by Emil Ludwig
Batte of the Nations
second puts forward dubious reasons ; then, nodding to encourage one another, they all obsequiously beg him not to march on Berlin. Leipzig will be a better point of attack.
The Emperor listens to them in silence as he wonders: " Is my power vanishing ? " At length he replies : " The secession of Bavaria is imminent. A movement on Leipzig, a backward movement, will arouse despair among the soldiers. But I will think over what you have said." He spends the rest of the day alone, refusing himself to all visitors, brooding over his maps. Caulaincourt, on duty outside, listens for sounds from within, but can only hear the windows rattling in the October gale which is howling round the castle. At length he is allowed to enter. The Emperor walks up and down, and, speaking rather to himself than to Caulaincourt, he says : " The French cannot endure reverses." Then he sinks into a reverie,
Next day he announces that they will go to Leipzig. It is October 15th: general animation; orders are issued; every one is delighted. Discussing with Marmont the latest steps of the Habsburg ruler, Napoleon says in conclusion : " I prefer a man of honour who simply keeps his word, to a conscientious man who does what he thinks right. . . . Emperor Francis has done what he believes to be the best for his subjects ; he is conscientious, but he is not a man of honour."
Next day begins the great " Battle of the Nations." The Emperor has only one hundred and eighty thousand men against three hundred thousand of the allies ; by the evening he has won only part of the battle-field. On the second morning Bernadotte arrives with reinforcements. The Emperor sees that things are going badly, and would like to withdraw, but he cannot make up his mind to a step that would give the impression of defeat. Once more he tries negotiation. General Merveldt has been taken prisoner; his sword is restored on parole; he is to go to Emperor Francis with proposals for an armistice.
" I will retire behind the Saale, while the Russians and the
" I Will Die Standing
Prussians withdraw beyond the Elbe, and you Austrians go back into Bohemia; Saxony must remain neutral." Then, livening up, he develops to this enemy general nothing less than a new plan for Europe. Hanover is to be returned to England ; the Baltic coast is to be freed; any of the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine who wish to do so can leave the Confederation ; Poland, Spain, and Holland are to be independent; the only reservation is as regards Italy, which must not become Austrian. " Be off with you ! You have a splendid peace mission. Should fortune favour it, you will earn the love of a great nation. But if your side refuse peace, we shall know how to defend ourselves."
General Merveldt departs in amazement, and his report seems incredible to his master. What! The Emperor Napoleon, in the course of war, between battles, is willing to renounce half Europe and chooses a prisoner to bring this offer ? We did not know he was so weak.
The Emperor is anxiously awaiting his emissary's return. Till far on into the night, therefore, he refrains from issuing orders for the morrow; he speaks of the ties of kinship, and of his wife and child. Suddenly he is attacked by his gastric trouble, and staggers against the wall of the tent, his face pale. They wish to send for his physician. " No ! my tent is transparent. If I am up and about, every one is at his post."
" At least lie down, Sire ! "
" No, I will die standing."
" Do let me fetch the doctor, Sire."
" No, I tell you ! I can send a sick soldier to hospital. But who can send me ? " Terrible moments pass. " I'm getting better now. See to it that no one comes into the tent! "
Half an hour later, he issues orders, but not for a retreat. Instead, the army moves a little nearer to Leipzig. The enemy now outnumbers him by two to one.
When day comes, he takes up his headquarters in a windmill. The attack upon the French starts from three sides. It
Defeat
appears that, at the last moment, Bernadotte has persuaded the Saxons to turn their guns against France. " Infamous !" exclaims the Emperor, and all around echo the word. Saxon officers who remain faithful to him, break their swords. A dragoon belonging to the escort wheels his horse, and shouts : " We'll do for them yet, the scoundrels ! We Frenchmen, too, are here ! Vive l'Empereur! " The whole escort follows him at the charge. Soon a young officer, who has seized one of the Saxon eagles, gallops back with it to the Emperor, and collapses from his wounds as he arrives. " These sons of France ! " says Napoleon softly.
On the second day of battle, he loses sixty thousand men. He is beaten, but even the German critics say of the affair : " The allies did not secure an overwhelming victory, such as might have been expected from the enormous preponderance of their forces."
During the hasty retreat of the defeated army through the town of Leipzig, the Emperor dictates orders for the withdrawal. " They had brought him a wooden stool," writes an eyewitness. " On this, he now fell into a slumber of exhaustion, his hands loosely folded in his lap. In gloomy silence the generals were standing round the fire, while the soldiers were marching past a little way off."
Next morning the pursuing enemy spread disorder in the streets ; a bridge was blown up prematurely, so that the rear guard was forced to surrender; one of the marshals escaped by swimming across the river, another was drowned, several were wounded and taken prisoner. When, subsequently, Macdonald came across Augereau, for whose corps he had been waiting, Augereau laughed him to scorn : " Do you think me such a fool as to let myself be slaughtered in a Leipzig suburb ? I won't do that for a madman's sake ! "
Here we have it for the first time, a sign that one of Napoleon's oldest companions-in-arms has become completely
Goethe's Epilogue
indifferent to the Emperor's fame; is animated by the mere will-to-live, reasonable enough in a private soldier, but unworthy of a marshal of France. On the very same day, another friend of Bonaparte's youth writes to the Emperor, complaining that in the report of the previous day's fighting his services have been overlooked, although for ten hours he had held a part of the plain for whose defence another man is now given the credit. " Never in my life have I served you more faithfully than I did on this occasion. . . . Sire, I could not suffer anything worse than to be forgotten at such a time." The letter is signed," Marmont."
These two utterances on the day after Leipzig are the shadows of coming events. Marmont and Augereau will both desert the Emperor in the decisive hour.
Fifty miles away, Goethe is sitting in his room at Weimar. Napoleon's picture has fallen from its nail. The poet has heard the sound of the Leipzig guns. The first news of the French defeat has arrived. Though none of the allied generals can say, yet, whether the Emperor may not be able to collect his forces once more, and to resume his career of victory, Goethe, who only a few months earlier had declared Napoleon to be invincible, already realises the full extent of the disaster. On the day of the retreat, as if everything had happened a hundred years before, and the whole matter had become legendary, he writes the following verses :
He who feels courage in his royal breast
knows no shudderings, treads gladly
the undermined road leading to the steps of the throne,
knows the danger and nevertheless mounts confidently.
The golden circlet's tremendous burden,
he does not try its weight; resolute and calm,
he presses it gladly on his bold brow,
and bears it lightly, as if it were a laurel crown.
Thus didst thou. What seemed so far away,
thou hast tranquilly learned to make thine own ;
Other German Opinions
and whatever fierce obstacles might block the path,
thou sawest them, contemplated them, and understood them.
A joyful day dawned, it summoned thee,
thou wast summoned, and thus it came to pass. . . .
And thou still standest despite all that has happened to thee,
despite the foe, who, with war and death
threatens thee from w
ithout and from within. . . .
The peoples are agape, they chatter, they are full of vain
imaginings— What do they care for, but games ? . . . The false world, it wooes us for our treasure, for our favour, for our position, and, even if one makes one's lover one's equal, love does not suffice him, he wants the whole kingdom. So was it with this man!—And now, declare it abroad, even if it cost you your life : To every man, be he whom he may, there comes a last happiness and a last day
At the same date, Schelling writes: " I do not believe that Napoleon's end is yet very near. If I am right, he will still be spared; and, even if all his helpers fall away from him, he will still live to drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs." When, almost immediately afterwards, the Bavarians definitively changed sides, Hegel wrote : " In Nuremberg, the mob has welcomed the incoming Austrians with the most hateful jubilation. . . . Nothing more contemptible can be imagined than the mood and the conduct of the burghers."
Three outstanding Germans, immediately after Leipzig ! Certainly, it is far from being a final defeat. Fighting, and fighting victoriously, the Emperor withdraws. In Erfurt, Murat presents himself, wishing to go back to his kingdom. The master allows him to do so, saying: " By next May, I shall have an army of a quarter of a million on the Rhine ! " Thus does his intelligence work; such is the quality of his imagination ; he can still think only in hundreds of thousands. In Mainz, his troops are attacked by typhus, and he hastens to move what is left of them across the Rhine. During the retreat, he works from three in the morning till eleven at night.
Meanwhile, the advancing allied headquarters are thronged
Letizia at the Fireside
by the princes who are deserting the cause of Napoleon. All is promptly forgotten and forgiven. But there is one honest man left who finds strong words to describe what is happening: " What do you think of these wretches' behaviour ? . . . They have had better treatment than they deserve. . . . All these princelets are weaklings, to whom a far more honourable existence has been conceded than their pitiful conduct would seem to justify. . . . The retention of their sovereignty, which consists in pretentiousness, pleasure seeking, and the lust for dominion, has cost them nothing more than the blood of their subjects."
Such is Baron vom Stein's judgment concerning his peers, the German princes.
XII
Letizia is sitting by the fire. In her hand is a letter from Mainz, in which her son answers her intercession for Louis by imposing certain conditions. But this is not what troubles her; she is thinking of the Emperor's parenthetical allusion to the turn in his fortunes. He writes : " In this situation, when all Europe is rising against me, and my heart is so full of care. ..." She has never warned him of the impending dangers; they are both of them too proud for that. But she has often uttered her foreboding to intimates, with her phrase " Pourvou que cela doure ! " She has never been disturbed by the thought of any disaster to herself. She thinks only of her dear ones. Who will help them when everything falls to pieces ? To whom, she is now asking herself, can the Emperor look for support ?
When he returns, she has to endure the recognition that the treachery begins among her own children. Murat, who is always led by a keener intelligence than his own (that of Caroline), signs a truce with England and enters into an alliance with Austria. Elise has an adviser, Fouche, who keeps away from
The Company at Morfontaine
Paris until the Emperor's fall. " The only thing that could save us all would be the Emperor's death." Such are the ex-minister's words to the Emperor's sister. But Elise writes to her mother asking what dances are to be given that winter in Paris. Louis defies orders, and, being unable to stay in Austria any longer, comes to Paris without leave. Napoleon proposes to banish him to a distance of two hundred miles from Paris. The mother intercedes between the pair; there is a further interview, as a result of which Napoleon and Louis are once more estranged. Jerome has left his subjects in the lurch, and has fled incognito from Cassel. Joseph, despite the Emperor's reiterated requests, persists in his refusal to undertake the defence of Paris. Lucien keeps his distance, still in a bad humour.
Such is the gallery of brothers and sisters, the relatives upon whom for a decade the Emperor has been trying to build up his dynasty. What can be the feelings of a mother who has always cherished the most tender affection for that one of her children who happened to be suffering most keenly ?
But in Morfontaine a cheerful mood prevails. The company there consists of Joseph, the Spanish king without a country ; Jerome's wife, a queen in like situation, whose father has gone over to the allies ; the sometime grand inquisitor of Spain says Mass in the chapel; there are two colonial bishops ; German, Spanish, and Italian courtiers without a court—a brilliant company, like the audience at private theatricals, watching actors who will soon come down from the stage to take their place on the floor of the drawing-room. Only one of them hopes to draw a big fish out of the troubled waters, Bernadotte's; wife, Joseph's sister-in-law, the woman to whom twenty years before the Emperor had given the go-by. She knows that her husband, commander of one of the allied armies, is already on the Rhine ; she hopes that ere long, in Notre Dame, he will place Josephine's crown on her pretty brown head.
At this country -seat, more intrigues are carried on against
Napoleon as Emperor in 1809. Woodcut from a medal by J. P. Droz.
Everything Is Crashing Round Me
Napoleon than Joseph is aware of; for Joseph is not himself an intriguer; he is merely easygoing and vain. The Emperor recognises this, now that it is too late, and says to Roederer:
" That has been one of my mistakes. I fancied I needed my brothers for the dynasty, but it is safe without them. It has been brought into being in the heart of the storm by the nature of things. The empress suffices. . . . Everything has been quiet for a year past. There is only disquiet when Joseph lives in Paris. ... He cannot forget that he is the first-born. Was there ever anything more absurd ? If he were talking of our father's vineyard, that would be another story ! . . . His interests are in women, houses, furniture. He likes to go out rabbit shooting, and to play blind man's buff with the girls. I am tied to nothing; care not a jot for houses or for women; though I do feel a little concern about my son."
Thus does his monomania make headway in these weeks of increasing peril. We see that all the rest, court included, has been nothing more than a game. He cares not a jot for anything outside the one passion of his soul—except that he is a little concerned about his son.
He now quickly makes up his mind to restore the Spanish crown to King Ferdinand, who is set at liberty; but the Cortes must approve the treaty. This is Talleyrand's advice, for Talleyrand has now been recalled to the Tuileries. Insistence on ratification by the Cortes will delay matters. The traitor's aim is to keep a French army in the south, so that France may be weakened for the benefit of the allies, for whose cause Talleyrand is now working. Joseph protests.
" My present situation makes it impossible for me to think of any sort of foreign dominion," writes the Emperor to his brother. " I shall deem myself lucky if the peace treaty will allow me to keep the old boundaries of France. Everything is crashing round me. My armies have been destroyed, and it will hardly be possible to make the losses good. Holland is gone, and Italy is uncertain. . . . Belgium and the Rhine province are
Returning Courage
discontented; the Spanish frontier is held by the enemy. . . . How is it possible, at this crisis, to think of a foreign throne ? " When the prefect of police advises him to leave a larger body of National Guards in Paris, during the campaign that is now imminent, he rejoins : " Who can guarantee that they will be faithful to me ? Am I to leave so large a force in my rear ? "
He is in despair. Surely there is no other word for the description of these thoughts ? His family, his allies, his own capital, all seem untrustworthy to him. Thus completely has his mood changed since the battle of Leipzig. Count Lavalette, Postmaster General, one
of the most honest men in Paris, who often came to see him at this time, found him one evening in a condition of great depression. Napoleon received Lavalette in his bedroom, standing in front of the fire, his hands stretched out towards the blaze. The visitor, though a stout-hearted fellow, advises peace, saying that the French are mutable. But when he ventures to mention the name of the Bourbons, on whom perhaps the Emperor's mantle may fall, Napoleon turns away from the fire and silently throws himself on the bed. When, a few minutes later, the count draws near, he finds that Napoleon is sleeping.
These healthy reactions are a sign of returning courage. Napoleon's overthrow is close at hand ; he foresees the catastrophe ; but when people talk to him about the Bourbons, to whose throne he has mounted and who may dispossess him in turn, he cannot be bothered with the topic. It bores him, and he goes to sleep.
Awakening reinvigorated, he recognises that the Bourbon sympathies of the northern provinces are a danger; he notes that the funds have fallen to fifty, and that the shares of the Bank of France have declined to half their former value ; and he finds that the new National Guard, which after all he is obliged to call up, fails to materialise. He therefore gladly accedes to a proposal that issues from the allies in Frankfort. They are as
"I Am the State "
disunited as he can possibly wish. Metternich, being a statesman, thinks it will be better not to occupy Paris. The tsar, being a romanticist, wants to take vengeance for Moscow by blowing up the Tuileries. In the end, Austria gets her way. The offer to France is that the country is to retain her natural frontiers ; the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees. The Emperor feels that he is saved. Without a moment's delay he will accept the Frankfort proposal. Maret has actually drafted the dispatch.
Suddenly he changes his mind. Why ? Perhaps he has been put out of temper by the opposition voiced in the Chambers. There, at length, the members are showing themselves refractory. " We will not vote further armaments unless the government agrees that they are to be used only for defence. The Emperor must pledge himself to carry out all the laws that protect liberty." Thunders of applause greet these words. For the first time in fifteen years, an assembly has ventured to criticise Napoleon. In his hatred for all Chambers, the Emperor flies into a passion, forbids the printing of the speech, closes the House, receives a few of the deputies, scolds them: