The disaster at Austerlitz affected the Emperors Francis and Alexander
very differently, Alexander was deeply dejected; but Francis was
tranquil. Under the common misfortune, he had at least the consolation,
that the Russians could no longer allege that the cowardice of the
Austrians constituted all the glory of Napoleon. The two emperors
retreated precipitately over the plain of Moravia, amidst profound
darkness, separated from their household, and liable to be insulted
through the barbarity of their own soldiers. Francis took it upon
himself to send their gallant Prince John of Lichtenstein to Napoleon,
to solicit an armistice, with a promise to sign a peace in a few days.
He commissioned him, also, to express to Napoleon, his wish to have an
interview with him at the advanced posts of the army. The French
Emperor, having returned to his head-quarters at Posoritz, there
received Prince John. He treated him as a conqueror full of courtesy,
and agreed to an interview with the Emperor of Austria. But an armistice
was not to be granted until the Emperors had met and explained
themselves.
Napoleon hastened to recall his columns to Nasiedlowitz and Goding.
Marshal Davoust, reinforced by the junction of Friant’s whole division,
and by the arrival in line of Gudin’s division, had lost no time, thanks
to his nearer position to the Hungary road. He set out in pursuit of the
Russians, and pressed them closely. He intended to overtake them before
the passage of the Morava, and to cut off perhaps a part of their army.
After marching on the 3d, he was, on the morning of the 4th, in sight of
Goding and nearly up with them. The greatest confusion prevailed in
Goding. Beyond that place there was a mansion belonging to the Emperor
of Germany, that of Holitsch, where the two allied sovereigns had taken
refuge. The perturbation there was as great as at Goding. The Russian
officers continued to hold the most unbecoming language respecting the
Austrians. They laid the blame of the common defeat on them, as if they
ought not to have attributed it to their own presumption, to the
incapacity of their generals, and to the levity of their government. The
Austrians, moreover, had behaved quite as well as the Russians on the
field of battle.
The two vanquished monarchs were very cool towards each other. The
Emperor Francis wished to confer with the Emperor Alexander, before he
went to the interview agreed upon with Napoleon. Both thought that they
ought to solicit an armistice and peace, for it was impossible to
continue the struggle. Alexander was desirous, though he did not
acknowledge it, that himself and his army should be saved as soon as
possible from the consequences of an impetuous pursuit, such as might be
apprehended from Napoleon. As for the conditions, he left his ally to
settle them as he pleased. The Emperor Francis alone having to defray
the expenses of the war, the conditions on which peace should be signed
concerned him exclusively. Some time before, the Emperor Alexander,
setting himself up for the arbiter of Europe, would have insisted that
those conditions concerned him also. His pride was less exigent since
the battle of the 2d of December.
The Emperor Francis accordingly set out for Nasiedlowitz, a village and
there, near the mill of Paleny, between Nasiedlowitz and Urschitz,
amidst the French and the Austrian advanced posts, he found Napoleon
waiting for him, before a bivouac fire kindled by his soldiers. Napoleon
had had the politeness to arrive first. He went to meet the Emperor
Francis, received him as he alighted from his carriage and embraced him.
The Austrian monarch, encouraged by the welcome of his all-powerful foe,
had a long conversation with him. The principal officers of the two
armies, standing aside, beheld with great curiosity the extraordinary
spectacle of the successor of the Cæsars vanquished and soliciting peace
of the crowned soldier, whom the French Revolution had raised to the
pinnacle of human greatness.
Francis wore the brilliant costume of an Austrian field-marshal, and was
a monarch of dignified aspect.
Napoleon apologized to the Emperor Francis for receiving him in such a
place. “Such are the palaces,” said he, “which your majesty has obliged
me to inhabit for these three months.”—“The abode in them,” replied the
Austrian monarch, “makes you so thriving, that you have no right to be
angry with me for it.” The conversation then turned upon the general
state of affairs, Napoleon insisting that he had been forced into the
war against his will at a moment when he least expected it, and when he
was exclusively engaged with England; the Emperor of Austria affirming
that he had been urged to take arms solely by the designs of France in
regard to Italy. Napoleon declared that, on the conditions already
specified to M. de Giulay, and which he had no need to repeat, he was
ready to sign a peace. The Emperor Francis, without explaining himself
on this subject, wished to know how Napoleon was disposed in regard to
the Russian army. Napoleon first required that the Emperor Francis
should separate his cause from that of the Emperor Alexander, and that
the Russian army should retire by regulated marches from the Austrian
territories, and promised to grant him an armistice on this condition.
As for peace with Russia, he added, that would be settled afterwards,
for this peace concerned him alone. “Take my advice,” said Napoleon to
the Emperor Francis, “do not mix up your cause with that of the Emperor
Alexander. Russia alone can now wage only a _fancy war_ in Europe.
Vanquished, she retires to her deserts, and you, you pay with your
provinces the costs of the war.” The forcible language of Napoleon
expressed but too well the state of things in Europe between that great
empire and the rest of the continent. The Emperor Francis pledged his
word as a man and a sovereign not to renew the war, and above all to
listen no more to the suggestions of powers which had nothing to lose in
the struggle. He agreed to an armistice for himself—and for the Emperor
Alexander, an armistice, the condition of which was that the Russians
should retire by regulated marches—and that the Austrian cabinet should
immediately send negotiators empowered to sign a separate peace with
France.
The two emperors parted with reiterated demonstrations of cordiality.
Napoleon handed into his carriage that monarch whom he had just called
his brother, and remounted his horse to return to Austerlitz.
General Savary was sent to suspend the march of Davoust’s corps. He
first proceeded to Holitsch, with the suite of the Emperor Francis, to
learn whether the Emperor Alexander acceded to the proposed conditions.
He saw the latter, around whom every thing was much changed since the
mission on which he was sent to him a few days before. “Your master,”
said Alexander to him, “has shown himself very great. I acknowledge all
the power of his genius, and, as for myself, I shall retire, since my
ally is satisfied.” General Savary conversed for some time with the
young czar on the late battle, explained to him how the French army,
inferior in number to the Russian army, had nevertheless appeared
superior on all points, owing to the art of manœuvring which Napoleon
possessed in so eminent a degree. He courteously added that with
experience Alexander, in his turn, would become a warrior, but that so
difficult an art was not to be learned in a day. After these flatteries
to the vanquished monarch, he set out for Goding to stop Marshal
Davoust, who had rejected all the proposals for a suspension of arms,
and was ready to attack the relics of the Russian army. To no purpose he
had been assured in the name of the Emperor of Russia himself that an
armistice was negotiating between Napoleon and the Emperor of Austria.
He would not on any account abandon his prey. But General Savary stopped
him with a formal order from Napoleon. These were the last musket-shots
fired during that unexampled campaign. The troops of the several nations
separated to go into winter-quarters, awaiting what should be decided by
the negotiators of the belligerent powers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]