What happened in France between the first days of November, 1813, when Napoleon reached St. Cloud, and the close of the year, is so incredible that it scarcely seems to belong in the pages of sober history. Of 575 thousand Frenchmen, strictly excluding Germans and Poles, who had been sent to war during 1812 and 1813, about 300 thousand were prisoners or shut up in distant garrisons, and 175 thousand were dead or missing; therefore a 100 thousand or thereabouts remained under arms and ready for active service. By various decrees of the Emperor and the senate, 936 thousand more were called to arms: a 160 thousand from the classes between 1804 and 1814, whether they had once served or not; a 160 thousand from the class of 1815; 1,76,500 were to be enrolled in the regular national guard, and 140 thousand in a home guard; finally, in a comprehensive sweep from all the classes between 1804 and 1814 inclusive, every possible man was to be drawn. This, it was estimated, would produce 300 thousand more.
It is easy to exaggerate the significance of these enormous figures, for to the layman they would seem to mean that every male capable of bearing arms was to be taken. But this was far from being the case; contrary to the general impression, the population of France had been and was steadily increasing. In spite of all the butcheries of foreign and civil wars, the number of inhabitants was growing at the rate of half a million yearly, and the country could probably have furnished three times the number called out. Moreover, less than a third of the 936 thousand were ever organized, and not more than an eighth of them fought.
This disproportion between plan and fulfilment was due partly to official incapacity or worse, partly to a popular resistance which was not due to disaffection. It speaks volumes for the state of the country that even the hated flying columns, with their thorough procedure, could not find the men, especially the fathers, husbands, and only sons, who were the solitary supports of many families. The fields were tilled by the spades of women and children, for there were neither horses to draw nor men to hold the plows. Government pawn-shops were gorged, and the government storehouses were bursting with manufactured wares for which there was no market; government securities were worth less than half their face, the currency had disappeared, and usury was rampant. Yet it seems certain that four fifths of the people associated none of these miseries with Napoleonic empire.
The generation which had grown to maturity under Napoleon saw only one side of his activities: the majestic public works he had inaugurated, the glories of France and the splendors of empire during the intervals of peace, the exhaustion and abasement of her foes in a long series of splendid campaigns—all this they associated with the imperial rule, and desired what they supposed was a simple thing, the Empire and peace.
The other fifth was, however, thoroughly aroused. When the legislature convened on December 19th, and the diplomatic correspondence was so cleverly arranged and presented as to make the allies appear implacable, an address to the throne was passed, amid thunderous applause and by a large majority, which virtually called for a return to constitutional government as the price of additional war supplies. In sober moments even the most ardent liberals were ashamed, feeling that this was not an opportune moment for disorganizing such administration as there was by calls for the reform of the constitution.
Only one question was imperative, the awful responsibility they had for the national identity. The general public was so outraged by the spectacle that the deputies reconsidered their action, and by a vote of 254-223 struck out the obnoxious clause. But this did not appease Napoleon, who made no attempt to conceal his rage, and prorogued the chamber in scorn. His support was ample in the almost universal conviction that at such a moment there was no time for parleying about abstract questions of political rights; but every cavilling deputy had some friends at home, and in a crisis where the very existence of France was jeopardized there were agitations by the reactionary radicals. The royalists kept silent then, and for months later, contenting themselves with biting innuendos or witty double meanings; drinking, for instance, to ‘the Emperor’s last victory,’ when the newspapers announced “the last victory of the Emperor.”
The first conscription from the classes of 1808-1814 was thoroughly successful, the second attempt to glean from them was an utter failure; the effort to forestall the draft of 1815 met with resistance, and was abandoned. It was impossible to organize the home guards and reserves, for they rebelled or escaped, and local danger had to be averted by local volunteers who were designated as ‘sedentary’ because they could not be ordered away.
By the end of January not more than 20 thousand men had been secured for general service from all classes other than the first—at least that was approximately the number in the various camps of instruction. In order to arm and equip the recruits, Napoleon had recourse to his private treasure, drawing 55 million Francs from the vaults of the Tuileries for that purpose. The remaining ten were transferred at intervals to Blois. But all his treasure could not buy what did not exist. The best military stores were in the heart of Europe; the French arsenals could afford only antiquated and almost useless supplies. The recruits were armed, some with shot-guns and knives, some with old muskets, the use of which they did not know; they were for the most part without uniforms, and wore bonnets, blouses, and sabots. There were not half enough horses for the scanty artillery and cavalry. Worse than all, there was no time for instruction in the manual and tactics. On one occasion a boy conscript was found standing inactive under a fierce musketry fire; with artless intrepidity he remarked that he believed he could aim as well as anybody if he only knew how to load his gun!
The disaffected, though few, were powerful and active, suborning the prefects and civic authorities by every device, issuing proclamations which promised anything and everything, and procuring plans of fortified places for the allies. Talleyrand began to utter oracular innuendos about the vindictiveness of the allies, the desertion of Murat, the sack of Paris, and various half-truths more dangerous even than lies. The air was so full of rumors that, although there was no widespread revolutionary movement, there were now and then serious panics; the town of Chaumont surrendered to a solitary Wurtemberg horseman.
But when the populace of the country at large began to wonder who the coming Bourbon might be, and what he would take back from the present possessors of royal and ecclesiastical estates, they were staggered. People in the cities heard with some satisfaction the strains of the ‘Marseillaise,’ which by order of imperial agents were once again ground out around the streets by the hand-organs. Napoleon walked the avenues of Paris without escort, and was wildly cheered; the Empress and her little son were produced on public occasions with dramatic success, and popular wit dubbed the boy conscripts by the name of “Marie Louises.” The little men showed a grim determination and eventually a sublime courage, but they never could acquire the veteran steadfastness which wins battles. Journals, theaters, music-halls, and public balls were all managed in the interest of imperial patriotism; imperial tyranny dealt ruthlessly with suspicious characters. Yet the imperialists had their doubts, and many, like Savary, threw an anchor to windward by storing treasure at distant points, and sending their families to safe retreats. On the whole, the balance of public opinion at the opening of 1814 was overwhelmingly imperialist both in the cities and in the country. Men ardently desired peace, but they wanted it with honour and under the Empire.
That the Empire desired peace seemed to be proved by steps for the release of its two most important prisoners, the King of Spain and the Pope. Wellington thought that if the former had been despatched directly into his kingdom on December 8th, the day on which the conditions between himself and the Emperor were signed, England would have found the further conduct of the war impossible. Talleyrand, already deep in royalist plots, must have been of the same opinion, for he did not advise haste, but craftily suggested to his prisoner that the provisional government of Spain might refuse to accept him as king unless the treaty of release had been previously ratified by the Cortes.
Accordingly it was referred to them, and, since the liberals desired the assent to their new constitution of a king not under duress, by their influence it was rejected. It was not until March, 1814, that Ferdinand was unconditionally released, and this delay proved fatal to Napoleon’s interests in Spain. The liberals could no longer fight for free institutions, because it was then clear that the dynastic conservatism of Europe was to win a temporary victory. In about six months King Ferdinand undid the progressive work of six years, and Spain relapsed into absolutism and ecclesiasticism, with all their attendant evils. Nevertheless, France interpreted the conduct of the Emperor as indicating an earnest desire for peace, and this feeling had been strengthened by the absolutely unconditional release of the Pope on January twenty-second. This apparently gracious concession was effective among the masses, who did not know, as the Emperor did, that the allies were already on French soil.
The very next day Napoleon performed his last official act, which was one of great courage both physical and moral. The national guard in Paris had been reorganized, but its leaders had never been thoroughly loyal, many of them being royalists, some radical republicans, and the disaffection of both classes had been heightened by recent events. But the officers were nevertheless summoned to the Tuileries; the risk was doubled by the fact that they came armed.
Drawn up in the vast chamber known as that of the marshals, they stood expectant; the great doors were thrown open, and there entered the Emperor, accompanied only by his consort and their child in the arms of his governess, Mme. de Montesquiou. Napoleon announced simply that he was about to put himself at the head of his army, hoping, by the aid of God and the valour of his troops, to drive the enemy beyond the frontiers. There was silence. Then, taking in one hand that of the Empress, and leading forward his child by the other, he continued, “I intrust the Empress and the King of Rome to the courage of the national guard.” Still silence. After a moment, with suppressed emotion, he concluded, “My wife and my son.” No generous-hearted Frenchman could withstand such an appeal; breaking ranks by a spontaneous impulse, the listeners started forward in a mass, and shook the very walls with their cry, “Long live the Emperor!” Many shed tears, and felt, as they withdrew in respectful silence, a new sense of devotion welling up in their hearts. On the eve of his departure, the Emperor received a numerously signed address from the very men whose loyalty he had hitherto had just reason to suspect.
It was 4 in the morning of January 25th when Napoleon left for Chalons. From that moment he was no longer Emperor. During the long winter nights just past he had wrought with an intensity and a feverish activity which he had never surpassed, sparing neither himself nor others, displaying no consideration for prejudice or honest opposition, calling on every Frenchman to sacrifice everything for France, to which, as he vehemently asserted, he himself was more necessary than she to him. If he had come honestly to believe what millions of others believed, it was little wonder; he had thenceforth but one aim—to prove that he was, as of yore, the first general of France, the only one able to save the country in an hour when all her glories were falling in wreck about her. His strategic plans, immense and intricate as was his task, were complete and excellent.
The first was intended to prevent invasion by way of Liege, the most direct line and that which Prussia preferred. The second, which was partly defensive, was the one eventually used against the clumsy form of advance actually chosen by the invaders. Of the two, the former was the more brilliant, but the second was almost as clever. By it the Rhine bank was divided into three parts for purposes of defence. Macdonald was stationed at Cologne to protect the lower course; Marmont was to guard the central stretch, and they two divided between them the remnants of the army which had been swept out of Germany; Victor was stationed on the upper course to command the garrisons of the great frontier fortifications and strengthen himself by the new levies; Bertrand remained as a sort of rear post on the right bank of the river at Kastel, opposite Mainz. All told, these generals had at first only 50 thousand men.
The allies no sooner obtained possession of central Europe than they outdid its recent master in every species of exaction. The countries which had formed the Confederacy of the Rhine were compelled almost to double the number of the contingents they had raised for France, and to organize every fencible man into either the first or second line of reserves, called by the old feudal terms of ban and arriere-ban. At the same time the allies demanded and obtained new subsidies both of money and arms from Great Britain. In the three armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, as they stood on the Rhine, there were ready by January 1st about 285 thousand men.
By the end of February the army-lists of France, excluding the national guards, displayed a total of 650 thousand men; the coalition, including England, had registered nearly a million. Deducting 40 per cent as ample to cover all shortcomings, we may say that France, with 390 thousand in the ranks, men and boys, faced Europe with 600 thousand full-grown men. These figures include the French armies of Catalonia, of the Pyrenees, of Italy, and of the Netherlands, together with the garrisons in all the strong places then held by France on both sides of the Rhine; they also include the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian reserves, with the national armies of Holland, Spain, and Italy.
Aside from the centrifugal forces inherent in the coalition, there was one which threatened its disintegration: the erratic character of the great Gascon who represented Sweden. Bernadotte’s first care, after the battle of Leipsic, was to move north and secure the long-coveted prize of Norway. Ever mindful of the hint about a French crown, which Alexander had thrown out as still another bait at Abo, he gave as his parting admonition the transparent advice that the coming campaign should be confined to a frontier invasion of France, and at Hamburg he actually offered Davout, as the price of surrender, a safe return for himself and his army to their native land! This was too much; Alexander was furious, and the schemer was peremptorily ordered to leave a sufficient investing force before the city and return with the rest of his army to the lower Rhine. There he was suffered to remain in idleness, the task assigned to him being that of watching the Netherlands; two of his best corps were withdrawn from him and assigned to Blucher.
Nor was Napoleon free from his thorn in the flesh. In a bulletin published by him after the retreat from Moscow was a passage which implied some censure of Murat for his lack of stability. This both the King of Naples and his spouse bitterly resented, the latter roundly abusing her brother in their correspondence. This was an excellent pretext for desertion when the general crash appeared imminent, and at Erfurt the dashing and gallant, but weak and testy, monarch decamped.
Hastening south, he entered at once into alliance with Austria, and then, putting himself at the head of eighty thousand Neapolitans, set out for Rome, waging a terrific warfare of proclamations. Eugene, too—and this was an elemental disaster—was virtually checkmated by the defection of his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, which opened the Tyrol to the allies. All Italy was consequently lost. Augereau, whose feeble loyalty to Napoleon was already at the vanishing-point, had been appointed to take forty thousand conscripts, collect any straggling soldiers he could find in south-eastern France, and keep open the door out of Italy for some or all of Eugene’s veterans, with whose assistance it was hoped the marshal could form an army for the defence of the Vosges Mountains. But Eugene, having fought the indecisive battle of Roverbello, and finding himself in a sorry plight from both the military and political points of view, could send no reinforcements until April, when finally he concluded an armistice releasing his army. Augereau therefore found himself opposite Bubna at Geneva with an ineffective force, and with very little heart to wield what he had. This ended Napoleon’s grand scheme for uniting the forces of Italy, Naples, Switzerland, and France.
Prussia was now the ablest as well as the bitterest of Napoleon’s foes, Stein, Blucher, Gneisenau, and their friends aiming at nothing short of annihilating the Napoleonic power. This was, no doubt, due in part to a thirst for revenge; but in the main it was due to the longing for such a leadership in Germany as would spread abroad the new doctrines of liberal and constitutional monarchy, in order to restrain Austria’s ever-increasing influence. The councils of the allies presented an amusing spectacle. The Prussians urged an immediate advance by the best line for invasion, that, namely, from Liege and Brussels; but the Austrians, except Radetzky, drew back, fearing Prussia almost equally with France.
The Czar held the balance, but his scales were very sensitive, inclining often toward Prussia, but settling in the end to a compromise suggested by Schwarzenberg and Metternich. Having imitated Napoleon in his practice of war requisitions, the allies now determined to imitate him in contempt for international law, and to violate Swiss neutrality. The plan which they adopted was to throw their main army into France by way of Basel, and thus turn the line of frowning fortresses behind the Rhine, as well as the Vosges Mountains. Blucher was to cross the middle Rhine, and Bulow, with thirty thousand men, was to cooperate with the English troops under Graham in the Netherlands.
The whole scheme was unmilitary, but it exactly suited Metternich, who, having on January 13th first learned of Bernadotte’s understanding with the Czar about the crown of France, was very uneasy. Both he and Schwarzenberg desired to end the war on the frontier, if possible; Prussia’s power and Alexander’s ambitions for European preponderance were far more dangerous to Austria than a Napoleonic empire confined to France.
Blucher, leaving 28 thousand men before Mainz, crossed the Saar on January ninth with forty-seven thousand; Schwarzenberg, with the main army arrayed in four columns, 209 thousand strong, crossed the Rhine at or near Basel and moved toward Langres. The thin, straggling French columns began to retreat concentrically toward Chalons on the Marne. At the opening of the second stage in the campaign Blucher had invested the Mosel fortresses, and was advancing, with less than 30 thousand men, toward Arcis on the Aube; Schwarzenberg was in and about Langres; and the French were concentrated on a line from Vitry-le-Francois to St. Dizier. Napoleon reached Chalons on the 26th, having left Joseph to represent him in Paris. The wily strategist, feeble as was his strength, had momentarily secured the advantage over his unwieldy foe, having wedged himself between the invading armies, and being quite strong enough, with the forty thousand soldiers in his ranks, to cope with Blucher.
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