“MISERABLE WRETCHES!”
But to go on, with Paris in the hands of an army of 150,000 men, was out of the question. Napoleon had to bow to the inevitable. He at length yielded to the protests of the others. He stopped beside the Fountains of Juvisy. “He sat down on the parapet of one of the fountains,” described Labédoyère, an eye-witness, “and remained above a quarter of an hour with his head resting on his hands, lost in the most painful reflections.” Then he rose, went back to the post-chaise, and, telling General Belliard to rally all the men he could at Essonne, set off to drive to Fontainebleau. He reached there at six next morning.
Between ten o’clock on Wednesday night and six o’clock on Thursday morning the tragedy at the Invalides was enacted. Its opening scene took place just as Napoleon’s post-chaise was drawing up in the village of Fromenteau. Its final scene took place just as the post-chaise was entering the courtyard of Fontainebleau.
The Capitulation of Paris was signed before the Barrier of La Villette at five in the afternoon. Its first article laid down that the French army must evacuate Paris within twelve hours: before five o’clock next morning. The last clause recommended the city to the mercy of the Allied Sovereigns, and of the Czar Alexander in particular.
All day long the booming of cannon and rattle of musketry had dinned in the ears of the trembling and terrified Parisians, ever steadily drawing nearer. The marshals, Marmont and Mortier, had made their last stand, and, resisting desperately to the last, in a struggle in which the Allies lost two to every one of the defenders, so ferocious was the contest, had been beaten back into the city. They carried back with them, so gallantly had they counter-attacked at one point, the standard of the Second Squadron of the Russian Garde du Corps—now a trophy in the present collection at the Invalides.
BEYOND ALL HOPE NOW
The outnumbered and exhausted troops could make no further fight, although, to the end, many of the soldiers were for holding out to the last cartridge. The Générale had beaten to arms at two in the morning; at six, with sunrise, the enemy’s guns opened fire; from then until late in the afternoon the fighting had gone on incessantly.
All was over by four o’clock. From east to west, from Charenton and Belleville, right round to Neuilly, the Allies, the Russians, Blücher’s Prussians, and the Austrians, had captured every position capable of defence, one after the other, by sheer weight of numbers, and had carried at the point of the bayonet every place of vantage held by the French. Woronzeff and the Prince of Würtemburg had stormed Romainville, La Villette, and La Chapelle. Langeron and the Russian Imperial Guard were masters of the heights of Montmartre and the Buttes Chaumont, looking down directly on Paris. Eighty-six guns had been taken from the marshals since the morning; nearly six thousand soldiers and National Guards had fallen, killed or wounded, facing the foe. A six-miles long line of batteries and battalions on the side of the Allies had closed in to within short musket range of the Paris barriers. Already the Russian cannon were opening fire on the city, and their shells were bursting over the central streets of Paris; falling, some in the Chaussée d’Antin and on the Boulevard des Italiens.
At four o’clock Marmont, who had been the soul of the defence, fighting, now on horseback, now on foot, using his sword at times—“the marshal was seen everywhere in the thickest of the fight, a dozen or more soldiers were bayoneted at his side, and his hat was riddled with bullets”—at four o’clock Marmont repassed within the barriers to announce that further defence was impossible. He was scarcely recognisable, we are told—“he had a beard of eight days’ growth; the great-coat which covered his uniform was in tatters; from head to foot he was blackened with powder-smoke.” Then had to be done the only thing that was left to do. Marmont and Mortier held a hasty conference, and after it a trumpeter and an aide de camp carrying a white flag rode out through the firing line to the nearest advanced post of the Allies. The officer was taken before the Czar Alexander on the plateau of Chaumont, and Paris surrendered. The last sounds that were heard on the French side as the firing ceased came from a battalion of the Imperial Guard which had been serving under Marmont, from a scanty remnant of veterans stubbornly resisting at bay to the last—shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!”
THE FLAG OF THE POLYTECHNIC