CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY - F I VE
With his back to the wall, Napoleon was defiant. Having lost the military
war against the Allies, he proceeded to lose the political war in Paris by
refusing to conciliate the notables. He made an initial gesture towards
them by ordaining that the Senate and Council of State should join the
Chamber of Deputies in a joint session of the Legislature, but spoiled the
effect by appointing one of his own placemen as president of the session.
Bourgeois hostility was redoubled by emergency cuts in salaries, the
collapse of the stockmarket, the acquisition by the Allies of frontier
factories, as at Liege, and new taxes: the Emperor reintroduced the droits
reunis on alcohol, tobacco and salt, doubled the patente and increased the
normal rate of taxation by 30 centimes. To cap all, the French people
were about to experience the horrors of war as French territory was
invaded for the first time since 1 792 .
By the beginning of 1 8 14 Napoleon no longer had significant support
in France outside the Army. The propertied classes were angry that all
their concessions to the Emperor had been in vain : they had had to see
their sons serve in the wars, see all the money they had spent on
substitutes in the draft in previous years spent for nothing, and now they
faced business ruin. They were also under physical threat from a number
of directions: from the Allied invaders, from peasants hungry for a
redistribution of land, from the extraordinary commissioners (rather like
the Revolutionary deputes en mission) Napoleon threatened to unleash
upon them, from the volunteer militias formed from the unemployed,
and from the host of deserters, draft evaders and bandits who roamed the
countryside.
The notables were angry that they were back with the disorder that
had plagued them under the Directory. Was it for this they had made an
Emperor? Bonaparte's blunders meant they were now back with the
dilemma they sought to avoid by opting for the imperial 'third way'.
They did not want the restoration of the Bourbons but they feared even
more Jacobinism and the levee en masse. However, the Bourbons came to
seem an increasingly attractive bet after Louis XVIII's decree of
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r February r 8 r 3, in which he declared that he would accept the
Revolutionary and Bonapartist land settlements and not attempt to
tamper with 'national property'.
It was therefore in an atmosphere of high tension that the Legislative
Body met in plenary session on 19 December r 8 r 3. Apparently
conciliatory, Napoleon promised to consult the Legislature on all peace
proposals and two commissions were elected to study Allied overtures.
The Senate gave the Emperor its full backing, but the Chamber censured
him for continuing the war, and a charter incorporating the criticism was
adopted by 229 votes to 3 1 - a clear warning to Napoleon had he been
minded to heed it. He responded by declining to print the charter,
refusing even to contemplate peace, and finally by dissolving the
Legislature. 'You are not the representatives of the nation. The true
representative of the nation is myself. France has more need of me than I
have need of France. ' On New Year's Day r 8 r 4 he made his intransigent
attitude clear by hinting that, if the war effort was impeded by the
notables, he himself would head a Jacobin revolution to sweep away all
existing privilege in France.
Napoleon's position seemed hopeless, but the Allies were far from
unanimous in their intentions after Leipzig. In November r 8 r 3 a
conference at Frankfurt broke up in dissension. The stumbling block was
the western European powers' increasing unease with the presence of
Russia in the West; the sleeping giant that had been aroused from its
slumbers on the steppes could turn out to be as great a threat to them as
to Napoleon. Austria, having regained all her possessions, wanted to offer
Bonaparte the natural frontiers, foreseeing that his downfall would
benefit Russia and Prussia but not herself. Why should she collude in the
Czar's dream of a triumphal entry into Paris, sweet revenge for Napoleon
in Moscow in r 8 r 2 ? For balance-of-power reasons, too, Britain was
inclined to go along with Austria, always provided France did not retain
Antwerp and the Scheidt. The machiavellian Bernadotte, representing
Sweden, had his own reasons for opposing an invasion of France: he
actually hoped he would be summoned back as the next Emperor after a
coup by the notables dislodged Bonaparte.
To save face, the feuding Allies offered Napoleon the natural frontiers
in November r 8 r 3, imagining that the Emperor would refuse and that in
the meantime they could hammer out a common policy. Napoleon
dithered, then surprised everyone by accepting the terms though, oddly,
he would not allow his acceptance to be promulgated in France.
Meanwhile in Britain there were second thoughts, once it was understood
that 'natural frontiers' must inevitably collide with British insistence on a
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neutral Belgium. Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, travelled to
Basle in some alarm. There he was able to make common cause with
Metternich, who realized that he needed British support to counter the
Czar and that the only way forward for Austria was to continue the war.
The Allies therefore replied early in 1 8 1 4 that the 'natural frontiers'
terms were no longer on offer, that France would have to accept the pre1 792 boundaries. This enabled Napoleon to present the Allies in
propaganda terms as ravening wolves, intent on destroying France. The
hollowness of their claim to be waging war only on the Emperor of
France, not its people, was now evident.
With Wellington advancing in the extreme south of France, Napoleon
made an eleventh-hour effort to remove the Spanish piece from the board
and get the Peninsular veterans to the eastern frontier by offering
Ferdinand the throne of Spain. By the treaty of Valen�ay in November
r 8 1 3 Ferdinand accepted these terms, though with Wellington advancing
into France they were a pointless concession anyway. It did not suit
Napoleon's enemies, internal as well as external, that Spain should be
wrapped up so neatly. Ferdinand found himself unable to leave Valen�ay
for the Pyrenees until March r 8 r 4.
Baulked politically at every turn, Napoleon determined to go down
fighting. On paper his position was hopeless. He had 8o,ooo exhausted
survivors of the grim campaigns of 1 8 1 3 to set against an Allied force of
3oo,ooo, with tens of thousands being added to its muster rolls every
week. In Italy Eugene was already hard pressed by the Austrians and in
the Pyrenees Soult was retreating before Wellington. The Confederation
of the Rhine was lost and both Holland and Belgium were on the point of
rebellion. But Napoleon did not yet despair, fortified by the elan of his
most loyal marshals, such as Mortier and the gallant Davout, who
defended besieged Hamburg brilliantly against impossible odds during
the winter of r 8 r 3-14. Napoleon drafted the National Guard, called up
aged reservists plus policemen, forest rangers and customs officials and
pressed into service a year early the 1 8 1 5 class of conscripts. But there
was still an acute manpower shortage, as the number of deserters and
draft dodgers who had slipped through the net since 1 8o8 now topped
one million. Of the JOO,ooo men Napoleon was able to raise on paper,
barely 1 2o,ooo actually served in the r 8 r 4 campaign.
Apart from shortage of numbers, two other factors told against the
Emperor in January 1 8 14. One was money, and in the light of this it was
something of a miracle that a campaign was fought at all. The new
taxation was systematically evaded and produced nothing worthwhile;
army contractors had to be content with promissory notes. Since the
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Domaine Extraordinaire had been used up by the disastrous 1 8 1 2 and 1 8 1 3
campaigns, Napoleon had to dig deeply into his private funds - the so­
called Tresor des Tuileries; in January there were still 75 million francs left,
but by April this had shrunk to 1 0 million. The other unfavourable
development was the treachery of the marshals, with a few honourable
exceptions. Victor began the new year by abandoning Strasbourg and
Nancy, giving the Allies free passage over the Moselle and forcing the
entire French line back.
Even worse was the perfidy of the Murats in Italy. With the support of
his wife, in January 1 8 1 4 Murat signed a treaty with Metternich which
guaranteed that he would continue to be King of Naples, in return for his
help in waging war on Eugene de Beauharnais. 'Caroline! Mine is a
family of tramps!' Napoleon allegedly said, when told of his sister's
treachery. But even in the sober columns of his official correspondence
his deep anger is palpable: 'The conduct of the King of Naples and that
of the Q!.Ieen is quite unspeakable. I hope to live long enough to avenge
for myself and for France such an outrage and such horrible ingratitude.'
Once again the true man of honour was manifestly Eugene de
Beauharnais, who fell back to Lyons with his forces in obedience to the
orders of his ex-stepfather. Though offered the crown of Italy by the
Allies if he would desert his master, Eugene refused. As he wrote to his
mother: 'The Emperor's star fades, but that is simply a further reason to
remain faithful to him.'
Napoleon's one hope was that the Allies might delay their offensive
until the spring. But in January came news that the enemy was on the
move. He therefore ordered Paris to be held and defended as a fortress.
In one of his very worst errors, he appointed Joseph Lieutenant-General
to the Empress's Council of Regency and de facto Governor of Paris.
Since the other members of the Council were Cambaceres, who had no
reason to love the Emperor, and Talleyrand, who was already actively
intriguing against him, his only true supporter in the highest circles in
Paris was his wife Marie-Louise, whom he respected as he had never
respected Josephine - 'never a lie, never a debt' was how he characterized
her, in pointed contrast to his first wife. Napoleon's 'brother complex'
was alive and well in 1 8 1 4, not just in the inexplicable decision to make
the man who had failed so signally in Spain his Lieutenant-General, but
in his ludicrous sexual jealousy of his elder sibling. Napoleon actually
worried that while he was campaigning Joseph would try to seduce
Marie-Louise.
The Allied plan for 1 8 1 4 once again envisaged the operation of four
armies. The Prussian Biilow would take half Bernadotte's Army of the
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North and, together with an expeditionary force sent from Britain under
Sir Thomas Graham, would occupy Holland and Belgium before moving
into northern France; the other half of the Army of the North, under
Bernadotte and Bennigsen, would divert to besiege Hamburg and
Magdeburg. Meanwhile Blucher would cross the Rhine with 1 oo,ooo
men of the Army of Silesia on a broad front between Coblenz and
Mannheim and try to pin Napoleon frontally; and Schwarzenberg and
the three emperors would advance via Kolmar with 2oo,ooo men of the
Army of Bohemia, fall on the French right and, depending on their
progress, either make contact with the Austrians from Italy advancing
from Lyons or with Wellington coming up from the Pyrenees. By
February the Allies hoped to have 40o,ooo troops on French soil.
Schwarzenberg began by advancing cautiously to the Langres plateau
where he waited until 23 January, having heard that new peace overtures
were afoot. On 22 January Blucher crossed the Meuse, and advanced
seventy miles into France; his vanguard established a bridgehead over the
Marne. Napoleon made the salvation of Paris his prime aim in the 1 8 1 4
campaign; t o d o this h e had to prevent a junction o f the two main Allied
armies. Hearing that Blucher and Schwarzenberg were only two days
march apart, he left Paris on 25 January and next day took up station at
Chiilons-sur-Marne, ready to occupy the 'centre' position and keep the
two armies divided.
Since the area to the east of Paris is crisscrossed with numerous rivers
and roads and Napoleon knew the geography intimately, he planned to
fight an unorthodox campaign based on the advantage this gave him. His
mode of fighting would be somewhere between regular and irregular
fighting, as he could not afford the casualties he would sustain even in a
victorious pitched battle. But he was gradually forced into orthodox
warfare when the apathetic peasantry refused to heed the exhortation to
take up arms against the foreign invader. Once again we may discern the
level of cant in all the talk about a 'people's war' . The lesson of 1 8 1 2 was
that peasants would take up arms only when the enemy was already
defeated or in full retreat. The obvious solution for Napoleon was to
declare a levee-en-masse, as in 1 793, and this was in fact what the Allies
most feared. Although he toyed with the idea, he rejected it decisively, as
it would transfer power to local Jacobin leaders. Napoleon was never
more the man of the Right than when he declared: 'If fall I must, I will
not bequeath France to the revolutionaries, from whom I have delivered
her.'
First blood in the campaign was drawn by Mortier, with whom
Blucher fought a sanguinary but indecisive battle at Bar-sur-Aube on 24
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January. When the Emperor came on the scene at Chalons, with Ney and
the Young Guard, he noticed Blucher's forces dispersed, so hatched a
plan to pin him down while Marmont worked around his rear to launch
an attack at Bar-le-Duc. Just in time Bli.icher managed to avoid the trap
but on 29 January near Brienne (where he had been to school) Napoleon
caught up with him and, using Ney and Grouchy effectively, badly
mauled the Prussians, who left behind 4,000 dead and wounded. He then
dogged the steps of the Prussians through heavy snowstorms but Bli.icher
got away to link up with part of Schwarzenberg's army.
On I February Napoleon and 4o,ooo men waited for the Allies at La
Rothiere on the road to Brienne. The scouts he had sent out brought back
poor intelligence, for it was difficult to make out anything in the blinding
snow. When news came that an enemy army was on the march north
from Trannes, Napoleon at once offered battle, unaware that Bli.icher had
linked with Schwarzenberg and that he therefore faced an I I o,ooo-strong
army, nearly three times larger than his. There ensued a miniature
version of Eylau, fought in a raging blizzard which soaked the
ammunition and made it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. As night
fell, Napoleon broke off contact, having suffered a tactical defeat, with
6,ooo casualties and the loss of so guns (Allied losses were of the same
order). Despite the wild disparity in numbers he had acquitted himself
well.
Napoleon returned to Troyes, where he arrived on 3 February, having
lost 4,000 men through desertion on the march. The citizens of Troyes
gave him a very frosty welcome. For a few hours the Emperor brooded,
idly pinning his hopes on peace talks which had opened at Chatillon-sur­
Seine; according to his spies, Austria was still opposed to Prussia and
Russia in not wanting guerre a outrance. If the war continued, his problem
was how to fight the enemy in detail if they were already united. There
seemed no other way, as guerrilla warfare was anathema to him. Then his
scouts brought him some good news. The enemy had grown overconfi­
dent and once more divided their forces.
Bli.icher had decided to advance by way of the Marne while
Schwarzenberg proceeded up the Seine. This gave Napoleon the separate
targets he required, but first he needed to widen the gap between the two
Allied armies so that they could not regroup by a rapid forced march.
Then he intended to strike hard at the Army of Bohemia while Marmont
and Oudinot contained Bli.icher. A number of small victories hastened the
process: Marmont defeated the Bavarians at Arcis-sur-Aube, Grouchy
and the Guards cavalry beat the Russian cavalry at Troyes, and there
were successful skirmishes at Vitry and Sens. But while Schwarzenberg
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veered south, the effect of all this was to drive Blucher pell-mell towards
Paris, and he was soon reported at Meaux, 25 miles from the French
capital. Napoleon's strategy was now in ruins. After a brilliant feint that
sent Schwarzenberg eastward, he doubled back for the defence of Paris.
The early days of February severely tested Napoleon's morale, for bad
news rained in on him thick and fast. Paris was in a high state of panic
over Blucher's advance, while Caulaincourt removed the last hope of a
peaceful settlement by reporting from the Chatillon-sur-Seine conference
that the Allies would offer only the 1 792 frontiers. There was now fine
detail on Murat's defection in Italy and news that Bulow had taken
Brussels and was besieging Antwerp. The Napoleon of 1 8 1 2 and 1 8 1 3
would have sat brooding, but the man o f 1 8 1 4, displaying energies not
seen since his heyday, not only put strong forces into Paris to restore
morale there but, with just 3o,ooo troops made plans to defeat Blucher in
detail before turning south to deal with Schwarzenberg.
Advancing cautiously and hampered by icy and slushy roads and food
shortages, Napoleon took time to get within range of Blucher. Then,
learning that the Prussian field-marshal had divided his forces, he struck
hard . On 1 0 February he sent Ney and Marmont against the advanced
Prussian positions at Champaubert, inflicting 4,000 losses on the enemy
at cost of two hundred Frenchmen, and providing himself with an
entering wedge between the corps of Yorck and Sacken which Blucher
had foolishly separated . Too late Blucher ordered his two deputies to
concentrate, but Napoleon got to Sacken first. On r r February at
Montmirail he brought off a textbook manoeuvre, pinning Sacken's
Russian allies with artillery fire until Mortier arrived to deliver the
knock-out blow. Timing his movements perfectly, Napoleon then sent in
the Guard for the coup de grace. Montmirail was one of the Guard's great
moments and the victory was particularly to be savoured as the Emperor
had once again defeated a numerically superior enemy ( 1 8,ooo against
1 o,ooo), inflicting twice as many casualties (4,ooo) and hauling in 3,000
prisoners. Those who claim that the Napoleon of 1 8 1 4 was the General
Bonaparte of 1 796-97 back to his best form are not exaggerating.
Flushed with victory, Napoleon seemed to gain a new lease of life; he
was again the complete commander, full of energy, alert to the slightest
battlefield nuance. In this mood he attacked Yorck at Chateau-Thierry on
12 February; the Prussians fought a desperate rearguard action before
escaping north over the Marne to Soissons. Marching to Yorck's aid,
Blucher sheered off once he heard the Emperor himself was commanding
the French and then had to beat off assaults on his rearguard. In the
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fighting on 1 2- 1 3 February the Prussians and Russians lost 6,ooo, the
French no more than 6oo.
Once again it was bad news from other fronts that led Napoleon to
break off the pursuit of his quarry. It was Victor who had let Blucher
through the net to menace Paris earlier and it was again Victor who let
the Emperor down. Napoleon had been reasonably confident about
holding the Army of Bohemia at arm's length, for the key to Paris was the
Nogent bridge over the Seine and he had left clear contingency plans to
blow it up if it could not be defended . However, the Austrians found
another bridge at Bray, ten miles west, and crossed there. Victor
abandoned the Nogent bridge to avoid encirclement, thus precipitating
another panic in Paris. But Schwarzenberg did not take the gleaming
opportunity apparently offered him. He was afraid of being caught
between Napoleon's force and the other army Augereau was supposed to
have raised in Lyons. Moreover, he was finally running into partisan
resistance as the French peasants, enraged by Allied looting, at last began
showing signs of the guerrilla spirit.
When Blucher heard the news from the Seine, he naturally calculated
that Napoleon would be forced to go to the help of his capital, giving the
Prussians the opportunity to take them in the rear. The Emperor was
keen to encourage this thinking and laid out a decoy for the Prussians,
using the small forces of Marmont's corps, Grouchy's cavalry and the
Guard as bait. Blucher fell for the trap and came within an ace of being
surrounded; he was saved only because the roads, muddy after melted
snow, prevented Grouchy from bringing up the horse artillery to finish
the Prussians off. Nevertheless at Vauchamps on 14 February Napoleon
inflicted 7 ,ooo casualties for the loss of just 6oo.
In the so-called 'Six Days Campaign' of February 1 8 1 4, Napoleon
returned to his peerless best as a commander, inevitably recalling his
successes in 1796--97 . He could probably have finished off Blucher and
the Prussians on 13 February but for the hiccup caused by the news from
the Seine front. As it was, he caused Allied losses of 2o,ooo and seized a
large number of guns. The key to his success was that he had a small
army (3o,ooo) under his personal direction, much as in the Italian
campaign of 1 796-97. A generalization becomes inevitable: Napoleon was
a brilliant commander of small armies which he could mould to his will as
a conductor moulds an orchestra, but the huge armies of 1 81 2 and 1 8 1 3
spiralled out o f his control; the Emperor had i n a sense promoted himself
to his own level of incompetence. The irony of the 'Six Days' was that all
Napoleon's brilliance availed him nothing. Within days Blucher had
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received 3o,ooo Russian reinforcements, more than making good his lost
numbers. It was as if Napoleon's victories had never been achieved.
Reasonably confident that Blucher would take time to lick his wounds
after such a mauling, Napoleon left Marmont and Mortier in a holding
position at Vauchamps, and swung away south-east in pursuit of
Schwarzenberg, whose cavalry patrols were already probing Melun and
Fontainebleau. After marching 47 miles in 36 hours, he hurled his forces,
now 6o,ooo strong, against the Austrians. In engagements at Mormant
and Valjiouan the French generals carried all before them. For the fourth
time on this campaign the supremely useless Victor ruined things.
Commanded to march through the night to catch the enemy at
Monterreau, he disobeyed orders, thus allowing the Austrians to dig in
behind strong positions. Napoleon angrily dismissed him, replaced him
with General Gerard, then brought off another superb victory by sending
in his cavalry at just the right moment. For the loss of 2,500 the French
inflicted casualties of 6,ooo.
Yet another French success at Mery-sur-Seine on 21 February left the
Allies demoralized and in disarray. Having won seven battles in eight
days, Napoleon was again offered the 1 792 frontiers as the basis for peace
but, flushed with his string of recent successes, turned the offer down.
He intended to pursue Schwarzenberg to Troyes, forcing him to make a
stand there, but learned to his dismay that Blucher had managed to link
up with him there. Disheartened, Napoleon sent word through his
envoys that he would accept the 1 792 frontiers, only to be told that the
offer was revoked. Even so, had the Allies stood to face him at Troyes,
Napoleon, with 70,000 against I oo,ooo might have won a great victory.
But at a council of war between Blucher and Schwarzenberg in Troyes on
22 February, the Allies agreed to withdraw: Blucher would head north to
the Marne to link up with Bulow and divert attention from Schwarzen­
berg, who would retire to Langres. Consequently, Napoleon entered
Troyes to a greeting far warmer than his last one; the burghers had had
enough of Germanic depredations.
From a military point of view Napoleon's position at the end of
February looked promising. But the apparent situation masked a host of
problems: the Emperor had reached the end of his ingenuity, his armies
were exhausted, there were no recruits, France seemed sunk in apathy
and morale in the army failed to pick up. Ominously, too, the Allies'
political will was growing stronger. After conferences between Castle­
reagh, Czar, Kaiser and Austrian Emperor at Bar-sur-Aube on 25
February and again at Chaumont on 1 March, it was agreed that Britain
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would commit another £ 5 million in subsidies so that the war could
continue for another twenty years if necessary.
In the last week of February Blucher again began advancing on Paris.
Napoleon ordered Marmont and Mortier to block his advance at all costs;
meanwhile, leaving Oudinot, MacDonald, Kellermann and Gerard to face
Schwarzenberg, he set off after the Prussians, hoping to take them in the
rear. Oudinot engineered a deception whereby Austrian spies would
think the Emperor was still in Troyes; he held noisy reviews, with the air
full of cries of ' Vive l 'Empereur!' But Schwarzenberg caught them off
balance by suddenly ordering a general advance and defeating Oudinot at
Bar-sur-Aube on 27 February.
Napoleon's daring plan to catch Blucher also failed. Once again
Blucher escaped the trap in the nick of time and crossed to the north
bank of the Marne, before withdrawing north to Aisne with Napoleon on
his heels. Because of cowardice by the commandant of Soissons and the
tardiness of Marmont and Mortier, who were supposed to head the
Prussians off there, Blucher made good his getaway, met his reinforce­
ments under BUlow and emerged from the chase with an army of I oo,ooo
Prussians and Russians. Just then word came in that MacDonald had
retreated and allowed the enemy to occupy Troyes; once again the
Emperor was stupefied at the incompetence of his marshals. Undeterred
he hurried on to engage Blucher, whom he found on the plateau of
Craonne on 7 March.
With just 40,000 men, Napoleon was again facing impossible odds,
especially with 25,000 fresh Russian troops in the field. It was the
Russians who caused the French the heaviest losses, including both
Grouchy and Victor wounded, but finally they gave ground and retreated
to Laon; casualties were about 5 ,ooo either side. Even at these odds
Napoleon might have scored a complete victory but for the idiocy of Ney,
who attacked prematurely before the artillery had been brought up.
Lacking cavalry for reconnaissance, Napoleon concluded from the enemy
withdrawal that he had defeated Blucher's rearguard and was astonished
to run into the main army at Laon on 9 March.
A grim struggle on I O March saw the French unable to make progress
against superior numbers; Blucher fought defensively, fearing a trap.
That night Y orck probed and found Marmont's VI Corps, coming up as
reinforcement, in an exposed position. He unexpectedly counterattacked
and routed Marmont's corps; another 4,ooo men were lost that Napoleon
could ill afford. Napoleon heard the bad news at 5 a.m. and decided to
stand his ground and deflect the Prussians on to himself. It was fortunate
for the Emperor that at this point BlUcher fell ill and handed over to his
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deputy. Gneisenau was overawed by the responsibility of facing the
Corsican ogre, so failed to move in to finish the French off, as a good
commander could have done. After a day of skirmishing, Napoleon
concluded that success against such superior numbers was impossible, so
withdrew across the Aisne to Soissons. In the fighting around Laon and
Craonne he had lost 6,ooo men to the Allies' 2,ooo.
Events were turning away from Napoleon in every theatre. Caulain­
court got an extension of the offer of the 1 792 frontiers until 1 7 March,
but Napoleon still refused to consider this a basis for peace. For a month
he had been vainly urging Augereau to appear in the field with the new
Army he was supposedly gathering at Lyons: at one point he exhorted
Augereau 'to forget his 56 years and remember the great days of
Castiglione'. Now word came in that Augereau had given up and there
would be no second Army. Next he heard from Marie-Louise that Joseph
was trying to organize an address to the Emperor from the Council of
State and National Guard in favour of peace. Angrily he exploded, and
made his dark suspicions of his brother overt: 'Everyone has betrayed me.
Will it be my fate to be betrayed also by the King? . . . Mistrust the King;
he has an evil reputation with women, and an ambition which grew upon
him while he was in Spain. '
The Emperor was still full o f fight. When the Allied General S t Priest
incautiously ventured ahead of the main army to take Rheims, Napoleon
fell on him and inflicted 6,ooo Russian casualties for 700 French losses.
But he was still no nearer shaking off the tentacles of the two armies
under Blucher and Schwarzenberg. He made a final attempt to break the
impasse by marching on Troyes, keeping Schwarzenberg pinned there
while he cut Blucher's communications with Strasbourg and made
contact with the strong French garrisons at Metz and Verdun. At first
Schwarzenberg seemed to be retreating, but suddenly changed tack and
concentrated his vanguard at Arcis-sur-Aube. There the two armies
collided on 20 March. The French took the town, only to come under
very heavy enemy counterattack.
The engagement with Schwarzenberg at Arcis-sur-Aube miscarried
when the Emperor was unable to deploy the numbers he needed as
Blucher had meanwhile defeated Marmont. Napoleon, victorious against
the Bavarians on the Allied right, was nearly killed when a shell exploded
directly under his horse. Some describe the incident as a suicide attempt
or manifestation of death wish for, seeing a howitzer shell just about to
explode, the Emperor deliberately rode his horse over it. The animal was
killed instantly, but Napoleon got up without a scratch. Many times later
he would regret that he had not died on the field of Arcis.
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The French had the better of a nocturnal skirmish with Schwarzen­
berg's vanguard, but next day the entire 8o,ooo-strong Army of Bohemia
appeared. Having only z8,ooo to pit against them, Napoleon withdrew,
leaving Oudinot to cover the retreat. From 3-6 p.m. on the z r st a grim
battle raged around Arcis in which the French rearguard was badly
mauled before getting away. This time the French managed to complete
an evacuation by bridge and then blow it up. Losses at Arcis were 3,000
French and 4,000 Austrians. Undaunted, Napoleon did not do the
obvious thing and march for Paris but made for St Dizier, hoping to cut
off Allied supply lines.
At first the Allies seemed likely to fall for this decoy and began pulling
their forces back from the advance on Paris. But then a letter from
Napoleon to Marie-Louise was intercepted. Talleyrand had for some
time been advising the Allie� that the Emperor was deeply unpopular in
Paris and there was a strong royalist party there, but the Russians,
particularly, were not convinced, suspecting machiavellianism on Met­
ternich's part - for Talleyrand was Metternich's creature. Now in the
clearest possible terms they found Napoleon admitting to his wife the
truth of this and, incidentally, revealing his own strategy: 'I decided to
make for the Marne and his line of communication, in order to push him
back further from Paris and draw nearer to my fortress. I shall be at St
Dizier this evening. ' After reading this, the Czar, on the advice of
Bonaparte's oldest enemy, Pozzo di Borgo, changed his mind and argued
strongly for an advance on Paris.
The Allies united both armies and, r 8o,ooo-strong, advanced smoothly
down the Marne towards Paris. Marmont and Mortier tried to bar the
way but were swept aside at La Fere-Champenoise on 25 March.
Napoleon meanwhile spent four days in a fool's paradise at St Dizier,
vaguely wondering whether he dared call a 'people's war'. He was
aroused from his fantasy on the 27th by news that the enemy would be in
Paris before him. Marmont and Mortier fought the last battle at the foot
of Montmartre on 30 March, the National Guard defended courageously
at Belleville and the Charonne heights, as did Moncey at the Porte de
Clichy, and made the Allies take significant losses as they fought their
way into the suburbs. In the end, though, they were simply overwhelmed
by superior numbers, and on the evening of the 30th Marmont signed the
capitulation of Paris.
Elsewhere in France resistance had collapsed. Lyons, from which so
much had been expected, fell on 2r March, joining a long list of
important provincial cities that were in hostile hands. In mid-February
Wellington commenced his advance from the Pyrenees. He defeated
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Soult at Orthez on 27 February, as a result of which Bordeaux rose
against Bonaparte and opened its gates to the English on 1 2 March. On
the 24th the hopelessly outnumbered Soult abandoned field operations
and took his army inside the walls of Toulouse. Three days later
Wellington began besieging it, forcing Soult to withdraw after a
sanguinary encounter on 1 0 April. The venal marshal actually achieved
his finest hour in the last days of the 1 8 1 4 war by trying to link up with
Suchet, who had at last been forced out of Catalonia. Soult was still in the
field when Toulouse declared for the Bourbons and on 12 April
Wellington entered the city in triumph, to learn of the amazing
denouement in Paris, six days earlier.
On learning that the Allies had stolen a march, Napoleon set out for
Paris with a small force, hoping to marshal the city's defences. He got as
far as Fontainebleau before he heard of Marmont's surrender. His
response was stupefaction. Could it really be true that Joseph had done
nothing to fortify the city and had then bolted in a blue funk? Sadly, this
turned out to be the case. Joseph had not raised the numbers of defenders
Napoleon expressly asked him to, had no gunners to service the artillery
park at Vincennes, and spent most of his time conferring with Talleyrand
on the best terms he could obtain from the Allies for himself. Napoleon
raged impotently: 'It is the first time I have heard that a population of
300,000 men cannot survive for three months,' he said of the inexplicable
failure of Paris to survive even one hour of siege. It is said that the city
did not fight because all quartiers save the working-class suburbs hated
Napoleon, that Parisians feared it would be sacked and gutted if they
resisted, and because Joseph had left them without fortifications, but
none of these alleged reasons convinces.
For once the age-old French cry of nous sommes trahis expressed the
plain truth. The most culpable of those who failed Napoleon was his
brother Joseph, whose incompetence was so spectacular that one is
justified in suspecting deliberate sabotage. Marmont has been identified
as the prime villain by the influential historian Henry Houssaye, on the
grounds that supply lines and logistics would have forced the retreat of
the Allies if Paris had held out for just another twenty-four hours. But
the worst of all villains was the venal and treacherous Talleyrand who,
with Fouche and other inveterate plotters, remained in the capital to
welcome the Allied 'deliverers' while Joseph and Jerome rode hell-for­
leather for the Loire. Joseph persuaded Marie-Louise that the Council of
Regency and the Court must leave the capital but ignored Napoleon's
explicit instruction that nobody must be left in Paris who could legitimate
a transfer of power to an Allied nominee. Talleyrand managed to stay on
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in Paris by the simple ruse of appearing at the barrier at the city exit
without a passport authorizing him to leave.
Talleyrand, together with Chabrol, prefect of the Seine and Pasquier,
prefect of police, were therefore on hand to welcome the Czar and the
King of Prussia when they entered the city with their troops on 3 1
March. But he was nearly beaten at his own game when a little-known
assembly jumped the gun. The Council of the Seine - an assembly so
despised by Napoleon that he habitually drew up the budget for Paris
without consulting it - in a proclamation by its councillors called on
Parisians to repudiate Napoleon and petition for a Bourbon restoration; it
was the notables on the Council, not the aristocracy who were the prime
movers. Talleyrand, fearful lest this premature proclamation provoke a
backlash, banned it from Le Moniteur and quickly formed a provisional
government on 1 April. Two days later he persuaded the Senate to vote
for Napoleon's deposition. With deeply researched malice he had already
packed off Marie-Louise and her son, using Joseph, moronic or
treacherous according to interpretation, as frontman in persuading her.
The upshot was that it was no longer feasible for anyone in the
government to suggest a transfer of power to the Regency and the
abdication of Napoleon in favour of his son.
Nevertheless, this was the option Caulaincourt held out for in
negotiations with Czar Alexander. At Fontainebleau meanwhile Napoleon
had assembled 6o,ooo troops and was prepared to fight on. But on 4 April
a delegation of marshals, headed by Ney, Moncey and Lefebvre, told him
this was no longer an option. 'The Army will not march,' said Ney. 'The
Army will obey me,' said Napoleon indignantly. 'The Army will obey its
chiefs,' came the uncompromising reply. Opinion is divided as to
whether Ney, Berthier or Lefebvre was most responsible for the revolt of
the marshals, but Napoleon then had no choice but to write out a
conditional abdication, provided the Allies recognized his son as his
successor. Caulaincourt, Ney, Marmont and MacDonald formed the
delegation that took this offer - the so-called 'Brumaire in reverse' - back
to Paris.
Alexander vacillated, fearful that if he did not accept a Regency of the
King of Rome, fighting might break out again. But Talleyrand had not
finished spinning his web of intrigues. He flattered the gullible Marmont
that he could be a second General Monk and worked on him to betray his
colleagues. While Caulaincourt and the others got into tough negotiations
with the Czar about Napoleon II, a message was dramatically delivered to
Alexander, stating that Marmont had signed an agreement with
Schwarzenberg and that his corps were even then fraternizing with their
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new allies the Austrians. The marshals now had no option but to return
to the Emperor with the bad news and ask for his unconditional
abdication. On 6 April Napoleon signed the deed, and on the very same
day Talleyrand nudged the Senate towards his final goal: the restoration
of the Bourbons.
Three things strike the Bonaparte student as salient about the dramatic
first three months of 1 8 14. First is the brilliance of Napoleon's
campaigning. Second is the astonishing level of treachery towards the
Emperor. Third is the affectionate relationship between Napoleon and
Marie-Louise. Of these the first largely speaks for itself. As Wellington
commented later after a close examination of the northern campaign:
'The study of it has given me a greater idea of his genius than any other.
Had he continued that system a little while longer it is my opinion that he
would have saved Paris.' On the second, the only surprise is that the
dreadful Talleyrand still finds his supporters. Even the great Pieter Geyl
displayed naivete in thinking Talleyrand had the interests of France at
heart, rather than his own, in 1 8 14. Talleyrand's apologists appear to
work from a false syllogism: Napoleon's interests and those of France
were different; Talleyrand's interests and Napoleon's were different;
therefore Talleyrand's interests and those of France were identical.
Marie-Louise's conduct and support for her husband during these
trying three months were irreproachable. She was the only one on the
Council of Regency who fully supported the Emperor and was
continually thwarted by Joseph and Talleyrand. Despite the danger that
the Paris mob, enraged by the Allied siege, might in exasperation visit on
her the fate it had meted out to Marie-Antoinette, she wanted to stay and
fight and was overborne only when Joseph produced a letter from
Napoleon written on 8 February. This contained the following: 'If l lose a
battle . . . get the Empress and the King of Rome to leave for Rambouillet
. . . Never let the Empress and the King of Rome fall into the hands of
the enemy . . . I would prefer my son to be killed rather than see him
brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.'
Marie-Louise made it plain in a letter to Napoleon on 29 March that
she thought this was bad advice:
They insist on my going . . . I should have been quite brave enough to
stay, and I am very angry that they would not let me, especially when
the Parisians are showing such eagerness to defend themselves . . . But
the whole lot of them have lost their heads except me, and I believe that
in a day or two you will tell me I was right in not wanting to evacuate
the capital for a mere I S,OOO cavalrymen who would never have got
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through the streets. I am really angry at having to go, it will have
terrible disadvantages for you, but they pointed out to me that my son
would be running into danger, and that was why I dared not gainsay
them once I had seen the letter you wrote to the King [sc. Joseph] .
In further letters she revealed the true calibre of Joseph: he had asked her
to intercede with her father, the Austrian Emperor, to make sure the
Bonaparte family did not suffer from France's humiliation.
Yet most of all, Marie-Louise's correspondence in early 1 8 1 4 reveals a
woman still very much in love with her husband. She may not yet have
been a woman of the world - she would come to that later - but she had
no doubts about her heart. Two letters in particular show something of
the inner woman. On 2 February she wrote: 'I myself am growing very
brave since your latest successes, and I hope I don't deserve to be called a
child any longer - that's what you used to like to call me before you went
away.' And on 10 March she wrote, to commemorate the anniversary of
the birth of her son in 1 8 u : 'I have been thinking about you so much
today, it is three years since you gave me so moving a proof of your love
that the tears come whenever I think of it, so it's an exceedingly precious
day to me. ' It was Napoleon's misfortune that, sunk in self-pity and
depression, he seemed unable to respond to her once he had abdicated. In
more ways than one, it now appeared, he seemed ready to give up on life.
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