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 Blucher, 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 23 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. 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 Blucher 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 defence 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 Blucher 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 defence of Paris, because it would, in his own words, “give the enemy a great shock, and result in unforeseen circumstances.”
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—16 thousand French with twenty-four thousand five hundred of their foe. It was irregular and indecisive, but Napoleon held his own.
The neighbouring 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 13th 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 21st 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 19th 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 22nd, 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 9th 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 Blucher’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 Blucher 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 8th 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 Blucher 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 25 thousand of the allies in the sharp but indecisive skirmishes before Arcis; the loss of the former was 1800, that of the allies 2700. 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 27500 men—quite enough, he believed, to demoralize the retreating Austrians. It was 10 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 100 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 45 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 Blucher 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 Blucher 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 Blucher, 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 8th 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 20th the place was assaulted. The French general had 21500 men under his immediate command, 6800 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 32 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 23rd. 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 28th, 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; 2000 were captured and 500 killed. Thanks to Marmont’s disobedience and bad judgment, Blucher had opened communications with Schwarzenberg, and both were marching as swiftly as possible direct to Paris. Of this Napoleon remained ignorant until the 28th.
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 23rd 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 Blucher, 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 4000 men, and captured four cannon. On the 21st 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 24th, the junction between Blucher 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 humour 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 favouring 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 Blucher, and on the 25th 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. Blucher, who from his unremitted ardour had won the name of “Marshal Forward,” was transported with joy.
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 25th before Marmont and Mortier effected their junction, and then, although about 16 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 29th 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 27th to abandon his charge, a military depot full of ammunition and supplies, which was essential to the safety of Paris.
The garrison consisted of 6000 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 Blucher’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 29th 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 Blucher’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?
