To the man guiding these astounding changes it seemed a very small
matter then that a handful of Tyrolese peasants were in revolt against
the French King in Bavaria; nor that a small group of philosophers,
poets, and men of letters, were consulting together in Prussia over the
shame of their betrayal by their rulers, and considering plans for
guiding a popular movement for the emancipation of Germany.
But these were the first stirrings of a force Napoleon had not before
had to contend with. He had fought with kings and princes and proud
aristocracies clinging to their ancient splendor and possessions, but
his armies had never been face to face with _patriotism_.
He had not met it, because it did not exist in the German Empire until
he himself made its existence possible by breaking up the old stifling
tyrannies. Now a few patriotic and courageous men all over Germany
were combining, and inciting the people to revolt; an association
called "The League of Virtue" was created. Then the Tyrolese peasants
were subdued and their leader Hofer was shot in cold blood by
Napoleon's orders. The King of Prussia was ordered to suppress the
"League of Virtue," and French spies supposed they were uprooting
patriotism by reporting it as treason to France.
Napoleon was at this moment at the climax of his greatness. He decreed
that Rome should be annexed to his empire, and that his infant son
should receive the title "King of Rome," which title should thereafter
belong to the oldest son of the French Emperor. What if this did bring
curses upon his name? He was now beyond the reach of blessings or
curses from men; and probably was rather pleased than otherwise when
Alexander I. threw off their sentimental friendship and defied him, by
abandoning the plan of a Continental blockade for the ruin of England.
Now he was free to develop his gigantic plan. Does anyone suppose that
the conquest of Russia was all of that plan? Far from it! There is
every reason to believe that it was his intention, after Russia was
subdued, to press on into Asia and to expel the English from their
precious India!
Not since the days of Attila had there been seen such an army as was
led into Russia--six hundred thousand men, of whom only one out of
twenty was ever to return! And was it the lives of Frenchmen that he
was spending so lavishly? Not at all. This great host was composed
chiefly of Germans, Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, Swiss, who
should have been fighting for their own liberation at home.
Lest Prussia should revolt in his absence the wary Napoleon garrisoned
that kingdom with sixty thousand French troops, and took the sons of
Prussia with him for the great human sacrifice in Russia.
It was the 7th of September when the great army moved. On and on they
marched for two months through a silent and deserted land, only to
reach at last a mysteriously silent city. Had a whole people fled at
his approach? Napoleon took up his quarters in the Kremlin. Suddenly
fires broke out in a hundred places. The city became a roaring
furnace. In vain did they try to stay the conflagration. In a few
hours Moscow, his rich prize, was a mass of ruin and ashes.
Napoleon waited for a message from Alexander begging for peace; but
none came. Then the snowflakes began to fall and fierce winds began to
sweep down from the north. At length his stubborn pride had to bend.
He sent his messengers to Alexander--still there was no answer.
Provisions were failing, and there were leagues and leagues of deep and
white snow between him and food for his famishing soldiers.
Then the Russians came. How could this starved, benumbed, frightened
wreck of a great army stand before the Cossacks? The story of that
"retreat" could never be written. Men, hollow-eyed and gaunt with
misery, flung away their arms and fought with each other like wolves
for a morsel of bread or a dead horse.
On the 5th of December Napoleon quietly slipped away, leaving the
freezing, famishing victims of his ambition to make their own way back
as they could; knowing that for all, save a fragment, of that mighty
host the snow must be a winding sheet.
When Frederick William III. accepted that last humiliation and sent a
Prussian army in the train of the conqueror to fight his battles, while
Frenchmen guarded Prussians at home, the indignation was deep and
wide-spread. Three of his best generals, Bluecher and two others,
resigned.
The Prussian contingent in the great invading army, which was under
General York, had escaped many of the horrors of the retreat; and had
returned with seventeen thousand out of the sixty thousand which had
entered Russia.
This Prussian commander, as soon as he crossed the line with his
soldiers, on his own responsibility abandoned the French and arranged a
treaty of neutrality with the Russian general. Frederick disavowed the
act, but it was received by the people of Prussia with wild enthusiasm.
York called an assembly together at Koenigsberg, and boldly ordered that
all men capable of bearing arms should be mustered into the Prussian
army.
The force of public sentiment revealed by this was too overwhelming for
the King to oppose. It swiftly swelled into a popular uprising in
which all classes took part. It was the first great patriotic movement
in Germany; and to Prussia belongs the glory of having initiated it.
It was the Prussian people who converted their whole male population
into an army and their country into an arsenal, and with one voice, and
animated by one heart, refused longer to bear the degradation put upon
them by their King. Hitherto the people had been led by their rulers.
Now for a brief time they were going to be leaders, reluctantly
followed by kings and princes.
Within five months two hundred and seventy thousand men were under arms
and Frederick had been obliged to declare war against the Emperor of
the French, in alliance with Russia and Sweden. Austria remained
neutral, but the Rheinbund, with only two exceptions, still held to
France.
Napoleon by the irresistible magic of his influence assembled an army
nearly as large as the one he had just sacrificed in Russia. The
campaign opened in April (1813). By June his star seemed to be waning,
and Austria offered to mediate a peace. Napoleon insulted Metternich,
who brought the proposals, and Francis II. joined the allies against
his son-in-law. In October the end arrived.
The battle of Leipzig was to the people of Germany what Jena and
Austerlitz had been to Napoleon. The news of this great victory was
electrifying. From the Baltic to the Alps the air resounded with
rejoicings.
There are no persuasions needed to make people leave a sinking ship.
Jerome Bonaparte fled from his kingdom of Westphalia--the Rheinbund
dissolved--Holland, Switzerland, Italy fell away. Wurtemberg joined
the allies and the great movement for emancipation became national, not
Prussian.
The allied princes offered to Napoleon that the Rhine, the Alps, the
Pyrenees, and the sea should be the frontiers of France. Still
believing in his invincibility, he scorned the proposition. His star
had certainly deserted him, for while he was collecting his broken
forces in Germany, and while hope was reviving over small victories,
the allied armies, unknown to him, were advancing on Paris!
He learned it too late. History holds no picture more powerfully
impressive than that of this man waiting at Fontainebleau, twelve
leagues from Paris, still believing in his power to retrieve, and
unconscious that he is already deposed! And the magic of his
influence, the power of the spell he cast over mankind, is illustrated
by the fact that even now, knowing him to have been a tyrant and a
scourge as we do, rejoicing in his defeat as we must, we still cannot
look at that picture without a moistened eye and almost a regret at his
downfall!
Alexander, and Frederick William, and the allied armies were in Paris,
which had capitulated, and at their bidding had consented to the
deposition of Napoleon.
On the 6th of April, 1814, Louis XVIII., brother of the murdered Louis,
was proclaimed King of France, and to the man who had been master of
Europe was assigned--the island of Elba on the coast of Italy.
But in March of the following year, while sovereigns were still
wrangling over the disorder he had left, and while Talleyrand was
scheming for his new master as faithfully as he had for the old, the
startling news came that Napoleon had landed in France. Louis XVIII.
vanished into thin air before the man whom the people were receiving
with wild acclamations of delight.
Europe again united, and again Napoleon was seen advancing, as of old,
with a great army. Bluecher was in command of one division of the
allied armies and Wellington of the other.
The battle of Waterloo began on the morning of the 18th of June, 1815.
To England was to belong the glory of Napoleon's final downfall.
Wellington accomplished his defeat, and then Bluecher came in time to
make that defeat an annihilation.
The mistake of the year before was not to be repeated. From that
moment until his death at St. Helena, in 1821, Napoleon was a prisoner
and an exile. He had finished the work he had been appointed to do,
and Fate had flung him aside!