Here again we touch on the disputed question whether Metternich played a fair game against Napoleon, or whether he tempted him to play with loaded dice while his throne was at stake. The latter supposition for a long time held the field; but it is untenable. On several occasions the Austrian statesman warned Napoleon, or his trusty advisers, that the best course open to him was to sign peace at once. He did so at Dresden, and he did so now. On November 10th he sent Caulaincourt a letter, of which these are the most important sentences:
" … M. de St. Aignan will speak to you of my conversations [with him]. I expect nothing from them, but I shall have done my duty. France will never sign a more fortunate peace than that which the Powers will make to-day, and tomorrow if they have reverses. New successes may extend their views…. I do not doubt that the approach of the allied armies to the frontiers of France may facilitate the formation of great armaments by her Government. The questions will become problematical for the civilized world; but the Emperor Napoleon will not make peace. There is my profession of faith, and I shall never be happier than if I am wrong."
The letter rings true in every part. Metternich made no secret of sending it, but allowed Lord Aberdeen to see it.[393] And by good fortune it reached Caulaincourt about the time when he assumed the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. Its substance must therefore have been known to Napoleon; and the tone of the Frankfurt proposals ought to have convinced him of the need of speedily making peace while Austria held out the olive branch from across the Rhine. But Metternich's gloomy forecast was only too true. During his sojourn at Paris he had tested the rigidity of that cast-iron will.
In fact, no one who knew the Emperor's devotion to Italy could believe that he would give up Piedmont and Liguria. His own despatches show that he never contemplated such a surrender. On November 20th he gave orders for the enrolling of 46,000 Frenchmen of mature age—"not Italians or Belgians"—who were to reinforce Eugène and help him to defend Italy; that, too, at a time when the defence of Champagne and Languedoc was about to devolve on lads of eighteen.
He was equally determined not to give up Holland. On the possession of this maritime and industrious community he had always laid great stress. He once remarked to Roederer that the ruin of the French Bourbons was due to three events—the Battle of Rossbach, the affair of the diamond necklace, and the victory of Anglo-Prussian influence over that of France in Dutch affairs (1787). He even appealed to Nature to prove that that land must form part of the French Empire. "Holland," said one of his Ministers in 1809, "is the alluvium of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt—in other words, one of the great arteries of the Empire." Before the last battle at Leipzig he told Merveldt that he could not grant Holland its independence, for it would fall under the tutelage of England. And even while his Empire was crumbling away after that disaster, he wrote to his mother: "Holland is a French country, and will remain so for ever."[394]
Russia, Prussia, and Britain were equally determined that the Dutch should be independent; and if Metternich wavered on the subject of Dutch independence, his hesitation was at an end by the middle of December, for a memorandum of the Russian diplomatist, Pozzo di Borgo, states that Metternich then regarded the Rhine boundary as ending at Düsseldorf: "after that town the river takes the name of Waal."[395] Such juggling with geography was surely superfluous; for by that time the Frankfurt terms had virtually lapsed, owing to Napoleon's belated acceptance; and Metternich had joined the other allied Governments that now demanded a more thorough solution of the boundary question.
In fact, the allies were now able to make political capital out of their recent moderation.[396] On December 1st they issued an appeal to the French nation to the following effect: "We do not make war on France, but we are casting off the yoke which your Government imposed on our countries. We hoped to have found peace before touching your soil: we now go to find it there."
If the sovereigns hoped by means of this declaration to separate France from Napoleon, they erred. To cross the Rhine was to attack, not Napoleon, but the French Revolution. Belgium and the Rhine boundary had been won by Dumouriez, Jourdain, Pichegru, and Moreau, at a time when Bonaparte's name was unknown outside Corsica and Provence. France had looked on wearily at Napoleon's wars in Germany, Spain, and Russia: they concerned him, not her. But when the "sacred soil" was threatened, citizens began to close their ranks: they ceased their declamations against the crushing taxes and youth-slaying conscription: they submitted to heavier taxes and levies of still younger lads. In fact, by doffing the mask of Charlemagne, the Emperor became once more the Bonaparte of the days of Marengo.
He counted on some such change in public opinion; and it enabled him to defy with impunity the beginnings of a Parliamentary opposition. The Senate had been puffily obsequious, as usual; but the Corps Législatif had mistaken its functions. Summoned to vote new taxes, it presumed to give advice. A commission of its members agreed to a report on the existing situation, drawn up by Lainé, which gave the Emperor great offence. Its crime lay in its outspoken requests that peace should be concluded on the basis of the natural frontiers, that the rigours of the conscription should be abated, and that the laws which guaranteed the free exercise of political rights should be maintained intact. The Emperor was deeply incensed, and, despite the advice of his Ministers, determined to dissolve the Chamber forthwith (December 31st). Not content with this exercise of arbitrary power, he subjected its members to a barrack-like rebuke at the official reception on New Year's Day.—He had convoked them to do good, and they had done evil. Two battles lost in Champagne would not have been so harmful as their last action. What was their mandate compared with his? France had twice chosen him by some millions of votes: while they were nominated only by a few hundreds apiece. They had flung mud at him: but he was a man who might be slain, never dishonoured. He would fight for the nation, hurl back the foe, and conclude an honourable peace. Then, for their shame, he would print and circulate their report.—Such was the gist of this diatribe, which he shot forth in strident tones and with flashing eyes. He had the copies of the report destroyed, and dismissed the deputies to their homes throughout France.
The country, in the main, took his side; and doubtless the national instinct was sound; for the allies had crossed the Rhine, and France once more was in danger. As in 1793, when the nation welcomed the triumph of the dare-devil Jacobins over the respectable parliamentary Girondins, as promising a vigorous rule and the expulsion of the monarchical invaders, so now the soldiers and peasants, if not the middle classes, rejoiced at the discomfiture of the talkers by the one necessary man of action. The general feeling was pithily expressed by an old peasant: "It's no longer a question of Bonaparte. Our soil is invaded: let us go and fight."