Some allusion has already been made to the news of a political disturbance in Paris, which reached Napoleon during his retreat from Moscow, and quickened his final abandonment of the army. The occurrence in question was the daring conspiracy headed by General Mallet. This officer, one of the ancient noblesse, had been placed in confinement in 1808, in consequence of his connection with a society called the Philadelphes, which seems to have sprung up within the French army, at the time when Napoleon seized the supreme power, and which had for its immediate object his deposition—while some of the members contemplated the restoration of a republican government, and others, of whom Mallet was one, the recall of the royal family of Bourbon. The people of Paris had for some weeks received no official intelligence from the grand army, and rumours of some awful catastrophe were rife among all classes, when Mallet conceived the daring project of forging a senatus-consultum, announcing the fall of Napoleon in a great battle in Russia, and appointing a provisional government. Having executed this forgery, the general escaped from his prison, and appeared in full uniform, attended by a corporal dressed as an aide-de-camp, at midnight, on the 22nd of October 1812, at the gates of the Minims barracks, then tenanted by some new and raw levies. The audacity with which he claimed the obedience of these men to the senatorial decree overawed them. He assumed the command, and on the instant arrested by their means Savary, minister of police, and some others of the principal functionaries in the capital. General Hullin, the military governor, was summoned and hesitated; at that moment the officer of police, from whose keeping Mallet had escaped, recognised him, and he was immediately resisted, disarmed, and confined. The whole affair was over in the course of a few hours, but the fact that so wild a scheme should have been so nearly successful was sufficiently alarming. The ease and indifference with which a considerable body of armed men, in the very heart of Paris, had transferred their services to a new authority, proclaimed by a stranger, made Napoleon consider with suspicion the basis of his power. And ignorant to what extent the conspiracy had actually gone, he heard with additional alarm, that no fewer than twenty-four persons, including the leader, had been condemned to death. Of so many he was willing to believe that some at least had been mere dupes, and apprehended that so much bloodshed might create a violent revulsion of public feeling. The Parisians beheld the execution of these men with as much indifference as their bold attempt; but of this Napoleon was ignorant, until he reached the Tuileries.
His arrival, preceded as it had been by the twenty-ninth bulletin, in which the veil was at last lifted from the fatal events of the campaign, restored for the moment the appearances of composure, amidst a population of which almost every family had lost a son or a brother. Such was the influence that still clung to his name. The Emperor was safe. However great the present calamity, hope remained. The elements, as they were taught to believe, had not merely quickened and increased, but wholly occasioned the reverses of the army. The Russian winter was the only enemy that had been able to triumph over his genius, and the valour of Frenchmen. The senate, the magistrates, all those public bodies and functionaries who had the means of approaching the throne, now crowded to its footsteps with addresses full of adulation yet more audacious than they had ever before ventured on. Tho voice of applause, congratulation, and confidence, re-echoed from every quarter, drowned the whispers of suspicion, resentment, and natural sorrow. Every department of the public service appeared to be animated with a spirit of tenfold activity. New conscriptions were called for and yielded. Regiments arrived from Spain and from Italy. Every arsenal resounded with the preparation of new artillery—thousands of horses were impressed in every province. Ere many weeks had elapsed. Napoleon found himself once more in a condition to take the field with not less than 350,000 soldiers. Such was the effect of his new appeal to the national feelings of this great and gallant people.
Meanwhile the French garrisons dispersed over the Prussian territory were wholly incompetent to overawe that oppressed and insulted nation, now burning with the settled thirst and the long-deferred hope of vengeance. The king interposed, indeed, his authority to protect the soldiers of Napoleon from popular violence; but it presently became manifest that their safety must depend on their concentrating themselves in a small number of fortified places; and that even if Frederick William had been cordially anxious to preserve his alliance with France, it would soon be impossible for him to resist the unanimous wishes of his people. Murat was already weary of his command. He found himself thwarted and controlled by the other generals, none of whom respected his authority; and one of whom, when he happened to speak of himself in the same breath with the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia, answered without ceremony, "You must remember that these are kings by the grace of God, by descent, and by custom; whereas you are only a king by the grace of Napoleon, and through the expenditure of French blood." Murat was moreover jealous of the extent to which his queen was understood to be playing the sovereign in Naples, and he threw up his command; being succeeded by Eugene Beauharnois, and insulted anew by Napoleon himself, in a general order which announced this change, and alleged as its causes, the superior military skill of the viceroy, and his possession of "the full confidence of the Emperor." Eugene succeeded to the command at the moment when it was obvious that Frederick William could no longer, even if he would, repress the universal enthusiasm of his people. On the 31st of January, the King made his escape to Breslau, in which neighbourhood no French were garrisoned, erected his standard, and called on the nation to rise in arms. Whereon Eugene retired to Magdeburg, and shut himself up in that great fortress, with as many troops as he could assemble to the west of the Elbe.
Six years had elapsed since the fatal day of Jena; and, in spite of all the watchfulness of Napoleon's tyranny, the Prussian nation had recovered in a great measure its energies. The people now answered the call of their beloved prince, as with the heart and voice of one man. Youths of all ranks, the highest and the lowest, flocked indiscriminately to the standard: the students of the universities formed themselves into battalions, at the head of which, in many instances, their teachers marched. The women flung their trinkets into the king's treasure—the gentlemen melted their plate—England poured in her gold with a lavish hand. The rapidity with which discipline was established among the great levies thus assembled, excited universal astonishment. It spoke the intense and perfect zeal with which a people, naturally warlike, had devoted themselves to the sacred cause of independence. The Emperor of Russia was no sooner aware of this great movement, than he resolved to advance into Silesia. Having masked several French garrisons in Prussian Poland, and taken others, he pushed on with his main army to support Frederick William. There was some risk in leaving a considerable number of hostile fortresses behind him and his own frontier; but this he encountered cheerfully, rather than permit the Prussians to stand alone in the first onset of Napoleon, of whose extensive preparations all Europe was well aware. The two sovereigns, long attached to each other by the warmest feelings of personal friendship, though of late compelled by the iron force of circumstances to put on the disguise of hostility, met at Breslau on the 15th of March. Tears rushed down the cheeks of Frederick William, as he fell into the arms of Alexander—"Wipe them," said the Czar; "they are the last that Napoleon shall ever cause you to shed."
The aged Kutusoff having died, the command of the Russian army was now given to Witgenstein; while that of the Prussians was entrusted to a leader, whose name was hailed as the sure pledge of unremitting activity and indomitable perseverance. This was Blucher, an officer originally trained under the great Frederick, whose exemplary conduct after the battle of Jena has already been mentioned. The brave old man had, since that catastrophe, lived in utter retirement. The soldiery had long before bestowed on him the nom-de-guerre of Marshal Forwards, and they heard of his appointment with universal delight. Addicted to drinking, smoking, and gambling, and little conversant with the higher branches of war as an art, Blucher was at first despised by Napoleon. But his technical deficiencies were abundantly supplied by the skill of Scharnforst, and afterwards of Gneisenau; and he himself possessed such influence over the minds of his men in the day of action, and was sure to rally them so rapidly after defeat, and to urge them on so keenly when fortune was more favourable, that ere long the Emperor was forced to confess that no one gave him so much trouble as that "debauched old dragoon." Blucher hated the very names of France and Buonaparte with a perfect hatred; and, once more permitted to draw his sword, he swore never to sheathe it until the revenge of Prussia was complete.
The Crown Prince of Sweden landed with 35,000 men at Stralsund, and advanced through Mecklenburg, while the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia were concentrating their armies in Silesia. It was announced and expected that German troops would join Bernadotte, so as to enable him to open the campaign on the lower Elbe with a separate army of 100,000. Lord Wellington was about to advance once more into Spain, with his victorious veterans. Three great armies, two of which might easily communicate with each other, were thus taking the field against him at once; and yet, such was Napoleon's pride or obstinacy, that he would make no sacrifice whatever to secure the assistance of Austria. He still adhered to his resolution of entering into no general peace which should not recognise Joseph as King of Spain; and refused absolutely to listen to any proposals which included the cession either of Illyria or the Tyrol. Ere he once more left Paris, he named Maria Louisa Regent in his absence; but this was a circumstance not likely to have much weight with the wavering counsels of the Austrian.
While Napoleon's military preparations were in progress, he made an effort to conciliate that large party of his subjects, who had hitherto looked on him with coldness as the oppressor of the head of the Catholic church. During his absence in Russia, the Pope had been removed once more to Fontainebleau, where he now occupied apartments in the palace, under strict surveillance of the police. The Emperor presented himself suddenly in his hunter's dress before the holy father on the 13th of January; and exerted his talents with such success, that preliminary articles of a new concordat were at length drawn up. But in his eagerness to produce a favourable impression on the Catholic public, Napoleon published these preliminary articles, as if they had formed a definite and ratified treaty; and Pius, indignant at this conduct, which he considered as equally false and irreverent, immediately announced his resolution to carry the negotiation no further.
The Pope, however, was the only man in France who as yet durst openly confront the rage of Buonaparte. As the time when he was expected to assume once more the command of his army in the field drew near, the addresses of his apparently devoted subjects increased in numbers, and still more in the extravagance of their adulations.
Napoleon quitted Paris in the middle of April, and on the 18th reached the banks of the Saale; where the troops he had been mustering and organising in France had now been joined by Eugene Beauharnois and the garrison of Magdeburg. The Czar and his Prussian ally were known to be at Dresden; and it soon appeared that, while they meditated a march westwards on Leipsig, the French intended to move eastwards with the view of securing the possession of that great city. Of the armies thus about to meet each other's shock in the heart of Saxony, there is no doubt that Buonaparte's was considerably the more numerous. His activity had been worthy of his reputation; and a host nearly 200,000 strong was already concentrated for action, while reserves to nearly a similar extent were gradually forming behind him on the Rhine. The Russians had not as yet pushed forward more than half their disposable troops beyond the Vistula—wherever the blame lay, such was the fact; the Prussians, unanimous as their patriotism was, had had only three months to reorganise their establishments. Under such circumstances, the advance of the allies beyond the Elbe, could only have proceeded from their ardent wish to stimulate the spirit of insurrection in the kingdom of Saxony and the neighbouring states. It was obviously Napoleon's interest to bring them to action while their numbers were thus unequal, and ere the sole object of their hazardous advance could be realised.
The armies met sooner than he had ventured to hope, on the first of May, near the town of Lutzen, celebrated already as the scene of the battle in which King Gustavus Adolphus died. The allies crossed the Elster suddenly, under the cover of a thick morning fog, and attacked the left flank of the French, who had been advancing in column, and who thus commenced the action under heavy disadvantages. But the Emperor so skilfully altered the arrangement of his army, that, ere the day closed, the allies were more afraid of being enclosed to their ruin within his two wings, than hopeful of being able to cut through and destroy that part of his force which they had originally charged and weakened, and which had now become his centre. Night interrupted the conflict. They retreated next morning, leaving Napoleon in possession of the field. But here the advantage stopped. The slain of the one army were not more numerous than those of the other; and the allies, convinced of their mistake, but neither broken nor discouraged, fell back leisurely on Leipsig, thence on Dresden, and finally across the Elbe to Bautzen, without leaving either prisoners or guns in the hands of the French. The victory of Lutzen was blazoned abroad, as having restored all its glory to the eagle of Napoleon; but he clearly perceived that the days were no more in which a single battle determined the fate of a campaign, and an empire. It was at Lutzen that Marshal Bessieres died.
Napoleon entered Dresden on the 6th, and on the 12th was joined there by the King of Saxony, who certainly had been individually a gainer by his alliance, and who still adhered to it, in opposition to the wishes both of his people and his army. The Saxon troops, who had been wavering, once more submitted to act in concert with the French; and Hamburg, which city had partaken in the movement of Prussia, and all the country to the left of the Elbe, fell back, for the moment, into their hands. The cruelty with which the defection of Hamburg, in particular, was now revenged on the inhabitants by Marshal Davoust, has consigned to lasting abhorrence the name of that able but heartless satellite of Napoleon. All the atrocities of Junot and Massena, in Portugal, in 1808 and 1809, were equalled on the banks of the Elbe, by Davoust, in the summer of 1813.
While the Emperor paused at Dresden, Ney made various demonstrations in the direction of Berlin, with the view of inducing the allies to quit Bautzen; but it soon became manifest that they had resolved to sacrifice the Prussian capital, if it were necessary, rather than forego their position; by adhering to which they well knew Buonaparte must ultimately be compelled to carry his main force into a difficult and mountainous country, in place of acting in the open plains of Saxony and Brandenburg. They were, moreover, desirous to remain in the neighbourhood of Bohemia for another reason. The Austrian Emperor had again renewed his negotiation with Napoleon; urging him to accept his mediation for the conclusion of a general peace, and at the same time giving him to understand that such a peace could not be obtained, unless he would consent to be satisfied with the frontier of the Rhine, and restore effectively the independence of the German nation. Napoleon's conferences with Bubna, the Austrian envoy, were frequent and long; but they ended where they began. He was well aware, however, that the Emperor Francis was increasing his military establishment largely, and that a great body of troops was already concentrated behind the mountainous frontier of Bohemia. He could not but see that Austria regarded herself as enabled and entitled to turn the scale on whichsoever side she might choose; and he determined to crush the army which had retreated from Lutzen, ere the ceremonious cabinet of Vienna should have time to come to a distinct understanding with the headquarters of Alexander and Frederick William. Victory, he clearly saw, could alone serve his interests with the Austrian.
Having replaced by woodwork some arches of the magnificent bridge over the Elbe, at Dresden, which the allies had blown up on their retreat, Napoleon now moved towards Bautzen, and came in sight of the position on the morning of the 21st of May. Its strength was obviously great. In their front was the river Spree: wooded hills supported their right, and eminences well fortified their left. The action began with an attempt to turn their right, but Barclay de Tolly anticipated this movement, and repelled it with such vigour, that a whole column of 7000 dispersed and fled into the hills of Bohemia for safety. The Emperor then determined to pass the Spree in front of the enemy, and they permitted him to do so, rather than come down from their position. He took up his quarters in the town of Bautzen, and his whole army bivouacked in presence of the allies. The battle was resumed at daybreak on the 22nd; when Ney on the right, and Oudinot on the left, attempted simultaneously to turn the flanks of the position; while Soult and Napoleon himself directed charge after charge on the centre. During four hours the struggle was maintained with unflinching obstinacy; the wooded heights, where Blucher commanded, had been taken and retaken several times—the bloodshed, on either side, had been terrible—ere, the situation of both flanks being apparent, the allies perceived the necessity either of retiring, or of continuing the fight against superior numbers on disadvantageous ground. They withdrew accordingly; but still with all the deliberate coolness of a parade: halting at every favourable spot, and renewing their cannonade. "What," exclaimed Napoleon, "no results! not a gun! not a prisoner!—these people will not leave me so much as a nail." During the whole day he urged the pursuit with impetuous rage, reproaching even his chosen generals as "creeping scoundrels," and exposing his own person in the very hottest of the fire. By his side was Duroc, the grand master of the palace, his dearest—many said, ere now, his only friend. Bruyeres, another old associate of the Italian wars, was struck down in their view. "Duroc," whispered Napoleon, "fortune has a spite at us this day." A few minutes afterwards, Duroc himself was mortally wounded. The Emperor instantly ordered a halt, and remained all the afternoon in front of his tent, surrounded by the guard, who did not witness his affliction without tears. From this time he would listen to no reports or suggestions.—"Everything to-morrow," was his invariable answer. He stood by Duroc while he died; drew up with his own hand an epitaph to be placed over his remains by the pastor of the place, who received 200 napoleons to defray the expense of a fitting monument; and issued also a decree in favour of his departed friend's children. Thus closed the 22nd. The allies being strongly posted during most of the day, had suffered less than the French; the latter had lost 15,000, the former 10,000 men.
They continued their retreat into Upper Silesia; and Buonaparte advanced to Breslau, and released the garrison of Glogau. Meanwhile the Austrian having watched these indecisive though bloody fields, once more renewed his offers of mediation. The sovereigns of Russia and Prussia expressed great willingness to accept it; and Napoleon also appears to have been sincerely desirous for the moment of bringing his disputes to a peaceful termination. He agreed to an armistice, and in arranging its conditions agreed to fall back out of Silesia; thus enabling the allied princes to re-open communications with Berlin. The lines of country to be occupied by the armies, respectively, during the truce, were at length settled, and it was signed on the 1st of June. The French Emperor then returned to Dresden, and a general congress of diplomatists prepared to meet at Prague.
England alone refused to send any representative to Prague, alleging that Buonaparte had as yet signified no disposition to recede from his pretensions on Spain, and that he had consented to the armistice with the sole view of gaining time for political intrigue and further military preparation. It may be doubted whether any of the allied powers who took part in the congress did so with much hope that the disputes with Napoleon could find a peaceful end. His recent successes were to the general view dazzling, however in reality unproductive, and must have been supposed to quicken the flame of his pride. But it was of the utmost importance to gain time for the advance of Bernadotte; for the arrival of new reinforcements from Russia; for the completion of the Prussian organisation; and, above all, for determining the policy of Vienna.
Metternich, the Austrian minister, repaired in person to Dresden; and, while inferior diplomatists wasted time in endless discussions at Prague, one interview between him and Napoleon brought the whole question to a definite issue. The Emperor had hitherto seen in Metternich only a smooth and elegant courtier, and he expected to bear him down by military violence and rudeness. He assumed at once that Austria had no wish but to drive a good bargain for herself, and asked broadly, What is your price? Will Illyria satisfy you? I only wish you to be neutral—I can deal with these Russians and Prussians single-handed. Metternich stated plainly that the time in which Austria could be neutral was past; that the situation of Europe at large must be considered. Napoleon insinuated that he would be happy to dismember Prussia, and give half her territories to Austria. Metternich replied that his government was resolved to be gained by no share in the spoils of others; that events had proved the impossibility of a steadfast peace, unless the sovereigns of the continent were restored to the rank of independence; in a word, that the Rhenish Confederacy must be broken up; that France must be contented with the boundary of the Rhine, and pretend no longer to maintain her usurped and unnatural influence in Germany. Napoleon replied by a gross personal insult: Come, Metternich, said he, tell me honestly how much the English have given you to take their part against me?
The Austrian court at length sent a formal document, containing its ultimatum: the tenor of which Metternich had sufficiently indicated in this conversation. Talleyrand and Fouché, who had now arrived from Paris, urged the Emperor to accede to the proffered terms. They represented to him the madness of rousing all Europe to conspire for his destruction, and insinuated that the progress of discontent was rapid in France itself. Their arguments were backed by intelligence of the most disastrous character from Spain. Wellington, on perceiving that Napoleon had somewhat weakened his armies in that country, when preparing for his Saxon campaign, had once more advanced from the Portuguese frontier. He was now in possession of the supreme authority over the Spanish armies, as well as the Portuguese and English, and had appeared in greater force than ever. The French line of defences on the Douro had been turned and abandoned: their armies had concentrated to withstand him at Vittoria, and there, on the 21st of June, Joseph and Marshal Jourdan had sustained a total defeat. The "Intrusive King" was now retreating towards the Pyrenees, chased from post to post by an enemy who, as it seemed, bade fair to terminate his campaign by an invasion of the south-western provinces of France. Napoleon was urged by his military, as well as political advisers, to appreciate duly the crisis which his affairs had reached. Berthier, and indeed almost all the generals on whose opinions he had been accustomed to place reliance, concurred in pressing him either to make peace on the terms proposed, or to draw in his garrisons on the Oder and Elbe, whereby he would strengthen his army with 50,000 veterans, and retire to the Rhine. There, they said, with such a force assembled on such a river, and with all the resources of France behind him, he might bid defiance to the united armies of Europe, and, at worst, obtain a peace that would leave him in secure tenure of a nobler dominion than any of the kings, his predecessors, had ever hoped to possess. Ten battles lost, said he, would not sink me lower than you would have me to place myself by my own voluntary act; but one battle gained enables me to seize Berlin and Breslau, and make peace on terms compatible with my glory. He proceeded to insult both ministers and generals by insinuations that they were actuated by selfish motives; complained haughtily that they seemed disposed to draw distinctions between the country and the sovereign; and ended by announcing that he did not wish for any plans of theirs, but their service in the execution of his.
Thus blinded by arrogance and self-confidence, and incapable of weighing any other considerations against what he considered as the essence of his personal glory, Napoleon refused to abate one iota of his pretensions—until it was too late. Then, indeed, whether more accurate intelligence from Spain had reached him, or the accounts of those who had been watching the unremitting preparations of the allies in his neighbourhood, had at length found due weight—then, indeed, he did show some symptoms of concession. A courier arrived at Prague with a note, in which he signified his willingness to accede to a considerable number of the Austrian stipulations. But this was on the 11th of August. The day preceding was that on which, by the agreement, the armistice was to end. On that day Austria had to sign an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Russia and Prussia. On the night between the 10th and 11th, rockets answering rockets, from height to height along the frontiers of Bohemia and Silesia, had announced to all the armies of the allies this accession of strength and the immediate recommencement of hostilities.
On neither side had the pending negotiation been permitted for a moment to interrupt or slacken military preparation. Napoleon had sent Beauharnois into Italy, to be ready in case of any Austrian demonstration in that quarter; and General Wrede, with the Bavarian army, guarded his rear. An Austrian army, 60,000 strong, was now ready to pass the Alps; and, to watch Wrede, another corps of 40,000, under the Prince of Reuss, had taken their station. These were minor arrangements. The forces now assembled around Napoleon himself were full 250,000 in number, and disposed as follows: Macdonald lay with 100,000 at Buntzlaw, on the border of Silesia; another corps of 50,000 had their headquarters at Zittau, in Lusatia; St. Cyr, with 20,000, was at Pirna, on the great pass from Bohemia; Oudinot at Leipsig, with 60,000; while with the Emperor himself at Dresden remained 25,000 of the imperial guard, the flower of France. The reader, on referring to the map, will perceive that these corps were so distributed as to present a formidable front on every point where it was likely the allies should hazard an attack, and, moreover, so that Napoleon could speedily reinforce any threatened position with his reserve from Dresden. For the armies to be opposed were thus situated:—Behind the Erzgebirge, or Metallic Mountains, and having their headquarters at Prague, lay The Grand Army of the Allies (consisting of 120,000 Austrians and 80,000 Russians and Prussians), commanded in chief by the Austrian general Schwartzenberg. The French corps at Zittau and Pirna were prepared to encounter these, should they attempt to force their way into Saxony, either on the right or the left of the Elbe. The Second Army of the Allies (consisting of 80,000 Russians and Prussians), called the Army of Silesia, and commanded by Blucher, lay in advance at Breslau. The French corps at Zittau and Buntzlau were in communication, and could confront Blucher wherever he might attempt to approach the Elbe. Lastly the Crown Prince of Sweden was at Berlin, with 30,000 of his own troops, and 60,000 Russians and Prussians, Oudinot and Macdonald were so stationed that he could not approach the upper valley of the Elbe without encountering one or other of them, and they also had the means of mutual communication and support. The French had garrisons at Wittemberg, Magdeburg, and elsewhere on the Elbe; and between the main armies of the Allies were various flying corps of Russian and Prussian light troops.
On the whole, Dresden formed the centre of a comparatively small circle, completely occupied by the French; while the Allies might be considered as lying on part of a much wider circle beyond them. Napoleon had evidently arranged his troops with a view of provoking his enemies to make isolated assaults, and so beating them in detail. But he was now opposed by generals well acquainted with his system of tactics, and who had accordingly prepared a counter-scheme expressly calculated to baffle the plan of arrangements on which he had reckoned. The commanders of the three allied armies agreed—that whosoever of them should be first assailed or pressed by the French, should on no account accept battle, but retreat; thus tempting Napoleon in person to follow, leaving Dresden open to the assault of some other great branch of their confederacy, and so enabling them at once to seize all his magazines, to break the communications between the remaining divisions of his army, and interpose a hostile force in the rear of them all—between the Elbe and the Rhine. The plan of the Allies is supposed to have been drawn up by two generals who thoroughly understood the military system of Napoleon—Bernadotte, the Crown Prince of Sweden and Moreau; who had some time ere this accepted the invitation of the Emperor Alexander, and returned from his American exile, to take part in the war—which now, in the opinion of many Frenchmen, had for its object the emancipation of France itself, as well as of the other countries of Europe. The conduct of Moreau, in placing himself in the ranks of the Allies, will be praised or condemned, according as men judge him to have been swayed by patriotic motives, or by those of personal resentment and ambition. There can be no question that his arrival brought a great accession of military skill to their counsels.
Blucher made the first movement; and no sooner did Napoleon understand that he was threatening the position of Macdonald than he quitted Dresden (15th August) with his guard and a powerful force of cavalry, and proceeded to the support of his lieutenant. The Prussian adhered faithfully to the general plan, and retired across the Katsbach, in the face of his enemies. Napoleon was still pursuing him in the direction of the Neiss and Breslau, when he was informed that Schwartzenberg had rushed down from the Bohemian hills. He instantly abandoned Blucher to the care of Macdonald, and sent his guards back to Dresden, whither he himself also began his journey early on the 23rd.
Having driven St. Cyr, and his 20,000 men, before him, Schwartzenberg (with whom were the Sovereigns of Russia and Prussia in person) made his appearance on the heights to the south of the Saxon capital, on the 25th. The army of St. Cyr had thrown themselves into the city, and it was now surrounded with fortifications of considerable strength. Yet had this vast host attacked it at once, there is every reason to believe it must have fallen before Napoleon could have returned from Silesia. They delayed, for whatever reason, until daybreak on the 26th; and then assailed Dresden in six columns, each more numerous than its garrison. St. Cyr already began to despair, when the imperial guard made their appearance crossing the bridge from the Eastern side of the Elbe, and in the midst of them Napoleon. A German author[63] says: "It was then that, for the first time, I beheld his face. He came on with the eye of a tyrant, and the voice of a lion, urging his breathless and eager soldiers." Two sallies were on the instant executed by these troops, hot as they were from their long and toilsome march. The Allies were driven back for some space. Night set in, and the two armies remained in presence till the morning. Then, amidst a fierce storm of wind and rain, Napoleon renewed the battle. 200,000 men (such had been the rapid decision of his orders to his various generals) were now gathered round him, and he poured them out with such skill, on either flank of the enemy's line that ere the close of the day, they were forced to withdraw altogether from their attempt. Ney and Murat on the left flank, and Vandamme on the right (at Pirna), had taken possession of the two chief roads into Bohemia, and in consequence they were compelled to retreat by the comparatively difficult country paths between. On either side 8000 men had been slain or wounded; but with the French there remained from 15 to 20,000 prisoners, and twenty-six cannon; and the ablest of all the enemy's generals had fallen.
Early in the day Buonaparte himself ordered some half-dozen cannon to be fired at once upon a group, apparently of reconnoitring officers, and this was followed by a movement which was thought to indicate that some personage of importance had been wounded. A peasant came in the evening, and brought with him a bloody boot and a greyhound, both the property, he said, of the great man who was no more: the name on the collar was Moreau. Both his legs had been shot off. He continued to smoke a cigar while they were amputated and dressed, in the presence of Alexander, and died shortly after; thus, if he had erred, paying the early forfeit of his errors.
But Fortune had only revisited the banners of her ancient favourite with a momentary gleam of sunshine. The fatigues he had undergone between the 15th and the 28th of August would have broken any other frame, and they, for the time, weakened his. It is said that a mess of mutton and garlic, the only food he had tasted on the 26th, had besides deranged his stomach. Unable to remain with the columns in the rear of Schwartzenberg, he returned to Dresden weary and sick; and thenceforth evil tidings awaited him.
Vandamme continued the pursuit on the Pirna road. Seduced by the enormous prize which lay before him at Tœplitz, where the chief magazines of the Allies had been established, and on which all their broken columns were now endeavouring to reassemble, this rude and hot-headed soldier incautiously advanced beyond the wooded heights of Peterswald into the valley of Culm. A Russian corps suddenly turned on him, and formed in line of battle. Their General, Count D'Osterman, assured them that the life of "their Father" depended on their steadfastness; and no effort could shake them. The battle continued till night, when Vandamme ought undoubtedly to have retired to Peterswald. He lingered till the morning of the 30th;—when behind him, on those very heights, appeared the Prussian corps of Kleist, who had been wandering and lost their way amidst the forests. The French rushed up the hill in despair, thinking they were intercepted by design. The Prussians, on their part, doubted not that some other division of Napoleon's force was hard behind them, and rushed down—with the same fear, and the same impetuosity. The Russians advanced and completed the disarray. The field was covered with dead: Vandamme and nearly 8000 men laid down their arms. Many eagles were taken—the rest of the army dispersed in utter confusion among the hills.
This news reached Napoleon still sick at Dresden. "Such," said he to Murat, "is the fortune of war—high in the morning—low ere night. Between triumph and ruin there intervenes but a step." A map lay stretched on the table before him; he took his compasses, and measuring distances on it with an idle hand, repeated the lines of one of his favourite poets:
Hard on the tidings of Culm followed others of the same complexion. No sooner did Blucher perceive that Napoleon had retired from Silesia, than he resumed the offensive, and descended from the position he had taken up at Jauer. He encountered Macdonald, who was by no means prepared for this boldness, on the plains between Wahlstadt and the river Katsbach, on the 26th of August, and after a hard fought day gained a complete victory.[64] The French lost 15,000 men and 100 guns, and fell back on Dresden. Oudinot, meanwhile, had advanced from Leipsig towards Berlin, with the view of preventing Bernadotte from effecting a junction with Blucher, or overwhelming the French garrisons lower down the Elbe. The Crown Prince, however, met and defeated him at Grossbeeren, on the 23rd of August; took Luckau, where 1000 men were in garrison, on the 28th; and continued to advance towards Wittemberg, under the walls of which city Oudinot at length concentrated all his forces. Napoleon, perceiving the importance of this point, sent Ney with new troops, and gave him the chief command, with strict orders to force his way to Berlin; so placing Bernadotte between the Leipsig army and himself at Dresden. Ney endeavoured to pass the Swedes without a battle, but failed in this attempt. A general action was forced on him on the 7th of September, at Dennewitz. He also was wholly defeated; 10,000 prisoners and forty-six guns remained in the hands of Bernadotte; and Ney retreated in confusion upon Torgau.
Napoleon had now recovered his health and activity; and the exertions which he made at this period were never surpassed, even by himself. On the 3rd of September he was in quest of Blucher, who had now advanced near to the Elbe; but the Prussian retired and baffled him as before. Returning to Dresden he received the news of Dennewitz, and immediately afterwards heard that Witgenstein had a second time descended towards Pirna. He flew thither on the instant; the Russian also gave way, according to the general plan of the campaign; and Buonaparte once more returned to Dresden on the 12th. Again he was told that Blucher, on the one side, and Witgenstein on the other, were availing themselves of his absence, and advancing. He once more returned to Pirna: a third time the Russian retired. Napoleon followed him as far as Peterswald, and, having contemplated with his own eyes the scene of Vandamme's catastrophe, once more returned to his centre-point.
Not all Ney's exertions could prevent Bernadotte and Blucher from at length effecting their junction to the west of the Elbe. The Marshal, having witnessed the combination of these armies, retreated to Leipsig. Napoleon ordered Regnier and Bertrand to march suddenly from Dresden on Berlin, in the hope of recalling Blucher; but the veteran persisted. Meantime Schwartzenberg was found to be skirting round the hills to the westward, as if for the purpose of joining Blucher and Bernadotte, in the neighbourhood of Leipsig. It became manifest to all that Dresden had ceased to be the key of Napoleon's defence: yet he clung to the Elbe, as he had done to the Kremlin.
He lingered at Dresden at least three weeks after all rational hope of holding that river was gone; and even at the last, when he perceived the necessity of transferring his person to Leipsig, he could not be persuaded to call in his garrisons scattered down the valley, which he still hoped some turn of events would enable him to revisit in triumph.
Towards Leipsig, however, as on a common centre, the forces of France, and all her enemies, were now at length converging. Napoleon reached that venerable city on the 15th of October, and almost immediately the heads of Schwartzenberg's columns began to appear towards the south. It was necessary to prepare on the northern side also, in case Bernadotte and Blucher should appear ere the grand army was disposed of; and, lastly, it was necessary to secure effectually the ground to the west of Leipsig;—a series of marshy meadows interfused with the numerous branches of the Pleiss and the Elster, through which lies the only road to France. Napoleon having made all his preparations, reconnoitred every outpost in person, and distributed eagles, in great form, to some new regiments which had just joined him. The ceremonial was splendid: the soldiers knelt before the Emperor, and in presence of all the line: military mass was performed, and the young warriors swore to die rather than witness the dishonour of France. Upon this scene the sun descended; and with it the star of Napoleon went down for ever.
At midnight three rockets, emitting a brilliant white light, sprung into the heavens to the south of the city; these marked the position on which Schwartzenberg (having now with him the Emperor of Austria, as well as Alexander and Frederick William) had fixed his headquarters. They were answered by four rockets of a deep red colour, ascending on the instant from the northern horizon; and Napoleon doubted not that he was to sustain on the morrow the assault of Blucher and Bernadotte, as well as of the grand army of the Allies. Blucher was indeed ready to co-operate with Schwartzenberg; and though the Crown Prince had not yet reached his ground, the numerical superiority of the enemy was very great. Buonaparte had with him, to defend the line of villages to the south and north of Leipsig, 136,000 men; while, even in the absence of Bernadotte, who might be hourly looked for, the Allies mustered not less than 230,000.
The battle commenced on the southern side, at daybreak of the 16th. The Allies charged the French line there six times in succession, and were as often repelled. Napoleon then charged in his turn, and with such effect, that Murat's cavalry were at one time in possession of a great gap between the two wings of the enemy. The Cossacks of the Russian imperial guard, however, encountered the French horse, and pushed them back again. The combat raged without intermission until nightfall: three cannon shots, discharged at the extremity of either line, then marked as if preconcertedly, the pause of battle; and both armies bivouacked exactly where the morning light had found them. Such was the issue on the south, where Napoleon himself commanded. Marmont, his lieutenant on the northern side, had been less fortunate. Blucher attacked him with a vast superiority of numbers: nothing could be more obstinate than his defence; but he lost many prisoners and guns, was driven from his original ground, and occupied, when the day closed, a new line of positions, much nearer the walls of the city.
Gallant as the behaviour of his troops had been, the result satisfied Napoleon that he must finally retreat from Leipsig; and he now made a sincere effort to obtain peace. General Mehrfeldt, the same Austrian officer who had come to his headquarters after the battle of Austerlitz, to pray for an armistice on the part of the Emperor Francis, had been made prisoner in the course of the day, and Napoleon resolved to employ him as his messenger. Mehrfeldt informed him that the King of Bavaria had at length acceded to the alliance. This intelligence added to his perplexities, already sufficiently great, the prospect of finding a new enemy stationed on the line of his march to France. He entreated the Austrian to request for him the personal intercession of Francis. "I will renounce Poland and Illyria," said he, "Holland, the Hanse Towns, and Spain. I will consent to lose the sovereignty of the kingdom of Italy, provided that state remain as an independent one—and I will evacuate all Germany. Adieu! Count Mehrfeldt, when on my part you name the word armistice to the two Emperors, I doubt not the sound will awaken many recollections."
It was now too late: the Allied Princes had sworn to each other to entertain no treaty while one French soldier remained on the Eastern side of the Rhine. Napoleon received no answer to his message; and prepared for the difficult task of retreating with 100,000 men, through a crowded town, in presence of an enemy already twice as numerous, and in early expectation of being joined by a third great and victorious army.
During the 17th the battle was not renewed, except by a distant and partial cannonade. The Allies were resolved to have the support of Bernadotte in the decisive contest.
At eight in the morning of the 18th it began, and continued until nightfall without intermission. Buonaparte had contracted on the south, as well as on the north, the circuit of his defence; and never was his generalship, or the gallantry of his troops, more brilliantly displayed than throughout this terrible day. Calm and collected, the Emperor again presided in person on the southern side, and again, where he was present, in spite of the vast superiority of the enemy's numbers, the French maintained their ground to the end. On the north, the arrival of Bernadotte enabled Blucher to push his advantages with irresistible effect; and the situation of Marmont and Ney (now also stationed on that side) was further perplexed by the shameful defection of 10,000 Saxons, who went over with all their artillery to the enemy, in the very midst of the battle. The two marshals, therefore, were compelled to retire from point to point, and at nightfall lay almost close to the walls of Leipsig. Three cannon shot, as before, marked the general termination of the battle.
The loss on either side had been great. Napoleon's army consisted chiefly of very young men—many were merely boys—the produce of his forestalled conscriptions: yet they fought as bravely as the guard. The behaviour of the Germans, on the other hand, at length considering their freedom and independence as hanging on the fortune of a single field, had been answerable to the deep enthusiasm of that thoughtful people. The burghers of Leipsig surveyed from their towers and steeples one of the longest, sternest, and bloodiest of battles: and the situation of the King of Saxony, who remained all the while in the heart of his ancient city, may be imagined.
Napoleon gave orders at midnight for the commencement of the inevitable retreat; and while the darkness lasted, the troops continued to file through the town, and across the two bridges, over the Pleisse, beyond its walls. One of these bridges was a temporary fabric, and it broke down ere daylight came to show to the enemy the movement of the French. The confusion necessarily accompanying the march of a whole army, through narrow streets and upon a single bridge, was fearful. The Allies stormed at the gates on either side, and, but for the heroism of Macdonald and Poniatowski, to whom Napoleon entrusted the defence of the suburbs, it is doubted whether he himself could have escaped in safety. At nine in the morning of the 19th, he bade farewell for ever to the King of Saxony, who remained to make what terms he could with the allied sovereigns. The battle was ere then raging all round the walls.
At eleven o'clock the Allies had gathered close to the bridge from either wing; and the walls over against it had been entrusted to Saxons, who now, like their brethren of the day before, turned their fire on the French. The officer to whom Napoleon had committed the task of blowing up the bridge, when the advance of the enemy should render this necessary, conceived that the time was come, and set fire to his train. The crowd of men, urging each other on the point of safety, could not at once be stopped. Soldiers and horses, cannons and wains, rolled headlong into the deep though narrow river; which renewed, though on a smaller scale, the horrors of the Beresina. Marshal Macdonald swam the stream in safety: the gallant Poniatowski, the hope and pride of Poland, had been twice wounded ere he plunged his horse into the current, and he sank to rise no more. Twenty-five thousand Frenchmen, the means of escape entirely cut off, laid down their arms within the city. Four Princes, each entering at the head of his own victorious army, met at noon in the great market-place at Leipsig: and all the exultation of that solemn hour would have been partaken by the inhabitants, but for the fate of their own sovereign, personally esteemed and beloved, who now vainly entreated to be admitted to the presence of the conquerors, and was sent forthwith as a prisoner of war to Berlin.
Napoleon, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, lost at Leipsig at least 50,000 men.
The retreat of the French through Saxony was accompanied with every disaster which a hostile peasantry, narrowness of supplies, and the persevering pursuit of the Cossacks and other light troops could inflict on a disordered and disheartened mass of men. The soldiers moved on, while under the eye of Napoleon, in gloomy silence: wherever he was not present, they set every rule of discipline at nought, and were guilty of the most frightful excesses. The Emperor conducted himself as became a great mind amidst great misfortunes. He appeared at all times calm and self-possessed; receiving, every day that he advanced, new tidings of evil.
He halted for two days at Erfurt, where extensive magazines had been established, employing all his energies in the restoration of discipline: and would have remained longer, had he not learned that the victors of Leipsig were making progress on either flank of his march, while the Bavarians (so recently his allies), reinforced by some Austrian divisions, were moving rapidly to take post between him and the Rhine. He resumed his march, therefore, on the 25th. It was here that Murat quitted the army. Notwithstanding the unpleasant circumstances under which he had retired to Naples in January, Joachim had reappeared when the Emperor fixed his headquarters at Dresden in the summer, and served with his usual gallantry throughout the rest of the campaign. The state of Italy now demanded his presence; and the two brothers-in-law, after all their differences, embraced each other warmly and repeatedly at parting—as if under a mutual presentiment that they were parting to meet no more.
The Austro-Bavarians had taken up a position amidst the woods near Hanau before the Emperor approached the Mayne. He came up with them in the morning of the 30th, and his troops charged on the instant with the fury of desperation. Buonaparte cut his way through ere nightfall; and Marmont, with the rear, had equal success on the 31st. In these actions there fell 6000 of the French; but the enemy had 10,000 killed or wounded, and lost 4000 prisoners, and these losses would have been far greater but for the ready wit of a patriotic miller, who, watching the tide of battle, suddenly let the water into his mill-stream, and thus interposed a seasonable obstacle between the French cavalry and some German infantry, whom they had been driving before them; a service which the King of Prussia subsequently rewarded with munificence.
The pursuit on the road which Napoleon adopted had been entrusted to the Austrians, who urged it with far less vigour than the Prussians under the fiery guidance of Blucher would probably have exerted. No considerable annoyance, therefore, succeeded to the battle of Hanau. The relics of the French host at length passed the Rhine; and the Emperor having quitted them at Mentz, arrived in Paris on the 9th of November.
The armies of Austria and Prussia at length halted on the Rhine. To the Germans of every age this great river has been the object of an affection and reverence scarcely inferior to that with which an Egyptian contemplates the Nile, or the Indian his Ganges. When these brave bands having achieved the rescue of their native soil, came in sight of this its ancient landmark, the burden of an hundred songs, they knelt, and shouted the Rhine! the Rhine! as with the heart and voice of one man. They that were behind rushed on, hearing the cry, in expectation of another battle.
Of the events which crowded upon each other in the space of a few weeks after the overthrow of Leipsig, any one would in times less extraordinary have been sufficient to form an epoch in history. Having once reached the summit of his greatness, the long-favoured child of fortune was destined to sink even more rapidly than he had ascended. Every day added some new alliance to the camp of his foreign enemies; and every hour that passed brought with it clearer indications that the French nation (considered apart from the army) were weary utterly of the very names of War, and Ambition, and Napoleon.
The fabric of his German empire crumbled into nothing, as at the spell of a magician. Hanover returned to the dominion of its rightful sovereign immediately. Brunswick, Hesse, and the other states which had formed Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, followed the same example. The Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved for ever; and the princes who had adhered to that league were permitted to expiate their, in most cases involuntary, error, by now bringing a year's revenue and a double conscription to the banner of the Allies. Bernadotte turned from Leipsig to reduce the garrisons which Napoleon, in the rashness of his presumption, had disdained to call in, even when compelled to evacuate Dresden; and one by one they fell, though in most cases—particularly at Dantzick, Wirtemberg, and Hamburg—the resistance was obstinate and long. The Crown Prince—having witnessed the reduction of some of these fortresses, and entrusted the siege of the others to his lieutenants—invaded Denmark, and the government of that country perceived the necessity of acceding to the European alliance, by whatever fine its long adhesion to Napoleon might be expiated. The treaty was concluded at Kiel, on the 14th of January, 1814. Sweden yielded Pomerania to Denmark; Denmark gave up Norway to Sweden; and 10,000 Danish troops having joined his standard, Bernadotte then turned his face towards the Netherlands.
In Holland, no sooner had the story of Leipsig reached it than a complete, though bloodless revolution was effected. The cry of orange boven, "up with the orange," burst simultaneously from every part of the country: the French governors, yielding to a power which they perceived the absurdity of attempting to resist, retired on the instant, and the long-exiled Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, returning in triumph from England, assumed the administration of affairs in November, 1813. A few French garrisons remained shut up in strong places, of which the most important was Bergen-op-Zoom; and Bernadotte now co-operated with the Russian corps of Witzingerode, the Prussians of Bulow, and a British force of 10,000, under Sir T. Graham,[65] with the view of completing the deliverance of Holland; which was ere long effected, with the exception of Bergen-op-Zoom, from whose walls the English were repulsed with dreadful slaughter.
On the side of Italy the aspect of affairs was almost as dark. General Hiller, having conducted an Austrian army through the Tyrol, as soon as the decision of his government was taken, had defeated Eugene Beauharnois, and driven him behind the Adige. The Croats, the Tyrolese, all the Illyrians were rising, and—so far from giving aid in the defence of the French soil—it was manifest that the Viceroy could hardly hope to maintain himself much longer in Lombardy. An English naval force had already taken Trieste: the Adriatic was free; and, to complete Napoleon's perplexity as to this quarter, it was no longer a secret that Murat, his brother-in-law, his creature, was negotiating with Austria, and willing, provided that Naples were guaranteed to him, to array the force of that state also on the side of the confederacy.
As little comfort could Buonaparte derive if he turned to the Pyrenees. He had sent Soult thither from Dresden, to retrieve if possible the fortunes of the army defeated in June at Vittoria; and that most able general, with considerable reinforcements, had entered Spain, and attempted to relieve the siege of Pamplona—of which strong place, as well as St. Sebastian Lord Wellington had resolved to be master before he should pass the French frontier with his victorious army. But Soult also had been twice defeated; the fortresses had fallen: except a detached, and now useless force under Suchet in Catalonia, there remained no longer a single French soldier in Spain. The Peninsula had at length been delivered by the genius of Wellington; and his army were cantoned within the territory of France ere the close of the campaign. Such were the tidings which reached Napoleon from his Italian and Spanish frontiers, at the very moment when it was necessary for him to make head against the Russians, the Austrians, and the Germans, chiefly armed and supplied at the expense of England, and now rapidly concentrating in three great masses on different points of the valley of the Rhine.
Nor were even these the worst tidings. Two parties, of which one had not of late years attracted much public notice, and the other had as long wanted efficient leaders, were well-known ere now to be labouring throughout France, though not as yet in conjunction, for one common purpose—the deposition of Buonaparte. The royalists had recovered a great share of their ancient influence in the society of Paris, even before the disasters of the Russian expedition. The exiled Bourbon had found means to distribute proclamations early in 1813: his agents had ever since been exerting themselves indefatigably, both in Paris and in the provinces, especially in those of the west. The Mayor of Bourdeaux (Lynch) was at the head of a loyal association, comprehending the chief inhabitants of that great city, and already in communication with the Marquess of Wellington, who, however, felt it his duty to check them on this occasion, lest the progress of events should render their efforts fruitless to Louis, and fatal to themselves. La Roche Jacquelein (a name already so illustrious in La Vendée) had once more prepared that faithful province for insurrection. Saintonge had been organised by the Abbé Jaqualt; Perigord by Messieurs de la Roche Aymon; and in the countries about Nantes, Angers, and Orleans, great bands, consisting partly of Buonaparte's own refractory conscripts, were in training under the Counts De L'Orge, D'Antichamp, and Suzannet. The royalist gentlemen of Touraine, to the number of 1000, were headed by the Duke of Duras; those of Brittany were mustering around Count Vittray, and various chieftains of the old Chouans; and Cadoudal, brother to Georges, was among the peasantry of Varnes. These names, most of them well-known in the early period of the Revolution, are of themselves sufficient to show how effectually the Buonapartean government had endeavoured, during thirteen years, to extinguish the old fire of loyalty. It had all the while glowed under the ashes, and it was now ready to burst forth shining and bright. The Bourbon princes watched the course of events with eager hope. The Duke of Berri was already in Jersey, Monsieur (now Charles X.) in the Netherlands, and the Duke D'Angouleme about to make his appearance at the headquarters of Wellington, in Bearn, the cradle of his race. The republicans, meanwhile,—those enthusiasts of the Revolution who had in the beginning considered Buonaparte's consulate as a dictatorship forced on France by the necessities of the time, and to be got rid of as soon as opportunity should serve—and who had long since been wholly alienated from him, by his assumption of the imperial dignity, his creation of orders and nobles, his alliance with the House of Austria, and the complete despotism of his internal government—these men had observed, with hardly less delight than the royalists, that succession of reverses which darkens the story of the two last campaigns. Finally, not a few of Napoleon's own ministers and generals, irritated by his personal violence, and hopeless of breathing in peace while that fierce and insatiable spirit continued at the head of affairs, were well prepared to take a part in his overthrow; nor was it long ere all these internal enemies, at whatever distance their principles and motives might have seemed to place them from each other, were content to overlook their differences and work together. Talleyrand, there can be little doubt, and others only second to him in influence, were in communication with the Bourbons, before the Allies crossed the Rhine. Ere then, said Napoleon at St. Helena, I felt the reins slipping from my hands.
The allied princes issued, at Frankfort on the Mayne, a manifesto, the firm and temperate language of which was calculated to make a strong impression in France, as well as elsewhere. The sovereigns announced their belief that it was for the interest of Europe that France should continue to be a powerful state, and their willingness to concede to her, even now, greater extent of territory than the Bourbon kings had ever claimed—the boundaries, namely, of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Their sole object in invading France was to put an end to the authority which Napoleon had usurped over other nations. They disclaimed any wish to interfere with the internal government—it was the right of the nation to arrange that as they pleased; the hostility of Europe was against, not France, but Napoleon—and even as to Napoleon, against not his person, but his system. The same terms were tendered to Napoleon himself, through M. de St. Aignan, one of his own ministers, who happened to have fallen into the hands of the Allies at Weimar; and his answer was such that diplomatists from all the belligerent powers forthwith assembled at Manheim;—Lord Aberdeen appearing on the part of the government of England—a circumstance of itself sufficient to give to these new conferences a character of greater promise than had attended any of recent date.
But although Napoleon authorised Caulaincourt to commence this negotiation on his behalf, it was very soon manifest that he did so merely, as before, for the purpose of gaining time. His military preparations were urged with unremitting energy. New conscriptions were called for, and granted: every arsenal resounded with the fabrication of arms: and all the taxes were at once doubled by an imperial decree. The enslaved press proclaimed that the national ardour was thoroughly stirred, and with its thousand voices reminded the Allies of the effects of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation when about to touch the sacred soil of France in 1793.
But the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period was long since gone by. In vain did Napoleon send special agents through the departments, calling on Frenchmen of all classes to rise in arms for the protection of the soil. Coldness, languor, distrust met them almost everywhere. The numerical results even of the conscription-levy were far under what they should have been; and of those who did enrol themselves, multitudes daily deserted, and not a few took part with those royalist bands who were, as we have already seen, mustering and training zealously in almost every district that was either strong by nature, or remote from the great military establishments of Buonaparte. Nay, even the Legislative Senate, so long the silent and submissive slaves of all his imperial mandates, now dared to testify some sympathy with the feelings of the people, whom, in theory at least, they were supposed to represent. This was a novelty for which Napoleon had not been prepared, and he received it in a manner little likely to conciliate the attachment of wavering men. They ventured to hint that ancient France would remain to him, even if he accepted the proposals of the Allies, and that Louis XIV., when he desired to rouse the French people in his behalf in a moment of somewhat similar disaster, had not disdained to detail openly the sincere efforts which he had made to obtain an honourable peace. "Shame on you!" cried the Emperor, "Wellington has entered the south, the Russian menace the northern frontier, the Prussians, Austrians, and Bavarians, the eastern. Shame! Wellington is in France, and we have not risen en masse to drive him back! All my Allies have deserted—the Bavarian has betrayed me. No peace till we have burned Munich! I demand a levy of 300,000 men—with this and what I already have, I shall see a million in arms. I will form a camp of 100,000 at Bourdeaux; another at Mentz; a third at Lyons. But I must have grown men—these boys serve only to encumber the hospitals and the road-sides.... Abandon Holland! sooner yield it back to the sea! Senators, an impulse must be given—all must march—you are fathers of families—the heads of the nation—you must set the example. Peace! I hear of nothing but peace when all around should echo to the cry of war." The senate, nevertheless, drew up and presented a report which renewed his wrath. He reproached them openly with desiring to purchase inglorious ease for themselves at the expense of his honour. I am the state, said he, repeating a favourite expression: What is the throne?—a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet—I am the state—I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public—people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.
Having uttered these furious words, Napoleon repaired to his council of state, and there denounced the legislative senate, as composed of one part of traitors and eleven of dupes. In place of assisting, said he, they impede me. Our attitude alone could have repelled the enemy—they invite him. We should have presented a front of brass—they lay open wounds to his view. I will not suffer their report to be printed. They have not done their duty, but I will do mine—I dissolve the Legislative Senate. And the Emperor did accordingly issue his decree, proroguing indefinitely that assembly, the last feeble shadow of popular representation in France.
The greatest confusion already began to pervade almost every department of the public service. The orders of the government were more peremptory than ever, and they were hourly more neglected. Whole bands of conscripts, guilty of endeavouring to escape, were tried by military commissions and decimated. Even close to the barriers of Paris such executions were constantly going on; and all in vain. The general feeling was that of sullen indifference. Hireling musicians paraded the streets, singing fine-new ballads in honour of the Emperor, to the long-forgotten tune of ça ira; the passengers gathered round them, and drowned the strains in hooting and laughter. In every saloon discussions such as the police had long suppressed were urged without ceremony. This will not continue; the cord is too much stretched—it will soon be over; such was the universal language. Talleyrand, hearing an officer express his alarm and astonishment, made answer in words which have passed into a proverb:—It is the beginning of the end.
During this uneasy pause, Napoleon at last dismissed his venerable prisoner of Fontainebleau. It is not unlikely that, in the altered state of Italy, he thought the arrival of the Pope might tend to produce some dissension among his enemies in that quarter; and, in effect, when Pius reached Rome, he found the capital of the Catholic world in the hands of Murat, who had ere then concluded his treaty with Francis, and was advancing into the north of Italy, in the view of co-operating in the campaign against Beauharnois, with the Austrians on the one side, and on the other, with an English force recently landed at Leghorn, under Lord William Bentinck.
He also unlocked the gates of Valençay on Ferdinand of Spain; and, without doubt, the letter, in which he announced this intention to his injured victim, will ever be recorded among the prime instances of his audacity. He informed Ferdinand that the English were spreading jacobin principles in Spain, and attacking the foundations of the throne, the aristocracy, and the church; and that he, therefore, was anxious to see him at the head of affairs in the kingdom, provided he would expel the English, and re-establish its relations with France, on the footing of the peace which gave Godoy his title. Ferdinand durst not execute any treaty without consulting the Cortes. They disdained to treat at all with Napoleon. He then liberated the King unconditionally; and after five years' captivity, Ferdinand re-entered Spain, amidst the all but universal acclamations of a nation, who had bled at every pore in his cause, and whom his government was destined ere long to satisfy that they had bled in vain. Napoleon, no doubt, understood well what sort of a present he was conferring on the Spaniards when he restored Ferdinand, and probably calculated that his arrival would fill the country with civil tumults, sufficient to paralyse its arm for foreign war. And—had the King returned but a year earlier—such, in all likelihood, would have been the consequence. Once more Napoleon was too late in doing good that evil might follow.
For some time, thanks to the slavery of the Parisian press, the population of the capital remained in ignorance as to the proceedings of the Allies on the Rhine. Indeed—such was still the influence of the Emperor's military reputation—the inhabitants of the French provinces on that frontier, continued to believe it impossible that any foreign army should dare to invade their soil, until they that had ears to hear, and eyes to see, were perforce undeceived. Schwartzenberg, with the Grand Army, at length crossed the Rhine, between Basle and Schaffhausen, on the 20th of December, and disregarding the claim of the Swiss to preserve neutrality, advanced through that territory unopposed, and began to show themselves in Franche-Comté, in Burgundy, even to the gates of Dijon. On the 1st of January, 1814, the Silesian Army, under Blucher, crossed the river at various points between Rastadt and Coblentz; and shortly after, the Army of the North, commanded by Witzingerode and Bulow (for Bernadotte declined having any part in the actual invasion of France) began to penetrate the frontier of the Netherlands. The wealthier inhabitants of the invaded provinces escaped to Paris, bearing with them these tidings; the English détenûs of Verdun were seen traversing the capital on their route to more distant quarters; the state prisoners of Vincennes itself, under the walls of Paris, were removed. The secret, in a word, could no longer be kept. It was known to every one that the Pyrenees had been crossed by Wellington, and the Rhine by three mighty hosts, amounting together to 300,000 men, and including representatives of every tongue and tribe, from the Germans of Westphalia to the wildest barbarians of Tartary. Persons of condition despatched their plate and valuables to places at a distance from the capital; many whole families removed daily; and the citizens of Paris were openly engaged in laying up stores of flour and salted provisions, in contemplation of a siege.
The violation of the Swiss territory was in itself indefensible; but he who had so often disdained all rules of that kind in his own person, who had seized D'Enghien, who had traversed Bareuth, could hardly hope to be listened to when he complained of Schwartzenberg's proceeding. The allied generals, moreover, proclaimed everywhere as they advanced, that they came as the friends not the enemies of the French nation, and that any of the peasantry who took up arms to oppose them must be content to abide the treatment of brigands. This assuredly was a flagrant outrage against the most sacred and inalienable rights of mankind: but Napoleon had set the fatal example himself in Lombardy, and followed it without a blush, in Egypt, in Germany, in Spain, in Portugal, and but yesterday in Russia. Here also, therefore, his reclamations moved no feeling favourable to himself; and the time was gone by when the French people would have been ready to take fire at so lawless an aggression upon their national rights:—these Napoleon's tyranny had trampled down ere strangers dared to insult them. There were some few scattered instances of resistance; but in general, the first advance of the Allies was regarded with indifference; and it was only at a later period, when the invading generals were no longer able to maintain strict discipline among their barbarous hordes of horsemen, then scattered over a wide extent of country, that the sense of individual suffering afforded even a glimpse of hope to Napoleon, and those who, like him, were eager to oppose a national insurrection to the allied march.