A succession of battles now took place with varying success, but still leaving the Allies nearer to Paris than before. If Buonaparte turned against Blucher, Schwarzenberg made an advance towards the capital; if against Schwarzenberg, Blucher progressed a stage. To check Schwarzenberg whilst he attacked Blucher, Napoleon sent Oudinot, Macdonald, and Gerard against Schwarzenberg; but they were defeated, and Napoleon himself was repulsed with severe loss from Craonne and the heights of Laon. But Buonaparte getting between the two Allied armies, and occupying Rheims, the Austrians were so discouraged that Schwarzenberg gave orders to retreat. The Emperor Alexander strenuously opposed retreat; but the effectual argument was advanced by Lord Castlereagh, who declared that the moment the retreat commenced the British subsidies should cease. A sharp battle was fought on the 20th of March, between Schwarzenberg and Napoleon, at Arcis-sur-Aube, and Napoleon was compelled to retreat. Blucher, who had received the order to retreat from Schwarzenberg, had treated it with contempt, and replied to it by his favourite word, "Forwards!" Napoleon had now to weigh the anxious question, whether it was better to push on, and stand a battle under the walls of Paris, with his small, much-reduced force, against the Allies, and with the capital in a state of uncertainty towards him—or to follow and harass the rear of the enemy. He seems to have shrunk from the chance of a defeat under the eyes of his metropolis, and he therefore, finding a Prussian force in Vitry, crossed the Marne on the 22nd of March, and held away towards his eastern frontiers, as if with some faint, fond hope that the peasantry of Franche Comté and Alsace might rise and fly to his support. But no such movement was likely; all parts of France were mortally sick of his interminable wars, and glad to see an end put to them. The Allies had now taken the bold resolve to march on Paris and summon it to surrender.

The Emperor Francis determined to remain at Aube, with the division under General Ducca, not thinking it becoming him to join in the attack on the French capital where his daughter ruled as empress-regent; and a body of ten thousand cavalry, under command of Winzengerode and Czernicheff, was ordered to watch the motions of Napoleon and intercept his communications with Paris, whilst the Russian and Prussian light troops scoured the roads in advance, stopping all couriers. Blucher, at the same time, having thrown open the gates of Rheims, was moving on Châlons and Vitry, to form a junction with the army of Schwarzenberg. The flying parties captured, near Sommepuix, a convoy of artillery and ammunition; and, on another occasion, they fell in with a courier bearing a budget of the most melancholy intelligence to the Emperor—that the British had made a descent on Italy; that the Austrians had defeated Augereau, and were in possession of Lyons; that Bordeaux had declared for Louis XVIII.; and that Wellington was at Toulouse. These tidings gave immense confidence to the Allies. Near Fère-Champenoise the Allies met, finding Blucher in the act of stopping a body of infantry, five thousand in number, which was bearing provisions and ammunition to the army of Napoleon. The column consisted of young conscripts and National Guards, who had never been in action, but they bravely defended their charge till they were surrounded by the mingling forces of the two armies, and compelled to surrender.

ALEXANDER I.

[[See larger version]]

The Allies now advanced in rapid march. They put to flight the divisions of Mortier and Marmont, whom Buonaparte had posted to give them a check. These divisions lost eight thousand men, besides a vast quantity of guns, baggage, and ammunition. A similar fate awaited a body of ten thousand National Guards. At Meaux Mortier and Marmont blew up a great powder-magazine as Blucher approached, and then retired beneath the walls of Paris. The Allies, in three days, had marched seventy miles. On the 28th of March they were in full view of Paris, and had driven Marmont and Mortier close under its walls. The north-east side of Paris, on which they were approaching, was the only one then fortified. A ridge of hills along that side, including the heights of Belleville, Romainville, and Montmartre, was defended by an old wall, and there the French authorities had placed the defenders of the city—the shattered forces of the two retreating marshals, bodies of the National Guard, and youths from the Polytechnic schools, many of them mere boys of from twelve to sixteen years old, some of whom served the guns on the batteries. The whole of the forces left to defend the great and wealthy city of Paris amounted to between thirty and forty thousand men.

NAPOLEON SIGNING HIS ABDICATION. (See p. [83].)

[[See larger version]]

The other side of the city was only defended by the Seine, but the Allies, who had first to cross that river, feared that Buonaparte might come up and attack their rear while they were doing so. They determined, therefore, to attack the line of fortifications. The most lying proclamations were issued by the ex-King Joseph to assure the inhabitants that the bodies of the enemy who came in view were only stragglers who had managed to get past the army of the Emperor, who was dispersing the Allies most triumphantly. The forces in Paris—eight thousand troops of the line and thirty thousand of the National Guard—were reviewed in front of the Tuileries on a Sunday, to impress the people with a sense of security; but on the morning of the 29th the Empress and her child quitted the palace, attended by a regiment of seven hundred men, and fled to Blois, carrying with her the crown jewels and much public treasure, and followed by nearly all the members of Government. The population—unlike their fathers, who stopped Marie Antoinette in her attempt to escape—suffered this departure with murmurs, but without any attempt to prevent it. When she was gone they began heartily to curse Buonaparte for the trouble and disgrace he had brought upon them. That very morning Joseph issued a most flaming proclamation, assuring the Parisians that the Emperor was at hand, and would annihilate the last traces of the audacious enemy. But already the assault had commenced, and the next day, the 30th of March, it was general all along the line. The Parisians fought bravely, especially the boys from the Polytechnic schools; and as the Allies had to attack stone walls and batteries, their slaughter was great. Joseph rode along the line to encourage them in this useless, because utterly hopeless, waste of life. The Allied monarchs had, before commencing the assault, issued a proclamation, promising that all life and property should be strictly protected if the city quietly opened its gates; and, in the midst of the storming, they sent in again, by a French prisoner, the same offer, adding that, should the city be carried by assault, no power on earth could prevent it from being sacked by the enraged soldiers, and probably destroyed. Yet Joseph did not give the order for capitulation till the whole line was in the hands of the Allies, except Montmartre. The Cossacks were already in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and bombs flying into the Chaussée d'Antin. Then King Joseph, whose lying proclamation was still selling on the boulevards at a sou each, ordered Marmont to capitulate; and though he had vowed in his proclamation to stand by the Parisians to the last gasp, he then fled after the Empress to Blois. In this defence four thousand French were killed and wounded, and double that number of the Allies, as they had to face the towers and batteries crowded with soldiers and to fight their way up hill.