NAPOLEON'S SUPREME EFFORT[6]
[Footnote 6: References: Fournier, Der Congress von
Chatillon. Die Politik im Kriege von 1814. Eine historische
Studie. Koch, Memoires p. s. a l'histoire de la campagne de
1814. Sorel, L'Europe et la revolution francaise, Vol. VIII.]
The Fertility of Genius -- The Battles of Brienne and La Rothiere
-- The French Retreat -- Victory at Champaubert -- Victory at
Montmirail -- Victory at Vauchamps -- Success Engenders Delusion
-- Insincerity of the Allies -- Their Clashing Interests -- The
Congress of Chatillon -- Napoleon's Procrastination -- French
Victory and French Diplomacy.
[Sidenote: 1814]
The year 1814 is the most astonishing of Napoleon's military life. He
first conceived a plan for combining the resources of Italy,
Switzerland, Naples, and France. This failed by Augereau's sloth and
Murat's ingratitude. Nothing daunted, the fertile brain then outlined
schemes for meeting the quick advance of the allies through the
Netherlands, for defending the Rhine frontier, and for a levy _en
masse_ of the French people to hurl back invasion under the walls of
Paris. After taking the field, the daring of his conceptions, the
rapidity of his movements, the surprises he prepared for his enemy,
the support he wrung from an exhausted land, the devotion he received
from a panting, ill-clothed army at bay--all are so remarkable that by
contrast the allies appear to be a lumbering, stupid mass. With
another antagonist they would have appeared in a very different light;
Gneisenau's clear head, Bluecher's daring, Radetzky's good sense and
courage, together with the valor of the forces at their back, would
have won the goal far more easily with an ordinary, or even an
extraordinary, combatant in Napoleon's plight. The Emperor of the
French had not merely a prestige worth a hundred thousand men, as he
was fond of reckoning: he had an activity of mind and body, a
reservoir of resources, which made his single blade cover the whole
circumference of defense like the whirling spokes of a fiery wheel.
After a skirmish for the possession of St. Dizier, the campaign opened
at Brienne, where Bluecher, hurrying to gain touch with the main army
of the allies, was caught on January twenty-ninth. The conflict
probably did not recall to Napoleon his mock conflicts when a
schoolboy near the same spot. The terrific struggle began late in the
afternoon, and lasted in full fury until midnight, when the Prussian
general, narrowly escaping capture, abandoned the town and hurried
toward Trannes. Thoroughly beaten, he needed not touch alone, but
actual union with the Austrians, and this he gained near Bar on the
Aube, whence Schwarzenberg was passing on toward Auxerre. Ignorant of
this success, Napoleon now drew up his line with its center at La
Rothiere, hoping in the first place to hold the bridge over the Aube
at Lesmont, and thus secure the moral effect of his victory at
Brienne, and in the second to bring on another engagement with
Bluecher, whom he believed to be still isolated. Marmont was at
Montierender, Mortier was summoned from before Troyes. This stand of
Napoleon's was a desperate attempt to overawe the allied sovereigns,
for strategically it was fatal, since in the case of either victory or
defeat the French army was in danger of being outflanked by
Schwarzenberg's advance, and thus cut off from Paris. On February
first, Bluecher, reinforced by twelve thousand of the Russian guard,
attacked. The battle lasted, with fluctuating success for the allies,
during two days, and at its close Napoleon safely retreated over the
Aube to make another stand at Troyes. The various conflicts were
terrific; in the end Bluecher lost six thousand dead and wounded, the
French about four thousand. The odds against the latter were never
less than two to one, sometimes more. Had the allies first thrown
their full strength into the contest, and had they then followed up
their victory by a well-organized pursuit, the campaign would have
ended there. As it was, they paused, permitted a disorganized, feeble
enemy to escape, and gained nothing from the bloody conflict except an
ill-founded self-confidence. Bluecher wrote on the evening of the
battle that they would be in Paris within eight days. To General
Reynier, who was to be liberated by an exchange of prisoners, the Czar
said: "We shall be in Paris before you." A council of war was called
which decided for an advance on the French capital in two columns; to
Bluecher, as the conqueror of La Rothiere, was assigned the shortest
line, that down the Marne.
For several days the allied lines moved onward, slowly, widely
scattered, and carelessly. Napoleon was as calm and undaunted as if he
had been the victor. Retreating on the defensive with careful
deliberation, he strengthened his forces by well-chosen periods of
rest, and by hurrying in reinforcements from the various depots about
and beyond Paris. On the afternoon of February ninth, when leaving
Nogent for Sezanne, he wrote to his brother Joseph, whom he had left
to represent his interests at Paris, that he could now reckon, all
told, on between sixty and seventy thousand men, including engineers
and artillery; that he estimated the Silesian army under Bluecher at
forty-five thousand, and the main army under Schwarzenberg at a
hundred and fifty thousand, including Bubna and the Cossacks. "If I
gain a victory over the Silesian army, and put it out of account for
some days, I can turn against Schwarzenberg, reckoning on the
reinforcements you will send, with from seventy to eighty thousand
men, and I think he cannot oppose me at once with more than from a
hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty thousand. If I find myself too
weak to attack, I shall be at least strong enough to hold him in check
for a fortnight or three weeks, and this would give me the opportunity
for new combinations." To hold Schwarzenberg temporarily, Oudinot with
twenty-five thousand men was stationed on the line from Provins to
Sens, and Victor with fourteen thousand was sent to Nogent. The
Emperor himself, with the old guard, about eight thousand strong, with
Ney and Marmont each commanding six thousand infantry, and with ten
thousand cavalry under Nansouty and Doumerc, set out from Sezanne to
try his fortunes with Bluecher.
This was the last of Napoleon's great strategic schemes which was
destined to be crowned with success. It had but a single drawback.
While Napoleon was still the boldest man in war that ever lived, as at
St. Helena he declared himself to be, his marshals were uneasy and
depressed; Marmont, in this moment of infinite chance, as it seemed to
him, fell into a panic. The marshal's fears were not justified, for
his Emperor's daring was not foolhardy. It was calculated on the
myriad chances of his enemy's opportunity and his enemy's ability, and
in this case it was perfectly calculated. Bluecher, in spite of
Gneisenau's continuous warnings, was over-confident. Having dispersed
his detachments more than ever, he had for two days been moving
swiftly in the hope of cutting off Macdonald by a dashing feat of
arms. In his haste he had not taken up two Russian corps which had
been separated from his main line, but on the contrary he had left
them so far out that they were beyond support. By a blunder of the
Czar's, reinforcements which had been promised were still a long
distance in the rear. Schwarzenberg's movements were marked by an
over-confident deliberation as characteristic of him as overhaste was
of Bluecher. Accordingly when on the tenth Marmont advanced from
Sezanne, he found the corps of Olsusieff, about forty-five hundred
strong, virtually isolated at Champaubert. His own numbers were
slightly superior, and with a swift rush he annihilated the unready
Russians. Napoleon was beside himself with joy, and began to talk of
the Vistula once more; but he stopped when he saw how sour the visages
of Marmont and the other marshals grew at the very mention of such an
idea. Nevertheless, if the process begun at Champaubert could be
continued, victory and ultimate recovery of something more than French
empire were assured. He therefore hurried Nansouty and Macdonald on
toward Montmirail for a second stroke of the same kind.
The affair at Montmirail was more of a battle than that at
Champaubert, for Bluecher had been able to gather in the divisions of
Sacken, York, Kleist, and Kapzewitch. The battle opened about an hour
before noon on the eleventh by a fierce artillery fire from the
French, behind which Napoleon manoeuvered so as to concentrate his own
force against the Russians, and separate them from York with his
Prussians. At two o'clock Napoleon attacked the Russians, Mortier
engaging the Prussians separately. The plan succeeded, and by
nightfall the enemy was in full retreat for Chateau-Thierry, where was
the nearest bridge over the Marne. Napoleon had hoped that Macdonald
would arrive from La Ferte-sous-Jouarre in time to seize the bridge,
cut off the retreat, and make the victory decisive. But in spite of
heroic exertion, that marshal could not or did not move with
sufficient rapidity over the heavy dirt roads. The flying allies
sacked the town with awful cruelty, and destroyed the bridge without
any molestation except from the inhabitants, who wreaked their
vengeance on numerous stragglers. On the thirteenth the French
occupied the place, repaired the bridge, and crossed to the right
bank. Next morning Marmont started in pursuit of Bluecher.
Somewhat flushed by such success, Napoleon deliberated whether he
should not now turn and attack Schwarzenberg. The Emperor thought
these victories might give pause to a mediocre Austrian, ever mindful
of the terrific blows his country had received once and again from
France. He was mistaken; Schwarzenberg had moved, though slowly, yet
steadily forward. On the twelfth Victor abandoned the bridge at
Nogent, and Napoleon sent Macdonald with twelve thousand men to join
Victor at Montereau. Early on the fourteenth came news that Bluecher
had driven Marmont back to Fromentieres. By noon Napoleon had effected
a junction with this marshal near Etoges, making a famous and
successful flank march over a marshy country, a manoeuver which is
justly considered worthy of his great genius. Advancing then to the
neighborhood of Vauchamps, his infantry attacked in front, while the
cavalry, under Grouchy, outflanked the enemy's line and fell on the
rear. Bluecher was apparently doomed, for he had only three regiments
of cavalry, and while facing one powerful enemy he would be forced to
break the ranks of another in order to open a line of retreat. He
solved the problem, but at enormous cost. Forming his troops into a
line of solid squares, one stood to support the artillery and receive
the onset in front, while the others dashed at Grouchy's horsemen,
each square standing and retreating behind the next alternately as the
bloody retreat went on. At last the butchery ceased, and Bluecher fled
to Bergeres. The French pursued only as far as Etoges. Napoleon had
hoped to follow all the way to Chalons, annihilate what was left of
Bluecher's army, and then to return and throw himself on Schwarzenberg.
He was arrested by the news that the Seine valley, as far as
Montereau, was in the hands of the Austro-Russians; that Oudinot and
Victor had been driven back to Nangis; in short, that Paris was
seriously menaced.
It was long asserted that in the three actions just recorded the
French far outnumbered their opponents, and that Napoleon's
generalship was consequently inferior to his high average. The
sufficient answer to this is in the facts now universally accepted. At
Champaubert there were four thousand eight hundred and fifty French
against four thousand seven hundred Russians; at Montmirail there were
twenty-two thousand seven hundred Russians and Prussians against
twelve thousand eight hundred French; and in the third engagement,
near Etoges, Bluecher had twenty-one thousand five hundred to ten
thousand three hundred. It is therefore natural to compare these three
victories with those at Montenotte, Millesimo, and Dego. But they were
far greater. At forty-four Napoleon displayed exactly the same
boldness, steadfastness, and skill which he had displayed in youth;
but in addition he overcame the stolid enmity of winter, of variable
weather, of roads almost impassable, of swampy fields that were almost
impassable by reason of overflowing ditches and half-frozen morasses.
He overcame, too, the resisting power created by his own example; for
here were the choicest soldiers of the Continent, commanded by men
inured for eighteen years to the hardships, the shifts, the rapidity
of warfare as he himself had taught the art. Momentarily Napoleon
seems to have wondered whether allied and co-allied Europe had learned
nothing in half a generation, and whether an army twice and a half
larger than his own, under veteran generals, was to withdraw again
behind the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, perhaps the Vistula. It is hard
to believe that he dreamed such dreams as we read the prosaic,
scientific, hard common sense of his military correspondence between
January twenty-sixth and February fourteenth. Yet there is certainly
an appearance of self-deception and vacillation in his political and
diplomatic plans, due apparently to the intoxication of success, as
when he spoke of the Vistula to Marmont after Champaubert.
The innermost thoughts of Metternich, and of the diplomats associated
with him, are very hard to fathom. For two generations the world
believed that after Leipsic, Napoleon, in his sanguine conceit,
rejected offer after offer from the allies, and finally perished
utterly because of a folly which made him believe he could recover his
predominance. There is now every reason to believe the contrary, and
to suppose that Napoleon clearly understood the situation. The war was
one of extermination on the part of the allies; in the interest of
their dynasties they intended not only to destroy Napoleon, but also
thereby to root out the ideas for which he was supposed to stand. By
the light of recent memoirs, especially those of Metternich himself,
we seem forced to the conclusion that in all the offers after Leipsic
there was, if anything, far less of reality and sincerity than in
those between the armistice of Poischwitz and the battle. When
Castlereagh arrived at the allied headquarters early in January, 1814,
he found them established in Basel. Schwarzenberg had found no
difficulty in crossing Switzerland. Geneva surrendered its keys
without a struggle, and generally the Swiss seemed indifferent to the
violation of their neutrality. As the advance continued, it appeared
that the French were equally apathetic. Bubna was driven from before
Lyons by Augereau, but Dijon surrendered to a squad of cavalrymen
which, at the request of the conscientious mayor, made a show of force
to oblige him. It was not difficult under such circumstances for the
sovereigns and their ministers to convince themselves that any peace
with Napoleon would be nothing but a "ridiculous armistice," and that
the Emperor of the French must, in any case, be utterly overthrown.
In response to the Frankfort proposals, the pacific Caulaincourt had
promptly arrived to conduct negotiations. The invaders had almost at
once suggested that they must abandon the Frankfort proposals, and
confine France to her royal limits; that is, refuse her Belgium with
the great port of Antwerp. So far they were agreed, but there the
unanimity ceased. The Czar desired first to conquer France, and then
leave her to choose her own government; he intended to take the whole
of Poland, and give Alsace to Francis in return for Galicia, thus
checking Austria by both Prussia and France, so that he could work his
will in the Orient. Metternich wished the old balance of power, and
had determined on the restoration of the Bourbons. Francis was writing
to his daughter that he would never separate her cause and that of her
son from France. The Prussian king and ministers desired only such an
arrangement as would secure to their country what she had regained.
Stein and his associates wished the utter humiliation of their foe.
Castlereagh spoke with the authority of a paymaster; he was determined
to keep the Netherlands from falling under French influence, to
restore the Bourbons, and to establish so nice an equilibrium in
Europe that Great Britain would be unhampered elsewhere in the world.
There was to be no mention of colonial restitution or neutral rights.
Being a second-rate statesman, he was much influenced by Metternich,
and the two sought to form an impossible alliance between
constitutional liberty and feudal absolutism.
A so-called congress was opened at Chatillon on February fifth.[7] It
must be remembered that the treaty of Reichenbach was still a secret.
That agreement was the reality behind the congress of Prague, the
Frankfort proposals, and the meeting at Mannheim. None of those
gatherings consequently was serious; that at Chatillon was even less
so. The memoirs of Metternich explain all the facts: Swiss neutrality
was violated by Austrian influence in order to restore the
aristocratic constitution of Bern and the ascendancy of that canton;
Alexander, posing still as a liberal, was angry at this violation of
international law, and forbade the restoration of Vaud to its old
master. Schwarzenberg's deliberate movements were due primarily to
timidity, but they stood in good stead Metternich's desire to restore
the Bourbons. It has been asserted, and there is much probability in
the conjecture, that not only the plan adopted for invading France,
but the slowness of the Austrians in advancing toward Langres, toward
Troyes, across into the Seine valley, together with the spurious
activity they displayed before Montereau, Sens, and Fontainebleau, was
part of a scheme to wear out but not to exhaust France, and then
compel her to take back her dynastic rulers. Bluecher, who wanted glory
and revenge, and the Prussian liberals, who desired so to crush France
that Prussia might be free to slough off her militarism and build up
a constitutional government, were alike furious at being chained to
the frontier. All these cross-purposes and bitterness were mirrored in
the ostentatious proceedings of the congress of Chatillon. Napoleon,
either divining the facts, or, more probably, informed by spies,
seemed indifferent, and refused at first to give full powers to
Caulaincourt; finally the marshals, terrified at the prospect of
indefinite war opened by the unlucky mention of the Vistula, made
their influence so felt that the Emperor yielded.
[Footnote 7: Fournier: Der Congress von Chatillon.]
Maret's name was long held up to detestation as the instigator of
Napoleon's procrastinating policy at Dresden, the line of conduct
which seemed to have made it possible for Austria to join the
coalition. Among the papers of that minister is an account of his
relations with Napoleon during the congress at Chatillon, which
displays the evident motive of an attempt to prove how pacific his
nature really was. He declares that after the defeat at La Rothiere,
Caulaincourt wrote a panic-stricken letter demanding full authority to
treat. Maret handed it to the Emperor, beseeching him to yield.
Napoleon seemed scarcely to heed, but indicated a passage in
Montesquieu's "Grandeur and Fall of the Romans," which he happened to
be reading: "I know nothing more magnanimous than the resolution taken
by a monarch who ruled in our time, to bury himself under the ruins of
the throne rather than to accept proposals which a king may not
entertain. He had a soul too lofty to descend lower than his
misfortunes had hurled him." "But I, sire," rejoined the secretary--"I
know something more magnanimous--to cast aside your glory in order to
close the abyss into which France would fall along with you." "Well,
then, gentlemen, make your peace," came the reply. "Let Caulaincourt
make it; let him sign everything necessary to obtain it. I can
support the disgrace, but do not expect me to dictate my own
humiliation." Maret informed Caulaincourt, but the latter recoiled
before the responsibility, and asked for particular instructions. The
Emperor persistently refused, but wrote giving the minister "carte
blanche" to take any measure which would save the capital. Again
Caulaincourt begged for details, and again Napoleon refused,
persisting until Bertrand joined his supplications to those of Maret,
whereupon he consented to abandon Belgium, and even the left bank of
the Rhine.
The formal despatch containing these concessions was to be signed next
morning, on February eighth, but in the interval came news of
Bluecher's movements. Maret found the Emperor buried in the study of
his map. "I have an entirely different matter in hand," was the
greeting; "I am at present occupied in dealing Bluecher a blow in the
eye." The signature was indefinitely postponed. On the tenth Alexander
suspended the congress on the plea of Caulaincourt's refusal to state
his own or accept the offered terms. Then followed the three
victories, and Napoleon, on the night of the twelfth, wrote to
Chatillon demanding the Frankfort proposals. Caulaincourt urgently
besought the allies for an armistice, and begged Napoleon to be less
exacting. Prussia and Austria were eager for the armistice, but
Alexander obstinately refused to reopen the congress until the
eighteenth, when everything seemed changed, and all the allies really
desired peace. Caulaincourt, warned by Napoleon's letter of the
twelfth, refused to treat without full instructions, and as he had
none he began to procrastinate. In the end he bore the blame for not
having used the carte blanche when he had it in order to save his
country, for subsequently he had no opportunity.