The tension of his feelings at this time, when rage and desperation finally gave way to a fixed resolve to stake all on a blow at Blücher's flank, finds expression in a phrase which has been omitted from the official correspondence.[412] In one of the five letters which he wrote to Joseph on the 9th, he remarked: "Pray the Madonna of armies to be for us: Louis, who is a saint, may engage to give her a lighted candle." A curiously sarcastic touch, probably due to his annoyance at the Misereres and "prayers forty hours long" at Paris which he bade his Ministers curtail. Or was it a passing flash of that religious sentiment which he professed in his declining years?
He certainly counted on victory over Blücher. A week earlier, he had foreseen the chance that that leader would expose his flank: on the 7th he charged Marmont to occupy Sézanne, where he would be strongly supported; on the afternoon of the 9th he set out from Nogent to reinforce his Marshal; and on the morrow Marmont and Ney fell upon one of Blücher's scattered columns at Champaubert. It was a corps of Russians, less than 5,000 strong, with no horsemen and but twenty-four cannon; the Muscovites offered a stout resistance, but only 1,500 escaped.[413] Blücher's line of march was now cut in twain. He himself was at Vertus with the last column; his foremost corps, under Sacken, was west of Montmirail, while Yorck was far to the north of that village observing Macdonald's movements along the Château-Thierry road.
The Emperor with 20,000 men might therefore hope to destroy these corps piecemeal. Leaving Marmont along with Grouchy's horse to hold Blücher in check on the east, he struck westwards against Sacken's Russians near Montmirail. The shock was terrible; both sides were weary with night marches on miry roads, along which cannon had to be dragged by double teams: yet, though footsore and worn with cold and hunger, the men fought with sustained fury, the French to stamp out the barbarous invaders who had wasted their villages, the Russians to hold their position until Yorck's Prussians should stretch a succouring hand from the north. Many a time did the French rush at the village of Marchais held by Sacken: they were repeatedly repulsed, until, as darkness came on, Ney and Mortier with the Guard stormed a large farmhouse on their left. Then, at last, Sacken's men drew off in sore plight north-west across the fields, where Yorck's tardy advent alone saved them from destruction. The next day completed their discomfiture. Napoleon and Mortier pursued both allied corps to Château-Thierry and, after sharp fighting in the streets of that place, drove them across the Marne. The townsfolk hailed the advent of their Emperor with unbounded joy: they had believed him to be at Troyes, beaten and dispirited; and here he was delivering them from the brutal licence of the eastern soldiery. Nothing was impossible to him.
Next it was Blücher's turn. Leaving Mortier to pursue the fugitives of Sacken and Yorck along the Soissons road, Napoleon left Château-Thierry late at night on the 13th, following the mass of his troops to reinforce Marmont. That Marshal had yielded ground to Blücher's desperate efforts, but was standing at bay at Vauchamps, when Napoleon drew near to the scene of the unequal fight. Suddenly a mighty shout of "Vive l'Empereur" warned the assailants that they now had to do with Napoleon. Yet no precipitation weakened the Emperor's blow: not until his cavalry greatly outnumbered that of the allies did he begin the chief attack. Stoutly it was beaten off by the allied squares: but Drouot's artillery ploughed through their masses, while swarms of horsemen were ready to open out those ghastly furrows. There was nothing for it but retreat, and that across open country, where the charges and the pounding still went on. But nothing could break that stubborn infantry: animated by their leader, the Prussians and Russians plodded steadily eastwards, until, as darkness drew on, they found Grouchy's horse barring the road before Etoges. "Forward" was still the veteran's cry: and through the cavalry they cut their way: through hostile footmen that had stolen round to the village they also burst, and at last found shelter near Bergères. "Words fail me," wrote Colonel Hudson Lowe, "to express my admiration at their undaunted and manly behaviour."
This gallant retreat shed lustre over the rank and file. But the sins of the commanders had cost the allies dear. In four days the army of Silesia lost fully 15,000 men, and its corps were driven far asunder by Napoleon's incursion. His brilliant moves and trenchant strokes astonished the world. With less than 30,000 men he had burst into Blücher's line of march, and scattered in flight 50,000 warriors advancing on Paris in full assurance of victory. It was not chance, but science, that gave him these successes. Acting from behind the screen of the Seine, he had thrown his small but undivided force against scattered portions of a superior force. It was the strategy of Lonato and Castiglione over again; and the enthusiasm of those days bade fair to revive.
His men, who previously had tramped downheartedly over wastes of snow and miry cross-roads, now marched with head erect as in former days; the villagers, far from being cowed by the brutalities of the Cossacks, formed bands to hang upon the enemies' rear and entrap their foragers. Above all, Paris was herself once more. Before he began these brilliant moves, he had to upbraid Cambacérès for his unmanly conduct. "I see that instead of sustaining the Empress, you are discouraging her. Why lose your head thus? What mean these Miserere and these prayers of forty hours? Are you going mad at Paris?" Now the capital again breathed defiance to the foe, and sent the Emperor National Guards. Many of these from Brittany, it is true, came "in round hats and sabots": they had no knapsacks: but they had guns, and they fought.
Could he have pursued Blücher on the morrow he might probably have broken up even that hardy infantry, now in dire straits for want of supplies. But bad news came to hand from the south-west. Under urgent pressure from the Czar, Schwarzenberg had pushed forward two columns from Troyes towards Paris: one of them had seized the bridge over the Seine at Bray, a day's march below Nogent: the other was nearing Fontainebleau. Napoleon was furious at the neglect of Victor to guard the crossing at Bray, and reluctantly turned away from Blücher to crush these columns. His men marched or were carried in vehicles, by way of Meaux and Guignes, to reinforce Victor: on the 17th they drove back the outposts of Schwarzenberg's centre, while Macdonald and Oudinot marched towards Nogent to threaten his right. These rapid moves alarmed the Austrian commander, whose left, swung forward on Fontainebleau, was in some danger of being cut off. He therefore sued for an armistice. It was refused; and the request drew from Napoleon a letter to his brother Joseph full of contempt for the allies (February 18th). "It is difficult," he writes, "to be so cowardly as that! He [Schwarzenberg] had constantly, and in the most insulting terms, refused a suspension of arms of any kind, … and yet these wretches at the first check fall on their knees. I will grant no armistice till my territory is clear of them." He adds that he now expected to gain the "natural frontiers" offered by the allies at Frankfurt—the minimum that he could accept with honour; and he closes with these memorable words, which flash a searchlight on his pacific professions of thirteen months later: "If I had agreed to the old boundaries, I should have rushed to arms two years later, telling the nation that I had signed not a peace, but a capitulation."[414]
The events of the 18th strengthened his resolve. He then attacked the Crown Prince of Würtemberg on the north side of the Seine, opposite Montereau, overthrew him by the weight of the artillery of the Guard, whereupon a brilliant charge of Pajol's horsemen wrested the bridge from the South Germans and restored to the Emperor the much-needed crossing over the river. Napoleon's activity on that day was marvellous. He wrote or dictated eleven despatches, six of them long before dawn, gave instructions to an officer who was to encourage Eugène to hold firm in Italy, fought a battle, directed the aim of several cannon, and wound up the day by severe rebukes to Marshal Victor and two generals for their recent blunders. Thus, on a brief winter's day, he fills the rôle of Emperor, organizer, tactician, cannoneer, and martinet; in fact, he crowns it by pardoning Victor, when that brave man vows that he cannot live away from the army, and will fight as a common soldier among the Guards: he then and there assigns to him two divisions of the Guard. To the artillerymen the camaraderie of the Emperor gave a new zest: and when they ventured to reproach him for thus risking his life, he replied with a touch of the fatalism which enthralls a soldier's mind: "Ah! don't fear: the ball is not cast that will kill me."
Yes: Napoleon displayed during these last ten days a fertility of resource, a power to drive back the tide of events, that have dazzled posterity, as they dismayed his foes. We may seek in vain for a parallel, save perhaps in the careers of Hannibal and Frederick. Alexander the Great's victories were won over Asiatics: Cæsar's magnificent rally of his wavering bands against the onrush of the Nervii was but one effort of disciplined valour crushing the impetuosity of the barbarian. Marlborough and Wellington often triumphed over great odds and turned the course of history. But their star had never set so low as that of Napoleon's after La Rothière, and never did it rush to the zenith with a splendour like that which blinded the trained hosts of Blücher and Schwarzenberg. Whatever the mistakes of these leaders, and they were great, there is something that defies analysis in Napoleon's sudden transformation of his beaten dispirited band into a triumphant array before which four times their numbers sought refuge in retreat. But it is just this transcendent quality that adds a charm to the character and career of Napoleon. Where analysis fails, there genius begins.
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