The weather also inflicted the most terrible hardship on the combatants. It was the worst winter for many years, and so cold that oxen were being roasted on the ice that had formed over the rivers. Blizzards frequently hid opposing bodies of troops from one another, deep drifts of snow hampered their movements, wood for the camp fires was so difficult to obtain that they often went out long before dawn and the men were compelled to sleep in huddles to keep the life in their bodies.
The situation in Paris was also grim. The funds had dropped five points, and the rich, now fearing that the capital would be sacked by the ferocious Russians, were fleeing with their jewels to their châteaux in the country.
Up to the end of the year Lord Aberdeen had been Britain’s ambassador to Austria, but early in January Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Minister, had decided to take over negotiations himself, and travelled in great discomfort to join Metternich in Basle. They liked each other and found much common ground on how Europe should be reconstituted after Napoleon had been finally defeated.
Before leaving England Castlereagh, who dominated the Cabinet, had secured its approval of his own views. The most important of these were: no interference with Britain’s ‘Maritime Rights’; complete independence for Spain, Portugal and Holland, the latter to be given as a barrier Belgian lands which positively must exclude the French from the great port of Antwerp; that France should become a Limited Monarchy; no undue hardships to be inflicted on the French people, so that they might the sooner become reconciled to their late enemies; and that the Grand Alliance should be kept in being after the war to preserve the peace of Europe.
Metternich, both from fear of Russia and because his sovereign’s daughter was Empress of the French, also wished France to remain strong and become a friendly Power. He was, too, willing to forgo Austria’s claim to Belgium in exchange for a free hand in northern Italy. But the two statesmen knew that their wish to grant France a lenient Peace would meet with strong opposition from Prussia, as that country, so harshly treated by Napoleon, was determined to exact vengeance and intended to demand territorial expansion in several directions.
It was, however, the Czar’s attitude that gave them most concern. The liberal principles of which he had long believed himself to be the champion, were in direct conflict with his ambitions. He talked with apparent sincerity of re-creating Poland as a Kingdom and restoring their liberty to the Poles; but the fact was that he meant to make the new Poland a satellite state subject to himself. Moreover this would have entailed Austria and Prussia giving up to him great areas of territory that they had acquired by the partitions of Poland.
To compensate Prussia he proposed to abolish the Kingdom of Saxony; which, to the end, had remained loyal to Napoleon. But these measures would have been of no benefit to Austria. On the contrary, they would give Russia a huge increase in manpower, bring her frontier many hundred miles closer to Central Europe and eliminate the buffer state of Saxony.
Having discussed these matters with mutual satisfaction, Castlereagh and Metternich took the icy road to Langres where the Czar had set up his headquarters with his principle advisers, Count Nesselrode and the Prussian statesman Stein who was Napoleon’s most bitter enemy.
As Britain, alone among the Allies, had remained for twenty years in arms against Napoleon and again and again poured out her treasure to finance Coalitions against him, Castlereagh was in a very strong position and his influence did much to bring the disputants closer together. The prickly questions of Poland and Saxony were tactfully ignored, but Alexander agreed that France should be treated leniently and her people given the liberty of deciding for themselves on their future form of government. He also gave way to Castlereagh’s insistence that France should be restricted to her ‘ancient’ as opposed to her ‘natural’ limits; that is to the territories she possessed in 1792 instead of her frontiers being the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees. Thus she would be deprived of her Belgian lands and Antwerp. These understandings were set forth on January 29th in a document called ‘The Langres Protocol’.
On the day following his victory at Brienne, Napoleon attempted to open negotiations with the Austrians, but while awaiting their reply he, in his turn, was caught napping.
The Allies had called a conference at Châtillon, which opened on February 5th. Napoleon sent Caulaincourt to it with instructions to accept the terms offered at Frankfurt the previous November, by which France would have retained her ‘natural’ frontiers. But the Allies had since advanced into the heart of France and were much more confident of victory. They now demanded the reduction of France to her ‘ancient’ boundaries, and that Napoleon should abdicate.
Caulaincourt fought hard for his master, to whom he was devoted, but on the 9th gave way and sent a despatch to the Emperor informing him that he had done so. On receiving it Napoleon erupted in ungovernable rage and vowed that he would yet destroy his enemies.
At their last Council of War it had been decided by the Allies that they should divide their forces. Blücher, with fifty thousand men, was to march direct on Paris, while the timid Schwarzenberg, who had three times that number, was to continue to engage Napoleon. Sound strategy would have dictated that the much larger army should have been that to advance against the capital; but the decision had been reached owing to dissension among the Allies.
By this time Blücher was well on his way to Paris but the Czar, determined not to be deprived of a personal triumph, sent him an order that he was not to enter the capital until the arrival of the Allied sovereigns.
His order proved unnecessary. Only a few hours after receiving Caulaincourt’s despatch Napoleon learned the whereabouts of Blücher’s army. With his old energy and flair for assessing military situations, he ordered Marmont to occupy Sezanne and set off with Ney to support him. On the 10th at Champoutert the corps of both Marshals struck at a division of Russians about five thousand strong, and almost annihilated it. This attack on Blücher’s army cut it in half. His leading corps, under Sacken, was west of Montmirail, while that of Yorck was far to the north. With the speed he had displayed in his best years, Napoleon followed up by hurling his troops against Sacken. In and about the village of Marchair there was the most appalling slaughter on both sides. Mortier with the Imperial Guard overcame their enemies and Sacken’s corps was routed; its remnants being saved only by the tardy arrival of Yorck, whose men also gave way before the French.
Next day the Emperor drove the Russians from Château Thierry, to the surprise and joy of its inhabitants who believed him to have been defeated and awaiting the end at Troyes. On the 13th, leaving Mortier to continue the pursuit of Sacken and Yorck, Napoleon marched to reinforce Marmont, who was having to give ground before Blücher. The Emperor’s arrival changed the tide of battle. Many Prussian and Russian formations were overwhelmed, but others fought with the greatest stubbornness, and only the veteran Blücher’s courageous leadership enabled the greater part of his infantry to carry out an orderly retreat.
Never had Napoleon shown his mastery of the art of war to greater effect than in these battles. With thirty thousand hungry and ill-supplied men he had defeated fifty thousand, and eliminated the threat to Paris. His troops had again become jubilant, in the capital the fickle mobs were once more acclaiming him as a hero and predicting that he would drive the enemy from the soil of France.
Throughout this whirlwind campaign Napoleon found time to write to his Empress daily, and she sent him most affectionate replies. He seemed positively indefatigable and fought six battles in nine days.
But the odds were heavily against him. The Czar had browbeaten Schwarzenberg into taking the offensive. One of his columns defeated Oudinot in his attempts to hold the bridge over the Seine at Bray, the other advanced toward Fontainebleau. To his fury, Napoleon was forced to abandon his pursuit of Blücher and endeavour to halt these columns. By superhuman efforts he transported his troops by way of Meaux to support Victor and Macdonald and together they succeeded in checking the Aus
trian advance. On the 17th and 18th his activities were almost unbelievable. In addition to writing a dozen despatches and directing three battles, he laid and fired a number of cannon himself. When his artillerymen endeavoured to dissuade him from exposing his person, he inflamed their devotion to him by crying, ‘Do not fear! The ball is not yet cast that will kill me.’
On the 21st he took advantage of his amazing succession of victories to attempt to detach Austria from her allies. From Nogent he wrote to his father-in-law, the Emperor Francis, asserting that Britain and Russia were using him as a cat’s-paw, and that Austria had nothing to gain by continuing the war. They meant to grab all Poland and Saxony and give Austria’s old Belgian lands to the Dutch.
The Austrians, more than ever alarmed by the highhanded attitude of the Czar, who had declared that when he reached Paris he intended to appoint a Russian Military Governor of the city, were inclined to listen favourably to Napoleon. The Conference at Châtillon had been suspended on the 10th. On the 18th it resumed its sittings and, towards the end of the month, alarmed by Napoleon’s victories, was prepared to make concessions to Caulaincourt. But everything remained in the melting pot because Napoleon would give no firm undertaking that he would relinquish Belgium and the territories on the French side of the Rhine.
On March 1st Castlereagh, greatly perturbed because it now looked as though the Coalition might break up, assembled another Conference at Chaumont. There on the 9th it was definitely agreed that Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria should bind themselves by a solemn treaty not to negotiate separately with France for peace.
Meanwhile, Blücher, with nearly fifty thousand men, had resumed the offensive. Napoleon, believing the army of his most inveterate enemy to be broken, received this news with consternation, but swiftly despatched Ney and Victor to fall on the veteran’s rear. Blücher wisely retired northward, crossed the Marne and destroyed its bridges behind him. Having delayed the enemy in this way probably saved him from defeat, as Marmont was hotly pursuing him, Napoleon preparing to turn his right flank and his men were utterly exhausted by marching night and day through snowstorms and on roads made slippery by ice.
On March 2nd, having got across the river to La Ferté, the Emperor resumed his pursuit of Blücher, in the optimistic belief that he could drive his enemies back into Lorraine, then rescue the garrisons that had been cut off in Verdun, Toul and Metz, which would have greatly added to his strength.
But by then Blücher had reached the neighbourhood of Soissons and on the banks of the Aisne joined up with Bülow, who was able to furnish supplies for the veteran’s famished men and add forty-two thousand troops to their numbers. Next day Soissons surrendered.
The Emperor, still intent on relieving his beleagured garrisons, pressed on across the Aisne and forced Blücher to retire on Laon. There the veteran learned that Napoleon was approaching Craonne. Near that town rises a long, narrow plateau. Blücher ordered his Russian corps to occupy it and, on March 7th, there ensued one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Five times the gallant Ney scaled the slope at the head of his men, only to be driven back by the defenders. Napoleon then used his cavalry for a sixth assault. Blücher meanwhile had attempted to outflank the French, but the manoeuvre failed, upon which he ordered a general retreat to Laon. The casualties on both sides were very heavy. Grouchy, six other French Generals and Marshal Victor were among the wounded:
In this campaign the Emperor was greatly handicapped by the absence of many of his most able Marshals: St. Cyr was a prisoner, Davout was shut up in Hamburg, Suchet was grimly hanging on to Catalonia, Augereau was defending Lyons, and Soult, who had recently suffered another severe defeat by Wellington at Orthez, was far away in the south. Of those with Napoleon: Ney, Oudinot, Mortier, Macdonald and Marmont, only the latter had come off best when left to engage the enemy without support, and even his corps was surprised and badly cut up in a night attack shortly after the Emperor, having on the 9th and 10th failed to dislodge Blücher from the stronghold of Laon, was forced to withdraw by the news that Schwarzenberg was advancing on Paris.
The Emperor’s force had been reduced to twenty thousand men, while Schwarzenberg had one hundred thousand. Yet such was Napoleon’s prestige that, on learning that he had reached the Aube the Austrian, fearing an attack on his flank, hesitated to advance further or turn upon the wizard warrior. This delay gave Napoleon time to call up the corps of Macdonald and Oudinot. The fighting around Arcis-sur-Aube lasted two days and became ferocious. The Emperor rode about among his troops to urge them on. To the horror of those about him a shell burst just in front of his horse and, for a moment, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. But he emerged unhurt, mounted another horse and continued to direct the battle.
But God was indeed ‘on the side of the big battalions’. By the 20th he was forced to fall back northward toward Sezanne. Still convinced that he could relieve his garrisons in the east—where the French peasantry had raised armed bands of irregulars to help defend their beloved France by harassing the enemy’s supply routes—he hurried his army toward Vitry; but on the 23rd Cossacks captured one of his couriers carrying a letter to Marie Louise. In it he said, ‘I have decided to march toward the Marne in order to draw the enemy’s army further from Paris and got nearer my fortresses. This evening I shall be at St. Dizier.’
Made aware of the Emperor’s plans, Blücher marched south and joined up again with Schwarzenberg. At the Czar’s insistence it was decided that, instead of following Napoleon, they should renew the advance on Paris. The greatly weakened corps of Marmont and Mortier were all that barred the way to the capital. They fought well with great gallantry, but were brushed aside and the advance on the capital continued.
When the ordinary citizens of Paris became aware that the enemy was within a few miles of the city they were amazed and horror-stricken. For over twenty years they had become accustomed to celebrating France’s victories. Their armies had marched triumphantly into Milan, Vienna, Rome, Naples, Lisbon, Venice, Madrid, Berlin and even Moscow. It had been unthinkable to them that a day could come when barbarian Cossacks and jack-booted Prussians would shoulder them off the pavements in the streets of Paris. Yet all the woe that could be inflicted by an enemy army of occupation could be only days away.
The better informed, Talleyrand and Roger among them, far from being surprised by the Allies’ breakthrough, found it difficult to understand how even the genius of Napoleon had prevented it from happening long before. It was nine weeks since he had left Paris and for the past six they had been waiting impatiently to hear that his army, less than a third the size of that of the Allies, had been completely defeated.
During these weeks of waiting the question uppermost in their minds had been what would happen in France after Napoleon had been vanquished. Through his secret sources Talleyrand knew the divergent views of the Allies. All of them were agreed that the Emperor must be deposed and France reduced to her old frontiers before the Revolution, but there their agreement ended.
Castlereagh was for giving the French liberal terms so that their good will would result in a treaty of commerce with Britain, similar to that which had been signed with King Louis XVI in 1787, and that they should be allowed to choose their own future form of government by a plebiscite.
The Czar also was not harshly inclined toward the French people. He was averse to a Republic, yet did not favour the return of the Bourbons. He would have preferred a limited monarchy under a new dynasty, and he had been heard to mention Bernadotte for that rôle.
Frederick William agreed with the Czar about a limited monarchy; but the Prussians generally were filled with hatred for the French and wished to impose upon them the harshest terms possible.
Austria wanted to leave France strong and, as Marie Louise was the Emperor Francis’s daughter, he proposed that she be made Regent for her little son, the King of Rome.
Lastly, from January onward the Senate had at last thrown off its long subservience to
Napoleon. A large majority in it wished to see the end of him, and many of the older members who had been Jacobins, eagerly hoped for the return of a Republic.
Talleyrand and Roger had discussed the question exhaustively. For many years they had agreed that the only hope of a lasting peace in Europe lay in a treaty of friendship between France and England. They therefore favoured a strong France. Both were for a limited monarchy as the most stable form of government, foreseeing that a return to a Republic would lead to dissension and, if the extremists got the upper hand, the possible repetition of ’93, with another reign of terror. Talleyrand was confident that, given the power he hoped to have, he could restrain the hotheads in the Senate and he aimed to bring about the restoration of the Bourbons.
After Wellington’s victory at Orthez Soult had skilfully withdrawn his army to the east, knowing that the Duke, not daring to risk an attack on his flank by advancing further up the coast, must follow him, and hoping to join up with Suchet. But this had necessitated his abandoning Bayonne and Bordeaux. Wellington had detached General Beresford’s division to occupy the latter city, and on March 12th the Duc d’Angoulême had entered it with the British troops. This Prince, who had married Louis XVI’s only daughter, the Princess Therése, having been welcomed by the Royalist Mayor, had proclaimed his Uncle, Louis XVIII, King of France; upon which the majority of the citizens had shown their delight and donned the White Cockade.
Soon afterwards the King’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, had arrived in Nancy, and his emissary, the Baron de Vitrolles, had several times come in secret to Paris to confer with Talleyrand; but as long as Napoleon’s Council of Regency remained in control of the capital, Talleyrand’s hands were tied. Many senators were also strongly averse to the return of a monarchy. And, above all, each of the victorious Allies would have their say on what form the new government should take. So the future of France still lay on the knees of the gods.
The Irish Witch Page 31