The pallid, silent Emperor at St. Dizier was closeted with considerations like these. He knew of the defeat which forced Marmont and Mortier back on Paris; the loss of the capital was imminent; parties were in a dangerous state; his marshals were growing more and more slack; he had failed in transferring the seat of war to Lorraine; the information he had so far received was almost certainly colored by the medium of scheming followers through which it came. What single mind could grapple with such affairs? It was not because the thwarted man had lost his nerve, but because he was calm and clear-minded, that he felt the need of frank, dispassionate advice on all these matters.
On the other hand, there stood forth in the clearest light a single fact about which there could be no doubt, and it alone might counterbalance all the rest: the peoples of northern and eastern France were at last aroused in behalf of his cause. For years all Europe had rung with outcries against the outrages of Napoleon’s soldiery; the allied armies no sooner became invaders in their turn than they began to outstrip their foe in every deed of shame; in particular, the savage bands from Russian Asia indulged their inhuman passions to the full, while the French peasantry, rigid with horror, looked on for the moment in paralysis. Now they had begun to rise in mass, and from the 25th to the 28th their volunteer companies brought in a thousand prisoners.
The depots, trains, and impedimenta of every sort which the allies abandoned on turning westward fell into the hands of a peasant soldiery, many of whom were armed with shot-guns. The rising for Napoleon was comparable only to that which earlier years had seen in the Vendee on behalf of the Bourbons.
Besides, all the chief cities of the district were now in the hands of more or less regular troops; Dunette was marching from Metz with four thousand men; Broussier, from Strasburg with five thousand; Verdun could furnish two thousand, and several other fortresses a like number. Souham was at Nogent with his division, Allix at Auxerre with his; the army at the Emperor’s disposal could easily be reckoned at 70 thousand. Assisted by the partizan bands which now hung in a passion of hatred on the skirts of the invaders, and by the national uprising now fairly under way, could not the Emperor-general hope for another successful stand?
He well knew that the fear of what had happened was the specter of his enemy’s council-board; they would, he reckoned, be rendered over-cautious, and give him at least a fortnight in which to manoeuver before the fall of Paris could be expected. Counting the men about Vitry and the garrison reinforcements at only 60 thousand, the combined armies of Suchet, Soult, and Augereau at the same number, that of Marmont at 14 thousand, and the men in the various depots at 16 thousand, he would have a total of a 150 thousand, from which he could easily spare 50 thousand to cut off every line of retreat from his foe, and still have left a 100 thousand wherewith to meet their concentrated force on a basis of something like equality.
From the purely strategic point of view, the march of the allies to Paris was sheer madness unless they could count on the exhaustion of the population right, left, and behind. If the national uprising could be organized, they would be cut off from all reinforcement and entrapped. Already their numbers had been reduced to a 110 thousand men. Napoleon with a 100 thousand, and the nation to support him, had a fair chance of annihilating them.
It was, therefore, not a mere hallucination which led him to hope that once again the tangled web of affairs might be severed by a sweep of the soldier’s saber. But of course in the crisis of his great decision he could not stand alone; he must be sure of his lieutenants. Accordingly, after a few hours of secret communing, he summoned a council, and laid before it his considerations substantially as enumerated.
Those present were Berthier, Ney, Lefebvre, Caulaincourt, and Maret; Oudinot and Macdonald, at Bar on the Ornain and Perthes respectively, were too distant to arrive in time, but he believed that he knew their opinion, which was that the war should be continued either in Lorraine or from a center of operations to be established at Sens. From this conclusion Macdonald did not once waver; Oudinot had begun to hedge; their absence, therefore, was unimportant. Berthier was verging on desperation, and so was Caulaincourt, who, since leaving Chatillon, had been vainly struggling to reopen negotiations for peace on any terms; Ney, though physically brave, was not the stuff from which martyrs are made, and Lefebvre, naturally weak, was labouring under a momentary attack of senility. The council was imperative for peace at any price; the Emperor, having foreseen its temper, had little difficulty in taking the military steps for carrying out its behests.
Early in the morning of March 28th the army was set in motion toward Paris. The line of march was to be through Bar on the Aube, Troyes, and Fontainebleau, a somewhat circuitous route, chosen apparently for three reasons: because the region to be traversed would still afford sustenance to the men, because the Seine would protect its right flank, and because the dangerous point of Meaux was thus avoided. Such a conclusion is significant of the clearest judgment and the nicest calculation. Pages have been written about Napoleon’s hallucinations at the close of his career; neither here nor in any of the courses he adopted is there aught to sustain the charge.
At breakfast-time a squad of jubilant peasants brought in a prisoner whom they believed to be no less a person than the Comte d’Artois. In reality it was Weissenberg, an Austrian ambassador on his way to London. He was promptly liberated on parole and despatched with letters to Francis and Metternich. By a curious adventure, Vitrolles was in the minister’s suite disguised as a serving-man, but he was not detected.
At Doulevant Napoleon received cipher despatches from La Valette, the postmaster-general in Paris, a trusted friend. These were the first communications since the 22nd; the writer said not a moment must be wasted, the Emperor must come quickly or all would be lost. His decision once taken, Napoleon had grown more feverish with every hour; this message gave wings to his impatience. With some regard for such measures as would preclude his capture by wandering bands of Cossacks, he began almost to fly. New couriers were met at Doulaincourt with despatches which contained a full history of the past few days; in consequence the troops were spurred to fresh exertions, their marches were doubled, and at nightfall of the 29th Troyes was reached. Snatching a few brief hours of sleep, Napoleon at dawn next morning threw discretion to the winds, and started with an insufficient escort, determined to reach Villeneuve on the Vanne before night.
The task was performed, but no sooner had he arrived than at once he flung himself into a post-chaise, and, with Caulaincourt at his side, sped toward Paris; a second vehicle, with three adjutants, followed as best it might; and a third, containing Gourgaud and Lefebvre, brought up the rear. It will be remembered that Gourgaud was an able artillerist; Lefebvre, it was hoped, could rouse the suburban populations for the defence of Paris. At Sens Napoleon heard that the enemy was ready to attack; at Fontainebleau that the Empress had fled toward the Loire; at Essonnes he was told that the decisive battle was raging; and about ten miles from the capital, at the wretched posting-station of La Cour de France, deep in the night, fell the fatal blow. Paris had surrendered. The terrible certainty was assured by the bearer of the tidings, Belliard, a cavalry officer despatched with his troop by Mortier to prepare quarters for his own and Marmont’s men.
Maria Louisa had played her role of Empress-regent as well as might be expected from a woman of 23 with slender abilities; only once in his letters did the Emperor chide her, and that was for a fault at that time venial in European royalty: receiving a high official, in this case the arch-chancellor, in her bedchamber. On the whole, she had been dignified and conciliatory; once she rose to a considerable height, pronouncing before the senate with great effect a stirring speech composed by her husband and forwarded from his headquarters.
About her were grouped a motley council: Joseph, gentle but efficient; Savary, underhanded and unwarlike; Clarke, working in the war ministry like a machine; Talleyrand, secretly plotting against Napoleon, whose title of vice-grand elector he wore with outward suavity; Cambaceres, wise but unready; Montalivet, adroit but cautious. Yet, while there was no one combining ability, enthusiasm, and energy, the equipment of troops had gone on with great regularity, and each day regiments of half-drilled, half-equipped recruits had departed for the seat of war. The national guards who garrisoned the city, some twelve thousand in all, had forgotten their imperialism, having grown very sensitive to the shafts of royalist wit; yet they held their peace and had performed the round of their duties. Everything had outwardly been so quiet and regular that Napoleon actually contemplated a new levy, but the emptiness of the arsenals compelled him to dismiss the idea. Theoretically a fortified military depot, Paris was really an antiquated fortress with arsenals of useless weapons. Spasmodic efforts had been made to throw up redoubts before the walls, but they had failed from lack of energy in the military administration.
A close examination of what lay beneath the surface of Parisian society revealed much that was dangerous. Talleyrand’s house was a nest of intrigue. Imperial prefects like Pasquier and Chabrol were calm but perfunctory. The Talleyrand circle grew larger and bolder every day. Moreover, it had influential members—de Pradt, Louis, Vitrolles, Royer-Collard, Lambrecht, Gregoire, and Garat, together with other high functionaries in all departments. Bourrienne developed great activity as an extortioner and briber; the great royalist irreconcilables, Montmorency, Noailles, Denfort, Fitz-James, and Montesquiou, were less and less careful to conceal their activity.
Jaucourt, one of Joseph’s chamberlains, was a spy carrying the latest news from headquarters to the plotters. “If the Emperor were killed,” he wrote on March 17th, “we should then have the King of Rome and the regency of his mother…. The Emperor dead, we could appoint a council which would satisfy all opinions. Burn this letter.” The programme is clear when we recall that the little King of Rome was not three years old. Napoleon was well aware of the increasing chaos, and smartly reproved Savary from Rheims.
But Talleyrand was undaunted. At first he appears to have desired a violent death for Napoleon, in the hope of furthering his own schemes during a long imperial regency. At all events, he ardently opposed the departure of the Empress and the King of Rome from Paris. Nevertheless it was he who despatched Vitrolles, the passionate royalist, to Nesselrode with a letter in invisible ink which, when deciphered, turned out to be an inscrutable riddle capable of two interpretations. “The bearer of this deserves all confidence. Hear him and know me. It is time to be plain. You are walking on crutches; use your legs and will to do what you can.”
Lannes had long before stigmatized the unfrocked bishop as a mess of filth in a silk stocking; Murat said he could take a kick from behind without showing it in his face; in the last meeting of the council of state before the renewal of hostilities, Napoleon fixed his eyes on the sphinx-like cripple and said: “I know I am leaving in Paris other enemies than those I am going to fight.” His fellow-conspirators were scarcely less bitter in their dislike than his avowed enemies. “You don’t know the monkey,” said Dalberg to Vitrolles; “he would not risk burning the tip of his paw even if all the chestnuts were for himself.”
Yet, master of intrigue, he pursued the even tenor of his course, scattering innuendos, distributing showers of anonymous pamphlets, smuggling English newspapers into the city, in fact working every wire of conspiracy. Surprised by the minister of police in an equivocal meeting with de Pradt, he burst out into hollow laughter, his companion joined in the peal, and even Savary himself found the merriment infectious.
Toward the close of March the populace displayed a perilous sensitiveness to all these influences. The London Times of March 15th, which was read by many in the capital, asked what pity Blucher and the Cossacks would show to Paris on the day of their vengeance, the editor suggesting that possibly as he wrote the famous town was already in ashes. Such suggestions created something very like a panic, and a week later the climax was reached. When the fugitive peasants from the surrounding country began to take refuge in the capital they found business at a standstill, the shops closed, the streets deserted, the householders preparing for flight.
From the 23rd to the 28th there was no news from Napoleon; the Empress and council heard only of Marmont’s defeat. They felt that a decision must be taken, and finally on the 28th the imperial officials held a council. The facts were plainly stated by Clarke; he had but 43 thousand men, all told, wherewith to defend the capital, and in consequence it was determined to send the Empress and her son to Rambouillet on the very next day.
This fatal decision was taken partly through fear, but largely in deference to Napoleon’s letter containing the classical allusion to Astyanax. The very men who took it believed that the Parisian masses would have died for the young Napoleon, and deplored the decision they had reached. “Behold what a fall in history!” said Talleyrand to Savary on parting. “To attach one’s name to a few adventures instead of affixing it to an age…. But it is not for everybody to be engulfed in the ruins of this edifice.” From that hour the restoration of the Bourbons was a certainty.
It was a mournful procession of imperial carriages which next morning filed slowly through the city, attracting slight attention from a few silent onlookers, and passed on toward Rambouillet. The baby king had shrieked and clutched at the doors as he was torn away from his apartments in the Tuileries, and would not be appeased; his mother and attendants were in consternation at the omen, and all thoughtful persons who considered the situation were convinced that the dissolution of the Empire was at hand.
A deputation from the national guard had sought in vain to dissuade the Empress from her course; their failure and the distant booming of cannon produced widespread depression throughout the city, which was not removed by a spirited proclamation from Joseph declaring that his brother was on the heels of the invaders. All the public functionaries seemed inert, and everybody knew that, even though the populace should rise, there was no adequate means of resistance either in men or in arms or in proper fortifications.
Clarke alone began to display energy; with Joseph’s assistance, what preparations were possible at so late an hour were made: six companies were formed from the recruits at hand, the national guard was put under arms, the students of the polytechnic school were called out for service, communication with Marmont was secured, and by late afternoon Montmartre, Belleville, and St. Denis were feebly fortified. The allies had been well aware that what was to be done must be done before the dreaded Emperor should arrive, and on that same morning their vanguard had summoned the town; but during the parley their generals began to feel the need of greater strength, and further asked an armistice of four hours.
This was granted on the usual condition that within its duration no troops should be moved; but the implied promise was perfidiously broken, and at nightfall both Alexander and Frederick William, accompanied by their forces, were in sight of the far-famed city. Dangers, hardships, bygone insults and humiliations, all were forgotten in a general tumult of joy, wrote Danilevsky, a Russian officer. Alexander alone was pensive, well knowing that, should the city hold out two days, reinforcements from the west might make its capture impossible until Napoleon should arrive. Accordingly he took virtual command, and issued stringent orders preparatory for the assault early next morning.
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