There is no convincing evidence that the Russian war of 1812 was
generally unpopular in France. There is no proof whatever that any
national calamity growing out of it was expected or feared. So great
was the confidence which the Emperor’s uninterrupted success had
inspired, that the current belief was that Russia would be beaten and
brought to terms. The glamour of the Dresden conference was sufficient
to dazzle the French people, and the magnificent host which gathered
under the eagles of the Empire left them no room for doubts. Led by
such a captain as Napoleon, this army of half a million men would bear
down all opposition. Bulletins from the front, dictated by the Emperor,
did not fail to produce the impression desired; and when at length
the victory of Borodino was followed by the French entry into Moscow,
national enthusiasm and pride reached its height.
The first shadow that fell upon France, the first thrill of fear, was
caused by the news that the Russians had given their capital to the
flames. Still, when it became known that the Emperor was quartering
the army amid the ruins, that there was shelter and food for all, that
communications between Paris and Moscow were so well guarded that not
a courier or convoy had been cut off, that Napoleon, seemingly quite
at ease, was giving his attention to the internal affairs of France,
was drawing up regulations for schools and theatres, was corresponding
with his son’s governess upon the subject of the child’s teething,
the French convinced themselves that the invasion had proved another
triumph. They could not put their eyes upon that sombre figure in
the Kremlin, the chief who had not a word to say to those about
him, who lay listless upon the sofa day by day,--a leader without a
plan,--wrapping himself in the delusion that even yet the Czar would
accept his peaceful overtures.
So strong was the system which Napoleon had organized in France that
it went on in his absence just as regularly as when he was present.
Even when the daring General Malet, encouraged by the Emperor’s great
distance from his capital, conspired with the priest, Abbé Lafon,
to overthrow the government, the attempts never had the slightest
chance of success. By means of a forged decree of the Senate, and the
announcement that the Emperor was dead, the conspirators were for a
moment enabled to secure control of a small body of troops, arrest
the minister and the prefect of police, and to take possession of the
city hall. But almost immediately the authorities asserted themselves,
seized the conspirators, and put them to death.
The true significance of this episode lay in the fact that so violent
a revolutionist as Malet, who had plotted to kill Napoleon because of
the Concordat, was found in league with the Abbé Lafon, a royalist and
clerical fanatic, and that they had agreed upon a programme which was
so eminently sane as to be formidable.
According to their plan, Napoleon’s family were to be set aside, the
conscription abolished, and the most oppressive taxes lifted. The Pope
was to be restored to his temporal power, and France was to secure
peace with the world by consenting to be reduced to her old boundaries
of Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees. Those who had purchased the confiscated
property of the Church and the nobles were to be quieted with the
assurance that their titles should not be questioned.
When we remember that peace was finally established in France upon
substantially the same lines as those marked out by the Abbé Lafon,
it becomes evident that he was in touch with those royalist clericals
who, failing miserably in 1812, succeeded completely two years later.
Napoleon’s uneasiness when he heard of the conspiracy, and his
curiosity in asking for the minutest details, can well be understood.
* * * * *
The twenty-fifth bulletin from the Grand Army told France that the
retreat from Moscow had begun. The twenty-eighth bulletin, dated from
Smolensk, and made public in Paris on November 29, 1812, announced
that winter had set in. After this, France was left for eighteen days
without news--eighteen days filled with dread. Then on December 17 came
the avalanche. The twenty-ninth bulletin, revealing much, suggested
all--the Grand Army was no more! The consternation, the dismay, the
stupor of grief and terror which overspread the stricken land, can be
imagined; it passes the power of words.
And the home-coming of the Emperor--what was it like, this time?
It was midnight in Paris, the 18th of December, 1812. The Empress Maria
Louisa, at the Tuileries, sad and unwell, had gone to bed. The imperial
babe, the infant King of Rome, was asleep. It was a mournful time
in France. Where was the hut from one end of the Empire to the other
which did not hear sobs this bitter, bitter night? How many women,
at cheerless firesides, wept and prayed for sons, husbands, lovers,
shrouded in motionless snow on far Russian plains! Even the Empress
was sorrowful. She knew nothing of the fate of the army or its chief.
Napoleon himself might get rest for his unresting spirit from Cossack
lance or Russian gun--in which event the Empress Maria might find
untold calamity for her imperial self.
A common cab rolled into the courtyard below, and steps were heard
hastily ascending the stairs. Two men hooded and wrapped up in furs,
pushed their way into the anteroom to the Empress’s bedchamber. Voices
were heard in this anteroom, and the Empress, frightened, was just
getting out of bed, when Napoleon burst in, rushed up to her, and
caught her in his arms.
On the following day, according to Pasquier, the Emperor admitted no
one but his archchancellor, his ministers, and his intimates. On the
20th, which was Sunday, he attended divine service, and then held
the usual levee; after which he formally received the Senate and the
Council. Seated upon his throne, enveloped in his robes of state, this
wonderful man, so recently a fugitive fleeing almost alone through
the wilds of Poland, never presented a serener face to the world, nor
looked down upon the grandees who bowed before him with haughtier
glance, than upon this memorable Sabbath. Loyal addresses were listened
to with dignity and composure; imperial responses were made in a tone
which convinced France and Europe that Napoleon remained unconquered.
Such was the grandeur of his attitude, so powerfully did his fortitude,
courage, magnetic audacity appeal to this gallant nation, that it
rallied to him with almost universal sympathy and enthusiasm. Towns,
cities, corporate bodies, imperial dependencies, sent in loyal
addresses, offers of cordial support. From Italy, Holland, the Rhine
provinces, poured in warm expressions of attachment and fidelity. Rome,
Milan, Florence, Turin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Mayence, testified their
sense of the benefits his rule had conferred upon them, and tendered
him “arms, armies, gold, fidelity, and constancy.”
Napoleon had said that he would be back in Germany in the spring with
three hundred thousand men. He lost no time in getting ready to keep
his promise. It was an awful task--this creation of a new army; but
he set about it with a grim resolution, a patient persistence, which
accomplished wonders. Skeleton regiments of veterans were filled in
with youthful recruits, and hurriedly drilled. The twelve hundred
cannon lost in Russia were replaced by old guns from the arsenals, or
new ones from the foundries. The enormous loss of war material was made
good from the reserves in the military depots. But where could the
Emperor get horses to supply the mighty number frozen or starved in
Russia? He could not get them. His utmost exertions could but supply
teams for the artillery. Of cavalry he could mount almost none.
Meditate a moment on the situation. The civilized world stood arrayed
against one man, one people. England on the seas, in Portugal, in
Spain; Russia marching on with a victorious host; Sweden (having been
promised Norway and English money) uniting with the Czar; Prussia and
Austria leaving the side of France,--Prussia joining in the crusade,
and Austria preparing to do so,--smaller German powers threatened
with ruin if they did not declare war upon Napoleon; Murat at Naples
betraying the man who had given him the crown; the Pope doing his
utmost to sow disaffection by troubling the conscience of Catholics
throughout the Empire; royalists in France beginning to stir, covertly
and stealthily, in the tortuous ways of intrigue and conspiracy. All
this we see upon one side. And upon the other, what? One man of supreme
genius and courage,--backed by one gallant nation,--preparing to lead
forth, to meet a world in arms, an army composed largely of boys,
almost without cavalry, and almost without drill.
“I noticed at this epoch,” says Constant, “that the Emperor had never
hunted so frequently.” Two or three times a week the hunting suit was
donned, and the imperial party would seek the pleasures of the chase.
As Napoleon had no real fondness for hunting, his valet was surprised.
One day he learned the explanation. English newspapers, as the Emperor
told Duroc, had been repeating that he was ill, could not stir, and
was no longer good for anything. “I’ll soon make them see that I am as
sound in body as in mind!”
One of these hunts, Napoleon endeavored to turn to a particularly
good account. The Pope was at Fontainebleau, to which place he had
been removed from Savona at the opening of the Russian campaign. His
quarrel with the Emperor had become most annoying in its consequences.
Disaffection, because of it, had found its way into the very Council
of State. All attempt at negotiation had been fruitless. On the eve of
another great war, here was a question which demanded settlement; and
the Emperor determined to go in person to the Pope.
On January 19, 1813, the hunt was directed to Grosbois, the fine estate
which had belonged to Barras, then to Moreau, and then to Berthier,
Prince of Neufchâtel. At Grosbois, accordingly, the imperial party
hunted. “But what was the surprise of all his suite when, at the moment
of reëntering the carriages, his Majesty ordered them to be driven
toward Fontainebleau.”
The Empress and the ladies, having no raiment with them other than
hunting costumes, were in some confusion at the prospect. The Emperor
teased them for a while, and then let them know that by his orders the
necessary change of clothes had been sent from Paris beforehand and
would be ready for them at Fontainebleau. Taking up his quarters in the
ancient palace, Napoleon and Maria Louisa went informally to call upon
the Pope. The meeting was affectionate. Again there were huggings and
kissings; again it was “My father!” “My son!” And again the magnetism,
the adroit winsomness of Napoleon, swept the aged pontiff off his feet.
He signed a new compact with his “son”; and once more there came to
them both the bliss due to the peacemakers.
Radiant with pleasure, Napoleon returned to Paris; and, quick as
couriers could speed, went the good news to all parts of the Empire.
But he had been too fast. He had given permission that the rebellious
cardinals--“the black cardinals,” who, refusing to attend the
celebration of the religious marriage with Maria Louisa, had been
forbidden to wear the red robes--might attend the Pope. And these black
cardinals had not changed their color,--were still black,--and they
began immediately to urge the Holy Father to break his plighted word.
The Holy Father did so, pleading by way of excuse, that the paper he
had signed was not a contract or treaty, but only the basis of one;
and that Napoleon had acted in bad faith in making it public. But the
Emperor inserted the treaty in the official gazette, keeping up the
pretence that all was peace between him and the Pope; so that the
French people at large knew no better until a much later date.
There are critics who say that Napoleon was too hasty in setting out
to join his army in April, 1813. But the plain facts of the case would
seem to show that Napoleon knew what he was about. Prussia had issued
her declaration of war on March 17, 1813, and Blücher pushed forward to
the Elbe. Russian troops had likewise reached the Elbe, and Cossacks
raided in the vicinity of Dresden, which the French, under Davoust,
evacuated. Blücher entered the Saxon capitol; the Saxon king was a
fugitive; and the Prussians passed on toward Leipsic.
By the 24th of April the Czar of Russia and the King of Prussia were in
Dresden. Bernadotte, at the head of thirty thousand Swedes, had joined
Bülow, and was covering Berlin.
In view of these events, how can it be said with assurance that
Napoleon was overhasty in taking the field?
Remembering that the Allies had threatened war upon those minor
German powers who would not join them, and that Saxony was already
in their grasp, it seems that Napoleon’s conduct admits of easy
explanation. Unless he checked the Allies, and that speedily, the Rhine
Confederation would go to pieces; the French garrisons in various
German cities would be lost. Eugène and his army would be cut off at
Magdeburg, and the fabric of Napoleonic Empire would fall without a
blow having been struck in its defence.
To accomplish these very purposes, the Allies had pressed forward;
and great must have been the confusion in both armies; for Napoleon,
as well as his enemies, was surprised when the two armies struck each
other at Lützen, May 2, 1813. A bloody struggle followed; the Allies
were outgeneralled, and they retreated from the field. Having no
cavalry, the Emperor lost the usual fruits of victory; but the mere
fact that he, so recently the fugitive from a lost army, now appeared
at the head of another host, and had driven Russians and Prussians
back in defeat, produced a moral effect which was immense. The enemy
was driven beyond the Elbe; all hopes of breaking up the Rhine
Confederation were at an end; Eugène and Napoleon would now unite;
Saxony was redeemed. Napoleon entered Dresden in triumph. His friend
and ally, the Saxon king, returned to his capital. The French army was
full of confidence: the Allies made no effort to stand their ground
till they reached Bautzen, on the Spree. Here, on May 21 and 22, they
were assailed by the French, and again overthrown.
So competent a judge as Lord Wolseley is of the opinion that a mistake
of Marshal Ney in this battle saved the allied army from total ruin.
The Russians and Prussians held a strong fortified position resting on
the Bohemian Mountains, from which there was only one line of retreat.
Napoleon’s quick eye took in the situation, and he sent Ney to the rear
of the enemy with seventy thousand men, while he assailed their front
with eighty thousand. In executing this turning movement, Ney became
engaged with a small force of Prussians, which Blücher had detached to
protect his rear. “Instead of pressing his march along the rear of the
allied army to cut off its retreat, and attack it in the rear, whilst
Napoleon assailed it in front, Ney allowed his movements to be checked,
and his direction diverted by this insignificant Prussian detachment.
This fighting soon roused Blücher to a sense of his extreme danger, and
he at once fell back and made good his retreat.” The Russians made the
best of a bad situation till dark, and then escaped during the night.
“Ney had, in fact, only succeeded in manœuvring the Allies out of a
position in which Napoleon intended to destroy them, and where they
must have been destroyed had his orders been skilfully obeyed.”
As it was, the Allies drew off without losing a gun, and Napoleon,
looking over the thousands of dead that cumbered the field, exclaimed
in rage and grief, “What a massacre for nothing!”
It was at this stage of the campaign that Napoleon is thought to have
made the crowning mistake of his later years. He halted his victorious
columns, and signed the armistice of Pleiswitz (June 4, 1813).
Austria had, since her defeats in 1809, fully recovered her strength.
Her armies reorganized, her people animated by a patriotic spirit which
had been intensified by promises of constitutional reforms, she had
come unhurt out of the war of 1812, and was now determined to recover
her lost provinces and her position as an independent power of the
first class. With Russia and France both severely crippled by the
late struggle, Austria realized her advantage too well to allow the
opportunity to pass. Either from Napoleon or the Allies the position
lost in 1809 must be recovered. With this end in view, Metternich
negotiated with all parties,--Prussia, England, France, and Russia. The
amount of lying this able and eminent Christian did at this critical
time would probably have taxed the conscience of even such veterans in
deception as Fouché and Talleyrand.
Whether Napoleon could have won the friendship of Austria by frankly
surrendering to her demands for the restitution of her lost territory,
must always remain a matter of doubt. Inasmuch as the Austrian army
was not quite ready to take the field, and her treasury was empty, and
she had no complaint against Napoleon, excepting that she had made an
unprovoked attack upon him in 1809 and had been thoroughly whipped,
the probability is that a prompt concession of her demands would have
gained her neutrality in the war of 1813. But this is by no means
certain. When we remember the strength of dynastic prejudices, the
influence of British money, the rising tide of German nationality and
of hatred of Napoleon, the intense antagonism to French principles, the
activity of royalist and clerical intrigue--it is difficult to escape
the conclusion that had Napoleon yielded up what he had taken from
Austria, he could have stopped at nothing short of a full surrender all
along the line. And had he returned to France shorn of all that French
blood had won, the storm of indignation there would have driven him
from the throne. Napoleon himself expressed substantially this view at
St. Helena; it may have been sound. Why, then; did he grant the truce?
What did he mean by saying, after he had signed it, “If the Allies do
not sincerely wish for peace, this armistice may prove our ruin”? No
one can say. There are facts which appear to prove conclusively that
he ardently wished for an honorable peace. Other facts seem to indicate
that he was playing for time, that he never did mean to give up
anything, and that he was beaten in a grand game of duplicity, where,
intending to deceive, he was duped.