by Philip Dwyer
Then news arrived that Murat in Italy had defected to the allies.10 Incited by the Emperor’s own sister, Caroline, Murat betrayed Napoleon by joining the coalition in the hope of saving his own crown, a move Napoleon described as ‘without name’.11 Once again, however, the Emperor’s military acumen came to the fore. After Brienne and La Rothière he withdrew to Troyes, where he got a rather sullen reception from the local population, and placed his troops behind the Seine, whence he hoped to muster fresh troops and win a little time before relaunching the offensive. It was while he was at Troyes that he learnt the allies had committed the mistake of splitting their army, with Blücher marching on Châlons and Schwarzenberg on Troyes.
Every battle fought was somehow an opportunity, in Napoleon’s mind, for a knockout blow that would end the war. He wrote to Joseph along those lines on 13 February: ‘If this operation is successful, we may very well find the whole campaign decided.’12 It was wishful thinking. His men were mostly raw recruits who had had to live in open country under the rain, who had not eaten properly for days and who were outnumbered by the allies. Even so, he fought and defeated the allies at Champaubert (10 February), Montmirail (11 February), Château-Thierry (12 February) and Vauchamps (14 February), sending the allies into a disorderly retreat. He then turned south and on 17 February attacked an already retreating Schwarzenberg at Nangis and Mormant. It is astonishing under the circumstances just how well Napoleon and his men performed. For the allies, it brought back memories of previous defeats. For Napoleon, it gave him unfounded hope that victory was possible, and made him intractable when the allies offered preliminary peace terms. The outcome of each battle was grossly exaggerated – after Montmirail he wrote Joseph to say that the Army of Silesia was no more.13 It was hardly the case. Another battle was fought and won against Schwarzenberg at Montereau on 18 February in which the allies lost some 6,000 casualties to the French 2,500. In the space of a week, the Prussian army had lost considerable ground and about 20,000 men.
But this was a different kind of campaign. Napoleon did not have control over its direction, was greatly outnumbered and was sometimes obliged to fight when he did not want to. Even if he had managed to push the allied troops back across the Rhine, as he had hoped, it would only have delayed the inevitable. This was not the first Italian campaign. Napoleon’s victories were small affairs that could not decide the outcome of the campaign. Certainly, they deflated Alexander’s ego and threw the minor German allies into a panic, even forcing a partial allied withdrawal, but they could not end the war.14 More importantly, with every victory Napoleon lost men he could ill afford to lose whereas the allies had the vital depth of resources and now the resolve not to admit defeat. After each victory, Napoleon would use the same methods that he had used to celebrate his victories in the past: flags were dispatched to Paris; the regulation thirty cannon salvoes were fired; sometimes prisoners were sent as trophies.
It made little impact. After news of La Rothière had reached Paris, a small panic set in that lasted a good week; people rushed to the banks to get out their money, a great many shops shut, and people started hoarding provisions as if for a siege.15 Royalists came out of the woodwork and started putting up placards on the walls of towns throughout France either announcing the return of Louis XVIII or issuing proclamations in his name.16 The general despondency was so obvious that Cambacérès warned Napoleon that the most ‘sinister events’ would occur if he did not quickly come to the aid of Paris.17 In the capital, the prefecture of police was receiving up to 1,300 requests a day for passports that would allow their holders to leave the city.18 Even Letizia, apparently afraid of what would happen if Paris were besieged, asked her daughter-in-law to warn her if ever she decided to leave, so that she could go with her.19 At the same time, hordes of people from the surrounding countryside were attempting to find refuge in Paris. That is perhaps why, when news of the victories started to come in – this is the bulletin of Champaubert – there was a general sense of relief, not to say of hope. After news of victory at the battle of Château-Thierry on 12 February was announced, a crowd gathered before the Tuileries to acclaim Marie-Louise and the three-year-old King of Rome, who appeared in the uniform of the National Guard.20 (The previous month, Napoleon had called 900 officers of the National Guard to the Tuileries and entrusted them with the Empress and their son.)21
Blücher did not care what his supreme command was doing, or Napoleon for that matter. He was on the march and was heading straight for Paris. Napoleon had to react. He was in Troyes at the time and turned back at the head of the Guard to meet up with troops under Ney and Victor. He finally caught up with Blücher on 7 March at Craonne, about thirty kilometres north-west of Rheims. Once again, despite overwhelming odds – around 85,000 Russian and Prussian troops faced 37,000 French – Napoleon was able to inflict a defeat, although for the loss of about 5,400 men.22 In terms of the percentages killed and wounded – one in four men involved in the battle – it was one of the bloodiest battles of the campaign.23 The Prussians blamed the Russian General Wintzingerode for moving too slowly to come to Blücher’s assistance, believing that they had missed an opportunity to defeat Napoleon.24
Napoleon was obliged to fight them again two days later at Laon, twenty-odd kilometres further north, again against overwhelming odds. Blücher had around 100,000 men and 150 cannon while Napoleon possessed only around 40,000 troops. Napoleon was let down by the lacklustre performance of Marmont, as he had been on a number of occasions during the campaign by his marshals. It was in any event a stroke of good luck for the French Emperor that Blücher fell ill, probably overcome with exhaustion, so that he could not personally direct operations. At the end of the second day’s fighting, Napoleon was able to extricate himself and withdraw towards Soissons, but the encounter had cost him another 6,000 casualties (to the allies’ 4,000). Soissons was only about a hundred kilometres from Paris. And yet Napoleon fought on. What else could he do? Seeing another chance to defeat the allies at Rheims where they had extended their lines, Napoleon turned east, reaching the outskirts of the town late in the afternoon of 13 March, when darkness had already fallen. He had managed to catch a couple of hours’ sleep when the Russians decided on a night attack at around 10 p.m. It was a mistake; Napoleon took the town two hours later with a few thousand allied casualties to 700 French.
The victory went to his head, reinforcing the notion that he was still the man of Austerlitz. He was not, but it was the man of Austerlitz the allies feared. The victory at Rheims, minor as it was, sent them into a tizz and they began to retreat again. This does not mean that Napoleon had a chance of defeating them – on the contrary. When Caulaincourt realized that the allied sovereigns were in a panic, he persuaded Napoleon to accept the 1792 frontiers as terms for negotiations, but his plenipotentiaries were not allowed to pass through the lines. The allies had met at Chaumont, a ‘dirty and dull town’ about 240 kilometres south-east of Paris, and signed a treaty on 9 March, a twenty-year quadruple alliance, which set out their determination to defeat Napoleon, to return France to its pre-revolutionary borders, to bring about a general peace in Europe and to convene an international congress to discuss any outstanding issues. Castlereagh was crucial in getting the allies to agree to stipulate their common goals.25 Napoleon’s decision to fight on and his refusal to negotiate meant that, some time in the last week of March, the allies resolved to remove him from the throne. There were to be no further negotiations; this was a fight to the finish.
Besides, they did not retreat for long. Schwarzenberg decided to halt and face Napoleon, something that took the Emperor completely by surprise. At Arcis-sur-Aube (20 March), Napoleon again faced far superior forces – about 28,000 French up against 80,000 allied troops – although he was under the mistaken impression that he was dealing only with the allied rearguard. The allies were dispersed around the exposed, low-lying town of Arcis, pounding it with artillery fire. Napoleon threw himself into the thick of it. At one point, he rode hi
s horse over a smoking howitzer shell, which then exploded, disembowelling and killing the horse. ‘He disappeared in the dust and smoke. But he got up without a scratch, and mounting a new horse rode off to inspect the positions of the other battalions.’26 Did he want to impress his troops, to show his men that he was not afraid of death; was he, as one historian has suggested, attempting to place his horse between himself and the explosion; or did he want to end it all? It is, of course, impossible to say.
The first day’s fighting petered out when it became dark. The next morning, Napoleon still thought he was fighting the allied rearguard. In fact, Schwarzenberg had fought with only a fraction of the allied army. When Napoleon understood what was before him, there could be no question of continuing the fight; he withdrew during the day, helped by the fact that Schwarzenberg, as cautious as ever, did not attack until three in the afternoon. It is astonishing that the allies did not press home their advantage – a Blücher or a Wellington certainly would have – but such was the quality of allied leadership, and such their fear of Napoleon’s military prowess, that an opportunity to end the war there and then was lost. Napoleon retreated with only 12,000 of his men left.
The allies knew what Napoleon was planning to do next. Cossacks had captured a letter from Napoleon to Marie-Louise stating that he intended to draw the allies away from Paris by pushing towards the Marne.27 The advantage in terms of information gathering and reconnaissance was decidedly in favour of the allies. On 23–24 March, more letters were captured that revealed the poor state of morale of Napoleon’s troops, as well as the lack of preparations for a siege in Paris. Most important of all, though, was a letter from Savary to Napoleon declaring that he could not answer for the loyalty of the people of Paris.28 It coincided with news from Bordeaux, just occupied by Wellington, that the white Bourbon flag had been raised.29 Castlereagh may have thought this to be ‘providential’ for the Bourbons,30 but one should not read too much into this.
As a result of these captured dispatches, as well as other reports, an allied council of war was held on the morning of 24 March. The allies faced two possible courses of action: they could pursue Napoleon or they could march on Paris. It was Alexander who, after consulting with his generals, decided that it would be preferable to ignore Napoleon and to march on Paris as soon as possible, convincing Frederick William and Schwarzenberg in the process (although neither needed too much persuading).31 It was the sensible thing to do from the allied perspective: supplies were running short after three months’ campaigning in Champagne and Napoleon seemed as unyielding as ever. The only means of obtaining a secure peace was through a military solution. Paris thus became the central focus of the allied armies, in the belief that if it fell so too would the regime.
On 28 March, the allied plenipotentiaries who were gathered at Dijon openly drank to the success of the Bourbon cause.32 The next day, 200,000 troops under Blücher and Schwarzenberg approached Paris, and began their attack on the heights of Belleville and Montmartre at five in the morning.33
‘Everyone Has Lost their Heads’34
On a cold, overcast winter’s day in March – it was one of the coldest months on record35 – a mournful line of victims of war wound its way from the Villette towards the Champs-Elysées and the Ecole Militaire.36 It was made up of the wounded, the sick, prisoners and peasant refugees with their families and whatever they could carry with them. Veterans of the Guard rode by on skinny horses, their white capes covered in mud and blood, their haggard looks revealing what they had just lived through; the wounded were placed on wagons requisitioned for the purpose. The curious came out to see them walk by. Some of the onlookers gave them what little bread and wine they could; some gave money. All the while, the thunder of cannon could be heard in the distance. This was a population used to seeing its soldiers march past in victory parades. It was the first time in living memory that the people of Paris had looked upon a French army in defeat. They were, generally speaking, antagonistic. General Pelleport, wounded in the fighting, wrote that at first no one at Belleville wanted to take care of him but that finally a group of workers from the faubourg broke down the door of a hotel to let him in.37 Colonel Girard, also wounded, was no more successful in getting himself looked after. When his domestics told people that he might succumb, they replied, ‘Good’ (Tant mieux). Nor were the people of Paris happy with Napoleon, whom they blamed for bringing this disaster upon them. ‘For the first time,’ wrote one British witness who had been a prisoner in France since 1803, ‘I heard the people openly dare to venture complaints against the Emperor as the sole cause of the impending calamity.’38
Two days previously, on 28 March at 8.30 in the evening, the guns firing on the outskirts of Paris could be heard in the Tuileries Palace where a meeting of the Regency Council was taking place. They had met to decide the fate of the Empire. Everyone, with the exception of Henri Clarke, asserted that Marie-Louise had to stay in the capital and that for her to leave would risk seeing the Empire collapse. It was then that Joseph pulled out two letters he had received from his brother. In the first of these, dated 8 February 1814, Napoleon stated that in the event of his death or the capture of Paris, Marie-Louise and his son should be taken to the Château de Rambouillet, in the Loire Valley, and that under no circumstances should the Empress and his son be allowed to fall into enemy hands.39 The second letter, dated from Rheims on 16 March, reiterated his desire not to see his wife and son fall into enemy hands. ‘I would rather know that he is in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of France.’40 Part of the problem here was Napoleon’s pride; this was not about protecting his wife and child. They would have been perfectly safe in an occupied city. It was because he could not bear the thought, if ever he were defeated, of having to put himself under the protection of his wife.41 The letters shook the confidence of the Council, which decided, with some regret, that Napoleon’s orders had to be followed and that Marie-Louise should leave for Rambouillet the next day (accompanied by Cambacérès). Talleyrand remarked at the end of the meeting, which finished well after midnight, ‘Goodness me, that is to lose a fine game.’42
To his credit, Joseph went to the heights of Montmartre the next day to see the fighting for himself, after which he wrote a note to Mortier and Marmont instructing them to negotiate, if they could not hold out. At three or four o’clock in the afternoon, Marmont informed the Russian commander, Barclay, that he was prepared to discuss an armistice.43 After the two marshals had negotiated with the allies for several hours in a little cabaret just outside the Saint-Denis barrier, they signed the capitulation at two in the morning on 31 March. It was a decision Marmont would spend the rest of his life justifying.44 During the nineteenth century, the verb raguser, a pun on Marmont’s title, the Duc de Raguse, became synonymous with betrayal. Napoleon and his followers later needed a scapegoat; Marmont conveniently fitted the bill. In that manner, Napoleon, as we shall see, was always able to argue that he was not defeated but betrayed. It was an idea that was as rife in the France of 1814 as the myth of the ‘stab in the back’ in Germany at the end of the First World War. The people of Paris were convinced that they had not capitulated, but that Marmont had betrayed them.45 A similar sentiment was expressed in the towns and villages to the north and east of Paris, such as Craonne, Laon and Soissons. It was a sentiment that pervaded the army as well, and was perpetuated by Napoleon who may have believed it himself.46 The accusation of betrayal directed at Marmont is, however, excessive.47 When the 200,000-strong allied army reached the village of Clichy, then a little town not far from Paris, they faced around 38,000 French troops, many of whom were National Guardsmen, ill equipped and ill trained. Under the circumstances, and despite making some mistakes, Marmont and Mortier did remarkably well on 29 March to hold off the allied assaults for as long as they did.48
The decision to leave Paris was made against the Empress’s better judgement. Marie-Louise had kept in touch with Napoleon by correspondence the whole time he was away, writing
to him, for example, on 10 March – it was their child’s birthday – to say how much she had been thinking about him.49 She wrote to her husband immediately after the Regency Council to inform him of the decision. ‘I confess that I am quite against the idea, I am sure it will have a terrible effect on the Parisians.’50 And later that day she wrote again: ‘everyone has lost their head, except me, and I hope that in a few days you can tell me that I was right not to want to evacuate the capital.’51 The next day, the Empress’s ladies-in-waiting could be seen through the windows of the palace, running from room to room, some weeping, as they gathered their things.52