar rejected every suggestion of attack; again force was demoralized by genius. At last, however, scouts brought word that columns of French soldiers were debouching beyond the Aube, and the facts were plain. Even then the paralyzed invaders feared to attack, and it was not until two thirds of Napoleon's force was behind the stream that, after fierce fighting, the French rear was driven from the town. Oudinot's corps was the last to cross the river, and, standing until sappers had destroyed the bridge, it hurried away to follow the main column toward Vitry. The divisions of Gérard and Macdonald joined the march, and there were then forty-five thousand men in line.
While Napoleon was thus neutralizing the efforts of armies and generals by the renown of his name, two of his marshals were finally discredited. Enfeebled as Blücher appeared to be, he was no sooner freed from the awe of Napoleon's proximity than he began to move. On the eighteenth he passed the Aisne, and Marmont, disobeying the explicit instructions of Napoleon to keep open a line of retreat toward Châlons, began to withdraw toward Fismes, where he effected a junction with Mortier. His intention was to keep Blücher from Paris by false manœuvers. Rheims and Épernay at once fell into hostile hands; there was no way left open toward Châlons except the long detour by Château-Thierry and Étoges; and Blücher, it was found, was hurrying to effect a connection with Schwarzenberg. This was an assured checkmate. Meantime Augereau had displayed a similar incapacity. On the eighth he had begun a number of feeble, futile movements intended to prevent the allies from forming their Army of the South. But after a few aimless marches he returned to Lyons, and stood there in idleness until his opponents had completed their organization. On the twentieth the place was assaulted. The French general had twenty-one thousand five hundred men under his immediate command, six thousand eight hundred Catalonian veterans were on their way from Perpignan, and at Chambèry were seven thousand more from the armies of Tuscany and Piedmont. The assailants had thirty-two thousand, mostly raw troops. With a stout heart in its commander, Lyons could have been held until the reinforcements arrived, when the army of the allies would probably have been annihilated. But there was no stout heart in any of the authorities; not a spade had been used to throw up fortifications; the siege-guns ready at Avignon had not been brought up. Augereau, at the very height of the battle, summoned the civil authorities to a consultation, and the unwarlike burghers assented without a murmur to his suggestion of evacuation. The great capital of eastern France was delivered as a prize to those who had not earned it. Had Suchet been substituted for Augereau some weeks earlier, the course of history might have been diverted. But although Napoleon had contemplated such a change, he shrank from disgracing an old servant, and again, as before Leipsic, displayed a kindly spirit destructive to his cause.
The night after his retreat from Arcis, Napoleon sent out a reconnaissance to Vitry, and finding it garrisoned by Prussians, swerved toward St. Dizier, which, after a smart combat, he entered on the twenty-third. This placed him midway between the lines of his enemy's communication both from Strasburg and from Basel; which of the two, he asked himself, would Schwarzenberg return to defend? Thinking only how best to bait his foe, he set his army in motion northward; the anxious Austrian would certainly struggle to retain the line in greatest danger. This illusion continued, French cavalry scoured the country, some of the Châtillon diplomats were captured, and the Emperor of Austria had a narrow escape at Bar. It seemed strange that the country-side as far as Langres was deserted, but the fact was apparently explained when the news came that the enemy were in force at Vitry; probably they had abandoned Troyes and had disregarded Brienne in order to divert him from his purpose.
Alas for the self-deception of a ruined man! The enemy at Vitry were a body of eight thousand Russian cavalry from the Silesian army, sent, under Wintzengerode, to dog Napoleon's heels and deceive him, just as they actually did. Having left Vitry on the twenty-eighth, they were moving toward St. Dizier when Napoleon, believing that they formed the head of a powerful hostile column, fell upon them with needless fury, and all too easily put them to flight; two thousand were captured and five hundred killed. Thanks to Marmont's disobedience and bad judgment, Blücher had opened communications with Schwarzenberg, and both were marching as swiftly as possible direct to Paris. Of this Napoleon remained ignorant until the twenty-eighth. From his prisoners the Emperor first gained a hint of the appalling truth. It was impossible to believe such reports. Orders were issued for an immediate return to Vitry in order to secure reliable information. Arrived before the place, Napoleon called a council of war to decide whether an attempt to storm it should be made. In the moment of deliberation news began to arrive in abundance: captured despatches and bulletins of the enemy, confirmed by definite information from the inhabitants of the surrounding country. There could no longer be any doubt: the enemy, with an advantage of three days' march, was on his way to Paris. The futility of his eastward movement appears to have struck Napoleon like a thunderbolt. Paris abandoned in theory was one thing; France virtually decapitated by the actual loss of its capital was quite another. The thought was unendurable. Mounting his horse, the unhappy man spurred back to St. Dizier, and closeted himself in silent communing with his maps.
The allies had not at first divined Napoleon's purpose. Indeed, their movements in passing the Aube and on the day following were little better than random efforts to fathom it. But on the morning of the twenty-third two important messengers were captured—one a courier from Berthier to Macdonald with despatches stating exactly where Napoleon was; the other a rider with a short note from Napoleon to his Empress, containing a statement of its writer's plans. This famous paper was lost, for Blücher, after having read it, let the rider go. But the extant German translation is doubtless accurate. It runs: "My friend, I have been all day in the saddle. On the twentieth I took Arcis on the Aube. The enemy attacked at eight in the evening. I beat him, killed four thousand men, and captured four cannon. On the twenty-first the enemy engaged in order to protect the march of his columns toward Brienne and Bar on the Aube. I have resolved to betake myself to the Marne in order to draw off the enemy from Paris and to approach my fortifications. I shall be this evening in St. Dizier. Adieu, my friend; kiss my boy." Savary declares that there was a final phrase: "This movement makes or mars me."
The menace to their lines of communication at first produced consternation in the council of the allies. The first proposition laid before them was that they should return on parallel lines and recover their old bases. Had this scheme been adopted, Napoleon's strategy would have been justified completely instead of partially as it was; nothing but a miracle could have prevented the evacuation of France by the invaders. But a second, calmer thought determined the invaders to abandon both the old lines, and, opening a new one by way of Châlons into the Netherlands, to make the necessary detour and fall on Napoleon's rear. Francis, for the sake of keeping close touch with his own domains, was to join the Army of the South at Lyons. Although there is no proof to support the conjecture, it seems as if the Czar and the King of Prussia had suggested this so that both Francis and Metternich might be removed from the military councils of the allies in order that the more warlike party might in their absence take decisive measures. That night a package of letters to Napoleon from the imperial dignitaries at Paris fell into the hands of the invaders. The writers, each and all, expressed a profound despondency, Savary in particular asserting that everything was to be feared should the enemy approach the capital. Next morning, the twenty-fourth, the junction between Blücher and Schwarzenberg was completed. Francis and Metternich being absent, Schwarzenberg, listening to warlike advice, determined to start immediately in pursuit of Napoleon and seek a battle. The march was begun, and it seemed as if Napoleon's wild scheme was to be completely justified. He had certainly displayed profound insight.
Alexander, however, had been steadily hardening his purpose to annihilate Napoleon. For a week past Vitrolles, the well-known royalist agent, had been at his headquarters; the accounts of a steady growth in royalist strength, the efforts of Napoleon's lifelong foe, Pozzo di Borgo, and the budget of despondent letters from the Paris officials, combined to temper the Czar's mystical humor into a determination of steel. Accordingly, on the same day he summoned his personal military advisers, Barclay, Wolkonsky, Diebitsch, and Toll; then, pointing out on a map the various positions of the troops engaged in the campaign, he asked, significantly and impressively, whether it were best to pursue Napoleon or march on Paris. Barclay supported the former alternative; Diebitsch advised dividing the army and doing both; but Toll, with powerful emphasis, declared himself for the second course. The Czar listened enthusiastically to what was near his own heart, and expressed himself strongly as favoring it; the others yielded with the eagerness of courtiers, and Alexander, mounting his horse, spurred after Frederick William and Schwarzenberg. The new plan was unfolded; the Prussian king supported it; Schwarzenberg hesitated, but yielded. That night orders were issued for an about-face, a long explanatory despatch was sent to Blücher, and on the twenty-fifth the combined armies of Bohemia and Silesia were hurrying with measured tramp toward Paris. For the first time there was general enthusiasm in their ranks. Blücher, who from his unremitted ardor had won the name of "Marshal Forward," was transported with joy.
In the collection of the Marquis of Bassano
Napoleon-François-Charles-Joseph, Prince Imperial;
King of Rome; Duke of Reichstadt
From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
The two armies marched on parallel lines, and met with no resistance of any importance, except as the various skirmishes enabled the irregular French soldiers to display a desperate courage, not only the untried "Marie Louises" coming out from Paris, but various bodies of the national guard convoying provision-trains. It was the twenty-fifth before Marmont and Mortier effected their junction, and then, although about sixteen thousand strong, they were steadily forced back through Fère-Champenoise and Allemant toward Charenton, which was under the very walls of Paris. Marmont displayed neither energy nor common sense on the retreat: his outlying companies were cut off, and strategic points which might have been held were utterly neglected. The army with which he reached Paris on the twenty-ninth should have formed an invaluable nucleus for the formation and incorporation of the numerous volunteers and irregular companies which were available; but, like its leader, it was entirely demoralized. Ledru des Essarts, commander of Meaux, was obliged on the twenty-seventh to abandon his charge, a military depot full of ammunition and supplies, which was essential to the safety of Paris. The garrison consisted of six thousand men, but among them were not more than eight hundred veterans, hastily collected from Marmont's stragglers, and the new conscripts were ill-conditioned and badly commanded. Although the generals drew up their men with a bold front to defend the passage of the Marne, the undisciplined columns were overwhelmed with terror at the sight of Blücher's army, and, standing only long enough to blow up the magazines, fled. They fought gallantly, however, on their retreat throughout the twenty-eighth, but to no avail; one position after another was lost, and they too bivouacked on the evening of the twenty-ninth before the gates of the capital. It is a weak curiosity, possibly, but we must wonder what would have occurred had Marmont, instead of retreating to Fismes on the eighteenth, withdrawn to Rheims, where he and Mortier could at least have checked Blücher's unauthorized advance, and perhaps have held the army of Silesia for a time, when the moral effect would probably have been to justify Schwarzenberg and confirm his project for the pursuit of Napoleon. In that case, moreover, the precious information of Napoleon's letter to his consort would not have fallen into his enemies' hands. Would destiny have paused in its career?
CHAPTER IX
The Beginning of the End[11]
Napoleon's Problem — The Military Situation — A Council of War and State — The Return to Paris — Prostrating News — The Empress-Regent and her Advisers — Traitors Within — Talleyrand — The Defenders of the Capital — The Flight of the Court — The Allies before the City.
The pallid, silent Emperor at St. Dizier was closeted with considerations like these. He knew of the defeat which forced Marmont and Mortier back on Paris; the loss of the capital was imminent; parties were in a dangerous state; his marshals were growing more and more slack; he had failed in transferring the seat of war to Lorraine; the information he had so far received was almost certainly colored by the medium of scheming followers through which it came. What single mind could grapple with such affairs? It was not because the thwarted man had lost his nerve, but because he was calm and clear-minded, that he felt the need of frank, dispassionate advice on all these matters. On the other hand, there stood forth in the clearest light a single fact about which there could be no doubt, and it alone might counterbalance all the rest: the peoples of northern and eastern France were at last aroused in behalf of his cause. For years all Europe had rung with outcries against the outrages of Napoleon's soldiery; the allied armies no sooner became invaders in their turn than they began to outstrip their foe in every deed of shame; in particular, the savage bands from Russian Asia indulged their inhuman passions to the full, while the French peasantry, rigid with horror, looked on for the moment in paralysis. Now they had begun to rise in mass, and from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth their volunteer companies brought in a thousand prisoners. The depots, trains, and impedimenta of every sort which the allies abandoned on turning westward fell into the hands of a peasant soldiery, many of whom were armed with shot-guns. The rising for Napoleon was comparable only to that which earlier years had seen in the Vendée on behalf of the Bourbons.
Besides, all the chief cities of the district were now in the hands of more or less regular troops; Dunette was marching from Metz with four thousand men; Broussier, from Strasburg with five thousand; Verdun could furnish two thousand, and several other fortresses a like number. Souham was at Nogent with his division, Allix at Auxerre with his; the army at the Emperor's disposal could easily be reckoned at seventy thousand. Assisted by the partizan bands which now hung in a passion of hatred on the skirts of the invaders, and by the national uprising now fairly under way, could not the Emperor-general hope for another successful stand? He well knew that the fear of what had happened was the specter of his enemy's council-board; they would, he reckoned, be rendered over-cautious, and give him at least a fortnight in which to manœuver before the fall of Paris could be expected. Counting the men about Vitry and the garrison reinforcements at only sixty thousand, the combined armies of Suchet, Soult, and Augereau at the same number, that of Marmont at fourteen thousand, and the men in the various depots at sixteen thousand, he would have a total of a hundred and fifty thousand, from which he could easily spare fifty thousand to cut off every line of retreat from his foe, and still have left a hundred thousand wherewith to meet their concentrated force on a basis of something like equality. From the purely strategic point of view, the march of the allies to Paris was sheer madness unless they could count on the exhaustion of the population right, left, and behind. If the national uprising could be organized, they would be cut off from all reinforcement and entrapped. Already their numbers had been reduced to a hundred and ten thousand men. Napoleon with a hundred thousand, and the nation to support him, had a fair chance of annihilating them.
It was, therefore, not a mere hallucination which led him to hope that once again the tangled web of affairs might be severed by a sweep of the soldier's saber. But of course in the crisis of his great decision he could not stand alone; he must be sure of his lieutenants. Accordingly, after a few hours of secret communing, he summoned a council, and laid before it his considerations substantially as enumerated. Those present were Berthier, Ney, Lefebvre, Caulaincourt, and Maret; Oudinot and Macdonald, at Bar on the Ornain and Perthes respectively, were too distant to arrive in time, but he believed that he knew their opinion, which was that the war should be continued either in Lorraine or from a center of operations to be established at Sens. From this conclusion Macdonald did not once waver; Oudinot had begun to hedge; their absence, therefore, was unimportant. Berthier was verging on desperation, and so was Caulaincourt, who, since leaving Châtillon, had been vainly struggling to reopen negotiations for peace on any terms; Ney, though physically brave, was not the stuff from which martyrs are made, and Lefebvre, naturally weak, was laboring under a momentary attack of senility. The council was imperative for peace at any price; the Emperor, having foreseen its temper, had little difficulty in taking the military steps for carrying out its behests.
Early in the morning of March twenty-eighth the army was set in motion toward Paris. The line of march was to be through Bar on the Aube, Troyes, and Fontainebleau, a somewhat circuitous route, chosen apparently for three reasons: because the region to be traversed would still afford sustenance to the men, because the Seine would protect its right flank, and because the dangerous point of Meaux was thus avoided. Such a conclusion is significant of the clearest judgment and the nicest calculation. Pages have been written about Napoleon's hallucinations at the close of his career; neither here nor in any of the courses he adopted is there aught to sustain the charge. At breakfast-time a squad of jubilant peasants brought in a prisoner whom they believed to be no less a person than the Comte d'Artois. In reality it was Weissenberg, an Austrian ambassador on his way to London. He was promptly liberated on parole and despatched with letters to Francis and Metternich. By a curious adventure, Vitrolles was in the minister's suite disguised as a serving-man, but he was not detected.
At Doulevant Napoleon received cipher despatches from La Valette, the postmaster-general in Paris, a trusted friend. These were the first communications since the twenty-second; the writer said not a moment must be wasted, the Emperor must come quickly or all would be lost. His decision once taken, Napoleon had grown more feverish with every hour; this message gave wings to his impatience. With some regard for such measures as would preclude his capture by wandering bands of Cossacks, he began almost to fly. New couriers were met at Doulaincourt with despatches which contained a full history of the past few days; in consequence the troops were spurred to fresh exertions, their marches were doubled, and at nightfall of the twenty-ninth Troyes was reached. Snatching a few brief hours of sleep, Napoleon at dawn next morning threw discretion to the winds, and started with an insufficient escort, determined to reach Villeneuve on the Vanne before night. The task was performed, but no sooner had he arrived than at once he flung himself into a post-chaise, and, with Caulaincourt at his side, sped toward Paris; a second vehicle, with three adjutants, followed as best it might; and a third, containing Gourgaud and Lefebvre, brought up the rear. It will be remembered that Gourgaud was an able artillerist; Lefebvre, it was hoped, could rouse the suburban populations for the defense of Paris. At Sens Napoleon heard that the enemy was ready to attack; at Fontainebleau that the Empress had fled toward the Loire; at Essonnes he was told that the decisive battle was raging; and about ten miles from the capital, at the wretched posting-station of La Cour de France, deep in the night, fell the fatal blow. Paris had surrendered. The terrible certainty was assured by the bearer of the tidings, Belliard, a cavalry officer despatched with his troop by Mortier to prepare quarters for his own and Marmont's men.
Maria Louisa had played her rôle of Empress-regent as well as might be expected from a woman of twenty-three with slender abilities; only once in his letters did the Emperor chide her, and that was for a fault at that time venial in European royalty: receiving a high official, in this case the arch-chancellor, in her bedchamber. On the whole, she had been dignified and conciliatory; once she rose to a considerable height, pronouncing before the senate with great effect a stirring speech composed by her husband and forwarded from his headquarters. About her were grouped a motley council: Joseph, gentle but efficient; Savary, underhanded and unwarlike; Clarke, working in the war ministry like a machine; Talleyrand, secretly plotting against Napoleon, whose title of vice-grand elector he wore with outward suavity; Cambacérès, wise but unready; Montalivet, adroit but cautious. Yet, while there was no one combining ability, enthusiasm, and energy, the equipment of troops had gone on with great regularity, and each day regiments of half-drilled, half-equipped recruits had departed for the seat of war. The national guards who garrisoned the city, some twelve thousand in all, had forgotten their imperialism, having grown very sensitive to the shafts of royalist wit; yet they held their peace and had performed the round of their duties. Everything had outwardly been so quiet and regular that Napoleon actually contemplated a new levy, but the emptiness of the arsenals compelled him to dismiss the idea. Theoretically a fortified military depot, Paris was really an antiquated fortress with arsenals of useless weapons. Spasmodic efforts had been made to throw up redoubts before the walls, but they had failed from lack of energy in the military administration.
A close examination of what lay beneath the surface of Parisian society revealed much that was dangerous. Talleyrand's house was a nest of intrigue. Imperial prefects like Pasquier and Chabrol were calm but perfunctory. The Talleyrand circle grew larger and bolder every day. Moreover, it had influential members—de Pradt, Louis, Vitrolles, Royer-Collard, Lambrecht, Grégoire, and Garat, together with other high functionaries in all departments. Bourrienne developed great activity as an extortioner and briber; the great royalist irreconcilables, Montmorency, Noailles, Denfort, Fitz-James, and Montesquiou, were less and less careful to conceal their activity. Jaucourt, one of Joseph's chamberlains, was a spy carrying the latest news from headquarters to the plotters. "If the Emperor were killed," he wrote on March seventeenth, "we should then have the King of Rome and the regency of his mother.... The Emperor dead, we could appoint a council which would satisfy all opinions. Burn this letter." The program is clear when we recall that the little King of Rome was not three years old. Napoleon was well aware of the increasing chaos, and smartly reproved Savary from Rheims.
But Talleyrand was undaunted. At first he appears to have desired a violent death for Napoleon, in the hope of furthering his own schemes during a long imperial regency. At all events, he ardently opposed the departure of the Empress and the King of Rome from Paris. Nevertheless it was he who despatched Vitrolles, the passionate royalist, to Nesselrode with a letter in invisible ink which, when deciphered, turned out to be an inscrutable riddle capable of two interpretations. "The bearer of this deserves all confidence. Hear him and know me. It is time to be plain. You are walking on crutches; use your legs and will to do what you can." Lannes had long before stigmatized the unfrocked bishop as a mess of filth in a silk stocking; Murat said he could take a kick from behind without showing it in his face; in the last meeting of the council of state before the renewal of hostilities, Napoleon fixed his eyes on the sphinx-like cripple and said: "I know I am leaving in Paris other enemies than those I am going to fight." His fellow-conspirators were scarcely less bitter in their dislike than his avowed enemies. "You don't know the monkey," said Dalberg to Vitrolles; "he would not risk burning the tip of his paw even if all the chestnuts were for himself." Yet, master of intrigue, he pursued the even tenor of his course, scattering innuendos, distributing showers of anonymous pamphlets, smuggling English newspapers into the city, in fact working every wire of conspiracy. Surprised by the minister of police in an equivocal meeting with de Pradt, he burst out into hollow laughter, his companion joined in the peal, and even Savary himself found the merriment infectious.
Toward the close of March the populace displayed a perilous sensitiveness to all these influences. The London "Times" of March fifteenth, which was read by many in the capital, asked what pity Blücher and the Cossacks would show to Paris on the day of their vengeance, the editor suggesting that possibly as he wrote the famous town was already in ashes. Such suggestions created something very like a panic, and a week later the climax was reached. When the fugitive peasants from the surrounding country began to take refuge in the capital they found business at a standstill, the shops closed, the streets deserted, the householders preparing for flight. From the twenty-third to the twenty-eighth there was no news from Napoleon; the Empress and council heard only of Marmont's defeat. They felt that a decision must be taken, and finally on the twenty-eighth the imperial officials held a council. The facts were plainly stated by Clarke; he had but forty-three thousand men, all told, wherewith to defend the capital, and in consequence it was determined to send the Empress and her son to Rambouillet on the very next day. This fatal decision was taken partly through fear, but largely in deference to Napoleon's letter containing the classical allusion to Astyanax. The very men who took it believed that the Parisian masses would have died for the young Napoleon, and deplored the decision they had reached. "Behold what a fall in history!" said Talleyrand to Savary on parting. "To attach one's name to a few adventures instead of affixing it to an age.... But it is not for everybody to be engulfed in the ruins of this edifice." From that hour the restoration of the Bourbons was a certainty.
It was a mournful procession of imperial carriages which next morning filed slowly through the city, attracting slight attention from a few silent onlookers, and passed on toward Rambouillet. The baby king had shrieked and clutched at the doors as he was torn away from his apartments in the Tuileries, and would not be appeased; his mother and attendants were in consternation at the omen, and all thoughtful persons who considered the situation were convinced that the dissolution of the Empire was at hand. A deputation from the national guard had sought in vain to dissuade the Empress from her course; their failure and the distant booming of cannon produced widespread depression throughout the city, which was not removed by a spirited proclamation from Joseph declaring that his brother was on the heels of the invaders. All the public functionaries seemed inert, and everybody knew that, even though the populace should rise, there was no adequate means of resistance either in men or in arms or in proper fortifications.
Clarke alone began to display energy; with Joseph's assistance, what preparations were possible at so late an hour were made: six companies were formed from the recruits at hand, the national guard was put under arms, the students of the polytechnic school were called out for service, communication with Marmont was secured, and by late afternoon Montmartre, Belleville, and St. Denis were feebly fortified. The allies had been well aware that what was to be done must be done before the dreaded Emperor should arrive, and on that same morning their vanguard had summoned the town; but during the parley their generals began to feel the need of greater strength, and further asked an armistice of four hours. This was granted on the usual condition that within its duration no troops should be moved; but the implied promise was perfidiously broken, and at nightfall both Alexander and Frederick William, accompanied by their forces, were in sight of the far-famed city. Dangers, hardships, bygone insults and humiliations, all were forgotten in a general tumult of joy, wrote Danilevsky, a Russian officer. Alexander alone was pensive, well knowing that, should the city hold out two days, reinforcements from the west might make its capture impossible until Napoleon should arrive. Accordingly he took virtual command, and issued stringent orders preparatory for the assault early next morning.
CHAPTER X
The Fall of Paris[12]
The Battle before Paris — The Armistice — The Position of Marmont — Legitimacy and the Bourbons — The Provisional Government — Napoleon's Fury — Suggestions of Abdication — Napoleon's New Policy Foreshadowed — His Troops and Officers — The Treason of Marmont — The Marshals at Fontainebleau — Napoleon's Despair.
From early dawn until midday on March thirtieth the fighting before Paris was almost continuous, the assailants displaying an assurance of victory, the defenders showing the courage of despair. Marmont and Mortier kept their ranks in order, and the soldiers fought gallantly; elsewhere the militia and the boys emulated each other and the regulars in steadfastness. But when, shortly after noon, it became evident that Paris was doomed to fall before superior force, Joseph, as deputy emperor, issued to Marmont full powers to treat, and followed the Empress, whom he overtook at Chartres, far beyond Rambouillet, where she had expected to halt. She had determined, for greater safety, to cross the Loire. At four in the afternoon the Prussians captured Montmartre, and prepared to bombard from that height; at the same moment the last ranks of the allied armies came up.
Marmont felt further resistance to be useless; his line of retreat was endangered, and he had special directions not to expose the city to a sack. There was still abundant courage in the citizens, who stood behind the barricades within the gates clamorous for arms and ammunition. A messenger came galloping in with the news that Napoleon was but half a day distant. The lookouts now and then espied some general riding a white horse, and called, "'Tis he!" But for all the enthusiasm, the expected "he" did not appear. Further carnage seemed useless, since French honor had been vindicated, and when the war-worn Marmont withdrew into the town he was received as one who had done what man could do. Negotiations once fairly begun, the allies abandoned the hard conditions with which they opened the parley, and displayed a sense of great relief. Their chief representative, Count Orloff, behaved with much consideration. Recognizing the force of the French plea that their army was quite strong enough, if not to defend the city another twenty-four hours, at least to contest it street by street until, arrived at last on the left bank of the Seine, they could regain Fontainebleau in safety, Orloff assented to what were virtually the stipulations of Marmont and Mortier. The terms adopted made provision for an armistice, assured kind treatment to the city, and permitted the withdrawal of the troops.
Throughout the afternoon and evening Marmont's house was the rendezvous of the negotiators and of the few political personages left in the city. There was the freest talk: "Bonaparte" was conquered; the Bourbons would be restored; what a splendid man was this Marmont! Some weeks earlier the marshal had been significantly informed by his brother-in-law Perregaux, a chamberlain of Napoleon's, that in case of a restoration he and Macdonald would be spared, whatever happened to the other great imperial leaders. Talleyrand had ostensibly taken flight with his colleagues, but by an interesting coincidence his coachman had sought the wrong exit from the city, and had been turned back. That night he appeared in Marmont's presence with direct overtures from the Bourbons. His interview was short, and he seemed to have gained nothing; but he had an air of victory as he withdrew. He saw that Marmont was consumed with vanity, feeling that the destinies of France, of Napoleon, of all Europe, perhaps, were in his hands alone. This was much. Passing through the corridors, the sly diplomatist respectfully greeted Prince Orloff, and begged to lay his profound respects at the feet of the Czar. "I shall not forget to lay this blank check before his majesty," was the stinging retort. Talleyrand smiled almost imperceptibly with his lips, and went his way. But Alexander said on hearing the facts: "As yet this is but anecdote; it may become history."
The triumphal entry of the allies into Paris began next morning, March thirty-first, 1814, at seven o'clock. It was headed by Alexander and Frederick William, now universally regarded as the Czar's satellite king. Francis was in Dijon; he was represented by Schwarzenberg. The three leaders, with their respective staff officers, were solemnly received by a deputation of the municipal authorities. Their soldiers were orderly, and there was no pillage or license. Crowds of royalists thronged the streets acclaiming the conquerors and shouting for Louis XVIII. Throughout the afternoon Talleyrand and Nesselrode were closeted in the former's palace; and when, toward evening, they were joined by the Czar and the King, both of whom had devoted the day to ceremony, the diplomats had already agreed that France must have the Bourbons. The sovereigns had actually been deceived by the noisy royalist manifestations into believing that France welcomed her invaders, and they assented to the conclusion of the ministers. A formal meeting was instantly arranged; there were present, besides the monarchs and their ministers, Schwarzenberg, Lichtenstein, Dalberg, and Pozzo di Borgo. Alexander assumed the presidency, but Talleyrand, with consummate skill, monopolized the deliberations. The Czar suggested, as various bases for peace, Napoleon under all guaranties, Maria Louisa as regent for the King of Rome, the Bourbons, and, it is believed, hinted at Bernadotte or the republic as possibilities. Of all these courses there was but one which represented the notion of legitimacy with which Alexander had in the coalition identified himself, and by which alone he, with his shady title, could hope to assert authority in western Europe. This was expounded and emphasized by the wily Talleyrand with tremendous effect. The idea of the republic was of course relegated to oblivion; of Bernadotte there could not well be a serious question. If France wanted a mere soldier, she already had the foremost in the world. Napoleon still alive, the regency would be only another name for his continued rule; the Bourbons, and they alone, represented a principle. There was little difficulty, therefore, in reaching the decision not to treat with Napoleon Bonaparte or with any member of his family.
This was the great schemer's first stroke; his second was equally brilliant: the servile senate was appointed to create a provisional government and to construct a new constitution, to be guaranteed by the allies. That body, however obsequious, was still French; even the extreme radicals, as represented by Lainé of Bordeaux, had to acknowledge this. The new and subservient administration was at work within twenty-four hours; Talleyrand, with his two creatures, Dalberg and Jaucourt; Montesquiou, the royalist; and Beurnonville, a recalcitrant imperialist, constituting the executive commission. Two days later the legislature was summoned, and seventy-nine deputies responded. After considerable debate they pronounced Napoleon overthrown for having violated the constitution. The municipal council and the great imperial offices, with their magistrates, gave their assent. The heart of the city appeared to have been transformed: on the street, at the theater, everywhere the white Bourbon cockades and ribbons burst forth like blossoms in a premature spring. But outside the focus of agitation, and in the suburbs, the populace murmured, and sometimes exhibited open discontent. In proportion to the distance west and south, the country was correspondingly imperial, obeying the imperial regency now established at Blois, which was summoning recruits, issuing stirring proclamations, and keeping up a brave show. In a way, therefore, France for the moment had three governments, that of the allies, that of the regency, and that of Napoleon himself.
When, in the latest hours of March thirtieth, Napoleon met Belliard, and heard the disastrous report of what had happened, he gave full vent to a frightful outburst of wrath. As he said himself in calmer moments, such was his anger at that time, that he never seemed to have known anger before. Forgetful of all his own shortcomings, he raged against others with a fury bordering on insanity, and could find no language vile or blasphemous enough wherewith to stigmatize Joseph and Clarke. In utter self-abandonment, he demanded a carriage. There were noise and bustle in the stable. With a choked, hoarse voice the seeming maniac called peremptorily for haste. No vehicle appeared. Probably Caulaincourt had dared to cross his Emperor's command for the sake of his Emperor's safety. Finally Napoleon strode forth into the darkness toward Paris. Questioning and storming as he walked, he denounced his two marshals for their haste in surrendering. His attendants reasoned in vain until, a mile beyond La Cour de France, Mortier's vanguard was met marching away under the terms of the convention, and Napoleon knew that he was face to face with doom; to advance farther would mean imprisonment or worse. General Flahaut was therefore sent to seek Marmont's advice, and Caulaincourt hurried away to secure an audience with the Czar. There were still wild hopes which would not die. Perhaps the capitulation was not yet signed, perhaps Caulaincourt could gain time if nothing else, perhaps by sounding the tocsin and illuminating the town the populace and national guard would be led to rise and aid the army. The reply from Marmont came as swiftly as only discouraging news can come; the situation, he said, was hopeless, the public depressed by the flight of the court, the national guard worthless; he was coming in with the twenty thousand troops still left to himself and Mortier. Napoleon, now calm and collected, issued careful orders for the two marshals to take position between the Essonne and the Seine, their left on the former stream, their right on the latter, the whole position protected by these rivers on the flanks, and by the Yonne in the rear. It was clear there was to be a great battle under the walls of Paris. Macdonald was the only general who advised it; Berthier, Drouot, Belliard, Flahaut, and Gourgaud all wished to return into Lorraine; but the divisions were coming in swiftly, and in the short midnight hour before returning to Fontainebleau, Napoleon's decision was taken.
On the afternoon of April first the Emperor rode from Fontainebleau to Marmont's headquarters. While he was in the very act of congratulating Marmont on his gallantry, the commissioners who had signed the capitulation arrived and opened their budget of news. They told of the formal entry by the allies, of their resolution not to treat with Napoleon, and declared that the white cockade of the Bourbons was everywhere visible. Napoleon grew pensive and somber as he listened, and then, almost without speaking, rode sadly back to Fontainebleau. Next morning he was cheerful again, and as he stepped into the White Horse court of the palace at the hour of guard-mounting two battalions cheered him enthusiastically. His step was elastic, his countenance lighted with the old fire; the onlookers said, "It is the Napoleon of Potsdam and Schönbrunn." But in the afternoon Caulaincourt returned, and the sky seemed darkened; the Czar had listened to the envoy's eloquence only so far as to take into consideration once again the question of peace with the Empire under a regency; as a condition antecedent, Napoleon must abdicate.
The stricken man could not hear his faithful servant's report with equanimity. He restrained his violent impulses, but used harsh words. Soon it seemed as if ideas of a strange and awful form were mastering him, the gloomy interview was ended, and the Emperor dismissed his minister. For such a disease as his there was no remedy but action; next morning two divisions, one each of the old and young guard, arrived, and they were drawn up for review. Napoleon, in splendid garb and with a brilliant suite, in which were two marshals, Ney and Moncey, went through the ceremony. At its close he gathered the officers present into a group, and explained the situation in his old incisive phrase and vibrating tones, closing with the words: "In a few days I am going to attack Paris; can I count on you?" There was dead silence. "Am I right?" rang out, in a final exhausting effort, the moving call of the great actor. Then at last came the hearty, ringing response so breathlessly expected. "They were silent," said General Petit in gentle tones, "because it seemed needless to reply." Napoleon continued: "We will show them if the French nation be master in their own house, that if we have long been masters in the dwellings of others we will always be so in our own." As the officers scattered to their posts and repeated the "little corporal's" words, the old "growlers," as men had come to call the veterans of the Empire, gave another cheer. The bands played the two great hymns of victory, the "Marseillaise" and the "Chant du Départ," as the ranks moved away.
Napoleon must now have certain clear conceptions. Except Mortier, Drouot, and Gérard, his great officers were disaffected; but the ambitious minor generals were still his devoted slaves. The army was thoroughly imperialist, partly because they represented the nation as a whole, partly because they were under the Emperor's spell. Of such troops he appeared to have at hand sixty thousand, distributed as follows: Marmont, twelve thousand five hundred; Mortier, six thousand; Macdonald, two thousand seven hundred; Oudinot, five thousand five hundred; Gérard, three thousand; Ney, two thousand three hundred; Drouot, nine thousand; and about eleven thousand six hundred guard and other cavalry. Besides these, there were sixteen hundred Poles, two thousand two hundred and fifty recruits, and fifteen hundred men in the garrisons of Fontainebleau and Mélun. Farther away were considerable forces in Sens, Tours, Blois, and Orléans, eight thousand in all; and still farther the armies of Soult, Suchet, Augereau, and Maison. Although the allies had lost nine thousand men before Paris, they had quickly called up reinforcements, and had about a hundred and forty thousand men in readiness to fight. This situation may not have been entirely discouraging to the devotee of a dark destiny, to which as a hapless worshiper he had lately commenced to give the name of Providence. Be that as it may, when Macdonald arrived on the morning of the fourth the dispositions for battle had been carefully studied and arranged; every corps was ordered to its station. As usual, Napoleon appeared about noon for the ceremony of guard-mounting, and the troops acclaimed him as usual. But a few paces distant from him stood the marshals and higher generals in a little knot, their heads close bunched, their tongues running, their glances averted. From out of this group rang the thunderous voice of Ney: "Nothing but the abdication can draw us out of this." Napoleon started, regained his self-control, pretended not to hear the crushing menace, and withdrew to his work-room.
Concurrent with the resolve of the marshals at Fontainebleau ran the actual treason of one who alone was more important to Napoleon's cause than all of them. "I am ready to leave, with my troops, the army of the Emperor Napoleon on the following conditions, of which I demand from you a written guaranty," are the startling words from a letter of Marmont to the Czar, dated the previous day. On April first agents of the provisional government had made arrangements with a discredited nobleman named Maubreuil for the assassination of Napoleon; the next day Schwarzenberg introduced into the French lines newspapers and copies of a proclamation explaining that the action of the senate and of all France had released the soldiers from their oaths. Marmont forwarded the documents he received to Berthier, and while most of the officers flung their copies away in contemptuous scorn, some read and pondered. On April third an emissary from Schwarzenberg appeared at Marmont's headquarters, and what he said was spoken to willing ears. Still under the influence of the homage he had received in Paris, the vain marshal saw himself repeating the rôle of Monk; he beheld France at peace, prosperity restored, social order reëstablished, and himself extolled as a true patriot—all this if only he pursued the easy line of self-interest, whereby he would not merely retain his duchy, but also secure the new honors and emoluments which would be showered on him. So he yielded on condition that his troops should withdraw honorably into Normandy, and that Napoleon should be allowed to enjoy life and liberty within circumscribed limits fixed by the allied powers and France. Next morning, the fourth, came Schwarzenberg's assent, and Marmont at once set about suborning his officers; at four in the afternoon arrived an embassy from Fontainebleau on its way to Paris. The officers composing it desired to see Marmont.
The informal meeting held in the courtyard at Fontainebleau was a historical event. Its members chatted about the course taken by the senate, about Caulaincourt's mission, and discussed in particular the suggestion of abdication. The marshals and great generals, long since disgusted with campaigning, wounded in their dignity by the Emperor's rebukes, and attributing their recent failures to the wretched quality of the troops assigned to them, were eager for peace, and yearned to enjoy their hard-earned fortunes. They caught at the seductive idea presented by Caulaincourt. The abdication of Napoleon would mean the perpetuation of the Empire. The Empire would be not merely peace, but peace with what war had gained; to wit, the imperial court and society, the preservation and enjoyment of estates, the continuity of processes which had done so much to regenerate France and make her a modern nation. The prospect was irresistible, and Ney only expressed the grim determination of his colleagues when he gave the watchword so unexpectedly at the mounting of the guard. When Napoleon entered his cabinet he found there Berthier, Maret, Caulaincourt, and Bertrand. Concealing his agitation, he began the routine of such familiar labors as impend on the eve of battle. Almost instantly hurrying footsteps were heard in the corridor, the door was burst open, and on the threshold stood Ney, Lefebvre, Oudinot, and Macdonald. The leader of the company quailed an instant under the Emperor's gaze, and then gruffly demanded if there were news from Paris. No, was the reply—a deliberate falsehood, since the decree of the senate had arrived the night before. "Well, then, I have some," roared Ney, and told the familiar facts.