Emperor thinks that Joseph in a private house in Paris is more to be
dreaded even than as king in Madrid! Will Napoleon at length learn his
lesson, and, after this outburst, leave Joseph at peace? Hardly! For
even little Jerome has an army once more, and is again making a mess of
things; he gives one of the generals new marching orders, with the remark
that he is acting on instructions from the Emperor. The latter hears of
it too late. “I will not tell you in plain terms what I think of your
conduct; enough that I will not tolerate it any longer! If you again make
false representations of the kind, I shall publish an order of the day
to the effect that in future no attention is to be paid to anything you
say.... By such behaviour you may disturb the march of my whole army. It
is sheer cheating!”
Soon afterwards Junot, one of the oldest of his comrades, becomes
affected with megalomania; he loses a battle in Illyria, and then, in a
fit of frenzy, throws himself out of a window. Bourrienne, who had for a
time been cashiered on account of peculation, and had then been appointed
chargé d’affaires in Hamburg, had, after all, to be dismissed once more
for the old offence. “If he dares to interfere in public business, I
will have him arrested, and make him disgorge his ill-gotten gains!”
Bernadotte, the most faithless, has actually landed in Pomerania with
his Swedes, has advised the allies to stand firm, and will deceive them
as he has deceived others. To crown all, a sworn enemy of the Emperor is
now to join the opposing combination. General Moreau, who had been exiled
to America for his share in Cadoudal’s conspiracy, is on his way to join
the foes of France, and will share with Bernadotte the distinction of
fighting against his native land.
In this situation, on the horns of a dilemma, too cautious to turn his
victories to account, and too powerful to accept the terms on which alone
he would be able to make peace, the Emperor has recourse to his whilom
methods. He invites Metternich to Dresden, and tries to win over the
Austrian diplomat by suggestion. The interview is typically Napoleonic,
lasting nine hours without a break. The Emperor gains nothing by it, but
posterity gains a great deal.
Standing in the middle of the room, his sword buckled on and his hat
under his arm, the Emperor receives the minister. After making formal
enquiries about his father-in-law’s health, he forthwith assumes the
offensive: “So you, too, want war. Well, you shall have it. I have
crushed the Prussians at Lützen, and have beaten the Russians at Bautzen.
You are waiting for your turn? Be it so, we shall meet again in Vienna.
Men are incorrigible! Three times I have replaced Emperor Francis on his
throne; I have promised always to live at peace with him; I have married
his daughter. Even at that time I thought: ‘You are making a fool of
yourself.’ Still, I did it; and now I regret it!”
We see that he is not disposed to be civil; that to his father-in-law’s
envoy, on whom he wishes to make a good impression, he is blunter than
he had been to Francis on the day after Austerlitz. Metternich speaks of
world peace, which will only be possible if the Emperor is willing to
accept a reasonable curtailment of his dominions. It will be necessary to
give back Warsaw to the tsar and Illyria to the emperor of Austria, to
set the Hansa towns free, to enlarge Prussia.
“What you are asking is that I shall dishonour myself. I will die rather
than cede a hand’s breadth of soil. Your born kings can accept defeat
twenty times over, and still go back to their palaces. I am the child of
fortune, and I cannot do this! My power will not outlast the day on which
I cease to be strong, on which I cease to be feared.... Through the cold
of Russia I lost everything except honour.... Now I have a new army; you
shall see it; I will hold a review for your benefit!” Here we have once
more the pride of the born soldier facing those who are born kings; here
we have General Bonaparte. When the minister ventures to declare that
this army of which Napoleon speaks would be glad if peace were made,
the Emperor cuts Metternich short with one of his amazing outbursts of
frankness:
“It is not the army that wants peace! My generals want it! Really, I have
no generals left. The cold of Moscow has demoralised them all. There, the
bravest among them cried like children. A fortnight ago, I could still
make peace; now, after two victories, I can no longer do so.”
“Europe and you, Sire, will never come to terms. When you have made
peace, it has been nothing more than a truce. To you, success and failure
are equally strong motives for war. This time the whole of Europe will
fight against you.”
The Emperor laughs savagely:
“Do you think to destroy me by a coalition? How many of you are there,
then, Messieurs les Alliés? Four, five, six, twenty? The more, the
merrier!” He goes on to warn Metternich against counting on Germany,
whose peoples he is holding together by the presence of his soldiers and
whose princes are held together by their dread of Austria. He advises
armed neutrality, so long as the negotiations are going on in Prague,
whereas Metternich talks of armed mediation. These finesses of the old
diplomacy are to mask the gulf between them. Then, for a whole hour, they
dispute about the relative strength of the opposing armies, each claiming
the possession of exact information about the other side.
“I have detailed and accurate lists of your forces,” says the Emperor.
“I have had so many spies at work, that I know to a unit even how many
drummers you have. But no one knows better than myself how much or how
little value to attach to these secret service reports. My calculations
are based on more exact data, upon mathematical inferences. In the last
resort, no one has more than he can have.” The Emperor shows the Austrian
envoy the muster rolls of the Austrian army, which till yesterday
had been part of the French alliance. Metternich can see for himself
whether the figures are accurate. The Emperor then spends hours upon a
description of the Russian campaign. When the minister remarks that the
imperial troops are composed of striplings, and asks what Napoleon will
do when these children, like those who have gone before them, have been
swallowed up by the war, the Emperor is overcome with wrath. He turns
pale, his features are distorted, and he shouts at Metternich:
“You are not a soldier. You do not know what passes in a soldier’s mind.
I grew to manhood on the battle-field. Such a man as I does not care a
snap of the fingers for the lives of a million men!” He flings his hat
into a corner of the room. Now, there is nothing assumed about his anger,
and what he has just said is the revelation of an innermost truth. The
man who turns pale at the sight of a dying horse, who cannot bear to see
a human being pass away, remains and must remain impassive when, in his
army lists, he adds up the figures, shifts the hundreds of thousands
from column to column, and erases the myriads of slain. Is not war made
with human lives, and does it not end with corpses? What is the use of
reproaching a craftsman for using the tools of his trade? But as far as
morals are concerned, the minister has the best of the argument, and he
would have been glad if all France could have heard Napoleon’s words.
“France has no reason to complain,” says the Emperor more calmly. “To
spare France, I have sacrificed Germans and Poles. In Russia I lost
three hundred thousand men, but only a tenth of them were Frenchmen!”
Meanwhile, he has picked up his hat for himself, a thing he has certainly
not done for the last ten years; he has acted sensibly, as if he had
still been General Bonaparte. Then he plants himself in front of the
Austrian and says:
“It was exceedingly stupid of me to marry an archduchess. I was trying
to weld the new with the old, to make Gothic prejudices square with
the institutions of my own century. Now I can see the whole extent of
my error! The blunder may cost me my throne, but I will bury the world
beneath its ruins!”
This tragical admission is the climax of the interview, and the
turning-point of the problem of war or peace. The rancour engendered
in him by his own mistake spurs him on, regardless of prudential
considerations, into the fight with a coalition whose forces outnumber
his by three to one. Like a great gambler who realises that he has
made an irretrievable blunder, he is impelled by the stubbornness
characteristic of such natures as his to stake all upon a single throw.
He will show that, blunder notwithstanding, he can still win.
By the time he dismisses Metternich, he has fully recovered composure.
His hand on the door-handle, he says: “We shall see one another again
before you leave?”
“I am at Your Majesty’s service. But I have no longer any hope of
succeeding in my mission.”
The Emperor looks at him quizzically, and taps him gently on the
shoulder: “Do you know what will happen? You will not make war on me!”
After three days’ negotiation, Metternich wishes to depart, but the
Emperor is afraid of the final rupture. Napoleon summons the Austrian
envoy several times, and then invites him to an early interview in the
garden. The two men walk up and down.
“Now then, you must not assume this injured air!” In ten minutes
they arrange for a prolongation of the truce, and talk about further
conversations in Prague. Everything is left hanging in the wind; and
in the memorandum he signs with Metternich, the Emperor recognises his
father-in-law’s position of armed neutrality, which can only be a stage
on the way to war. Then he drives off to Mainz, that he may see once more
the wife who is daughter of that same Austrian ruler. He has appointed
her regent in Paris again, but has expressly forbidden his ministers
to submit certain kinds of documents for her consideration. “There are
details with which a young woman’s mind must not be besmirched.”
Had the Habsburg archduchess been a staunch wife and an affectionate
daughter, she would have journeyed on to Vienna, and would have brought
about a reconciliation which there was really nothing to prevent except
the two men’s wounded pride. She had a passably good understanding. Only
a few weeks before, the Emperor, writing to Francis, had said: “She fills
the post of prime minister to my great satisfaction.” We cannot for a
moment suppose that now, at the height of the crisis, he can have failed
to let her know all the hazards of the hour, were it only to ensure that
in the event of a breach her feelings would be on his side. But the
little goose made no move. Her only concern was to send costly gifts
which would make an impression on her relatives.
In Prague, each party keeps the other in suspense; Fouché does his master
harm by gossiping with all and sundry; Bernadotte cements his alliance
with his new friends. When, at the last moment, it seems possible that
the Emperor may give way, Alexander and Frederick William are so much
alarmed at the prospect that they compel Metternich to make the terms
more exacting, for they realise that so favourable an opportunity is
not likely to recur. The Emperor now angrily draws back, and on the day
after the expiry of the truce he receives his father-in-law’s declaration
of war. No doubt, in the interval, he has secured reinforcements; but
he can no longer trust the Confederation of the Rhine, and has to keep
watch upon his German auxiliaries. He stands to arms in Saxony and
Silesia, faced by Schwarzenberg in command of three armies, two of them,
respectively led by Blücher and Bernadotte, holding Silesia and the
north. With Schwarzenberg is Moreau, who has just arrived, and who, on
his last visit to Germany, had been the conqueror of that country.
Thus paradoxical is the marshalling forces in the game of chess. Under
the Emperor of the French, are fighting three German kings against
a German general, who a little while back had been the Emperor’s
subordinate in the war against Russia. Against Napoleon, are fighting two
French generals. One of them is leading Prussian troops against the man
who had for years pushed him to the front; nor is this general really
a royalist, for he, too, is a son of the revolution. Blücher is the
only true-hearted foe, for Blücher, whom Napoleon defeated seven years
earlier, has never fought on the Emperor’s side, and has never espoused
his cause. The one element in Napoleon’s favour is that three monarchs
have their fingers in Schwarzenberg’s pie, three commanders who know as
little about the trade of war as Brother Joseph did in Spain.
At the end of August, the Emperor opens the second Saxon campaign with
a great victory near Dresden. But on the third day, when he might have
followed up the allies and scattered them, he is seized by a violent
attack of gastric spasm. For a whole hour he fancies he has been
poisoned; his will is paralysed, and he withdraws instead of pursuing.
Thereby he loses an army corps, and thus (according to the report of
Daru, his daily companion) “causes the disaster of 1813.” In this first
battle against the hated Bonaparte, Moreau falls. Is it an omen? When the
Emperor hears the news, the rivalry of his youth flames up anew, and from
his very soul he cries: “Moreau is dead! My star!”
His other army has been defeated by Blücher on the Katzbach. Once more,
considerations of statesmanship outweigh those of generalship. How can I
divide my adversaries? It will be better to spare Bohemia for the sake of
Austria, for the defeat has aroused alarm there. He will make a surprise
march on Berlin, and will thus lure the Prussians out of Silesia.
But what the tsar had said years ago is still true.... Miracles only
happen when the Emperor is present, and he cannot be everywhere. He
is thus hampered in his great enterprise. Lack of fighting spirit,
difficulties of food-supply, and the frequency of desertion, are
continually making it necessary for him to visit his flanking armies: so
that in popular parlance, in consequence of his rushings to and fro, he
is nicknamed the “Bautzen Messenger.” His armies suffer more and more
from lack of food. They are so thickly set upon the ground that they have
long since eaten the country bare.
Nevertheless, he has not nearly enough soldiers. Since the 1814 levies
are already with the colours, he orders the Senate to call up also
those of 1815, and even the men whose liability to service has nearly
expired on account of advancing years—the very peasants whom, when
setting forth on this campaign in a mood of self-pity, he had envied
for their fortunate position. But when will the reinforcements arrive?
Who will train them, and how long will it take? Vainly now, at the end
of September, he sends an envoy to his father-in-law, to talk of peace;
he is prepared to make great sacrifices, “if only you will listen.”
But Francis remains firm, and is at length able to detach an important
member of the Confederation of the Rhine: the king of Bavaria falls away.
Thereupon the anxious chessplayer, round whom the clouds are gathering,
says to his old comrade something which he has never before been willing
to admit:
“Marmont, my game is going awry.”
With this admission, the Emperor’s genius spreads its wings and flies
away.
XI
On Düben Heath is a Saxon fortress, Düben Castle. There, one morning,
the Emperor is at work, planning the march on Berlin, the defeat of
Bernadotte and Blücher, smashing blows which will finish off the enemy.
Then a number of generals are announced. He comes out of his study to
meet them, knowing what they want, for his intimates have kept him
informed of the growing discontent among the leaders, who wish to winter
quietly on the Rhine. Marshal Ney has recently reported: “I am no longer
master of my army.” One of the visitors begins to speak hesitatingly;
a second puts forward dubious reasons; then, nodding to encourage one
another, they all obsequiously beg him not to march on Berlin. Leipzig
will be a better point of attack.
The Emperor listens to them in silence as he wonders: “Is my power
vanishing?” At length he replies: “The secession of Bavaria is imminent.
A movement on Leipzig, a backward movement, will arouse despair among the
soldiers. But I will think over what you have said.” He spends the rest
of the day alone, refusing himself to all visitors, brooding over his
maps. Caulaincourt, on duty outside, listens for sounds from within, but
can only hear the windows rattling in the October gale which is howling
round the castle. At length he is allowed to enter. The Emperor walks up
and down, and, speaking rather to himself than to Caulaincourt, he says:
“The French cannot endure reverses.” Then he sinks into a reverie.
Next day he announces that they will go to Leipzig. It is October 15th:
general animation; orders are issued; every one is delighted. Discussing
with Marmont the latest steps of the Habsburg ruler, Napoleon says in
conclusion: “I prefer a man of honour who simply keeps his word, to a
conscientious man who does what he thinks right.... Emperor Francis
has done what he believes to be the best for his subjects; he is
conscientious, but he is not a man of honour.”
Next day begins the great “Battle of the Nations.” The Emperor has only
one hundred and eighty thousand men against three hundred thousand of the
allies; by the evening he has won only part of the battle-field. On the
second morning Bernadotte arrives with reinforcements. The Emperor sees
that things are going badly, and would like to withdraw, but he cannot
make up his mind to a step that would give the impression of defeat. Once
more he tries negotiation. General Merveldt has been taken prisoner;
his sword is restored on parole; he is to go to Emperor Francis with
proposals for an armistice.
“I will retire behind the Saale, while the Russians and the Prussians
withdraw beyond the Elbe, and you Austrians go back into Bohemia;
Saxony must remain neutral.” Then, livening up, he develops to this
enemy general nothing less than a new plan for Europe. Hanover is to
be returned to England; the Baltic coast is to be freed; any of the
princes of the Confederation of the Rhine who wish to do so can leave the
Confederation; Poland, Spain, and Holland are to be independent; the only
reservation is as regards Italy, which must not become Austrian. “Be off
with you! You have a splendid peace mission. Should fortune favour it,
you will earn the love of a great nation. But if your side refuse peace,
we shall know how to defend ourselves.”
General Merveldt departs in amazement, and his report seems incredible
to his master. What! The Emperor Napoleon, in the course of war, between
battles, is willing to renounce half Europe and chooses a prisoner to
bring this offer? We did not know he was so weak.
The Emperor is anxiously awaiting his emissary’s return. Till far on into
the night, therefore, he refrains from issuing orders for the morrow; he
speaks of the ties of kinship, and of his wife and child. Suddenly he is
attacked by his gastric trouble, and staggers against the wall of the
tent, his face pale. They wish to send for his physician. “No! my tent is
transparent. If I am up and about, every one is at his post.”
“At least lie down, Sire!”
“No, I will die standing.”
“Do let me fetch the doctor, Sire.”
“No, I tell you! I can send a sick soldier to hospital. But who can send
me?” Terrible moments pass. “I’m getting better now. See to it that no
one comes into the tent!”
Half an hour later, he issues orders, but not for a retreat. Instead, the
army moves a little nearer to Leipzig. The enemy now outnumbers him by
two to one.
When day comes, he takes up his headquarters in a windmill. The attack
upon the French starts from three sides. It appears that, at the last
moment, Bernadotte has persuaded the Saxons to turn their guns against
France. “Infamous!” exclaims the Emperor, and all around echo the word.
Saxon officers who remain faithful to him, break their swords. A dragoon
belonging to the escort wheels his horse, and shouts: “We’ll do for them
yet, the scoundrels! We Frenchmen, too, are here! Vive l’Empereur!” The
whole escort follows him at the charge. Soon a young officer, who has
seized one of the Saxon eagles, gallops back with it to the Emperor, and
collapses from his wounds as he arrives. “These sons of France!” says
Napoleon softly.
On the second day of battle, he loses sixty thousand men. He is beaten,
but even the German critics say of the affair: “The allies did not secure
an overwhelming victory, such as might have been expected from the
enormous preponderance of their forces.”
During the hasty retreat of the defeated army through the town of
Leipzig, the Emperor dictates orders for the withdrawal. “They had
brought him a wooden stool,” writes an eyewitness. “On this, he now
fell into a slumber of exhaustion, his hands loosely folded in his lap.
In gloomy silence the generals were standing round the fire, while the
soldiers were marching past a little way off.”
Next morning the pursuing enemy spread disorder in the streets; a bridge
was blown up prematurely, so that the rear guard was forced to surrender;
one of the marshals escaped by swimming across the river, another was
drowned, several were wounded and taken prisoner. When, subsequently
Macdonald came across Augereau, for whose corps he had been waiting,
Augereau laughed him to scorn: “Do you think me such a fool as to let
myself be slaughtered in a Leipzig suburb? I won’t do that for a madman’s
sake!”
Here we have it for the first time, a sign that one of Napoleon’s
oldest companions-in-arms has become completely indifferent to the
Emperor’s fame; is animated by the mere will-to-live, reasonable enough
in a private soldier, but unworthy of a marshal of France. On the very
same day, another friend of Bonaparte’s youth writes to the Emperor,
complaining that in the report of the previous day’s fighting his
services have been overlooked, although for ten hours he had held a part
of the plain for whose defence another man is now given the credit.
“Never in my life have I served you more faithfully than I did on this
occasion.... Sire, I could not suffer anything worse than to be forgotten
at such a time.” The letter is signed, “Marmont.”
These two utterances on the day after Leipzig are the shadows of coming
events. Marmont and Augereau will both desert the Emperor in the decisive
hour.
Fifty miles away, Goethe is sitting in his room at Weimar. Napoleon’s
picture has fallen from its nail. The poet has heard the sound of the
Leipzig guns. The first news of the French defeat has arrived. Though
none of the allied generals can say, yet, whether the Emperor may not
be able to collect his forces once more, and to resume his career of
victory, Goethe, who only a few months earlier had declared Napoleon to
be invincible, already realises the full extent of the disaster. On the
day of the retreat, as if everything had happened a hundred years before,
and the whole matter had become legendary, he writes the following verses: