The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

A new spirit had come over that army. What had seemed to them a purposeless, ghastly march through the mud was now realized to be one of the most brilliant manoeuvres Napoleon had ever undertaken. The conscripts, the raw boys, the National Guards, many of whom had been in action for the first time that day, were filled with incredible enthusiasm. They were ready for anything.

But the army must have rest. It must be permitted to sleep the night. Accordingly the divisions were disposed in the fields. Those who had fought hardest were given quarters in the village; the next were placed in the captured Russian camp; the others made themselves as comfortable as they could around huge fires. The poor prisoners had little or nothing. The ragged French were at least better clothed than they were in the morning. The defenseless had arms and the whole army had been fed. There was wine, too; the Russian commissariat was a liberal one. There was much laughter and jovialness in the camps that night. Of course, the guard and the other veterans expected nothing else, but to the youngsters the brilliant stroke of Napoleon was a revelation.

As the little Emperor rode from division to division, sometimes dismounting and walking through the camps on foot, he was received with such acclaim as reminded him of the old days in Italy. And, indeed, the brief campaign which he had so brilliantly inaugurated can be favorably compared to that famous Italian adventure, or to any other short series of consecutive military exploits in the whole history of war.

They said that the Emperor had hesitated and lost his great opportunity at Borodino. They said that he had frightfully miscalculated at Moscow, that his judgment had been grievously at fault in the whole Russian campaign. They said that he had sat idle during a long day when the fortunes of his empire might have been settled at Bautzen. They said that, overcome by physical weariness, he had failed to grasp his great opportunity after the victory at Dresden. They said that Leipsic and the battles that preceded it showed that he had lost the ability to see things with a soldier's eye. They declared that he made pictures and presented them to himself as facts; that he thought as an Emperor, not as a Captain. They said that in this very campaign in France, the same imperial obsession had taken such hold upon him that in striving to retain everything from Holland to the end of the Italian peninsula he stood to lose everything. They said that, if he had concentrated all his armies, withdrawn them from outlying dependencies, he could have overwhelmed Blücher and Schwarzenberg, the Czar Alexander, the Emperor Francis and King William, and that, having hurled them beyond the Rhine, these provinces in dispute would have fallen to his hand again. They said that his practical omnipotence had blinded his judgment.

Those things may be true. But, whether they be true or not, no man ever showed a finer strategic grasp of a situation, no man ever displayed more tactical ability on a given field, no man ever conducted a series of more brilliant enterprises, no man ever utilized a small, compact, well-handled force opposed to at least two and a half times its number, no man ever conducted a campaign which stood higher from a professional point of view than this one which began with the march from Nogent and the destruction at Champaubert.

There was no rest for Napoleon that night. Undoubtedly he was not now the man he had been. Paralyzing physical disabilities before and after interfered with his movements. The enormous strains to which he had subjected his body and brain sometimes resulted in periods of mental blindness and physical prostration. It was whispered that a strange malady—was it some form of epilepsy?—sometimes overcame the Emperor so that his faculties and abilities were in abeyance for hours. No man had ever abused such wonderful mental and physical gifts as he originally had possessed by subjecting them to such absolutely impossible strains as he, and Nature was having her revenge. But for that week in February and for a time thereafter there was a strange and marvelous return of the Emperor's physical powers.

He had sustained more fatigue than any man in the army, because to all of the personal sufferings of the march in the long day and the sleepless night and the conduct of the battle had been added responsibility, but he was as fresh as a boy. His pale cheek showed rare color; his eyes sparkled; his voice was clear and sharp. The nervous twitching of his mouth ceased. The gray look vanished. He was once more the boyish Captain of the Army of Italy, at whom the huge grenadiers laughed and the gray-headed veterans marveled.

The Emperor's scouts had been hard at work during the day. They were constantly coming and going at his headquarters at Champaubert with detailed accounts of the situation of the Russians and the Prussians. The Emperor had a momentous decision to make. From the position he had gained it was equally as easy for him to strike east as to strike west. He decided at last to strike west, realizing that no captain, much less fiery old Blücher, without an absolute forfeiture of his reputation as a soldier could afford to leave his van unsupported, but that the Prussian Field Marshal must advance to its support. If the Emperor's plans worked out, he could destroy that van, and then turn back and mete out the same fate to the main body coming to its rescue.

Just about ten miles away to the westward, on the main road to Paris by way of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, lay the village of Montmirail. As many miles beyond Montmirail, on the same Paris road, Sacken, with twenty thousand men, had been advancing. From Montmirail a road led northward to Château Thierry and the crossing of the Marne, behind which Macdonald had been driven by Yorck, with perhaps fifteen thousand more. The Emperor decided to seize Montmirail, throw out a corps to hold back Yorck on the northern road, while he crushed Sacken on the other with the remainder of the army, except one corps, which he would leave at Champaubert to delay Blücher's advance. These army corps were in reality nothing more than weak divisions, less than seven thousand strong.

Early in the afternoon Marteau, with old Bullet-Stopper and the little squadron of Maurice's cavalry, had rejoined the Emperor. He had been greatly refreshed by his night's sleep. He had taken advantage of the early hours of the morning to bury his father and sister, saying such prayers as he could remember, in default of the parish priest, who had been murdered. The Emperor having sent a courier with an escort back to Nogent, the Countess Laure and her English friend had elected to go with them. They feared to be left alone in the château all day, in the disturbed state of the country, and it was easier, perhaps, to reach Paris from Nogent by way of the Seine than by going direct from Sézanne. Marteau had approved of their decision.