THE THUNDERBOLT STROKE
On the tenth of February, 1814, for the first time in many days, the
sun shone brightly. Nevertheless there was little change in the
temperature; the thaw still prevailed. The sun's heat was not great
enough to dry the roads, nor was the weather sufficiently cold to
freeze them. As the Emperor wrote to his brother, with scarcely any
exaggeration, there was still six feet of mud on highways and by-paths.
Napoleon, by rapid marching at the head of Maurice's Squadrons d'Élite,
mounted grenadiers, chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, had easily
attained a position in front of the van of the army commanded by
Marmont, which had rested a few hours at St. Prix, where the road
crossed the Petit Morin on a bridge. His requisition on the peasantry
had been honored, and great numbers of fresh, vigorous draft horses had
been brought in from all sides. There was not much speed to be got out
of these farm animals, to be sure, but they were of prodigious
strength. The ordinary gun teams were relieved, and numbers of these
plow-horses attached to the limbers pulled the precious artillery
steadily toward the enemy.
Scouts had discovered the fact that Olsuvieff's division was preparing
breakfast on the low plateau upon which was situated the village of
Champaubert, which had been observed by Marteau and Bal-Arrêt.
Napoleon reconnoitered the place in person from the edge of the wood.
Nansouty's cavalry had earlier driven some Russian skirmishers out of
Baye, but Olsuvieff apparently had no conception of the fact that the
whole French army was hard by, and he had contented himself with
sending out a few scouts, who, unfortunately for him, scouted in the
wrong direction.
While waiting for the infantry under Marmont to come up, Napoleon sent
Nansouty's cavalry around to the left to head off Olsuvieff's advance
and interpose between him and the rear guard of Sacken's division.
Even the noise of the little battle--for the skirmish was a hot one--a
mile down the road, did not apprise the Russian of his danger, and it
was not until the long columns of the French came out of the wood and
deployed and until the guns were hauled into the clearing and wheeled
into action, that he awoke to the fact that an army was upon him and he
would have to fight for his life.
With his unerring genius Napoleon had struck at the key position, the
very center of Blücher's long drawn-out line. With but thirty thousand
men attacking eighty thousand he had so maneuvered as to be in
overwhelming force at the point of contact! In other words, he had got
there first with the most men. Blücher's army was separated into
detachments and stretched out over forty miles of roads.
Olsuvieff's division comprised five thousand men with twenty guns. At
first Napoleon could bring against him not many more than that number
of men and guns, to which must be added Nansouty's small cavalry
division. And Olsuvieff, with all the advantages of the position, made
a magnificent defense. As a defensive fighter the stubborn Russian
took a back seat for no soldier in Europe. But the most determined
resistance, the most magnificent courage, could not avail against
overwhelming numbers, especially directed and led by Napoleon in
person, for with every hour the numbers of the assailants were
increased by the arrival of fresh troops, while with every hour the
defense grew weaker through casualties.
Olsuvieff might have surrendered with honor at midday, but he was a
stubborn soldier, and he realized, moreover, that it was his duty to
hold Napoleon as long as possible. Even the most indifferent commander
could not fail to see the danger to Blücher's isolated corps. Couriers
broke through to the east to Sacken and Yorck, who together had over
thirty-five thousand men under their command, and to the west to
Blücher, with as many more men, telling all these commanders of the
extreme peril of the center and of the frightfully dangerous situation
in which their carelessness and the ability of their great enemy had
involved them. The noise of the firing, too, was carried far and wide
over the broad open fields and cultivated farms of the rolling prairie
of Champagne.
Blücher, however, could not credit the intelligence. He believed it
impossible for Napoleon to have escaped from Schwarzenberg. He could
not conceive that Napoleon would leave the Austrians unopposed to march
to Paris if they would. He could not think that even Napoleon would
venture to attack eighty thousand men with thirty, and, if he did, he
reasoned that Sacken and Yorck and Olsuvieff, singly or in combination,
were easily a match for him. The messengers must surely be mistaken.
This could only be a raid, a desperate stroke of some corps or
division. Therefore, he halted and then drew back and concentrated on
his rear guard waiting for further news.
Sacken and Yorck were nearer the fighting. They could hear and see for
themselves. They at once gave over the pursuit of Macdonald and
retraced their steps. Olsuvieff made good his defense until nightfall,
when the survivors gave up the battle. Fifteen hundred men of his
brave division had been killed on the plateau. As many more were
wounded and captured, most of whom subsequently died, and there were
about two thousand unhurt prisoners. Their ammunition was exhausted.
They were worn out. They were overwhelmed by massed charges at last.
Blücher's line was pierced, his center crushed, and one of the finest
divisions of his army was eliminated.
In the wagon train recaptured at Aumenier had been found arms and
provisions and ammunition. Another Prussian wagon train, blundering
along the road, was seized by Maurice's cavalry, which had been sent
scouting to the eastward. From the Russian camp the starving French
had got food, more arms and clothing. The dead were quickly despoiled,
even the living were forced to contribute to the comfort of their
conquerors. It was night before the last French division got up from
Sézanne, but there was enough food and weapons for all.
A new spirit had come over that army. What had seemed to them a
purposeless, ghastly march through the mud was now realized to be one
of the most brilliant manoeuvres Napoleon had ever undertaken. The
conscripts, the raw boys, the National Guards, many of whom had been in
action for the first time that day, were filled with incredible
enthusiasm. They were ready for anything.
But the army must have rest. It must be permitted to sleep the night.
Accordingly the divisions were disposed in the fields. Those who had
fought hardest were given quarters in the village; the next were placed
in the captured Russian camp; the others made themselves as comfortable
as they could around huge fires. The poor prisoners had little or
nothing. The ragged French were at least better clothed than they were
in the morning. The defenseless had arms and the whole army had been
fed. There was wine, too; the Russian commissariat was a liberal one.
There was much laughter and jovialness in the camps that night. Of
course, the guard and the other veterans expected nothing else, but to
the youngsters the brilliant stroke of Napoleon was a revelation.
As the little Emperor rode from division to division, sometimes
dismounting and walking through the camps on foot, he was received with
such acclaim as reminded him of the old days in Italy. And, indeed,
the brief campaign which he had so brilliantly inaugurated can be
favorably compared to that famous Italian adventure, or to any other
short series of consecutive military exploits in the whole history of
war.
They said that the Emperor had hesitated and lost his great opportunity
at Borodino. They said that he had frightfully miscalculated at
Moscow, that his judgment had been grievously at fault in the whole
Russian campaign. They said that he had sat idle during a long day
when the fortunes of his empire might have been settled at Bautzen.
They said that, overcome by physical weariness, he had failed to grasp
his great opportunity after the victory at Dresden. They said that
Leipsic and the battles that preceded it showed that he had lost the
ability to see things with a soldier's eye. They declared that he made
pictures and presented them to himself as facts; that he thought as an
Emperor, not as a Captain. They said that in this very campaign in
France, the same imperial obsession had taken such hold upon him that
in striving to retain everything from Holland to the end of the Italian
peninsula he stood to lose everything. They said that, if he had
concentrated all his armies, withdrawn them from outlying dependencies,
he could have overwhelmed Blücher and Schwarzenberg, the Czar
Alexander, the Emperor Francis and King William, and that, having
hurled them beyond the Rhine, these provinces in dispute would have
fallen to his hand again. They said that his practical omnipotence had
blinded his judgment.
Those things may be true. But, whether they be true or not, no man
ever showed a finer strategic grasp of a situation, no man ever
displayed more tactical ability on a given field, no man ever conducted
a series of more brilliant enterprises, no man ever utilized a small,
compact, well-handled force opposed to at least two and a half times
its number, no man ever conducted a campaign which stood higher from a
professional point of view than this one which began with the march
from Nogent and the destruction at Champaubert.
There was no rest for Napoleon that night. Undoubtedly he was not now
the man he had been. Paralyzing physical disabilities before and after
interfered with his movements. The enormous strains to which he had
subjected his body and brain sometimes resulted in periods of mental
blindness and physical prostration. It was whispered that a strange
malady--was it some form of epilepsy?--sometimes overcame the Emperor
so that his faculties and abilities were in abeyance for hours. No man
had ever abused such wonderful mental and physical gifts as he
originally had possessed by subjecting them to such absolutely
impossible strains as he, and Nature was having her revenge. But for
that week in February and for a time thereafter there was a strange and
marvelous return of the Emperor's physical powers.
He had sustained more fatigue than any man in the army, because to all
of the personal sufferings of the march in the long day and the
sleepless night and the conduct of the battle had been added
responsibility, but he was as fresh as a boy. His pale cheek showed
rare color; his eyes sparkled; his voice was clear and sharp. The
nervous twitching of his mouth ceased. The gray look vanished. He was
once more the boyish Captain of the Army of Italy, at whom the huge
grenadiers laughed and the gray-headed veterans marveled.
The Emperor's scouts had been hard at work during the day. They were
constantly coming and going at his headquarters at Champaubert with
detailed accounts of the situation of the Russians and the Prussians.
The Emperor had a momentous decision to make. From the position he had
gained it was equally as easy for him to strike east as to strike west.
He decided at last to strike west, realizing that no captain, much less
fiery old Blücher, without an absolute forfeiture of his reputation as
a soldier could afford to leave his van unsupported, but that the
Prussian Field Marshal must advance to its support. If the Emperor's
plans worked out, he could destroy that van, and then turn back and
mete out the same fate to the main body coming to its rescue.
Just about ten miles away to the westward, on the main road to Paris by
way of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, lay the village of Montmirail. As many
miles beyond Montmirail, on the same Paris road, Sacken, with twenty
thousand men, had been advancing. From Montmirail a road led northward
to Château Thierry and the crossing of the Marne, behind which
Macdonald had been driven by Yorck, with perhaps fifteen thousand more.
The Emperor decided to seize Montmirail, throw out a corps to hold back
Yorck on the northern road, while he crushed Sacken on the other with
the remainder of the army, except one corps, which he would leave at
Champaubert to delay Blücher's advance. These army corps were in
reality nothing more than weak divisions, less than seven thousand
strong.
Early in the afternoon Marteau, with old Bullet-Stopper and the little
squadron of Maurice's cavalry, had rejoined the Emperor. He had been
greatly refreshed by his night's sleep. He had taken advantage of the
early hours of the morning to bury his father and sister, saying such
prayers as he could remember, in default of the parish priest, who had
been murdered. The Emperor having sent a courier with an escort back
to Nogent, the Countess Laure and her English friend had elected to go
with them. They feared to be left alone in the château all day, in the
disturbed state of the country, and it was easier, perhaps, to reach
Paris from Nogent by way of the Seine than by going direct from
Sézanne. Marteau had approved of their decision.
The parting between the young people had been as formal as possible.
The Englishman, on the contrary, with true British hospitality, had
said that if peace ever came he would indeed be glad to welcome him at
his home in England. Marteau had sworn to hold the château and its
land in trust for the Countess, although she protested she would not
hear of anything of the kind. And then he had bade her farewell. He
had arrived in time to take part in the hard fighting at the close of
the day, and had been busy during the early part of the night in
carrying messages and resuming his duties at headquarters.
At two o'clock in the morning Napoleon threw himself down on a
peasant's bed in a hut and slept until four. At that hour he awakened
and summoned the officer on duty. Marteau presented himself. The
Emperor, as refreshed by his two hours of sleep as if he had spent the
night in a comfortable bed, addressed the young man familiarly. None
could unbend better than he.
"My good Marteau," he began. "But stop--Monsieur le Comte
d'Aumenier"--he smiled--"I have not forgot. Berthier has orders to
send to Paris to have your patent of nobility made out and to see that
the confiscated Aumenier lands are transferred to you."
"I thank your Majesty," said the young aide, deeming it wiser to say
nothing of his ultimate intentions regarding the patent of nobility and
the estates.
"It would be a fine thing," said the Emperor, "if you and that girl
should come together. She is the last of her line, I understand, save
her old uncle in England, who is unmarried and childless. Is it not
so?"
"That is true, Sire."
"Well, you couldn't do better. She is a woman of spirit and
resolution. Her prompt action in the château last night showed it. I
commend her to your consideration. Were I your age and in your station
I should like nothing better."
"Your Majesty anticipated my desire, my own proposition, in fact."
"What? You struck while you had the opportunity? That was well."
"But, unlike you, Sire, I struck unavailingly."
"The lady refused?"
"Positively. She is of the oldest family in France, while I----"
"Marteau," said the Emperor sharply, "no more of that. If you cannot
be a descendant, be an ancestor. Look at me. My family began at
Montemotte, and to-day the mother of my son is a Hapsburg!"
"But she is engaged to the son of that Englishman, Sire."
"Bah, what of that? Engagements can be broken, marriages even
dissolved. The Holy Father at Rome will refuse me nothing. When I
have beaten the allies I will take your affair in hand. There are few
powers in Europe that will turn a deaf ear to the suggestions of the
Emperor of the French, believe me. The lady shall be yours."
"Your Majesty's power," said the young officer dubiously, "does not
extend to women's hearts."
"Does it not?" laughed the Emperor grimly. "You shall see. My word
shall be law again everywhere. With my favor you will go far. There
are no patents of nobility that stand higher than mine, for mine are
based on my recognition of merit alone, not on accident of birth. You
served me well, and you shall see that I am not ungrateful. Meanwhile,
to you a new duty is assigned."
"I welcome it gladly."
Napoleon took an order prepared the night before from a table.
"This to General Nansouty. I want him to march at once. Read it. You
will see," he continued, "that Nansouty's cavalry is to hold Sacken in
check until I have seized Montmirail. He has guns with him. Let him
deploy, attack vigorously. Keep the enemy occupied and gradually fall
back upon Montmirail. Ride with him yourself, and rejoin me at
Montmirail about ten in the morning. We should be up then. You
understand?" said the Emperor, ready to explain his orders more fully,
believing that an order could be more intelligently delivered if the
purport were explained verbally to the bearer, especially in the case
of a skilled and trusted young soldier like Marteau.
"I understand, Sire."
"Away, then. Continue to merit my favor, for upon that favor
rests"--he laughed, he was in high good spirits and humor that
morning--"the lady."
Marteau saluted. In spite of himself a certain hope began to spring up
in his heart. That Emperor was almost a demi-god to his men. Whatever
he had essayed he had generally achieved in times past, and who could
tell? Certainly they were on the eve of great events.