THE STRUGGLES OF EXHAUSTION[9]
[Footnote 9: References: Houssaye, Napoleon a l'ile d'Elbe,
in Revue historique, tom. 51, pp. 1-25. Metternich's
Memoirs.]
The Allies Demoralized -- Napoleon's Desperate Choice -- The
Battle at Arcis -- The Correspondence of Caulaincourt and
Napoleon -- Panic at Schwarzenberg's Headquarters --
Cross-purposes of the Allies -- Napoleon's Determination
Confirmed -- His Over-confidence -- The Resolution to Abandon
Paris -- The French Brought to a Stand -- Their Masked Retreat --
Inefficiency of Marmont and Augereau -- Napoleon's March toward
St. Dizier -- His Terrible Disenchantment -- How the Allies had
Discovered Napoleon's Plans -- Their Determination to Pursue --
The Czar's Resolution to March on Paris -- Successful Return of
the Invaders.
Though unscientific as a military move and futile as to the ultimate
result of the war, the capture of Rheims was, nevertheless, a telling
thrust. On receipt of the news from Laon, Schwarzenberg had
immediately set his army in motion against Macdonald, and Bluecher,
after waiting two days to restore order among his worried troops and
insubordinate lieutenants, had advanced and laid siege to Compiegne.
The capture of Rheims checked the movements of both Austrians and
Prussians; dismay prevailed in both camps, and both armies began to
draw back. The French halted at Nangis in their retreat before
Schwarzenberg, and the people of Compiegne were released from the
terrors of a siege. "This terrible Napoleon," wrote Langeron in his
memoirs--"they thought they saw him everywhere. He had beaten us all,
one after the other; we were always frightened by the daring of his
enterprises, the swiftness of his movements, and his clever
combinations. Scarcely had we formed a plan when it was disconcerted
by him." Besides this, in obedience to Napoleon's call, the peasantry
began an organized guerrilla warfare, avenging the pillage,
incendiarism, and military executions of the allies by a brutal
retaliation in kind which made the marauding invaders quake. Finally
the momentary consternation of the latter verged on panic when the
report reached headquarters that Bernadotte, lying inactive at Liege
with twenty-three thousand Swedes, had permitted a flag of truce from
Joseph to enter his presence. Could it be that the sly schemer, for
the furtherance of his ambition to govern France, was about to turn
traitor and betray the coalition?
But the consternation of the allies was the least important effect of
the capture of Rheims by Napoleon.[10] It initiated certain ideas and
purposes in his own mind about which there has been endless
discussion. Many see in them the immediate cause of his ruin, a few
consider them the most splendid offspring of his mind. Reinforcements
from Paris, slender as they were, flowed steadily into his camp; and
when he learned that both Schwarzenberg and Bluecher had virtually
retreated, he believed himself able to cope once more with the former.
Accordingly he dictated to his secretary an outline of three possible
movements: to Arcis on the Aube, by way of Sezanne to Provins, and to
Meaux for the defense of Paris. The first was the most daring; the
second would cut the enemy off from the right bank of the Seine, but
it had the disadvantage of keeping the troops on miry cross-roads; the
third was the safest. Of course he chose the way of desperation--all
or nothing. Leaving Marmont with seven thousand men at Berry-au-Bac,
and Mortier with ten thousand at Rheims and Soissons, he enjoined them
both to hold the line toward Paris against Bluecher at all hazards, and
himself set out, on March seventeenth, for Arcis on the Aube. This he
did, instead of marching direct to Meaux for the defense of Paris,
because it would, in his own words, "give the enemy a great shock, and
result in unforeseen circumstances."
[Footnote 10: See Houssaye, 1814, pp. 258 _et seq._]
Schwarzenberg's movements during the next three days awakened in
Napoleon the suspicion, which he was only too glad to accept as a
certainty, that the Austro-Russian army was on the point of retreating
into the Vosges or beyond; and on the twentieth he announced his
decision of marching farther eastward, past Troyes, toward the
frontier forts still in French hands. This idea of a final stand on
the confines of France and Germany haunted him to the end, and was the
"will-o'-the-wisp" which intermittently tempted him to folly. But for
the present its execution was necessarily postponed. That very day
news was received within the lines he had established about Arcis that
the enemy, far from retreating, was advancing. Soon the French cavalry
skirmishers appeared galloping in flight, and were brought to a halt
only when the Emperor, with drawn sword, threw himself across their
path. A short, sharp struggle ensued--sixteen thousand French with
twenty-four thousand five hundred of their foe. It was irregular and
indecisive, but Napoleon held his own. The neighboring hamlet of Torcy
had also been attacked by the allies, and before their onset the
French had at first yielded. But the defenders were rallied, and at
nightfall the position was recaptured. This sudden exhibition by
Schwarzenberg of what looked like courage puzzled Napoleon; after long
deliberation he concluded that the hostile troops were in all
probability only a rear-guard covering the enemy's retreat. He was not
very far wrong, but far enough to make all the difference to him. The
circumstances require a full explanation.
Thanks to Caulaincourt's sturdy persistence, the congress at Chatillon
was still sitting, and on the thirteenth the French delegate wrote a
last despairing appeal to the Emperor. His messenger was delayed three
days by the military operations; but when he arrived, on the
sixteenth, Maret wrung from Napoleon concessions which included
Antwerp, Mainz, and even Alessandria. In the despatch announcing this,
and written on the seventeenth to Caulaincourt, Maret made no
reservation except one: that Napoleon intended, after signing the
treaty, to secure for himself whatever the military situation at the
close of the war might entitle him to retain. The return of the
messenger was likewise delayed for three days, and it was the
twenty-first before he reached the outskirts of Chatillon. He arrived
to find Caulaincourt departing; the second "carte blanche" had arrived
too late. With all his skill, the persistent and adroit minister had
been unable to protract negotiations longer than the eighteenth. His
appeal having brought no immediate response, he had, several days
earlier, despatched a faithful warning, and this reached Napoleon at
Fere-Champenoise simultaneously with the departure of the messenger
for Chatillon. The day previous the Emperor had received bad news from
southern France: that Bordeaux had opened its gates to a small
detachment of English under Hill, and that the Duke of Angouleme had
been cheered by the people as he publicly proclaimed Louis XVIII King
of France. Apparently neither this information nor Caulaincourt's
warning profoundly impressed Napoleon; he knew his Gascons well, his
"carte blanche" he must have believed to be in Chatillon, and it had
been in high spirits that he hastened on to Arcis, determined to make
the most of the time intervening until the close of negotiations.
When news of Napoleon's advance reached Schwarzenberg's headquarters
in Troyes, there had at first been nothing short of panic; the
commander himself was on a sick-bed, having entirely succumbed to the
hardships of winter warfare. No sooner had he ordered the first
backward step than his army had displayed a feverish anxiety for
farther retreat. As things were going, it appeared as if the different
corps would, for lack of judicious leadership, be permitted to
withdraw still farther in such a way as to separate the various
divisions ever more widely, and expose them successively to
annihilating blows from Napoleon, like those which had overwhelmed the
scattered segments of the Silesian army. The Czar and many others
immediately perceived the danger. With faculties unnerved by fear, the
officers foreboded a repetition with the Bohemian army of Montmirail,
Champaubert, and Vauchamps. Rumors filled the air: the peasantry of
the Vosges were rising, the Swiss were ready to follow their example;
the army must withdraw before it was utterly surrounded and cut off.
There was even a report--and so firmly was it believed that it long
passed for history--of Alexander's having expressed a desire to reopen
the congress.
Schwarzenberg's strange hesitancy in the initial stages of the
invasion has been explained. Beyond his natural timidity, it was
almost certainly due to Metternich's politics, which displayed a
desire to ruin Napoleon's imperial power, but to save France either
for the Bourbons or possibly for his Emperor's son-in-law. If the
Austrian minister could accomplish this, he could thereby checkmate
Prussian ambitions for leadership in Germany. But during the
movements of February and March the actions of the Austrian general
appear to have been due almost exclusively to cowardice. The papers of
Castlereagh, of Metternich, and of Schwarzenberg himself aim to give
the impression that during all the events which had occurred since the
congress of Prague, everything had been straightforward, and that
Austria had no thought of sparing Napoleon or acting otherwise than
she did in the end. Yet the indications of the time are quite the
other way: the Russians in Schwarzenberg's army were furious, and, as
one of them wrote, suspicious "of what we are doing and what we are
not doing." Alexander, in this crisis, was deeply concerned, not for
peace, but for an orderly, concentrated retreat. With stubborn
fatalism, he never doubted the final outcome; and during his stay in
Chatillon he had spent his leisure hours in excogitating a careful
plan for the grand entry into Paris, whereby the honors were to be his
own.
Consequently, when on the nineteenth he hastened to Schwarzenberg's
bedside, it was with the object of persuading the Austrian commander
to make a stand long enough to secure concentration in retreat. This
idea originated with the Russian general Toll, and the place he
suggested for concentration was the line between Troyes and Pougy. But
the council was terror-stricken, and though willing to heed
Alexander's urgent warning, they at first selected a position farther
in the rear, on the heights of Trannes. With this the Czar was
content, but on second thought such a course appeared to the more
daring among the Austrian staff as if it smacked of pusillanimity.
Schwarzenberg felt the force of this opinion, and by the influence of
some one, probably Radetzky, it was determined, without consulting the
Czar, to concentrate near Arcis on the left bank of the Aube, in
order to assume the offensive at Plancy. This independent resolution
of Schwarzenberg's staff explains the presence of allied troops near
Arcis and at Torcy. Alexander was much incensed by the news of the
meeting, and declared that Napoleon's real purpose was to hold them
while cutting off their connections on the extreme right at Bar and
Chaumont. This was in fact a close conjecture. Napoleon, though
surprised into action, was naturally confirmed in his surmise that the
hostile troops were a retreating rear-guard; and in consequence he had
definitely adopted the most desperate scheme of his life--the plan of
hurrying toward the Vosges, of summoning the peasantry to rise _en
masse_, and of calling out the garrison troops from the frontier
fortresses to reinforce his army and enable him to strike the invaders
from behind.
By his retreat to Troyes on February twenty-second, Schwarzenberg had
avoided a decisive conflict, saving his own army, and leaving Napoleon
to exhaust himself against the army of Silesia; by his decision of
March nineteenth he had confirmed Napoleon in the conviction that the
allies were overawed, and had thus led his desperate foe into the
greatest blunder conceivable--this chimerical scheme of concentrating
his slender, scattered force on the confines of France, and leaving
open a way for the great army of invaders to march direct on Paris. Of
such stuff are contemporary reputations sometimes constructed. But
this was not enough: a third time the Austrian general was to stumble
on greatness. Napoleon's movements of concentration had thus far met
with no resistance, in spite of their temerity; and throughout the
nineteenth the enemy's outposts, wherever found, fled incontinently.
It appeared a certainty that the allies were abandoning the line of
the Seine in order to avoid a blow on their flank. That evening
Napoleon began to vacillate, gradually abandoning his notion of an
offensive move near Troyes, and deliberating how best to reach Vitry
for a further advance toward his eastern fortresses. To avoid any
appearance of retreat, he rejected the safer route by way of
Fere-Champenoise to Sommesous, and determined to follow the course of
the Aube for a while before turning northward to Sommepuis. He might
run across the enemy's rear-guard, but he counted on their
pusillanimity for the probable retreat of the very last man to Troyes.
When Ney and Sebastiani began on the twentieth to push up the south
bank of the Aube, they expected no opposition. That very morning
Napoleon had announced to his minister of war, "I shall neglect
Troyes, and betake myself in all haste to my fortresses."
So far the Emperor had made no exhibition of the temerity about which
so much was later to be said. But he had deceived himself and had
taken a wild resolution. Moreover, it is amazing that he should have
felt a baseless confidence in Bluecher's remaining inert. This
hallucination is, however, clearly expressed in a despatch to Marmont
of the very same date. Yet, nevertheless, the alternative is not left
out of consideration, for he ordered that marshal, in case Bluecher
should resume the offensive, to abandon Paris and hasten to Chalons.
This fatal decision was not taken suddenly: the contingency had been
mentioned in a letter of February eighth to Joseph, and again from
Rheims emphatic injunctions to keep the Empress and the King of Rome
from falling into Austrian hands were issued to the same
correspondent. "Do not abandon my son," the Emperor pleaded; "and
remember that I would rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of
the enemies of France. The fate of Astyanax, prisoner to the Greeks,
has always seemed to me the unhappiest in history." The messenger had
been gone but a few hours when word was brought that Bluecher had
resumed the offensive, and a swift courier was despatched summoning
Marmont to Chalons. In this ultimate decision Napoleon showed how
cosmopolitan he had grown: he had forgotten, if he had ever
understood, the extreme centralization of France; he should have known
that, Paris lost, the head of the country was gone, and that the
dwarfed limbs could develop little or no national vitality.
This bitter lesson he was soon to learn. On the momentous afternoon of
the twentieth, as has been related, about sixteen thousand French
confronted nearly twenty-five thousand of the allies in the sharp but
indecisive skirmishes before Arcis; the loss of the former was
eighteen hundred, that of the allies twenty-seven hundred. In spite of
the dimensions which these conflicts had assumed, Napoleon remained
firm in the belief that he had to do with his retreating enemy's
rear-guard; Schwarzenberg, on the other hand, was convinced that the
French had a strength far beyond the reality. During the night both
armies were strongly reinforced, and in the early morning Napoleon had
twenty-seven thousand five hundred men--quite enough, he believed, to
demoralize the retreating Austrians. It was ten o'clock when he
ordered the attack, Ney and Sebastiani being directed to the plateau
behind the town. What was their surprise and dismay to find
Schwarzenberg's entire army, which numbered not less than a hundred
thousand, drawn up in battle array on the plain to the eastward, the
infantry in three dense columns, cavalry to right and left, with three
hundred and seventy pieces of artillery on the central front! The
spectacle would have been dazzling to any but a soldier: the bright
array of gay accoutrements, the glittering bayonets, the waving
banners, and the serried ranks. As it was, the audacious French
skirmishers instinctively felt the incapacity of a general who could
thus assemble an army as if on purpose to display its numbers and
expose it to destruction. Without a thought they began a sort of
challenging rencounter with horse-artillery and cavalry.
But the Emperor's hopes were dashed when he learned the truth; with
equal numbers he would have been exultant; a battle with odds of four
to one he dared not risk. Sebastiani was kept on the heights to mask
the retreat which was instantly determined upon, and at half-past one
it began. This ruse was so successful, by reason of the alarms and
crossings incident to the withdrawal of the French, that the allies
were again terror-stricken; even the Czar rejected every suggestion of
attack; again force was demoralized by genius. At last, however,
scouts brought word that columns of French soldiers were debouching
beyond the Aube, and the facts were plain. Even then the paralyzed
invaders feared to attack, and it was not until two thirds of
Napoleon's force was behind the stream that, after fierce fighting,
the French rear was driven from the town. Oudinot's corps was the last
to cross the river, and, standing until sappers had destroyed the
bridge, it hurried away to follow the main column toward Vitry. The
divisions of Gerard and Macdonald joined the march, and there were
then forty-five thousand men in line.
While Napoleon was thus neutralizing the efforts of armies and
generals by the renown of his name, two of his marshals were finally
discredited. Enfeebled as Bluecher appeared to be, he was no sooner
freed from the awe of Napoleon's proximity than he began to move. On
the eighteenth he passed the Aisne, and Marmont, disobeying the
explicit instructions of Napoleon to keep open a line of retreat
toward Chalons, began to withdraw toward Fismes, where he effected a
junction with Mortier. His intention was to keep Bluecher from Paris
by false manoeuvers. Rheims and Epernay at once fell into hostile
hands; there was no way left open toward Chalons except the long
detour by Chateau-Thierry and Etoges; and Bluecher, it was found, was
hurrying to effect a connection with Schwarzenberg. This was an
assured checkmate. Meantime Augereau had displayed a similar
incapacity. On the eighth he had begun a number of feeble, futile
movements intended to prevent the allies from forming their Army of
the South. But after a few aimless marches he returned to Lyons, and
stood there in idleness until his opponents had completed their
organization. On the twentieth the place was assaulted. The French
general had twenty-one thousand five hundred men under his immediate
command, six thousand eight hundred Catalonian veterans were on their
way from Perpignan, and at Chambery were seven thousand more from the
armies of Tuscany and Piedmont. The assailants had thirty-two
thousand, mostly raw troops. With a stout heart in its commander,
Lyons could have been held until the reinforcements arrived, when the
army of the allies would probably have been annihilated. But there was
no stout heart in any of the authorities; not a spade had been used to
throw up fortifications; the siege-guns ready at Avignon had not been
brought up. Augereau, at the very height of the battle, summoned the
civil authorities to a consultation, and the unwarlike burghers
assented without a murmur to his suggestion of evacuation. The great
capital of eastern France was delivered as a prize to those who had
not earned it. Had Suchet been substituted for Augereau some weeks
earlier, the course of history might have been diverted. But although
Napoleon had contemplated such a change, he shrank from disgracing an
old servant, and again, as before Leipsic, displayed a kindly spirit
destructive to his cause.
The night after his retreat from Arcis, Napoleon sent out a
reconnaissance to Vitry, and finding it garrisoned by Prussians,
swerved toward St. Dizier, which, after a smart combat, he entered on
the twenty-third. This placed him midway between the lines of his
enemy's communication both from Strasburg and from Basel; which of the
two, he asked himself, would Schwarzenberg return to defend? Thinking
only how best to bait his foe, he set his army in motion northward;
the anxious Austrian would certainly struggle to retain the line in
greatest danger. This illusion continued, French cavalry scoured the
country, some of the Chatillon diplomats were captured, and the
Emperor of Austria had a narrow escape at Bar. It seemed strange that
the country-side as far as Langres was deserted, but the fact was
apparently explained when the news came that the enemy were in force
at Vitry; probably they had abandoned Troyes and had disregarded
Brienne in order to divert him from his purpose.
Alas for the self-deception of a ruined man! The enemy at Vitry were a
body of eight thousand Russian cavalry from the Silesian army, sent,
under Wintzengerode, to dog Napoleon's heels and deceive him, just as
they actually did. Having left Vitry on the twenty-eighth, they were
moving toward St. Dizier when Napoleon, believing that they formed the
head of a powerful hostile column, fell upon them with needless fury,
and all too easily put them to flight; two thousand were captured and
five hundred killed. Thanks to Marmont's disobedience and bad
judgment, Bluecher had opened communications with Schwarzenberg, and
both were marching as swiftly as possible direct to Paris. Of this
Napoleon remained ignorant until the twenty-eighth. From his prisoners
the Emperor first gained a hint of the appalling truth. It was
impossible to believe such reports. Orders were issued for an
immediate return to Vitry in order to secure reliable information.
Arrived before the place, Napoleon called a council of war to decide
whether an attempt to storm it should be made. In the moment of
deliberation news began to arrive in abundance: captured despatches
and bulletins of the enemy, confirmed by definite information from the
inhabitants of the surrounding country. There could no longer be any
doubt: the enemy, with an advantage of three days' march, was on his
way to Paris. The futility of his eastward movement appears to have
struck Napoleon like a thunderbolt. Paris abandoned in theory was one
thing; France virtually decapitated by the actual loss of its capital
was quite another. The thought was unendurable. Mounting his horse,
the unhappy man spurred back to St. Dizier, and closeted himself in
silent communing with his maps.
The allies had not at first divined Napoleon's purpose. Indeed, their
movements in passing the Aube and on the day following were little
better than random efforts to fathom it. But on the morning of the
twenty-third two important messengers were captured--one a courier
from Berthier to Macdonald with despatches stating exactly where
Napoleon was; the other a rider with a short note from Napoleon to his
Empress, containing a statement of its writer's plans. This famous
paper was lost, for Bluecher, after having read it, let the rider go.
But the extant German translation is doubtless accurate. It runs: "My
friend, I have been all day in the saddle. On the twentieth I took
Arcis on the Aube. The enemy attacked at eight in the evening. I beat
him, killed four thousand men, and captured four cannon. On the
twenty-first the enemy engaged in order to protect the march of his
columns toward Brienne and Bar on the Aube. I have resolved to betake
myself to the Marne in order to draw off the enemy from Paris and to
approach my fortifications. I shall be this evening in St. Dizier.
Adieu, my friend; kiss my boy." Savary declares that there was a final
phrase: "This movement makes or mars me."
The menace to their lines of communication at first produced
consternation in the council of the allies. The first proposition laid
before them was that they should return on parallel lines and recover
their old bases. Had this scheme been adopted, Napoleon's strategy
would have been justified completely instead of partially as it was;
nothing but a miracle could have prevented the evacuation of France by
the invaders. But a second, calmer thought determined the invaders to
abandon both the old lines, and, opening a new one by way of Chalons
into the Netherlands, to make the necessary detour and fall on
Napoleon's rear. Francis, for the sake of keeping close touch with his
own domains, was to join the Army of the South at Lyons. Although
there is no proof to support the conjecture, it seems as if the Czar
and the King of Prussia had suggested this so that both Francis and
Metternich might be removed from the military councils of the allies
in order that the more warlike party might in their absence take
decisive measures. That night a package of letters to Napoleon from
the imperial dignitaries at Paris fell into the hands of the invaders.
The writers, each and all, expressed a profound despondency, Savary in
particular asserting that everything was to be feared should the enemy
approach the capital. Next morning, the twenty-fourth, the junction
between Bluecher and Schwarzenberg was completed. Francis and
Metternich being absent, Schwarzenberg, listening to warlike advice,
determined to start immediately in pursuit of Napoleon and seek a
battle. The march was begun, and it seemed as if Napoleon's wild
scheme was to be completely justified. He had certainly displayed
profound insight.
Alexander, however, had been steadily hardening his purpose to
annihilate Napoleon. For a week past Vitrolles, the well-known
royalist agent, had been at his headquarters; the accounts of a steady
growth in royalist strength, the efforts of Napoleon's lifelong foe,
Pozzo di Borgo, and the budget of despondent letters from the Paris
officials, combined to temper the Czar's mystical humor into a
determination of steel. Accordingly, on the same day he summoned his
personal military advisers, Barclay, Wolkonsky, Diebitsch, and Toll;
then, pointing out on a map the various positions of the troops
engaged in the campaign, he asked, significantly and impressively,
whether it were best to pursue Napoleon or march on Paris. Barclay
supported the former alternative; Diebitsch advised dividing the army
and doing both; but Toll, with powerful emphasis, declared himself for
the second course. The Czar listened enthusiastically to what was near
his own heart, and expressed himself strongly as favoring it; the
others yielded with the eagerness of courtiers, and Alexander,
mounting his horse, spurred after Frederick William and Schwarzenberg.
The new plan was unfolded; the Prussian king supported it;
Schwarzenberg hesitated, but yielded. That night orders were issued
for an about-face, a long explanatory despatch was sent to Bluecher,
and on the twenty-fifth the combined armies of Bohemia and Silesia
were hurrying with measured tramp toward Paris. For the first time
there was general enthusiasm in their ranks. Bluecher, who from his
unremitted ardor had won the name of "Marshal Forward," was
transported with joy.
[Illustration: In the collection of the Marquis of Bassano
NAPOLEON-FRANCOIS-CHARLES-JOSEPH, PRINCE IMPERIAL; KING OF ROME; DUKE
OF REICHSTADT.
_From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence_.]
The two armies marched on parallel lines, and met with no resistance
of any importance, except as the various skirmishes enabled the
irregular French soldiers to display a desperate courage, not only the
untried "Marie Louises" coming out from Paris, but various bodies of
the national guard convoying provision-trains. It was the twenty-fifth
before Marmont and Mortier effected their junction, and then, although
about sixteen thousand strong, they were steadily forced back through
Fere-Champenoise and Allemant toward Charenton, which was under the
very walls of Paris. Marmont displayed neither energy nor common sense
on the retreat: his outlying companies were cut off, and strategic
points which might have been held were utterly neglected. The army
with which he reached Paris on the twenty-ninth should have formed an
invaluable nucleus for the formation and incorporation of the numerous
volunteers and irregular companies which were available; but, like its
leader, it was entirely demoralized. Ledru des Essarts, commander of
Meaux, was obliged on the twenty-seventh to abandon his charge, a
military depot full of ammunition and supplies, which was essential to
the safety of Paris. The garrison consisted of six thousand men, but
among them were not more than eight hundred veterans, hastily
collected from Marmont's stragglers, and the new conscripts were
ill-conditioned and badly commanded. Although the generals drew up
their men with a bold front to defend the passage of the Marne, the
undisciplined columns were overwhelmed with terror at the sight of
Bluecher's army, and, standing only long enough to blow up the
magazines, fled. They fought gallantly, however, on their retreat
throughout the twenty-eighth, but to no avail; one position after
another was lost, and they too bivouacked on the evening of the
twenty-ninth before the gates of the capital. It is a weak curiosity,
possibly, but we must wonder what would have occurred had Marmont,
instead of retreating to Fismes on the eighteenth, withdrawn to
Rheims, where he and Mortier could at least have checked Bluecher's
unauthorized advance, and perhaps have held the army of Silesia for a
time, when the moral effect would probably have been to justify
Schwarzenberg and confirm his project for the pursuit of Napoleon. In
that case, moreover, the precious information of Napoleon's letter to
his consort would not have fallen into his enemies' hands. Would
destiny have paused in its career?