Declaration of the Allies at Frankfort--Revolution of
Holland--Liberation of the Pope and Ferdinand VII.--Obstinacy of
Napoleon--His Military Preparations--Dissolution of the Legislative
Senate.
Of the events which crowded upon each other in the space of a few weeks
after the overthrow of Leipsig, any one would in times less
extraordinary have been sufficient to form an epoch in history. Having
once reached the summit of his greatness, the long-favoured child of
fortune was destined to sink even more rapidly than he had ascended.
Every day added some new alliance to the camp of his foreign enemies;
and every hour that passed brought with it clearer indications that the
French nation (considered apart from the army) were weary utterly of the
very names of War, and Ambition, and Napoleon.
The fabric of his German empire crumbled into nothing, as at the spell
of a magician. Hanover returned to the dominion of its rightful
sovereign immediately. Brunswick, Hesse, and the other states which had
formed Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, followed the same example. The
Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved for ever; and the princes who
had adhered to that league were permitted to expiate their, in most
cases involuntary, error, by now bringing a year's revenue and a double
conscription to the banner of the Allies. Bernadotte turned from Leipsig
to reduce the garrisons which Napoleon, in the rashness of his
presumption, had disdained to call in, even when compelled to evacuate
Dresden; and one by one they fell, though in most cases--particularly at
Dantzick, Wirtemberg, and Hamburg--the resistance was obstinate and
long. The Crown Prince--having witnessed the reduction of some of these
fortresses, and entrusted the siege of the others to his
lieutenants--invaded Denmark, and the government of that country
perceived the necessity of acceding to the European alliance, by
whatever fine its long adhesion to Napoleon might be expiated. The
treaty was concluded at Kiel, on the 14th of January, 1814. Sweden
yielded Pomerania to Denmark; Denmark gave up Norway to Sweden; and
10,000 Danish troops having joined his standard, Bernadotte then turned
his face towards the Netherlands.
In Holland, no sooner had the story of Leipsig reached it than a
complete, though bloodless revolution was effected. The cry of _orange
boven_, "up with the orange," burst simultaneously from every part of
the country: the French governors, yielding to a power which they
perceived the absurdity of attempting to resist, retired on the instant,
and the long-exiled Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, returning in
triumph from England, assumed the administration of affairs in November,
1813. A few French garrisons remained shut up in strong places, of which
the most important was Bergen-op-Zoom; and Bernadotte now co-operated
with the Russian corps of Witzingerode, the Prussians of Bulow, and a
British force of 10,000, under Sir T. Graham,[65] with the view of
completing the deliverance of Holland; which was ere long effected, with
the exception of Bergen-op-Zoom, from whose walls the English were
repulsed with dreadful slaughter.
On the side of Italy the aspect of affairs was almost as dark. General
Hiller, having conducted an Austrian army through the Tyrol, as soon as
the decision of his government was taken, had defeated Eugene
Beauharnois, and driven him behind the Adige. The Croats, the Tyrolese,
all the Illyrians were rising, and--so far from giving aid in the
defence of the French soil--it was manifest that the Viceroy could
hardly hope to maintain himself much longer in Lombardy. An English
naval force had already taken Trieste: the Adriatic was free; and, to
complete Napoleon's perplexity as to this quarter, it was no longer a
secret that Murat, his brother-in-law, his creature, was negotiating
with Austria, and willing, provided that Naples were guaranteed to him,
to array the force of that state also on the side of the confederacy.
As little comfort could Buonaparte derive if he turned to the Pyrenees.
He had sent Soult thither from Dresden, to retrieve if possible the
fortunes of the army defeated in June at Vittoria; and that most able
general, with considerable reinforcements, had entered Spain, and
attempted to relieve the siege of Pamplona--of which strong place, as
well as St. Sebastian Lord Wellington had resolved to be master before
he should pass the French frontier with his victorious army. But Soult
also had been twice defeated; the fortresses had fallen: except a
detached, and now useless force under Suchet in Catalonia, there
remained no longer a single French soldier in Spain. The Peninsula had
at length been delivered by the genius of Wellington; and his army were
cantoned within the territory of France ere the close of the campaign.
Such were the tidings which reached Napoleon from his Italian and
Spanish frontiers, at the very moment when it was necessary for him to
make head against the Russians, the Austrians, and the Germans, chiefly
armed and supplied at the expense of England, and now rapidly
concentrating in three great masses on different points of the valley of
the Rhine.
Nor were even these the worst tidings. Two parties, of which one had not
of late years attracted much public notice, and the other had as long
wanted efficient leaders, were well-known ere now to be labouring
throughout France, though not as yet in conjunction, for one common
purpose--the deposition of Buonaparte. The royalists had recovered a
great share of their ancient influence in the society of Paris, even
before the disasters of the Russian expedition. The exiled Bourbon had
found means to distribute proclamations early in 1813: his agents had
ever since been exerting themselves indefatigably, both in Paris and in
the provinces, especially in those of the west. The Mayor of Bourdeaux
(Lynch) was at the head of a loyal association, comprehending the chief
inhabitants of that great city, and already in communication with the
Marquess of Wellington, who, however, felt it his duty to check them on
this occasion, lest the progress of events should render their efforts
fruitless to Louis, and fatal to themselves. La Roche Jacquelein (a name
already so illustrious in La Vendee) had once more prepared that
faithful province for insurrection. Saintonge had been organised by the
Abbe Jaqualt; Perigord by Messieurs de la Roche Aymon; and in the
countries about Nantes, Angers, and Orleans, great bands, consisting
partly of Buonaparte's own refractory conscripts, were in training under
the Counts De L'Orge, D'Antichamp, and Suzannet. The royalist gentlemen
of Touraine, to the number of 1000, were headed by the Duke of Duras;
those of Brittany were mustering around Count Vittray, and various
chieftains of the old Chouans; and Cadoudal, brother to Georges, was
among the peasantry of Varnes. These names, most of them well-known in
the early period of the Revolution, are of themselves sufficient to show
how effectually the Buonapartean government had endeavoured, during
thirteen years, to extinguish the old fire of loyalty. It had all the
while glowed under the ashes, and it was now ready to burst forth
shining and bright. The Bourbon princes watched the course of events
with eager hope. The Duke of Berri was already in Jersey, Monsieur (now
Charles X.) in the Netherlands, and the Duke D'Angouleme about to make
his appearance at the headquarters of Wellington, in Bearn, the cradle
of his race. The republicans, meanwhile,--those enthusiasts of the
Revolution who had in the beginning considered Buonaparte's consulate as
a dictatorship forced on France by the necessities of the time, and to
be got rid of as soon as opportunity should serve--and who had long
since been wholly alienated from him, by his assumption of the imperial
dignity, his creation of orders and nobles, his alliance with the House
of Austria, and the complete despotism of his internal government--these
men had observed, with hardly less delight than the royalists, that
succession of reverses which darkens the story of the two last
campaigns. Finally, not a few of Napoleon's own ministers and generals,
irritated by his personal violence, and hopeless of breathing in peace
while that fierce and insatiable spirit continued at the head of
affairs, were well prepared to take a part in his overthrow; nor was it
long ere all these internal enemies, at whatever distance their
principles and motives might have seemed to place them from each other,
were content to overlook their differences and work together.
Talleyrand, there can be little doubt, and others only second to him in
influence, were in communication with the Bourbons, before the Allies
crossed the Rhine. _Ere then_, said Napoleon at St. Helena, _I felt the
reins slipping from my hands_.
The allied princes issued, at Frankfort on the Mayne, a manifesto, the
firm and temperate language of which was calculated to make a strong
impression in France, as well as elsewhere. The sovereigns announced
their belief that it was for the interest of Europe that France should
continue to be a powerful state, and their willingness to concede to
her, even now, greater extent of territory than the Bourbon kings had
ever claimed--the boundaries, namely, of the Rhine, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees. Their sole object in invading France was to put an end to the
authority which Napoleon had usurped over other nations. They disclaimed
any wish to interfere with the internal government--it was the right of
the nation to arrange that as they pleased; the hostility of Europe was
against, not France, but Napoleon--and even as to Napoleon, against not
his person, but his system. The same terms were tendered to Napoleon
himself, through M. de St. Aignan, one of his own ministers, who
happened to have fallen into the hands of the Allies at Weimar; and his
answer was such that diplomatists from all the belligerent powers
forthwith assembled at Manheim;--Lord Aberdeen appearing on the part of
the government of England--a circumstance of itself sufficient to give
to these new conferences a character of greater promise than had
attended any of recent date.
But although Napoleon authorised Caulaincourt to commence this
negotiation on his behalf, it was very soon manifest that he did so
merely, as before, for the purpose of gaining time. His military
preparations were urged with unremitting energy. New conscriptions were
called for, and granted: every arsenal resounded with the fabrication of
arms: and all the taxes were at once doubled by an imperial decree. The
enslaved press proclaimed that the national ardour was thoroughly
stirred, and with its thousand voices reminded the Allies of the effects
of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation when about to touch the sacred
soil of France in 1793.
But the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period was long since gone by.
In vain did Napoleon send special agents through the departments,
calling on Frenchmen of all classes to rise in arms for the protection
of the soil. Coldness, languor, distrust met them almost everywhere. The
numerical results even of the conscription-levy were far under what they
should have been; and of those who did enrol themselves, multitudes
daily deserted, and not a few took part with those royalist bands who
were, as we have already seen, mustering and training zealously in
almost every district that was either strong by nature, or remote from
the great military establishments of Buonaparte. Nay, even the
Legislative Senate, so long the silent and submissive slaves of all his
imperial mandates, now dared to testify some sympathy with the feelings
of the people, whom, in theory at least, they were supposed to
represent. This was a novelty for which Napoleon had not been prepared,
and he received it in a manner little likely to conciliate the
attachment of wavering men. They ventured to hint that ancient France
would remain to him, even if he accepted the proposals of the Allies,
and that Louis XIV., when he desired to rouse the French people in his
behalf in a moment of somewhat similar disaster, had not disdained to
detail openly the sincere efforts which he had made to obtain an
honourable peace. "Shame on you!" cried the Emperor, "Wellington has
entered the south, the Russian menace the northern frontier, the
Prussians, Austrians, and Bavarians, the eastern. Shame! Wellington is
in France, and we have not risen _en masse_ to drive him back! All my
Allies have deserted--the Bavarian has betrayed me. No peace till we
have burned Munich! I demand a levy of 300,000 men--with this and what I
already have, I shall see a million in arms. I will form a camp of
100,000 at Bourdeaux; another at Mentz; a third at Lyons. But I must
have grown men--these boys serve only to encumber the hospitals and the
road-sides.... Abandon Holland! sooner yield it back to the sea!
Senators, an impulse must be given--all must march--you are fathers of
families--the heads of the nation--you must set the example. Peace! I
hear of nothing but peace when all around should echo to the cry of
war." The senate, nevertheless, drew up and presented a report which
renewed his wrath. He reproached them openly with desiring to purchase
inglorious ease for themselves at the expense of his honour. _I am the
state_, said he, repeating a favourite expression: _What is the
throne?--a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet--I am the state--I
alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong
you should not have reproached me in public--people wash their dirty
linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France._
Having uttered these furious words, Napoleon repaired to his council of
state, and there denounced the legislative senate, as composed of one
part of traitors and eleven of dupes. _In place of assisting_, said he,
_they impede me. Our attitude alone could have repelled the enemy--they
invite him. We should have presented a front of brass--they lay open
wounds to his view. I will not suffer their report to be printed. They
have not done their duty, but I will do mine--I dissolve the Legislative
Senate_. And the Emperor did accordingly issue his decree, proroguing
indefinitely that assembly, the last feeble shadow of popular
representation in France.
The greatest confusion already began to pervade almost every department
of the public service. The orders of the government were more peremptory
than ever, and they were hourly more neglected. Whole bands of
conscripts, guilty of endeavouring to escape, were tried by military
commissions and decimated. Even close to the barriers of Paris such
executions were constantly going on; and all in vain. The general
feeling was that of sullen indifference. Hireling musicians paraded the
streets, singing fine-new ballads in honour of the Emperor, to the
long-forgotten tune of _ca ira_; the passengers gathered round them, and
drowned the strains in hooting and laughter. In every saloon discussions
such as the police had long suppressed were urged without ceremony.
_This will not continue; the cord is too much stretched--it will soon be
over_; such was the universal language. Talleyrand, hearing an officer
express his alarm and astonishment, made answer in words which have
passed into a proverb:--_It is the beginning of the end._
During this uneasy pause, Napoleon at last dismissed his venerable
prisoner of Fontainebleau. It is not unlikely that, in the altered state
of Italy, he thought the arrival of the Pope might tend to produce some
dissension among his enemies in that quarter; and, in effect, when Pius
reached Rome, he found the capital of the Catholic world in the hands of
Murat, who had ere then concluded his treaty with Francis, and was
advancing into the north of Italy, in the view of co-operating in the
campaign against Beauharnois, with the Austrians on the one side, and on
the other, with an English force recently landed at Leghorn, under Lord
William Bentinck.
He also unlocked the gates of Valencay on Ferdinand of Spain; and,
without doubt, the letter, in which he announced this intention to his
injured victim, will ever be recorded among the prime instances of his
audacity. He informed Ferdinand that the English were spreading _jacobin
principles_ in Spain, and attacking the foundations of the throne, the
aristocracy, and the church; and that he, therefore, was anxious to see
him at the head of affairs in the kingdom, provided he would expel the
English, and re-establish its relations with France, on the footing of
the peace which gave Godoy his title. Ferdinand durst not execute any
treaty without consulting the Cortes. They disdained to treat at all
with Napoleon. He then liberated the King unconditionally; and after
five years' captivity, Ferdinand re-entered Spain, amidst the all but
universal acclamations of a nation, who had bled at every pore in his
cause, and whom his government was destined ere long to satisfy that
they had bled in vain. Napoleon, no doubt, understood well what sort of
a present he was conferring on the Spaniards when he restored Ferdinand,
and probably calculated that his arrival would fill the country with
civil tumults, sufficient to paralyse its arm for foreign war. And--had
the King returned but a year earlier--such, in all likelihood, would
have been the consequence. Once more Napoleon was too late in doing good
that evil might follow.
For some time, thanks to the slavery of the Parisian press, the
population of the capital remained in ignorance as to the proceedings of
the Allies on the Rhine. Indeed--such was still the influence of the
Emperor's military reputation--the inhabitants of the French provinces
on that frontier, continued to believe it impossible that any foreign
army should dare to invade their soil, until they that had ears to hear,
and eyes to see, were perforce undeceived. Schwartzenberg, with the
_Grand Army_, at length crossed the Rhine, between Basle and
Schaffhausen, on the 20th of December, and disregarding the claim of the
Swiss to preserve neutrality, advanced through that territory unopposed,
and began to show themselves in Franche-Comte, in Burgundy, even to the
gates of Dijon. On the 1st of January, 1814, the _Silesian Army_, under
Blucher, crossed the river at various points between Rastadt and
Coblentz; and shortly after, the _Army of the North_, commanded by
Witzingerode and Bulow (for Bernadotte declined having any part in the
actual invasion of France) began to penetrate the frontier of the
Netherlands. The wealthier inhabitants of the invaded provinces escaped
to Paris, bearing with them these tidings; the English _detenus_ of
Verdun were seen traversing the capital on their route to more distant
quarters; the state prisoners of Vincennes itself, under the walls of
Paris, were removed. The secret, in a word, could no longer be kept. It
was known to every one that the Pyrenees had been crossed by Wellington,
and the Rhine by three mighty hosts, amounting together to 300,000 men,
and including representatives of every tongue and tribe, from the
Germans of Westphalia to the wildest barbarians of Tartary. Persons of
condition despatched their plate and valuables to places at a distance
from the capital; many whole families removed daily; and the citizens of
Paris were openly engaged in laying up stores of flour and salted
provisions, in contemplation of a siege.
The violation of the Swiss territory was in itself indefensible; but he
who had so often disdained all rules of that kind in his own person, who
had seized D'Enghien, who had traversed Bareuth, could hardly hope to be
listened to when he complained of Schwartzenberg's proceeding. The
allied generals, moreover, proclaimed everywhere as they advanced, that
they came as the friends not the enemies of the French nation, and that
any of the peasantry who took up arms to oppose them must be content to
abide the treatment of brigands. This assuredly was a flagrant outrage
against the most sacred and inalienable rights of mankind: but Napoleon
had set the fatal example himself in Lombardy, and followed it without a
blush, in Egypt, in Germany, in Spain, in Portugal, and but yesterday in
Russia. Here also, therefore, his reclamations moved no feeling
favourable to himself; and the time was gone by when the French people
would have been ready to take fire at so lawless an aggression upon
their national rights:--these Napoleon's tyranny had trampled down ere
strangers dared to insult them. There were some few scattered instances
of resistance; but in general, the first advance of the Allies was
regarded with indifference; and it was only at a later period, when the
invading generals were no longer able to maintain strict discipline
among their barbarous hordes of horsemen, then scattered over a wide
extent of country, that the sense of individual suffering afforded even
a glimpse of hope to Napoleon, and those who, like him, were eager to
oppose a national insurrection to the allied march.
Meantime, nearer and nearer every day the torrent of invasion rolled
on--sweeping before it, from post to post, the various corps which had
been left to watch the Rhine. Marmont, Mortier, Victor, and Ney,
commanding in all about 50,000 men, retired of necessity before the
enemy. It had been considered as certain that much time must be occupied
with the besieging of the great fortresses on the Rhenish frontier. But
it was now apparent that the Allies had resolved to carry the war into
the interior, without waiting for the reduction of these formidable
outworks. Their numbers were such that they could afford to mask them,
and still pass on with hosts overwhelmingly superior to all those of
Napoleon's lieutenants. These withdrew, and with them, and behind them,
came crowds of the rustic population possessing any means of transport.
Carts and waggons, crammed with terrified women and children, thronged
every avenue to the capital. It was at last necessary that the Emperor
should break silence to the Parisians, and re-appear in the field.
The invasion of France, however, rallied around Napoleon some persons of
eminence who had long hung aloof from him. Carnot in particular, who,
ever since he opposed the assumption of the imperial title, had remained
in retirement, came forward to offer his sword in what he now considered
as the cause of his country. Nor did Buonaparte fail to receive such
proposals as they deserved. He immediately sent his old enemy to command
the great city and fortress of Antwerp; and similar instances of manly
confidence might be mentioned to his honour.
On the 22nd of January the first official news of the invasion appeared;
the _Moniteur_ announced that Schwartzenberg had entered Switzerland on
the 20th of December, and that Blucher also had crossed the Rhine on the
first day of the year; thus confessing openly the deliberate deceit of
its previous silence. The next morning, being Sunday, the officers of
the National Guard were summoned to the Tuileries. They lined the
_Saloon of the Marshals_, to the number of 900, altogether ignorant of
the purpose for which they had been convoked. The Emperor took his
station in the centre of the hall; and immediately afterwards the
Empress with the King of Rome (carried in the arms of Countess
Montesquiou), appeared at his side. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, "France
is invaded; I go to put myself at the head of my troops, and, with God's
help and their valour, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the
frontier." Here he took Maria Louisa in one hand and her son in the
other, and continued--"But if they should approach the capital, I
confide to the National Guard the Empress and the King of Rome"--then
correcting himself, he said in a tone of strong emotion--"_my wife and
my child_." Several officers stepped from their places and approached
him; and tears were visible on the cheeks even of those who were known
to be no worshippers of the Emperor, or hearty supporters of his cause.
A Frenchman can rarely resist a scene: and such this was considered, and
laughed at accordingly, ere next morning. It is, nevertheless, difficult
to refuse sympathy to the chief actor. Buonaparte was sincerely attached
to Maria Louisa, though he treated her rather with a parental tenderness
than like a lover; and his affection for his son was the warmest passion
in his heart, unless, indeed, we must except his pride and his ambition,
both of which may be well supposed to have merged for a moment in the
feeling which shook his voice.
[Footnote 65: Now Lord Lynedoch.]