The History of Napoleon Buonaparte Part 24

At eight in the morning of the 18th it began, and continued until nightfall without intermission. Buonaparte had contracted on the south, as well as on the north, the circuit of his defence; and never was his generals.h.i.+p, or the gallantry of his troops, more brilliantly displayed than throughout this terrible day. Calm and collected, the Emperor again presided in person on the southern side, and again, where he was present, in spite of the vast superiority of the enemy's numbers, the French maintained their ground to the end. On the north, the arrival of Bernadotte enabled Blucher to push his advantages with irresistible effect; and the situation of Marmont and Ney (now also stationed on that side) was further perplexed by the shameful defection of 10,000 Saxons, who went over with all their artillery to the enemy, in the very midst of the battle. The two marshals, therefore, were compelled to retire from point to point, and at nightfall lay almost close to the walls of Leipsig. Three cannon shot, as before, marked the general termination of the battle.

The loss on either side had been great. Napoleon's army consisted chiefly of very young men--many were merely boys--the produce of his forestalled conscriptions: yet they fought as bravely as the guard. The behaviour of the Germans, on the other hand, at length considering their freedom and independence as hanging on the fortune of a single field, had been answerable to the deep enthusiasm of that thoughtful people.

The burghers of Leipsig surveyed from their towers and steeples one of the longest, sternest, and bloodiest of battles: and the situation of the King of Saxony, who remained all the while in the heart of his ancient city, may be imagined.

Napoleon gave orders at midnight for the commencement of the inevitable retreat; and while the darkness lasted, the troops continued to file through the town, and across the two bridges, over the Pleisse, beyond its walls. One of these bridges was a temporary fabric, and it broke down ere daylight came to show to the enemy the movement of the French.

The confusion necessarily accompanying the march of a whole army, through narrow streets and upon a single bridge, was fearful. The Allies stormed at the gates on either side, and, but for the heroism of Macdonald and Poniatowski, to whom Napoleon entrusted the defence of the suburbs, it is doubted whether he himself could have escaped in safety.

At nine in the morning of the 19th, he bade farewell for ever to the King of Saxony, who remained to make what terms he could with the allied sovereigns. The battle was ere then raging all round the walls.

At eleven o'clock the Allies had gathered close to the bridge from either wing; and the walls over against it had been entrusted to Saxons, who now, like their brethren of the day before, turned their fire on the French. The officer to whom Napoleon had committed the task of blowing up the bridge, when the advance of the enemy should render this necessary, conceived that the time was come, and set fire to his train.

The crowd of men, urging each other on the point of safety, could not at once be stopped. Soldiers and horses, cannons and wains, rolled headlong into the deep though narrow river; which renewed, though on a smaller scale, the horrors of the Beresina. Marshal Macdonald swam the stream in safety: the gallant Poniatowski, the hope and pride of Poland, had been twice wounded ere he plunged his horse into the current, and he sank to rise no more. Twenty-five thousand Frenchmen, the means of escape entirely cut off, laid down their arms within the city. Four Princes, each entering at the head of his own victorious army, met at noon in the great market-place at Leipsig: and all the exultation of that solemn hour would have been partaken by the inhabitants, but for the fate of their own sovereign, personally esteemed and beloved, who now vainly entreated to be admitted to the presence of the conquerors, and was sent forthwith as a prisoner of war to Berlin.

Napoleon, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, lost at Leipsig at least 50,000 men.

The retreat of the French through Saxony was accompanied with every disaster which a hostile peasantry, narrowness of supplies, and the persevering pursuit of the Cossacks and other light troops could inflict on a disordered and disheartened ma.s.s of men. The soldiers moved on, while under the eye of Napoleon, in gloomy silence: wherever he was not present, they set every rule of discipline at nought, and were guilty of the most frightful excesses. The Emperor conducted himself as became a great mind amidst great misfortunes. He appeared at all times calm and self-possessed; receiving, every day that he advanced, new tidings of evil.

He halted for two days at Erfurt, where extensive magazines had been established, employing all his energies in the restoration of discipline: and would have remained longer, had he not learned that the victors of Leipsig were making progress on either flank of his march, while the Bavarians (so recently his allies), reinforced by some Austrian divisions, were moving rapidly to take post between him and the Rhine. He resumed his march, therefore, on the 25th. It was here that Murat quitted the army. Notwithstanding the unpleasant circ.u.mstances under which he had retired to Naples in January, Joachim had reappeared when the Emperor fixed his headquarters at Dresden in the summer, and served with his usual gallantry throughout the rest of the campaign. The state of Italy now demanded his presence; and the two brothers-in-law, after all their differences, embraced each other warmly and repeatedly at parting--as if under a mutual presentiment that they were parting to meet no more.

The Austro-Bavarians had taken up a position amidst the woods near Hanau before the Emperor approached the Mayne. He came up with them in the morning of the 30th, and his troops charged on the instant with the fury of desperation. Buonaparte cut his way through ere nightfall; and Marmont, with the rear, had equal success on the 31st. In these actions there fell 6000 of the French; but the enemy had 10,000 killed or wounded, and lost 4000 prisoners, and these losses would have been far greater but for the ready wit of a patriotic miller, who, watching the tide of battle, suddenly let the water into his mill-stream, and thus interposed a seasonable obstacle between the French cavalry and some German infantry, whom they had been driving before them; a service which the King of Prussia subsequently rewarded with munificence.

The pursuit on the road which Napoleon adopted had been entrusted to the Austrians, who urged it with far less vigour than the Prussians under the fiery guidance of Blucher would probably have exerted. No considerable annoyance, therefore, succeeded to the battle of Hanau. The relics of the French host at length pa.s.sed the Rhine; and the Emperor having quitted them at Mentz, arrived in Paris on the 9th of November.

The armies of Austria and Prussia at length halted on the Rhine. To the Germans of every age this great river has been the object of an affection and reverence scarcely inferior to that with which an Egyptian contemplates the Nile, or the Indian his Ganges. When these brave bands having achieved the rescue of their native soil, came in sight of this its ancient landmark, the burden of an hundred songs, they knelt, and shouted _the Rhine! the Rhine!_ as with the heart and voice of one man.

They that were behind rushed on, hearing the cry, in expectation of another battle.

[Footnote 63: Hoffman's Account of his own Life.]

[Footnote 64: Blucher was created Prince of Wahlstadt.]

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Declaration of the Allies at Frankfort--Revolution of Holland--Liberation of the Pope and Ferdinand VII.--Obstinacy of Napoleon--His Military Preparations--Dissolution of the Legislative Senate.

Of the events which crowded upon each other in the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks after the overthrow of Leipsig, any one would in times less extraordinary have been sufficient to form an epoch in history. Having once reached the summit of his greatness, the long-favoured child of fortune was destined to sink even more rapidly than he had ascended.

Every day added some new alliance to the camp of his foreign enemies; and every hour that pa.s.sed brought with it clearer indications that the French nation (considered apart from the army) were weary utterly of the very names of War, and Ambition, and Napoleon.

The fabric of his German empire crumbled into nothing, as at the spell of a magician. Hanover returned to the dominion of its rightful sovereign immediately. Brunswick, Hesse, and the other states which had formed Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, followed the same example. The Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved for ever; and the princes who had adhered to that league were permitted to expiate their, in most cases involuntary, error, by now bringing a year's revenue and a double conscription to the banner of the Allies. Bernadotte turned from Leipsig to reduce the garrisons which Napoleon, in the rashness of his presumption, had disdained to call in, even when compelled to evacuate Dresden; and one by one they fell, though in most cases--particularly at Dantzick, Wirtemberg, and Hamburg--the resistance was obstinate and long. The Crown Prince--having witnessed the reduction of some of these fortresses, and entrusted the siege of the others to his lieutenants--invaded Denmark, and the government of that country perceived the necessity of acceding to the European alliance, by whatever fine its long adhesion to Napoleon might be expiated. The treaty was concluded at Kiel, on the 14th of January, 1814. Sweden yielded Pomerania to Denmark; Denmark gave up Norway to Sweden; and 10,000 Danish troops having joined his standard, Bernadotte then turned his face towards the Netherlands.

In Holland, no sooner had the story of Leipsig reached it than a complete, though bloodless revolution was effected. The cry of _orange boven_, "up with the orange," burst simultaneously from every part of the country: the French governors, yielding to a power which they perceived the absurdity of attempting to resist, retired on the instant, and the long-exiled Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, returning in triumph from England, a.s.sumed the administration of affairs in November, 1813. A few French garrisons remained shut up in strong places, of which the most important was Bergen-op-Zoom; and Bernadotte now co-operated with the Russian corps of Witzingerode, the Prussians of Bulow, and a British force of 10,000, under Sir T. Graham,[65] with the view of completing the deliverance of Holland; which was ere long effected, with the exception of Bergen-op-Zoom, from whose walls the English were repulsed with dreadful slaughter.

On the side of Italy the aspect of affairs was almost as dark. General Hiller, having conducted an Austrian army through the Tyrol, as soon as the decision of his government was taken, had defeated Eugene Beauharnois, and driven him behind the Adige. The Croats, the Tyrolese, all the Illyrians were rising, and--so far from giving aid in the defence of the French soil--it was manifest that the Viceroy could hardly hope to maintain himself much longer in Lombardy. An English naval force had already taken Trieste: the Adriatic was free; and, to complete Napoleon's perplexity as to this quarter, it was no longer a secret that Murat, his brother-in-law, his creature, was negotiating with Austria, and willing, provided that Naples were guaranteed to him, to array the force of that state also on the side of the confederacy.

As little comfort could Buonaparte derive if he turned to the Pyrenees.

He had sent Soult thither from Dresden, to retrieve if possible the fortunes of the army defeated in June at Vittoria; and that most able general, with considerable reinforcements, had entered Spain, and attempted to relieve the siege of Pamplona--of which strong place, as well as St. Sebastian Lord Wellington had resolved to be master before he should pa.s.s the French frontier with his victorious army. But Soult also had been twice defeated; the fortresses had fallen: except a detached, and now useless force under Suchet in Catalonia, there remained no longer a single French soldier in Spain. The Peninsula had at length been delivered by the genius of Wellington; and his army were cantoned within the territory of France ere the close of the campaign.

Such were the tidings which reached Napoleon from his Italian and Spanish frontiers, at the very moment when it was necessary for him to make head against the Russians, the Austrians, and the Germans, chiefly armed and supplied at the expense of England, and now rapidly concentrating in three great ma.s.ses on different points of the valley of the Rhine.

Nor were even these the worst tidings. Two parties, of which one had not of late years attracted much public notice, and the other had as long wanted efficient leaders, were well-known ere now to be labouring throughout France, though not as yet in conjunction, for one common purpose--the deposition of Buonaparte. The royalists had recovered a great share of their ancient influence in the society of Paris, even before the disasters of the Russian expedition. The exiled Bourbon had found means to distribute proclamations early in 1813: his agents had ever since been exerting themselves indefatigably, both in Paris and in the provinces, especially in those of the west. The Mayor of Bourdeaux (Lynch) was at the head of a loyal a.s.sociation, comprehending the chief inhabitants of that great city, and already in communication with the Marquess of Wellington, who, however, felt it his duty to check them on this occasion, lest the progress of events should render their efforts fruitless to Louis, and fatal to themselves. La Roche Jacquelein (a name already so ill.u.s.trious in La Vendee) had once more prepared that faithful province for insurrection. Saintonge had been organised by the Abbe Jaqualt; Perigord by Messieurs de la Roche Aymon; and in the countries about Nantes, Angers, and Orleans, great bands, consisting partly of Buonaparte's own refractory conscripts, were in training under the Counts De L'Orge, D'Antichamp, and Suzannet. The royalist gentlemen of Touraine, to the number of 1000, were headed by the Duke of Duras; those of Brittany were mustering around Count Vittray, and various chieftains of the old Chouans; and Cadoudal, brother to Georges, was among the peasantry of Varnes. These names, most of them well-known in the early period of the Revolution, are of themselves sufficient to show how effectually the Buonapartean government had endeavoured, during thirteen years, to extinguish the old fire of loyalty. It had all the while glowed under the ashes, and it was now ready to burst forth s.h.i.+ning and bright. The Bourbon princes watched the course of events with eager hope. The Duke of Berri was already in Jersey, Monsieur (now Charles X.) in the Netherlands, and the Duke D'Angouleme about to make his appearance at the headquarters of Wellington, in Bearn, the cradle of his race. The republicans, meanwhile,--those enthusiasts of the Revolution who had in the beginning considered Buonaparte's consulate as a dictators.h.i.+p forced on France by the necessities of the time, and to be got rid of as soon as opportunity should serve--and who had long since been wholly alienated from him, by his a.s.sumption of the imperial dignity, his creation of orders and n.o.bles, his alliance with the House of Austria, and the complete despotism of his internal government--these men had observed, with hardly less delight than the royalists, that succession of reverses which darkens the story of the two last campaigns. Finally, not a few of Napoleon's own ministers and generals, irritated by his personal violence, and hopeless of breathing in peace while that fierce and insatiable spirit continued at the head of affairs, were well prepared to take a part in his overthrow; nor was it long ere all these internal enemies, at whatever distance their principles and motives might have seemed to place them from each other, were content to overlook their differences and work together.

Talleyrand, there can be little doubt, and others only second to him in influence, were in communication with the Bourbons, before the Allies crossed the Rhine. _Ere then_, said Napoleon at St. Helena, _I felt the reins slipping from my hands_.

The allied princes issued, at Frankfort on the Mayne, a manifesto, the firm and temperate language of which was calculated to make a strong impression in France, as well as elsewhere. The sovereigns announced their belief that it was for the interest of Europe that France should continue to be a powerful state, and their willingness to concede to her, even now, greater extent of territory than the Bourbon kings had ever claimed--the boundaries, namely, of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Their sole object in invading France was to put an end to the authority which Napoleon had usurped over other nations. They disclaimed any wish to interfere with the internal government--it was the right of the nation to arrange that as they pleased; the hostility of Europe was against, not France, but Napoleon--and even as to Napoleon, against not his person, but his system. The same terms were tendered to Napoleon himself, through M. de St. Aignan, one of his own ministers, who happened to have fallen into the hands of the Allies at Weimar; and his answer was such that diplomatists from all the belligerent powers forthwith a.s.sembled at Manheim;--Lord Aberdeen appearing on the part of the government of England--a circ.u.mstance of itself sufficient to give to these new conferences a character of greater promise than had attended any of recent date.

But although Napoleon authorised Caulaincourt to commence this negotiation on his behalf, it was very soon manifest that he did so merely, as before, for the purpose of gaining time. His military preparations were urged with unremitting energy. New conscriptions were called for, and granted: every a.r.s.enal resounded with the fabrication of arms: and all the taxes were at once doubled by an imperial decree. The enslaved press proclaimed that the national ardour was thoroughly stirred, and with its thousand voices reminded the Allies of the effects of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation when about to touch the sacred soil of France in 1793.

But the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period was long since gone by.

In vain did Napoleon send special agents through the departments, calling on Frenchmen of all cla.s.ses to rise in arms for the protection of the soil. Coldness, languor, distrust met them almost everywhere. The numerical results even of the conscription-levy were far under what they should have been; and of those who did enrol themselves, mult.i.tudes daily deserted, and not a few took part with those royalist bands who were, as we have already seen, mustering and training zealously in almost every district that was either strong by nature, or remote from the great military establishments of Buonaparte. Nay, even the Legislative Senate, so long the silent and submissive slaves of all his imperial mandates, now dared to testify some sympathy with the feelings of the people, whom, in theory at least, they were supposed to represent. This was a novelty for which Napoleon had not been prepared, and he received it in a manner little likely to conciliate the attachment of wavering men. They ventured to hint that ancient France would remain to him, even if he accepted the proposals of the Allies, and that Louis XIV., when he desired to rouse the French people in his behalf in a moment of somewhat similar disaster, had not disdained to detail openly the sincere efforts which he had made to obtain an honourable peace. "Shame on you!" cried the Emperor, "Wellington has entered the south, the Russian menace the northern frontier, the Prussians, Austrians, and Bavarians, the eastern. Shame! Wellington is in France, and we have not risen _en ma.s.se_ to drive him back! All my Allies have deserted--the Bavarian has betrayed me. No peace till we have burned Munich! I demand a levy of 300,000 men--with this and what I already have, I shall see a million in arms. I will form a camp of 100,000 at Bourdeaux; another at Mentz; a third at Lyons. But I must have grown men--these boys serve only to enc.u.mber the hospitals and the road-sides.... Abandon Holland! sooner yield it back to the sea!

Senators, an impulse must be given--all must march--you are fathers of families--the heads of the nation--you must set the example. Peace! I hear of nothing but peace when all around should echo to the cry of war." The senate, nevertheless, drew up and presented a report which renewed his wrath. He reproached them openly with desiring to purchase inglorious ease for themselves at the expense of his honour. _I am the state_, said he, repeating a favourite expression: _What is the throne?--a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet--I am the state--I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public--people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France._

Having uttered these furious words, Napoleon repaired to his council of state, and there denounced the legislative senate, as composed of one part of traitors and eleven of dupes. _In place of a.s.sisting_, said he, _they impede me. Our att.i.tude alone could have repelled the enemy--they invite him. We should have presented a front of bra.s.s--they lay open wounds to his view. I will not suffer their report to be printed. They have not done their duty, but I will do mine--I dissolve the Legislative Senate_. And the Emperor did accordingly issue his decree, proroguing indefinitely that a.s.sembly, the last feeble shadow of popular representation in France.

The greatest confusion already began to pervade almost every department of the public service. The orders of the government were more peremptory than ever, and they were hourly more neglected. Whole bands of conscripts, guilty of endeavouring to escape, were tried by military commissions and decimated. Even close to the barriers of Paris such executions were constantly going on; and all in vain. The general feeling was that of sullen indifference. Hireling musicians paraded the streets, singing fine-new ballads in honour of the Emperor, to the long-forgotten tune of _ca ira_; the pa.s.sengers gathered round them, and drowned the strains in hooting and laughter. In every saloon discussions such as the police had long suppressed were urged without ceremony.

_This will not continue; the cord is too much stretched--it will soon be over_; such was the universal language. Talleyrand, hearing an officer express his alarm and astonishment, made answer in words which have pa.s.sed into a proverb:--_It is the beginning of the end._

During this uneasy pause, Napoleon at last dismissed his venerable prisoner of Fontainebleau. It is not unlikely that, in the altered state of Italy, he thought the arrival of the Pope might tend to produce some dissension among his enemies in that quarter; and, in effect, when Pius reached Rome, he found the capital of the Catholic world in the hands of Murat, who had ere then concluded his treaty with Francis, and was advancing into the north of Italy, in the view of co-operating in the campaign against Beauharnois, with the Austrians on the one side, and on the other, with an English force recently landed at Leghorn, under Lord William Bentinck.

He also unlocked the gates of Valencay on Ferdinand of Spain; and, without doubt, the letter, in which he announced this intention to his injured victim, will ever be recorded among the prime instances of his audacity. He informed Ferdinand that the English were spreading _jacobin principles_ in Spain, and attacking the foundations of the throne, the aristocracy, and the church; and that he, therefore, was anxious to see him at the head of affairs in the kingdom, provided he would expel the English, and re-establish its relations with France, on the footing of the peace which gave G.o.doy his t.i.tle. Ferdinand durst not execute any treaty without consulting the Cortes. They disdained to treat at all with Napoleon. He then liberated the King unconditionally; and after five years' captivity, Ferdinand re-entered Spain, amidst the all but universal acclamations of a nation, who had bled at every pore in his cause, and whom his government was destined ere long to satisfy that they had bled in vain. Napoleon, no doubt, understood well what sort of a present he was conferring on the Spaniards when he restored Ferdinand, and probably calculated that his arrival would fill the country with civil tumults, sufficient to paralyse its arm for foreign war. And--had the King returned but a year earlier--such, in all likelihood, would have been the consequence. Once more Napoleon was too late in doing good that evil might follow.

For some time, thanks to the slavery of the Parisian press, the population of the capital remained in ignorance as to the proceedings of the Allies on the Rhine. Indeed--such was still the influence of the Emperor's military reputation--the inhabitants of the French provinces on that frontier, continued to believe it impossible that any foreign army should dare to invade their soil, until they that had ears to hear, and eyes to see, were perforce undeceived. Schwartzenberg, with the _Grand Army_, at length crossed the Rhine, between Basle and Schaffhausen, on the 20th of December, and disregarding the claim of the Swiss to preserve neutrality, advanced through that territory unopposed, and began to show themselves in Franche-Comte, in Burgundy, even to the gates of Dijon. On the 1st of January, 1814, the _Silesian Army_, under Blucher, crossed the river at various points between Rastadt and Coblentz; and shortly after, the _Army of the North_, commanded by Witzingerode and Bulow (for Bernadotte declined having any part in the actual invasion of France) began to penetrate the frontier of the Netherlands. The wealthier inhabitants of the invaded provinces escaped to Paris, bearing with them these tidings; the English _detenus_ of Verdun were seen traversing the capital on their route to more distant quarters; the state prisoners of Vincennes itself, under the walls of Paris, were removed. The secret, in a word, could no longer be kept. It was known to every one that the Pyrenees had been crossed by Wellington, and the Rhine by three mighty hosts, amounting together to 300,000 men, and including representatives of every tongue and tribe, from the Germans of Westphalia to the wildest barbarians of Tartary. Persons of condition despatched their plate and valuables to places at a distance from the capital; many whole families removed daily; and the citizens of Paris were openly engaged in laying up stores of flour and salted provisions, in contemplation of a siege.

The violation of the Swiss territory was in itself indefensible; but he who had so often disdained all rules of that kind in his own person, who had seized D'Enghien, who had traversed Bareuth, could hardly hope to be listened to when he complained of Schwartzenberg's proceeding. The allied generals, moreover, proclaimed everywhere as they advanced, that they came as the friends not the enemies of the French nation, and that any of the peasantry who took up arms to oppose them must be content to abide the treatment of brigands. This a.s.suredly was a flagrant outrage against the most sacred and inalienable rights of mankind: but Napoleon had set the fatal example himself in Lombardy, and followed it without a blush, in Egypt, in Germany, in Spain, in Portugal, and but yesterday in Russia. Here also, therefore, his reclamations moved no feeling favourable to himself; and the time was gone by when the French people would have been ready to take fire at so lawless an aggression upon their national rights:--these Napoleon's tyranny had trampled down ere strangers dared to insult them. There were some few scattered instances of resistance; but in general, the first advance of the Allies was regarded with indifference; and it was only at a later period, when the invading generals were no longer able to maintain strict discipline among their barbarous hordes of hors.e.m.e.n, then scattered over a wide extent of country, that the sense of individual suffering afforded even a glimpse of hope to Napoleon, and those who, like him, were eager to oppose a national insurrection to the allied march.

Meantime, nearer and nearer every day the torrent of invasion rolled on--sweeping before it, from post to post, the various corps which had been left to watch the Rhine. Marmont, Mortier, Victor, and Ney, commanding in all about 50,000 men, retired of necessity before the enemy. It had been considered as certain that much time must be occupied with the besieging of the great fortresses on the Rhenish frontier. But it was now apparent that the Allies had resolved to carry the war into the interior, without waiting for the reduction of these formidable outworks. Their numbers were such that they could afford to mask them, and still pa.s.s on with hosts overwhelmingly superior to all those of Napoleon's lieutenants. These withdrew, and with them, and behind them, came crowds of the rustic population possessing any means of transport.

Carts and waggons, crammed with terrified women and children, thronged every avenue to the capital. It was at last necessary that the Emperor should break silence to the Parisians, and re-appear in the field.

The invasion of France, however, rallied around Napoleon some persons of eminence who had long hung aloof from him. Carnot in particular, who, ever since he opposed the a.s.sumption of the imperial t.i.tle, had remained in retirement, came forward to offer his sword in what he now considered as the cause of his country. Nor did Buonaparte fail to receive such proposals as they deserved. He immediately sent his old enemy to command the great city and fortress of Antwerp; and similar instances of manly confidence might be mentioned to his honour.

On the 22nd of January the first official news of the invasion appeared; the _Moniteur_ announced that Schwartzenberg had entered Switzerland on the 20th of December, and that Blucher also had crossed the Rhine on the first day of the year; thus confessing openly the deliberate deceit of its previous silence. The next morning, being Sunday, the officers of the National Guard were summoned to the Tuileries. They lined the _Saloon of the Marshals_, to the number of 900, altogether ignorant of the purpose for which they had been convoked. The Emperor took his station in the centre of the hall; and immediately afterwards the Empress with the King of Rome (carried in the arms of Countess Montesquiou), appeared at his side. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, "France is invaded; I go to put myself at the head of my troops, and, with G.o.d's help and their valour, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier." Here he took Maria Louisa in one hand and her son in the other, and continued--"But if they should approach the capital, I confide to the National Guard the Empress and the King of Rome"--then correcting himself, he said in a tone of strong emotion--"_my wife and my child_." Several officers stepped from their places and approached him; and tears were visible on the cheeks even of those who were known to be no wors.h.i.+ppers of the Emperor, or hearty supporters of his cause.

A Frenchman can rarely resist a scene: and such this was considered, and laughed at accordingly, ere next morning. It is, nevertheless, difficult to refuse sympathy to the chief actor. Buonaparte was sincerely attached to Maria Louisa, though he treated her rather with a parental tenderness than like a lover; and his affection for his son was the warmest pa.s.sion in his heart, unless, indeed, we must except his pride and his ambition, both of which may be well supposed to have merged for a moment in the feeling which shook his voice.

[Footnote 65: Now Lord Lynedoch.]

CHAPTER x.x.xV

The Campaign of France--Battles of Brienne and La Rothiere--Expedition of the Marne--Battles of Nangis and Montereau--Schwartzenberg Retreats--Napoleon again marches against Blucher--Attacks Soissons and is Repulsed--Battles of Craonne and Laon--Napoleon at Rheims--His Perplexities--He Marches to St.

Dizier.

Napoleon spent part of the 24th of January in reviewing troops in the courtyard of the Tuileries, in the midst of a fall of snow, which must have called up ominous recollections, and at three in the morning of the 25th, once more left his capital. He had again appointed Maria Louisa Regent, placed his brother Joseph at the head of her council, and given orders for raising military defences around Paris, and for converting many public buildings into hospitals. He set off in visible dejection; but recovered all his energy on reaching once more the congenial atmosphere of arms.

He arrived at Chalons ere midnight; and found that Schwartzenberg and Blucher, having severally pa.s.sed through Franche-Comte and Lorraine, were now occupying--the former with 97,000 men, the latter with 40,000--an almost complete line between the Marne and the Seine. Blucher was in his own neighbourhood, and he immediately resolved to attack the right of the Silesian army, which was pus.h.i.+ng down the valley of the Marne, while its centre kept the parallel course of the Aube, ere the Prussian marshal could concentrate all his own strength, far less be adequately supported from the side of Schwartzenberg, who was advancing down the Seine towards Bar. A sharp skirmish took place accordingly on the 27th at St. Dizier; and Blucher, warned of Napoleon's arrival, lost no time in calling in his detachments, and taking a post of defence at Brienne-le-Chateau on the Aube--the same town where Buonaparte had received his military education. Could Napoleon force him from the Aube, it was evident that the French would be enabled to interpose themselves effectually between the two armies of the Allies: and it was most necessary to divide the enemy's strength, for after all his exertions, Napoleon had been able to add only 20,000 good troops to the 50,000 who had been retiring before the allied columns from the course of the Rhine.

Napoleon, therefore, marched through a thick forest upon the scene of his youthful studies, and appeared there on the 29th:--having moved so rapidly that Blucher was at dinner in the chateau, when the French thundered at his gates, and with difficulty escaped to the rear through a postern--actually leading his horse down a stair. The Russians, however, under Alsusieff, maintained their place in the town courageously; and, some Cossacks throwing themselves upon the rear of the French, the Emperor himself was involved in the melee, drew his sword, and fought like a private dragoon. General Gourgaud shot a Cossack when in the act of thrusting his spear at Napoleon's back. The town of Brienne was burnt to the ground; Alsusieff was made prisoner; Lefebre Desnouettes died; and there was considerable slaughter on both sides; but the affair had no result of importance. Blucher retired but a little further up the Aube, and posted himself at La Rothiere, where Schwartzenberg, warned by the cannonade, hastened to co-operate with him.