To explain how this last event was possible we must retrace our steps. After Soult was driven by Wellington from the mountains at the back of the town of Orthez, he drew back his shattered troops over the River Adour, and then turned sharply to the east in order to join hands with Suchet's corps. This move, excellent as it was in a military sense, left Bordeaux open to the British; and Wellington forthwith sent Beresford northwards with 12,000 troops to occupy that great city. He met with a warm greeting from the French royalists, as[pg.415] also did the Duc d'Angoulême, who arrived soon after. The young prince at once proclaimed Louis XVIII. King of France, and allowed the royalist mayor to declare that the allies were advancing to Paris merely in order to destroy Napoleon and replace him by the rightful monarch. Strongly as Wellington's sympathies ran with the aim of this declaration, he emphatically repudiated it. Etiquette compelled him to do so; for the allies were still negotiating with Napoleon; and his own tact warned him that the Bourbons must never come into France under the cloak of the allies.
The allied sovereigns had as yet done nothing to favour their cause; and the wiser heads among the French royalists saw how desirable it was that the initiative should come from France. The bad effects of the Bordeaux manifesto were soon seen in the rallying of National Guards and peasants to the tricolour against the hated fleur-de-lys; and Beresford's men could do little more than hold their own.[[437]] If that was the case in the monarchical south, what might not Napoleon hope to effect in the east, now that the Bourbon "chimæra" threatened to become a fact?
The news as to the state of Paris was less satisfactory. That fickle populace cheered royalist allusions at the theatres, hissed off an "official" play that represented Cossack marauders,[[438]] and caused such alarm to Savary that he wrote to warn his master of the inability of the police to control the public if the war rolled on towards Paris. Whether Savary's advice was honestly stupid, or whether, as Lavalette hints, Talleyrand's intrigues were undermining his loyalty to Napoleon, it is difficult to say. But certainly the advice gave Napoleon an additional reason for flinging himself on Schwarzenberg's rear and drawing him back into Lorraine. He had reason to hope that Augereau, reinforced by some of Suchet's troops, would march towards Dijon and threaten the[pg.416] Austrians on the south, while he himself pressed on them from the north-east. In that case, would not Austria make peace, and leave Alexander and Blücher at his mercy? And might he not hope to cut off the Comte d'Artois, and possibly also catch Bernadotte, who had been angling unsuccessfully for popular support in the north-east?
But, while basing all his hopes on the devotion of the French peasantry and the pacific leanings of Austria, the French Emperor left out of count the eager hatred of the Czar and the Prussians. "Blücher would be mad if he attempted any serious movement," so Napoleon wrote to Berthier on the 20th, apparently on the strength of his former suggestion that Joseph should persuade Bernadotte to desert the allies and attack Blücher's rear.[[439]] At least, it is difficult to find any other reason for Napoleon's strange belief that Blücher would sit still while his allies were being beaten; unless, indeed, we accept Marmont's explanation that Napoleon's brain now rejected all unpleasing news and registered wishes as facts.
Fortune seemed to smile on his enterprise. Though he failed to take Vitry from the allied garrison, yet near St. Dizier he fell on a Prussian convoy, captured 800 men and 400 wagons filled with stores. Everywhere he ordered the tocsin to proclaim a levée en masse, and sent messengers to warn his Lorraine garrisons to cut their way to his side. His light troops spread up the valley of the Marne towards Chaumont, capturing stores and couriers; and he seized this opportunity, when he pictured the Austrians as thoroughly demoralized, to send Caulaincourt from Doulevant with offers to renew the negotiations for peace (March 25th).[[440]] But while[pg.417] Napoleon awaits the result of these proposals, his rear is attacked: he retraces his steps, falls on the assailants, and finds that they belong to Blücher. But how can Prussians be there in force? Is not Blücher resting on the banks of the Aisne? And where is Schwarzenberg? The Emperor pushes a force on to Vitry to solve this riddle, and there the horrible truth unfolds itself little by little that he stands on the brink of ruin.
It is a story instinct with an irony like that of the infatuation of King Oedipus in the drama of Sophocles. Every step that the warrior has taken to snatch at victory increases the completeness of the disaster. The Emperor Francis, scared by the approach of the French horsemen, and not wishing to fall into the hands of his son-in-law, has withdrawn with Metternich to Dijon.[pg.418]
Napoleon's letter to him is lost.[[441]] Metternich, well guarded by Castlereagh, is powerless to meet Caulaincourt's offer, and their flight leaves Schwarzenberg under the influence of the Czar.[[442]] Moreover, Blücher has not been idle. While Napoleon is hurrying eastwards to Vitry, the Prussian leader drives back Marmont's weak corps, his vanguard crosses the Marne near Epernay on the 23rd, his Cossacks capture a courier bearing a letter written on that day by Napoleon to Marie Louise. It ends thus: "I have decided to march towards the Marne, in order to push the enemy's army further from Paris, and to draw near to my fortresses. I shall be this evening at St. Dizier. Adieu, my friend! Embrace my son." Warned by this letter of Napoleon's plan, Blücher pushes on; his outposts on the morrow join hands with those of Schwarzenberg, and send a thrill of vigour into the larger force.
That leader, held at bay by Macdonald's rearguard, was groping after Napoleon, when the capture of a French despatch, and the news forwarded by Blücher, informed him of the French Emperor's eastward march. A council of war was therefore held at Pougy on the afternoon of the 23rd, when the Czar and the bolder spirits led Schwarzenberg to give up his communications with Switzerland, and stake everything on joining Blücher, and following Napoleon's 40,000 with an array of 180,000 men. But the capture of another French despatch a few hours later altered the course of events once more. This time it was a budget of official news from Paris to Napoleon, describing the exhaustion of the finances, the discontent of the populace, and the sensation caused by Wellington's successes and the capture of Bordeaux. These glad tidings inspired Alexander with a far more incisive plan—to march on Paris. This suggestion had been pressed on him on the 17th[pg.419] by Baron de Vitrolles, a French royalist agent, at the close of a long interview; and now its advantages were obvious. Accordingly, at Sommepuis, on the 24th, he convoked his generals, Barclay, Volkonski, Toll, and Diebitsch, to seek their advice. Barclay was for following Napoleon, but the two last voted for the advance to Paris, Toll maintaining that only 10,000 horsemen need be left behind to screen their movements. The Czar signified his warm approval of this plan; a little later the King of Prussia gave his assent, and Schwarzenberg rather doubtfully deferred to their wishes. Thus the result of Napoleon's incursion on the rear of the allies signally belied his expectations. Instead of compelling the enemy to beat a retreat on the Rhine, it left the road open to his capital.[[443]]
At dawn on the 25th, then, the allied Grand Army turned to the right-about, while Blücher's men marched joyfully on the parallel road from Chalons. Near La Fère-Champenoise, on that day, a cloud of Russian and Austrian horse harassed Marmont's and Mortier's corps, and took 2,500 prisoners and fifty cannon. Further to the north, Blücher's Cossacks swooped on a division of 4,500 men, mostly National Guards, that guarded a large convoy. Stoutly the French formed in squares, and beat them off again and again. Thereupon Colonel Hudson Lowe rode away southwards, to beg reinforcements from Wrede's Bavarians.
They, too, failed to break that indomitable infantry. The 180 wagons had to be left behind; but the recruits plodded on, and seemed likely to break through to[pg.420] Marmont, when the Czar came on the scene. At once he ordered up artillery, riddled their ranks with grapeshot, and when their commander, Pacthod, still refused to surrender, threatened to overwhelm their battered squares by the cavalry of his Guard. Pacthod thereupon ordered his square to surrender. Another band also grounded arms; but the men in the last square fought on, reckless of life, and were beaten down by a whirlwind of sabring, stabbing horsemen, whose fury the generous Czar vainly strove to curb. "I blushed for my very nature as a man," wrote Colonel Lowe, "at witnessing this scene of carnage." The day was glorious for France, but it cost her, in all, more than 5,000 killed and wounded, 4,000 prisoners, and 80 cannon, besides the provisions and stores designed for Napoleon's army.[[444]] Nothing but the wreck of Marmont's and Mortier's corps, about 12,000 men in all, now barred the road to Paris. Meeting with no serious resistance, the allies crossed the Marne at Meaux, and on the 29th reached Bondy, within striking distance of the French capital.