Only forty-eight hours before, on Monday night, at Saint-Dizier, a small town 170 miles away, had Napoleon suddenly realised the gravity of the catastrophe impending over Paris. He was at that moment in the act of dealing the Allies a counter-stroke which he confidently believed would save the situation and bring the enemy’s advance to a general stand. Just a week before, he had abruptly turned back in his retreat towards the capital and had boldly started to march across the rear of the Allies in the direction of the Rhine. He would sever their communications; he would cut the enemy off from their base. Calling out the levée en masse of the peasantry all over Eastern France, and at the same time rallying to him the garrisons of the French fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine, with 100,000 men at his disposal, led by Ney, Macdonald, Victor, and Oudinot, while two other marshals, Marmont and Mortier, held the enemy at bay in front of Paris, he was looking forward to checkmate the Allies at the last moment and paralyse their advance on the capital. It was a daring and masterly project; but the Fortune of War was against Napoleon. He had sent word of his plans to Marie Louise at the Tuileries, together with instructions to his brother Joseph, Governor of Paris, but on the way a Cossack patrol captured the bearer of the vitally important documents. Napoleon’s despatch for once was not in cypher, and its full import was apparent instantly. It was carried to the Czar Alexander, and forthwith laid before a hastily convened Russian council of war. Another letter, taken at the same time, laid bare the critical condition of affairs inside Paris itself; describing how all was in confusion there, and that treachery to the cause of the Empire was at work within the city. The council of war decided to pay no heed to Napoleon’s counter-stroke, and, instead, to march at once on Paris in full force. Marmont and Mortier, it was known, could barely muster 6,000 regulars. With Blücher’s Prussians, at that moment on the point of joining them, the Allies could bring into line not far short of 150,000 men. This final plan was agreed to on the afternoon of Friday, March 24, and the general advance began at once.
NAPOLEON’S BLANK DISMAY
Napoleon knew nothing of what was happening until late on the night of the 27th, the following Monday. Then he was suddenly made aware of the full position. “Nothing,” exclaimed the doomed Emperor in blank dismay, “but a thunderbolt can save us now.” The Allies then had not turned back! The enemy nearest him, whom he had planned to attack next day, believing them to be the Russian main army, was only—he discovered at the last moment—a cavalry division, sent back to delude him and prevent his finding out what was really going on. And the troops advancing on Paris were already three clear days ahead of him! Napoleon counter-marched his whole force at once to hasten to the rescue of the capital. They would take the route by Sens, Troyes, and Fontainebleau, making a sweep to keep clear of the enemy’s columns, and approach Paris by the south bank of the Seine. It was a long march of fully 180 miles, but there was no other way open. Marmont and Mortier, to whom the news of Napoleon’s intended approach was sent off immediately, must manage to hold out in front of the city on the north bank until the Emperor arrived.
Fresh news, however, and yet more serious, as to the imminence of the grave peril threatening Paris, reached Napoleon during Tuesday night. Leaving the army to follow, he pressed forward ahead of the troops by himself in his travelling-carriage, escorted only by the Old Guard. They hurried forward with feverish eagerness all that night and the next day, the men of the Guard panting along at the double in their effort to keep up. With hardly a halt, they struggled along, famishing—most of the men had tasted no cooked food for the past five days—shoeless most of them, plodding and splashing barefoot through the mud, ankle deep; under a pitiless downpour of rain all the time. By Wednesday evening, the 30th, they had reached Troyes, after a forty miles march without a stop. There, still worse news reached Napoleon. Marmont and Mortier had been disastrously defeated at Meaux, and in consequence their defence of the northern heights outside the city was all but hopeless.
AT FULL GALLOP FOR PARIS
Napoleon, on that, abandoned his travelling-carriage for a light post-chaise, which set off at a gallop. He must now risk a ride practically unattended, in the desperate hope of being able to evade hostile patrols and get by stealth into the city. Once there, he would himself take charge of the defence. The men of the Old Guard were left behind at Troyes. They were worn out and unable, from sheer exhaustion, to go a step farther. Only a troop of Cuirassiers rode with the post-chaise, and most of these had to give up and drop back as the chaise raced forward, Napoleon himself from time to time calling from the windows to the postillions to keep on flogging the horses and go faster and faster. At every stopping-place to change horses the Emperor sent off a courier to tell Paris to hold out; and at each post-house he received still more alarming messages from the city. Now he heard that the Empress and his little son had had to fly from Paris. Then he learned that the whole city was in a state of complete panic, with affrighted peasants from all round crowding in; the shops and banks all shut; the theatres closed, a thing that had not happened even at the height of the Reign of Terror; everywhere chaos and hopeless despair. After that came the news that the enemy were advancing so fast that they were expected at any moment before the City barriers.
At ten o’clock Napoleon arrived at the village of Fromenteau, near the Fountains of Juvisy, twelve and a half miles from Paris. The post-chaise had to stop there again for a relay of fresh horses. As it drew up, a party of soldiers passed by, coming from the direction of the capital. Not knowing who was in the chaise, some of them shouted out to the occupants, Napoleon, and Caulaincourt, who had been riding with the Emperor: “Paris has surrendered!”
The dread news struck Napoleon like a bullet between the eyes. “It is impossible! The men are mad!” he hissed out, gripping at the cushions of his seat. Then he turned to his companion: “Find an officer and bring him to me!”
One rode up, as it happened, at that moment, a General Belliard. Napoleon questioned him eagerly, and he gave the Emperor sufficient details to leave no doubt of what had befallen. Great drops of sweat stood on Napoleon’s forehead. He turned, quivering with excitement, to Caulaincourt. “Do you hear that?” he ejaculated hoarsely, fixing a gaze on his companion under the light of the lamps, the bare memory of which made Caulaincourt shudder ever after to his dying day.
They left the chaise, and looking across the Seine Napoleon saw to the north and east, in the direction of Villeneuve Saint-Georges, the glare of the enemy’s watch-fires. Marshal Berthier now came up in a second post-chaise which had been following the Emperor’s. Speaking excitedly, Napoleon declared that he would go on to Paris. He set off walking rapidly along the road in the dark, leaving the horses to be put to and the post-chaise to pick him up. Berthier and Caulaincourt attended him, and General Belliard and some dragoons followed at a few paces behind. Napoleon rejected every remonstrance and refused to turn back. “I asked them,” exclaimed Napoleon, talking half to himself, half to his companions, “to hold out for only twenty-four hours! Miserable wretches! Marmont swore that he would be cut to pieces rather than yield! And Joseph ran away: my own brother! To surrender the capital to the enemy: what poltroons!” So he went on in a breathless torrent of words. He added finally: “They have capitulated: betrayed their country; betrayed their Emperor; degraded France! It is too terrible! Every one has lost his head! When I am not there they do nothing but add blunder to blunder.”