After his defeat at La Rothière, the Emperor authorized Bassano to
make peace, giving to Caulaincourt unlimited powers. But before the
necessary papers could be signed, Blücher had made his false movement,
and Napoleon’s hopes had risen. Bassano, entering his room on the
morning of February 9, found the Emperor lying on his map and planting
his wax-headed pins.
“Ah, it is you, is it?” cried he to Bassano, who held the papers in
his hands ready for signing. “There is no more question of that. See
here, I want to thrash Blücher. He has taken the Montmirail road. I
shall fight him to-morrow and next day. The face of affairs is about to
change. We will wait.”
In the movements which followed the Bonaparte of the Italian campaign
was seen again, and for the last time. He was everywhere, he was
tireless, he was inspiring, he was faultless, he was a terror to his
foes. We see him heading charges with reckless dash, see him aiming
cannon in the batteries, see him showing his recruits how to build
bridges, see him check a panic by spurring his own horse up to a live
shell and holding him there till the bomb exploded, see him rallying
fugitives, on foot and sword in hand. We hear him appeal to his tardy
marshals to “Pull on the boots and the resolution of 1793”; we hear
him address the people and the troops with the military eloquence of
his best days; we see him writing all night after marching or fighting
all day--his care and his efforts embracing everything, and achieving
all that was possible to man.
That was a pretty picture at the crossing of the river Aube, where
Napoleon was making a hasty bridge out of ladders spliced together,
floored with blinds taken from the houses near by. Balls were tearing
up the ground where the Emperor stood; but yet when he was about to
quench his extreme thirst by dipping up in his hands the water of the
river, a little girl of the village, seeing his need, ran to him with
a glass of wine. Empire was slipping away from him, and his mind must
have been weighed down by a thousand cares; but he was so touched by
the gallantry of the little maid that he smiled down upon her, as he
gratefully drank, and he said:--
“Mademoiselle, you would make a brave soldier!”
Then he added playfully, “Will you take the epaulets? Will you be my
aide-de-camp?” He gave her his hand, which she kissed, and as she
turned to go he added, “Come to Paris when the war is over, and remind
me of what you did to-day; you will feel my gratitude.”
He was no gentleman; he had not a spark of generosity in his nature; he
was mean and cruel; he was a superlatively bad man. So his enemies say,
beginning at Lewis Goldsmith and ending at Viscount Wolseley. It may be
so; but it is a little hard on the average citizen who would like to
love the good men and hate the bad ones that a “superlatively evil man”
like Napoleon Bonaparte should be endowed by Providence with qualities
which make such men as Wellington, Metternich, Talleyrand, Czar
Alexander, Emperor Francis, or Bourbon Louis seem small, seem paltry,
seem prosaic and sordid beside him.
Another glimpse of the Emperor fixes attention in these last struggles.
He was at the village of Méry where he rapidly reconnoitred over the
marshy ground bordering the Aube. Getting out of the saddle, he sat
down upon a bundle of reeds, resting his back against the hut of a
night-watchman, and unrolled his map. Studying this a few moments, he
sprang upon his horse, set off at a gallop, crying to his staff, “This
time we have got them!”
It did indeed seem that Blücher was entrapped and would be annihilated;
but after very heavy losses he managed to get across the marsh and the
river. It is said that a sudden frost, hardening the mud, was all that
saved him.
Having been reënforced by the corps of Bülow and Woronzoff, which
England had compelled Bernadotte to send, Blücher advanced against
Marmont on the Marne. The French fell back upon the position of Marshal
Mortier; and the two French generals, with about twelve thousand,
checked one hundred thousand Prussians.
Napoleon, with twenty-five thousand, hurried to the support of his
marshals, and was in Blücher’s rear by March 1. Once more the Prussian
seemed doomed. His only line of retreat lay through Soissons and across
the Aisne. With Napoleon hot upon his track, and in his rear a French
fortress, how was he to escape destruction? A French weakling, or
traitor, had opened the way by surrendering Soissons. Had he but held
the town for a day longer, the war might have ended by a brilliant
triumph of the French. Moreau was the name of the commandant at
Soissons--a name of ill-omen to Napoleon, whose fury was extreme.
“Have that wretch arrested,” he wrote, “and also the members of the
council of defence; have them arraigned before a military commission
composed of general officers, and, in God’s name, see that they are
shot in twenty-four hours.”
Here was lost the most splendid opportunity which came to the French
during the campaign. Blücher safely crossed the Aisne (March 3)
in the night, and was attacked by Marmont on March 9. During the
day the French were successful; but Blücher launched at the unwary
Marmont a night attack which was completely successful. The French
lost forty-five guns and twenty-five hundred prisoners. In a sort
of desperation, Napoleon gave battle at Laon, but was so heavily
outnumbered that he was forced to retreat.
Almost immediately, however, he fell upon the Russians at Rheims, March
13, killed their general, St. Priest, and destroyed their force. It was
at this time that Langeron, one of Blücher’s high officers, wrote: “We
expect to see this terrible man everywhere. He has beaten us all, one
after another; we dread the audacity of his enterprises, the swiftness
of his movements, and the ability of his combinations. One has scarcely
conceived any scheme of operations before he has destroyed it.”
This tribute from an enemy is very significant of what “this terrible
man” might have accomplished had he been seconded. Suppose Murat and
Eugène had been operating on the allied line of communications! Or
suppose Augereau had done his duty in Switzerland, in the rear of the
Allies! Spite of the odds, it seems certain that Napoleon would have
beaten the entire array had he not been shamefully betrayed--abandoned
by creatures of his own making.
As if the stars in their courses were fighting against this struggling
Titan, he learned that the relations between his wife and his brother
Joseph were becoming suspicious. Chancellor Pasquier states that he
himself saw the letters written by Napoleon on leaving Rheims in which
Savary, minister of police, was censured for not having made known
the facts to the Emperor, and in which Savary was ordered to watch
closely the suspected parties. Pasquier adds that at first he thought
the Emperor must be deranged; but that information which came to him
afterward caused him to believe that Napoleon’s suspicions “were only
too well founded.”
Did ever a tragedy show darker lines than this? All Europe marching
against one man, his people divided, his lieutenants mutinous and
inclining to treason, his senators ready to depose him, a sister and a
brother-in-law stabbing him to the vitals, members of his Council of
Regency in communication with the enemy, nobles whom he had restored
and enriched plotting his destruction, and his favorite brother, his
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, using the opportunity which the
trust afforded to debauch his wife!
Is it any wonder that even this indomitable spirit sometimes bent under
the strain?
Referring to the battle of Craonne, Constant writes:--
“The Emperor who had fought bravely in this battle as in all others,
and incurred the dangers of a common soldier, transferred his
headquarters to Bray. Hardly had he entered the room when he called me,
took his boots off while leaning on my shoulder, but without saying
a word, threw his sword and hat on the table, and stretched himself
on the bed with a sound which left one in doubt whether it was the
profound sigh of fatigue or the groan of utter despair. His Majesty’s
countenance was sorrowful and anxious. He slept for several hours the
sleep of exhaustion.”
After the Emperor’s repulse at Laon, Schwarzenberg took heart and
advanced toward Paris; but Napoleon, leaving Rheims, marched to
Épernay, and the Austrians fell back, pursued by the French. The allied
armies, however, concentrated at Arcis on the Aube, and, with one
hundred thousand men, beat off the Emperor when he attacked them with
thirty thousand.
Napoleon now made his fatal mistake--fatal because he could count on
no one but himself. He moved his army to the rear of the Allies to cut
their line of communications. This was a move ruinous to them, if the
French armies in front should do their duty. The despatches in which
Napoleon explained his march to the Empress Regent at Paris fell into
the hands of the enemy, owing to Marmont’s disobedience of orders
in abandoning the line of communications. They hesitated painfully,
they had even turned and made a day’s march following Napoleon, when
the capture of a bundle of letters from Paris, and the receipt of
invitations from traitors and royalists in Paris, revealed the true
situation there, and convinced them that by a swift advance they could
capture the city and end the war. Accordingly they turned about,
detaching a trifling force to harass and deceive the Emperor.
These movements, Napoleon to the rear and the Allies toward Paris,
decided the campaign. The small force of eight or ten thousand, which
the Allies had sent to follow the Emperor, was cut to pieces by him
at St. Dizier, and from the prisoners taken in the action he learned
of rumors that the Allies were in full march upon Paris. He soon
learned, also, that through Marmont’s disobedience of orders a severe
defeat had been inflicted upon the two marshals, and that Blücher and
Schwarzenberg had united.
What should Napoleon now do? Should he continue his march, gather up
the garrisons of his fortresses, enroll recruits, and, having cut the
enemy’s communications, return to give him battle? He wished to do
so, urged it upon the council of war, and at St. Helena repeated his
belief that this course would have saved him. It might have done so.
The army of the Allies, when it reached Paris, only numbered about
one hundred and twenty thousand. Half that number of troops were
almost within the Emperor’s reach, and there were indications that the
peasantry, infuriated by the brutality of the invaders, were about to
rise in mass. At this time they could have been armed, for Napoleon had
captured muskets by the thousand from the enemy. If Marmont and Mortier
would but exhaust the policy of obstruction and resistance; if Joseph
and War-minister Clarke, at Paris, would but do their duty, the Allies
would be caught between two fires, for the Emperor would not be long in
marshalling his strength and coming back.
But the older and higher officers were opposed to the plan. They told
Napoleon that he must march at once to the relief of Paris. After
a night of meditation and misery at St. Dizier, he set out on the
return (March 28, 1814). At Doulevent he received cipher despatches
from Lavalette, postmaster-general in Paris, warning him that if
he would save the capital he had not a moment to lose. This message
aroused him for the first time to the extremity of the peril. He had
expected a stubborner resistance from Marmont, had relied upon greater
effectiveness in Joseph and Clarke. But even now he did not realize
the awful truth, the absolute necessity for his immediate presence to
save Paris--else he would have mounted horse and spurred across France
as he had once done, to smaller purpose, across Spain: as he had done
the year before when Dresden was beleaguered. In this connection let
us remember what he had told Méneval,--that he was no longer able to
endure horse exercise. For a cause which may have been physical, he did
not mount a horse himself, for the long life-and-death ride, but he
sent General Dejean. Through this messenger he told Joseph that he was
coming at full speed, and would reach Paris in two days. Let the Allies
be resisted for only two days--he would answer for the balance. Away
sped Dejean, and he reached the goal in time.
The Empress and the King of Rome had been sent from the capital by
Joseph, and Joseph had taken horse to follow; but Dejean spurred after
him, and caught him up in the Bois de Boulogne. Brother’s message was
delivered to brother, Napoleon’s appeal made to Joseph; and the answer,
coldly given and stubbornly repeated, was, “Too late.”
The Allies had marched, dreading every hour to hear the returning
Emperor come thundering on their rear; Marmont had made one of the
worst managed of retreats, and had allowed the enemy to advance
far more rapidly than they had dared to hope; Parisians had vainly
clamored for arms, that they might defend their city; and while
thousands of citizens stood on the heights of Montmartre, looking
expectantly for the Emperor, who was known to be coming, and while the
cry, “It is he! It is he!” occasionally broke out as some figure on a
white horse was seen in the distance, the imbecile Joseph wrote to the
traitorous Marmont the permission to capitulate. This note had not been
delivered, the fight was still going on, and Dejean prayed Joseph to
recall the note. “The Emperor will be here to-morrow! For God’s sake,
give him one day!”
With a sullen refusal to wait, Joseph put spurs to his horse, and set
out to rejoin Maria Louisa.
In the dark corridors of human passion and prejudice, who can read the
truth? The rebukes of the outraged husband to a recreant brother may
have swayed Joseph, just as the reproofs of an indignant chief to a
disobedient subordinate may have controlled Marmont.
The note from Joseph did its work. The defence ceased, the French army
marched out, and the chief city of France fell, almost undefended.
Talleyrand and his clique had invited the Allies to march upon the
capital, and the same party of traitors had paralyzed the spirit of
the defence as far as they were able. They had found unconscious but
powerful accomplices in Napoleon’s brothers.
That night the French troops marching away from Paris, according to
the terms of the capitulation, were met, only a few miles from the
city, by Napoleon. After having sent Dejean, he had hurried his troops
on to Doulaincourt, where more bad news was picked up; and, by double
marches, he reached Troyes (March 29), where he rested. At daybreak
he left his army to continue its march, while he, with a small escort,
flew on to Villeneuve. There he threw himself into a coach and,
followed by a handful of officers, dashed forward--to Sens, where he
learned that the Allies were before Paris,--to Fontainebleau, where he
was told of the flight of the Empress,--to Essonnes, where they said
that the fight of Paris was raging,--and to La Cour de France, only ten
miles from his capital, where at midnight (March 30), as he waited for
a fresh team to be put to his carriage, he heard the tramp of horses
and the clank of arms. It was a squadron of cavalry on the highroad
from Paris. He shouted to them from the dark, and to his challenge came
the terrible response, “Paris has fallen.”
The scene which followed is one of those which haunt the memory. The
chilly gloom of the night, the little wayside inn, the halted cavalry,
the horseless carriage, the rage of the maddened Emperor, his hoarse
call for fresh horses, his furious denunciation of those who had
betrayed him, his desperate efforts to hurry the post-boys at the
stables, the passion which carried him forward on foot a mile along the
road to Paris, and the remonstrances of his few friends who urged him
to go back--make a weird and tragic picture one does not forget.
It was not until he met a body of French infantry, also leaving
Paris, that the frenzied Emperor would stop, and even then he would
not retrace his steps. He sent Caulaincourt to make a last appeal to
Alexander of Russia, he who had risen in the theatre at Erfurth to take
Napoleon’s hand when the actor recited, “The friendship of a great man
is a gift of the gods.”
A messenger was sent also to Marmont, and the Emperor waited in the
road to receive his answer; nine miles, and not much more than an hour,
being the tantalizing margin upon which, again, fate had traced the
words, “Too late.” Only the river separated him from the outposts of
the enemy; their campfires could be seen by reflection in the distance,
and yonder to the west was the dull glare hanging over Paris--Paris
where a hundred thousand men were ready to fight, if only a leader
would show them how!
Leaden must have been the feet of those hours, infinite the woe of that
most impatient of men, that haughtiest of men, that self-consciously
ablest of men, as he tramped restlessly back and forth on the bleak
hill in the dark, awaiting the answers from his messengers.
At last he was almost forced into his carriage and driven back to
Fontainebleau. Making his way to one of the humblest rooms, he fell
upon the bed, exhausted, heart-broken.
You go to France to-day, and you see around you everywhere, Napoleon.
You hear, on all sides, Napoleon. Ask a Frenchman about other historic
names, and he will reply with extravagant politeness. Leave him to
speak for himself, and his raptures run to Napoleon. _He_ is the Man;
_he_ is the ideal soldier, statesman, financier, developer, the creator
of institutions, organizer of society, the inspiration of patriotism.
What Frenchman speaks of the little men who pulled Napoleon down? Who
remembers them but to curse their infamous names? Who does not know
that the very soul of French memory and veneration for the past centres
at the Invalides, where the dead warrior lies in state?
We see this now. Time works its reversals of judgment. The pamphlet
gives way to the book; the caricature to the portrait; the discordant
cry of passion to the calm voice of reason. Angels roll away sepulchral
stones; and posterity sees the resurrected Cromwells, the Dantons, the
Napoleons, just as they were. Great is the power of lies--lies boldly
told and stubbornly maintained, but great, also, is the reaction of
truth. The cause, and the man of the cause, may have been slain by the
falsehood, and Truth may serve merely to show posterity where the grave
is; but sometimes--not always--she does more; sometimes the cause, and
the man of the cause, are called back into the battle-field of the
living; sometimes the great issues are joined again; sometimes the
martyr remains triumphant, the victim holds the victory.