Had Napoleon promptly accepted the Frankfort Proposal as they were
made, would he have secured peace? Manifestly not, for Metternich had
put two conditions to his offer which do not look pacific. First, the
war was not to be suspended during negotiations. Second, the Frankfort
Proposals were only to be taken as _bases_ upon which diplomats could
work. Does this look like a _bona fide_ offer of peace? Napoleon
thought not, and impartial history must hesitate long before saying
he erred. When in December, 1813, he sent his envoy to the Allies,
agreeing to all they demanded, he was once more told that he should
have consented sooner. The Allies had gained their point in having made
the offer, and their active interest in the matter was at an end. The
French envoy was kept in hand, seeking audiences and positive replies,
while the allied armies marched into France.
France in 1814 was a nation of about thirty million souls. During the
years 1812 and 1813 she had furnished nearly six hundred thousand
soldiers to Napoleon’s armies. Of these about half were prisoners in
Russia and Germany, or were shut up in distant garrisons; about two
hundred thousands were dead or missing; about one hundred thousand
remained subject to the Emperor’s call. It was his hope that further
conscription would yield him three hundred thousand recruits; but it
failed to do so.
So much war material had been lost in the campaigns in Russia and
Saxony that he could not furnish muskets to volunteers; some went to
war armed with shot-guns. Neither could he mount any large force of
cavalry; horses could not be had. Nor were there uniforms for all; some
went to the front in sabots and blouse. Money was lacking, and the
Emperor took more than $10,000,000 from his own private funds (saved
from his Civil List), and threw them into the equipment of the troops,
calling also upon the rich for voluntary contributions, on a sliding
scale which he was thoughtful enough to furnish. A few of the taxes
were increased, the communal lands taken for the public service, and
paper money issued against the value of this particular property.
Competent judges have expressed the opinion that had Napoleon at
this time liberated the Pope and Ferdinand of Spain, and done so
unconditionally, he might have won in the campaign which was about to
open. The release of the Pope might have brought back to allegiance
many of the disaffected; the release of Ferdinand might have made it
necessary for the English to quit Spain, and in this manner Napoleon
would have drawn to his own support the veterans he still kept there.
The Duke of Wellington is quoted as saying that had Ferdinand appeared
in Spain in December, 1813, the English would have had to evacuate it.
He, of all men, should have known.
But Napoleon would not consent to make unconditional surrender to the
Pope or to Ferdinand. He patched up a peace with the latter, which,
being a halfway measure, yielded no benefit; and as to the Pope, the
Holy Father refused to treat on any terms with his “son in Christ
Jesus.” Restore him to Rome first; then he would treat.
From the time Napoleon returned from Saxony till he left Paris to take
charge of his last campaign, less than three months passed.
There was never a time when he labored with greater patience or
exhibited greater fortitude, courage, and determination. But the
evidence seems to indicate that he had lost hope, that he was conscious
of the fact that nothing less than a miracle could save him.
Ever since the Russian campaign, he had not had the same confidence
in his star. As he set out from St. Cloud for his campaign in Saxony
he said to Caulaincourt: “I envy the lot of the meanest peasant of
my empire. At my age he has discharged his debts to the country and
remains at home, enjoying the society of his wife and children; while
I--I must fly to the camp and throw myself into the struggles of war.”
Méneval states that in private he found the Emperor “careworn, though
he did his best to hide his anxiety.”
“But in public his face was calm and reassured. In our conversations he
used to complain of feeling tired of war and of no longer being able to
endure horse exercise. He reproached me in jest with having fine times,
whilst he painfully dragged his plough.”
Is there anything which is more pathetic and which shows how grandly
Napoleon towered above the small men who were tugging to pull him down
than his rebuke to the intriguers of the legislative body?
At the head of a disloyal faction there, M. Lainé--an old Girondin,
now a royalist, who was soon to set up the Bourbon standard at
Bordeaux--started a movement which was meant to give aid to the Allies
by showing that divisions existed in France, and by forming a nucleus
of Bourbon opposition. A committee, which Lainé controlled, made a
report in which Napoleon’s government was impliedly censured, and
reforms demanded. Following this lead, others in the legislative body
clamored for the acceptance of the Frankfort Proposals.
This movement of opposition in the legislative body, at a time when
half a million men were on the march to invade France, was nothing
short of treason. At such a crisis, the dullest of Frenchmen must have
understood that obstruction to Napoleon was comfort to the enemy.
Even the cold Pasquier admits that the Emperor’s words to these men
were “somewhat touching.”
Having reproved the committee for allowing Lainé, the royalist, to lead
them astray, Napoleon said: “I stood in need of something to console
me, and you have sought to dishonor me. I was expecting that you would
unite in mind and deed to drive out the foreigner. You have bidden him
come! Indeed, had I lost two battles, it would not have done France
greater harm.”
Somewhat touching, Chancellor Pasquier? Ah, if ever the great man was
heard to sob in public, it was here! A nobler grief, and a nobler
expression of it, history has seldom recorded.
In the course of the same talk, the indignant Emperor reminded the
legislators that whatever differences existed between him and them
should have been discussed in private. “Dirty linen should not be
washed in public.” Then hurried away by angry impatience at those
who were forever prating about the sacrifices he exacted of France,
he exclaimed, “France has more need of me than I of France.” This
was true, but the statement was imprudent; and his enemies at once
misconstrued his meaning, and used the remark to his damage. He
dismissed the legislative body fearing, doubtless, that while he was at
the head of the army the royalists of the chamber might become a danger
in his rear.
Blow after blow fell upon the defeated Emperor during the closing weeks
of 1813. St. Cyr gave up Dresden, and Rapp surrendered Dantzic, upon
condition that their troops should be allowed to return to France. The
Allies set aside the conditions, and held the garrisons as prisoners of
war.
Constant relates two incidents which reveal Napoleon’s melancholy more
fully than his words to Méneval or to the legislative body.
The Emperor went about Paris more informally than he had ever done.
Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, he went to inspect his
public works, schools, and hospitals. Apparently he was curious to feel
the public pulse. Constant says that the people cheered him, and that
sometimes great multitudes followed him back to the Tuileries. The time
had been when the Emperor had not paid any special heed to the shouts
of a street mob. Now the cry of enthusiasm was music to his ears. After
one of these episodes the Emperor would return to the palace in high
spirits, would have much to say to his valet that night, and would be
“very gay.”
In his visits to Saint-Denis (Girl’s School of the Legion of Honor)
the Emperor was usually accompanied by two pages. “Now it happened in
the evening,” writes Constant, “that the Emperor, after returning from
Saint-Denis, said to me with a laugh on entering his chamber, where I
was waiting to undress him, ‘Well, well, here are my pages trying to
resemble the ancient pages. The little rogues! Do you know what they
do? When I go to Saint-Denis they wrangle with each other as to who
shall go with me.’ As he spoke, the Emperor was laughing and rubbing
his hands, and repeated in the same tone a number of times, ‘The little
rogues.’”
Would Chancellor Pasquier admit that this was also “somewhat touching”?
The greatest man of all history had said with proud mournfulness, “I
stood in need of something to console me,” and we do not realize how
infinitely sad he was till we read in Constant’s artless narrative that
the shouts of the mob made him “very gay,” and that the dispute of the
boys in the palace as to which two should go out into the town with him
made him rub his hands with pleasure, and repeat time and again, “Ah,
the little rogues.”
* * * * *
At the beginning of 1814 positive information came that Murat had made
a treaty with Austria, and had promised an army of thirty thousand men
to coöperate with the Allies against France. Much as this defection
must have wounded the Emperor, the worst part of it was that he knew
his sister Caroline to be more to blame than Murat. She did not believe
that the Allies meant to dethrone Napoleon; she believed he could make
peace on the basis of the Frankfort Proposals; and to save her own
crown she believed that a treaty with the Allies was necessary. To this
extent her treachery can be palliated--excuse for it there is none.
[Illustration: LETTER TO COUNTESS WALEWSKI, APRIL 16, 1814.*]
This defection was the cruelest blow of all; for Murat had been
promising his support, and the Emperor had based his plan of campaign
upon it. He had intended that Eugène should unite his forces to those
of Murat, and that the two should fall upon the Austrian line of
communications, threatening Vienna. From this plan he had expected the
happiest results.
Murat had been negotiating with England and Austria, but had not
definitely made terms. It is said that he was driven to a decision by a
wound which Napoleon inflicted upon his vanity. Murat, having written
the Emperor that he could bring thirty thousand men to the field to aid
France, was told to send the troops to Pavia, where they would receive
“the Emperor’s orders.” The King of Naples received this letter on a
day when, with the Queen and others, he was making a visit to Pompeii.
He was so much hurt by Napoleon’s tone that he tore the despatch in
pieces, trampled on the fragments, and returned to Naples to close with
the Austrian offers.
One must pity this brave, vain, fickle Murat, urged on to his shame and
ruin by his innate levity of character, the sting of wounded vanity,
the selfish promptings of an ambitious wife, and the temptings of
professional diplomats.
England dug the grave for Murat as she did for Napoleon, her agent at
Naples being Lord Bentinck. Murat having sent the Englishman a sword of
honor, the latter wrote to his government:--
“It is a severe violence to my feelings to incur any degree of
obligation to an individual whom I so deeply despise.”
On the same day he wrote to Murat: “The sword of a great captain is
the most flattering compliment which a soldier can receive. It is with
the highest gratitude that I accept, sire, the gift which you have done
me the honor to send.”
Lord Bentinck belonged, we must presume, to what Lord Wolseley calls
“the highest type of English gentleman”; hence his duplicity must not
be spoken of in the terms we use in denouncing the vulgar.
Another piece of bad luck had happened to the Emperor since the
Saxon campaign--his two brothers, Joseph and Jerome, were in France.
Wellington had not left the former much to resign in Spain; but
whatever there was, Joseph had surrendered it, and he had come away.
He was now in Paris, confident as ever of his own great merits, and
most unfortunately exercising his former evil influence. Napoleon made
this imbecile Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and having made the
Empress regent, Joseph became President of the Council of Regency. The
disastrous consequences of putting such power into Joseph’s hands will
be seen presently.
At length everything which human effort and human genius could achieve
for the national defence, in so short a time, was done; and it became
imperative that the Emperor should join his army.
On Sunday of January 23, 1814, it being known that he would leave Paris
in a few hours, the officers of the twelve legions of the National
Guard assembled in the hall of the marshals, at the Tuileries, to be
presented as the Emperor should return from Mass. Presently he came;
and while the Empress stood at his side, he took his little son in his
arms, and presented him to the brilliant throng. In a voice which
revealed his deep feeling, he told them that he was about to leave
Paris to put himself at the head of the army to drive the invaders from
France, and he reckoned on the zeal of all good citizens. He appealed
to them to be united, and to repel all insinuations which would tend to
divisions. “Efforts will not be lacking to shake your fidelity to your
duties; I rely on you to reject these perfidious attempts. Gentlemen,
officers of the National Guard, I put under your protection what, next
to France, is dearest to me in all the world,--my wife and my son!”
Even Pasquier records that these words were uttered in tones which
went to the heart, and with an expression of face that was noble
and touching. “I saw tears course down many a cheek. All swore by
acclamation to be worthy of the confidence with which they were being
honored, and every one of them took this oath in all sincerity.”
Warming up a little, in spite of himself, the Chancellor adds, “This
powerful sovereign in the toils of adversity, this glorious soldier
bearing up against the buffets of fortune, could but deeply stir souls
when, appealing to the most cherished affections of the human heart, he
placed himself under their protection.” The learned Chancellor frostily
adds that “the capital did not remain indifferent to this scene, and
was more deeply moved by it than one might expect.”
Let us get out of this draught of wind from the frozen summits of
eminent respectability, and turn to a man whose heart-beat had not been
chilled in any social or judicial ice-box.
Constant writes:--
“... The Emperor’s glance rested on the Empress and on the King of
Rome. He added in a voice that betrayed emotion, indicating by look and
gesture his son, ‘I confide him to you, gentlemen!’ At these words, a
thousand cries, a thousand arms arose, swearing to guard this precious
trust. The Empress, bathed in tears, would have fallen if the Emperor
had not caught her in his arms. At this sight the enthusiasm reached
its climax; tears fell from every eye, and there was not one of the
spectators who did not seem ready to shed his blood for the imperial
family.”
* * * * *
At the beginning of 1814 France was threatened by four armies,
aggregating half a million men. Wellington was at the Pyrenees in
the south, Bernadotte was in the Netherlands, while Blücher and
Schwarzenberg, crossing the Rhine higher up, but at different points,
were marching upon Paris by the Seine and the Marne.
With a confidence which events justified, the Emperor left Soult to
oppose Wellington. As to Bernadotte, he was neither trusted by the
Allies nor feared by Napoleon. The recreant Frenchman had merely come
to terms with the Allies because they had promised to take Norway from
Denmark and give it to Sweden. In addition to this, the Czar of Russia
had dangled before Bernadotte’s eyes, as a tempting bait, the crown of
France--a fact which of itself proves the hollowness of the overtures
made to Napoleon from Frankfort. So well was the crafty Prince-Royal
of Sweden understood by those who had bought him, that he was kept
under strict personal surveillance by each of the four great allied
powers,--Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain. From an army
led by such a man, Napoleon had little to fear; and he gave his whole
personal energies to Blücher and Schwarzenberg, especially to Blücher.
This old hussar who had served under Frederick the Great, and who was
now more than seventy years of age, was the most energetic of all the
officers arrayed against France; and he gave Napoleon more trouble than
all the others put together. He could easily be outgeneralled, he could
be beaten any number of times by such a captain as Napoleon; but there
was no such thing as conquering him. Routed one day, he was ready to
fight again the next. Outmanœuvred at one point, he turned up ready for
battle at another. His marches were swift, his resources inexhaustible,
his pluck and determination an inspiration, not only to the Prussians,
but to all the allied armies. He was not much of a general, was a
good deal of a brute; but he was about as well fitted for the task of
wearing down Napoleon’s strength as any officer Europe could have put
into the field.
Moving slowly from the Rhine toward Paris, meeting no resistance which
could hinder their march, the Allies, who were making war upon Napoleon
alone, and who had no grudge against France, and whose wish it was, as
they proclaimed, to see France “great, prosperous, and happy,” gave
rein to such license, committed such havoc upon property, and such
riotous outrage upon man, woman, and child, that the details cannot be
printed. In Spain, Napoleon had shot his own soldiers to put an end
to pillage; in Russia he had done the same. At Leipsic he had refused
to burn the suburbs to save his army. In his invasions of Prussia and
Austria he had held his men so well in hand that non-combatants were
almost as safe, personally, as they had been under their own king.
At Berlin the French Emperor publicly disgraced a prominent French
officer for having written an insulting letter to a German lady.
In France the sovereigns whose every proclamation and treaty ran under
the sanctimonious heading, “In the name of the Holy and Indivisible
Trinity,” let loose upon the country savage hordes of Cossacks, Croats,
and Prussian fanatics who wreaked their vengeance upon the non-combatant
peasantry and villagers until the invasion of the “Saviors of Society”
became a saturnalia of lust and blood and arson, which no language fit
for books can describe.
The Prussians had almost reached Brienne when the Emperor took the
field with a small force, and drove them from St. Dizier. He then came
upon Blücher at Brienne, suddenly, while the Prussian general was
feasting at the château, and captured one of the higher officers at the
foot of the stairs. The Emperor believed he had nabbed Blücher himself,
and he shouted, “We will hold on to that old fighter; the campaign will
not last long!”
But Blücher had fled through the back door, and had escaped. The battle
raged over the school grounds and the park where Napoleon had read and
meditated in his boyhood. During the fight he found himself storming
the school buildings, where the Prussians were posted; and he pointed
out to his companions the tree in the park under which he had read
_Jerusalem Delivered_.
One of the guides in the movement about Brienne was a curé who had been
a regent of the college while Napoleon was there. They recognized each
other, the Emperor exclaiming: “What! is this you, my dear master? Then
you have never quitted this region? So much the better; you will be
more able to serve the country’s cause.”
The curé saddled his mare and took his place cheerfully in the imperial
staff, saying, “Sire, I could find my way over the neighborhood with my
eyes shut.”
The Emperor drove the Prussians from Brienne with heavy loss; but when
Blücher joined Schwarzenberg, and Napoleon with his slender force
attacked this huge mass at La Rothière, he was beaten off, after a
desperate combat.
Riding back to the château of Brienne to spend the night, the Emperor
was suddenly assailed by a swarm of Cossacks, and for a moment he was
in great personal danger; so much so that he drew his sword to defend
himself. A Cossack lunged at him with a lance, and was shot down by
General Gourgaud.
This incident gave Gourgaud a claim upon Napoleon which was heard of
frequently afterward,--rather too frequently, as the Emperor thought.
At St. Helena Gourgaud, a fretful man and a jealous, tortured himself
and his master by too many complaints of neglect; and reminded the
Emperor once too often of the pistol-shot which had slain the Cossack.
“I saw nothing of it,” said Napoleon, thus putting a quietus to that
particularly frequent conversational nuisance.
It was now the 1st of February, 1814; the Emperor fell back to Nogent,
the Austrians following. Blücher separated from Schwarzenberg, divided
his army into small detachments, and made straight for Paris. In a
flash Napoleon saw his advantage, and acted. At Champ-Aubert he fell
upon one of these scattered divisions and destroyed it. At Montmirail
he crushed another; and hurling his victorious little army upon
Blücher himself, drove that astonished old warrior back upon Châlons.
Putting his guard into carts and carriages, and posting at the highest
speed night and day, Napoleon united with Marshals Oudinot, Victor,
and Macdonald at Guignes. On February 18 he fell upon the huge army
of Schwarzenberg at Montereau and actually drove it back toward
Troyes,--the Austrians as they retired calling upon old Blücher to come
and give them help!
When Caulaincourt, early in December, 1813, had appeared at Frankfort
ready to accept those famous proposals unconditionally, Metternich
had shuffled, evaded, and procrastinated. Finally, a Peace Congress
was assembled at Châtillon (February 6, 1814); and while the soldiers
marched and fought, the diplomats ate, drank and made themselves merry
in the farce of trying to arrange a treaty. Caulaincourt, gallant and
hospitable, supplied his brother diplomats at Châtillon with all the
good things which Paris could furnish,--good eatables, good drinkables,
and gay women. Hence, the Peace Congress was a very enjoyable affair,
indeed. It was not expected to do anything, and it fully came up to
expectations. As the tide of success veered, so shifted the diplomats.
When the Allies won a victory, their demands advanced; when Napoleon
won, the demands moderated. There was no such thing as a coming
together.