THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN[46]
[Footnote 46: References: Foucart: Bautzen, une bataille de
deux jours, 20-21 mai, 1813. Fievee: Correspondance et
relations avec Bonaparte, Memoires of Savary. Rousset: La
grande armee de 1813.]
War Between Great Britain and the United States -- Napoleon
Renews his Strength -- His Administrative Measures -- Social
Forces and Political Results -- Ideas of Peace -- The Military
Situation -- The Czar's Resolutions -- The Convention of
Tauroggen -- Defection of Prussia -- Supreme Exertions of France
in Napoleon's Cause -- Napoleon as a Wonder-worker.
[Sidenote: 1813]
By stringently enforcing the Orders in Council Canning had seriously
injured Great Britain. It was in some sense the outcome of general
exasperation that early in May, 1812, Perceval, the Tory premier, was
assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a
bankrupt of disordered mind. In the consequent reconstruction of the
cabinet, Castlereagh had succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley. On May
thirteenth the disastrous orders were repealed, but the United States
had already declared war. By land the Americans failed dismally at the
outset; but at sea they were five times victorious in as many
different engagements, two English frigates striking their flags to
what was then considered as fairly equal force. This was a moral
victory of immense importance. It was disproportionate of course to
the actual English loss, which was easily reparable, but it was an
appalling novelty to the British, who unwillingly realized that the
sons had shown a seamanship of the highest quality and were not
unworthy of their sires. The anxiety of Wellington and the maritime
successes of the Americans were not unwelcome lights in the otherwise
dark picture of European affairs upon which Napoleon was forced to
look after his return from Moscow.
The prodigal Emperor was undismayed; as he had recuperated his
physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of
his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make
sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly
denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority
of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its
independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority
of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the
field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his
monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council
of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the
people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived
authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of
things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who
understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such
language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the
entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were
not slow in their response--from the police, from the university, from
the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the
vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express
the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an
inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed
the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French
nation but the whole Empire was once again under the magician's
spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts of France
itself, but from the great cities of central and western Europe, from
Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz, and Amsterdam,
and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies were limited
only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits recalled the
famous scene from Moliere, in which the infatuated Orgon displays
indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in Tartufe.
But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm
in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained,
there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion
as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous
faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the
public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was
completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the
destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were
relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good
work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa
was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these
public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect
sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to
the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both
the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with
wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and
less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able,
devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an
absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a
vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, with
all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard against
the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of the
Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their own
account.
That the schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to
a combination of small things--each perhaps trivial in itself, but the
whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French.
During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless
concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force.
Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model
family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously
displayed, was yet seen and widely discussed. In the thick of Russian
horrors he had found time to correspond with his infant's governess
concerning the difficulties and dangers of teething; it was felt that
while the emperor and general was warring on the steppes of Muscovy,
the husband and father was present in spirit on the banks of the
Seine. On his return it was generally remarked that his reception into
the bosom of his family was tender and affectionate, and that parental
pride in a thriving child was paramount to the ruler's ambition for an
established dynasty. The imperial pair were seen in company alike on
the thronged thoroughfares and on the outer boulevards of Paris. They
were always greeted with enthusiasm, sometimes there was a display of
passionate loyalty. When the Emperor visited his invalid veterans, he
tasted their food and would have the Empress taste it too; she
graciously assented and there was universal delight. In short, the
domestic bliss of the Tuileries radiated happiness into the plain
homes of the nation, and made the common people not merely tolerant
but fond of such a paternal despotism.
Napoleon returned from Russia sincerely protesting that what he most
desired was peace. Yes, peace; but of what kind? The answer was
inclusive of the whole European question. It was easy to believe that
Spain was nearly exhausted, that if the process of devastation could
be continued three years longer, her shattered society would finally
accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not unnatural for
the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as safe and
loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative strategy
far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed, embodiment
of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in fully
estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and southern
Germany. Some inkling of the national movement he must have had, for
Schwarzenberg's lukewarmness had awakened suspicions of Austria, and
Prussia's new strength could not be entirely concealed. Soon after
reaching Paris he learned with dismay that his Prussian auxiliaries
had made terms with the Czar. This was done in defiance of their king;
but it indicated the national temper, which, seeing the hand of God in
the disasters of the monster who after humiliating Prussia had dared
to invade Russia, made it impossible for Prussian troops to serve
again in the ranks of a French army. The bolts of divine wrath had
fallen on the French and the French dependants, the Prussian and the
Austrian contingents had escaped unscathed; both German armies must
surely have been spared for a special purpose.
In his interview at Warsaw with de Pradt, Napoleon had predicted that
he would speedily have another army of three hundred thousand men
afoot. In this rough calculation he had included both Prussians and
Austrians. With a spirit of bravado, he there referred to the narrow
escapes of his life: defeated at Marengo until six, next morning he
had been master of Italy; at Essling, the rise of the Danube by
sixteen feet in one night had alone prevented the annihilation of
Austria; having defeated the Russians in every battle, he had expected
peace; was it possible, he asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian
character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for
which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his
allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still
conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main
correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact
of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men
only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the
Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered
proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more. Kutusoff
wanted peace quite as much as did Napoleon, and the ineffective
Russian pursuit was intrusted to Yermoloff, an untried officer; to
Wittgenstein; and to the incapable Tchitchagoff. The bickerings and
insubordination of the French marshals had now become notorious, but
they were fully offset by the discord and inefficiency of the Russian
generals.
Alexander, however, was not for peace. Out of the rude experiences he
had been undergoing there had been formed two fixed ideas: that
Napoleon could not, even if he would, surrender his preponderance in
Europe, and that he himself might hope to appear as the liberator of
European nationality. For a moment it appeared possible for the Czar
to establish himself as king of Poland by the aid of the Jesuits and
of Czartoryski's friends. But the Jesuit leader knew that Napoleon's
strength was far from exhausted, and fled to Spain. Czartoryski
entertained the idea that in case of Napoleon's overthrow he might
unite Poland under his own leadership and demand a truly liberal
constitution, such as could not be worked by a Russian autocrat with
three hundred thousand Russian soldiers at his back. Should the
virtual independence of Poland be wrung from Alexander, and not be
secured by the French alliance, then the only available constitutional
ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own princely family and
not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat did not clearly
understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw enough to
render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form distasteful,
and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible resolution to
recruit his strength, not by emptying his own lean purse, but by
securing the cooeperation with his forces of the strong armies built up
by Prussia and Austria. It was therefore with a fairly definite
purpose that, on December eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg for
Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by
energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.
Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on
December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Koenigsberg. The day
before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final
disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van
reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York,
who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the
Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not.
Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But
with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he
came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the
Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a
quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his
soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His
own sympathies being identical with those of his men, and considering
that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he therefore, on
December thirtieth, concluded the convention of Tauroggen, in which he
agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia which he occupied, and to
await orders from Berlin. Six days later an envoy arrived from
Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in reality to conclude a
treaty of alliance with Russia.
By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel
the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on
February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again
under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that
Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian
troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on
the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more
concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he
was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as
has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugene at
Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the
Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its
capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other
corps,--those of Reynier and Poniatowski,--could easily have checked
the foe; but the convention of Tauroggen had quickened the Austrian
memory of Russia's friendly lukewarmness in 1809, Francis was in no
humor to bolster the falling cause of his terrible son-in-law, and
after some show of negotiation a temporary neutrality was arranged.
When a few Cossacks appeared before Warsaw, on February sixth, the
Austrian general evacuated the city as if yielding to superior force,
and withdrew across the Vistula toward the frontier.
These blows seemed to fall lightly on the armor of Napoleon's
intrepidity. So far from feeling any dismay, the Emperor did not
contemplate curtailing his ambition. Perhaps he was not entirely
deceived; quite possibly, by the slightest exhibition of diminished
activity he might have weakened his influence in the great land which
formed the heart of his dominions. As one piece of bad news after
another reached Paris, each in turn seemed only a goad to new exertion
for Emperor and people. France was by that time not merely
enthusiastic; she was fascinated and adoring. The ordinary
conscription of 1813 yielded a hundred and forty thousand recruits;
four regiments were formed for artillery service from the idle
sailors, three thousand men were taken from the gendarmerie, some even
from the national guard. On January thirteenth the senate decreed a
further draft of a hundred thousand from the lists of 1813, and
ordered that the conscription for 1814 should be forestalled in order
that the hundred and fifty thousand boys thus collected might be
hardened by a year's camp life, and rendered available for immediate
use when their time arrived. There is truth in the charge that
Napoleon robbed the cradle and the grave. In order to officer this
mighty host, which included about a third of the able-bodied men of
France between seventeen and forty-five, such commanders as could be
spared were called home from Spain, and the rabble of non-commissioned
and commissioned officers which began to straggle in from Russia was
drawn back into the service. These survivors were treated like
conquerors, being praised and promoted until the nation became
bewildered, and thought of the Russian campaign as a series of
victories. Foreign visitors wrote that the Emperor had but to stamp
his foot and armed men sprang up on every side like AEetes' corps of
Colchian warriors on the field of Mars.
The comparison halted--Napoleon was AEetes and Jason combined; he yoked
the bulls that snorted fire and trod the fields with brazen hoofs, he
held the plow, he harrowed the field, he sowed the teeth and reaped
the harvest. We have abundant proof that literally every department of
administration felt the impulse of his will, while to the organization
of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the designing of
gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles, and commissary
stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the opinion of the
nation, to each and all these matters he gave such attention as left
nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of giant strength there
was created a true national impulse. With this behind them, the senate
in April called out another body of a hundred and eighty thousand men,
partly from the national guard and partly from those not ordinarily
taken as recruits. By this time the farmsteads of France and western
Germany had yielded up all their available horses, a number sufficient
to make a brave show of both cavalry and artillery. Allowing for
sickness, desertion, and malingering,--and of all three there was
much,--France and her wizard Emperor had ready on May first a fairly
effective force of nearly half a million armed men. This was exclusive
of the Spanish contingent, and there were a hundred thousand more if
the levies of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Rhenish confederation be
reckoned. At the time men said a miracle had been wrought: it was the
miracle of an iron will, a majestic capacity, and a restless
persistence such as have been combined in few if any other men besides
Napoleon Bonaparte. All that he could do was done,--equipment, drill,
organization,--but even he could not supply the one thing lacking to
make soldiers of his boys--two years of age and experience.