While the war was proceeding in the peninsula with advantage, but without any decided success, a new campaign was preparing in the north. Russia perceived the empire of Napoleon approaching its territories. Shut up in its own limits, it remained without influence or acquisitions; suffering from the blockade, without gaining any advantage by the war. This cabinet, moreover, endured with impatience a supremacy to which it itself aspired, and which it had pursued slowly but without interruption since the reign of Peter the Great. About the close of 1810, it increased its armies, renewed its commercial relations with Great Britain, and did not seem indisposed to a rupture. The year 1811 was spent in negotiations which led to nothing, and preparations for war were made on both sides. The emperor, whose armies were before Cadiz, and who relied on the co-operation of the West and North against Russia, made with ardour preparations for an enterprise which was intended to reduce the only power as yet untouched, and to carry his victorious eagles even to Moscow. He obtained the assistance of Prussia and Austria, which engaged by the treaties of the 24th of February and the 14th of March, 1812, to furnish auxiliary bodies; one of twenty, and the other of thirty thousand men. All the unemployed forces of France were immediately on foot. A senatus-consultus divided the national guard into three bodies for the home service, and appropriated a hundred of the first line regiments (nearly a hundred thousand men) for active military service. On the 9th of March, Napoleon left Paris on this vast expedition. During several months he fixed his court at Dresden, where the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, and all the sovereigns of Germany, came to bow before his high fortune. On the 22nd of June, war was declared against Russia.
In this campaign, Napoleon was guided by the maxims he had always found successful. He had terminated all the wars he had undertaken by the rapid defeat of the enemy, the occupation of his capital, and concluded the peace by parcelling out his territory. His project was to reduce Russia by creating the kingdom of Poland, as he had reduced Austria by forming the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, after Austerlitz; and Prussia, by organizing those of Saxony and Westphalia, after Jena. With this object, he had stipulated with the Austrian cabinet by the treaty of the 14th of March, to exchange Gallicia for the Illyrian provinces. The establishment of the kingdom of Poland was proclaimed by the diet of Warsaw, but in an incomplete manner, and Napoleon, who, according to his custom, wished to finish all in one campaign, advanced at once into the heart of Russia, instead of prudently organizing the Polish barrier against it. His army amounted to about five hundred thousand men. He passed the Niemen on the 24th of June, took Vilna, and Vitepsk, defeated the Russians at Astrowno, Polotsk, Mohilev, Smolensk, at the Moskva, and on the 14th of September, made his entry into Moscow.
The Russian cabinet relied for its defence not only upon its troops, but on its vast territory and on its climate. As the conquered armies retreated before ours, they burnt all the towns, devastated the provinces, and thus prepared great difficulties for the foe in the event of reverses or retreat. According to this plan of defence, Moscow was burnt by its governor Rostopchin, as Smolensk, Dorigoboui, Viasma, Gjhat, Mojaisk, and a great number of other towns and villages had already been. The emperor ought to have seen that this war would not terminate as the others had done; yet, conqueror of the foe, and master of his capital, he conceived hopes of peace which the Russians skilfully encouraged. Winter was approaching, and Napoleon prolonged his stay at Moscow for six weeks. He delayed his movements on account of the deceptive negotiations of the Russians, and did not decide on a retreat till the 19th of October. This retreat was disastrous, and began the downfall of the empire. Napoleon could not have been defeated by the hand of man, for what general could have triumphed over this incomparable chief? what army could have conquered the French army? But his reverses were to take place in the remote limits of Europe; in the frozen regions which were to end his conquering domination. He lost, with the close of this campaign, not by a defeat, but by cold and famine, in the midst of Russian snows and solitude, his old army, and the prestige of his fortune.
The retreat was effected with some order as far as the Berezina, where it became one vast rout. After the passage of this river, Napoleon, who had hitherto accompanied his army, started in a sledge for Paris, in great haste, a conspiracy having broken out there during his absence. General Mallet, with a few others, had conceived the design of overthrowing this colossus of power. His enterprise was daring; and as it was grounded on a false report of Napoleon's death, it was necessary to deceive too many for success to be probable. Besides, the empire was still firmly established, and it was not a plot, but a slow and general defection which could destroy it. Mallet's plot failed, and its leaders were executed. The emperor, on his return, found the nation astounded at so unusual a disaster. But the different bodies of the state still manifested implicit obedience. He reached Paris on the 18th of December, obtained a levy of three hundred thousand men, inspired a spirit of sacrifice, re-equipped in a short time, with his wonderful activity, a new army, and took the field again on the 15th of April, 1813.
But since the retreat of Moscow, Napoleon had entered on a new series of events. It was in 1812 that the decline of the empire manifested itself. The weariness of his domination became general. All those by whose consent he had risen, took part against him. The priests had conspired in secret since his rupture with the pope. Eight state prisons had been created in an official manner against the dissentients of his party. The national masses were as tired of conquest as they had formerly been of factions. They had expected from him consideration for private interests, the promotion of commerce; respect for men; and they were oppressed by conscriptions, taxes, the blockade, provost courts, and duties which were the inevitable consequences of this conquering system. He had no longer for adversaries the few who remained faithful to the political object of the revolution, and whom he styled idéologues, but all who, without definite ideas, wished for the material advantages of better civilization. Without, whole nations groaned beneath the military yoke, and the fallen dynasties aspired to rise again. The whole world was ill at ease; and one check served to bring about a general rising. "I triumphed," says Napoleon himself, speaking of the preceding campaigns, "in the midst of constantly reviving perils. I constantly required as much address as voice. Had I not conquered at Austerlitz, all Prussia would have been upon me; had I not triumphed at Jena, Austria and Spain would have attacked my rear; had I not fought at Wagram, which action was not a decided victory, I had reason to fear that Russia would forsake, Prussia rise against me, and the English were before Antwerp." [Footnote: Mémorial de Saint Hélène, tome ii. p. 221.] Such was his condition; the further he advanced in his career, the greater need he had to conquer more and more decisively. Accordingly, as soon as he was defeated, the kings he had subdued, the kings he had made, the allies he had aggrandized, the states he had incorporated with the empire, the senators who had so flattered him, and even his comrades in arms, successively forsook him. The field of battle extended to Moscow in 1812, drew back to Dresden in 1813, and to Paris in 1814: so rapid was the reverse of fortune.
The cabinet of Berlin began the defections. On the 1st of March, 1813, it joined Russia and England, which were forming the sixth coalition. Sweden acceded to it soon after; yet the emperor, whom the confederate powers thought prostrated by the last disaster, opened the campaign with new victories. The battle of Lützen, won by conscripts, on the 2nd of May, the occupation of Dresden, the victory of Bautzen, and the war carried to the Elbe, astonished the coalition. Austria, which, since 1810, had been on a footing of peace, was resuming arms, and already meditating a change of alliance. She now offered to act as mediator between the emperor and the confederates. Her mediation was accepted; an armistice was concluded at Plesswitz, on the 4th of June, and a congress assembled at Prague to negotiate peace. It was impossible to come to terms. Napoleon would not consent to diminished grandeur; Europe would not consent to remain subject to him. The confederate powers, joined by Austria, required that the limits of the empire should be to the Rhine, the Alps, and the Meuse. The negotiators separated without coming to an agreement. Austria joined the coalition, and war, the only means of settling this great contest, was resumed.
The emperor had only two hundred and eighty thousand men against five hundred and twenty thousand; he wished to force the enemy to retire behind the Elbe, and to break up, as usual, this new coalition by the promptitude and vigour of his blows. Victory seemed, at first, to second him. At Dresden, he defeated the combined forces; but the defeats of his lieutenants deranged his plans. Macdonald was conquered in Silesia; Ney, near Berlin; Vandamme, at Kulm. Unable to obstruct the enemy, pouring on him from all parts, Napoleon thought of retreating. The princes of the confederation of the Rhine chose this moment to desert the cause of the empire. A vast engagement having taken place at Leipzic between the two armies, the Saxons and Wurtembergers passed over to the enemy on the field of battle. This defection to the strength of the allied powers, who had learned a more compact and skilful mode of warfare, obliged Napoleon to retreat, after a struggle of three days. The army advanced with much confusion towards the Rhine, where the Bavarians, who had also deserted, attempted to prevent its passage. But it overwhelmed them at Hanau, and re-entered the territory of the empire on the 30th of October, 1813. The close of this campaign was as disastrous as that of the preceding one. France was threatened in its own limits, as it had been in 1799; but the enthusiasm of independence no longer existed, and the man who deprived it of its rights found it, at this great crisis, incapable of sustaining him or defending itself. The servitude of nations is, sooner or later, ever avenged.
Napoleon returned to Paris on the 9th of November, 1813. He obtained from the senate a levy of three hundred thousand men, and made with great ardour preparations for a new campaign. He convoked the legislative body to associate it in the common defence; he communicated to it the documents relative to the negotiations of Prague, and asked for another and last effort in order to secure a glorious peace, the general wish of France. But the legislative body, hitherto silently obedient, chose this period to resist Napoleon.
It shared the common exhaustion, and without desiring it, was under the influence of the royalist party, which had been secretly agitating ever since the decline of the empire had revived its hopes. A commission, composed of MM. Lainé, Raynouard, Gallois, Flaugergues, Maine de Biran, drew up a very hostile report, censuring the course adopted by the government, and demanding that all conquests should be given up, and liberty restored. This wish, so just at any other time, could then only favour the invasion of the foe. Though the confederate powers seemed to make the evacuation of Europe the condition of peace, they were disposed to push victory to extremity. Napoleon, irritated by this unexpected and harassing opposition, suddenly dismissed the legislative body. This commencement of resistance announced internal defections. After passing from Russia to Germany, they were about to extend from Germany and Italy to France. But now, as before, all depended on the issue of the war, which the winter had not interrupted. Napoleon placed all his hopes on it; and started from Paris on the 25th of January, for this immortal campaign.
The empire was invaded in all directions. The Austrians entered Italy; the English, having made themselves masters of the peninsula during the last two years, had passed the Bidassoa, under general Wellington, and appeared on the Pyrenees. Three armies pressed on France to the east and north. The great allied army, amounting to a hundred and fifty thousand men, under Schwartzenberg, advanced by Switzerland; the army of Silesia, of a hundred and thirty thousand, under Blücher, by Frankfort; and that of the north, of a hundred thousand men, under Bernadotte, had seized on Holland and entered Belgium. The enemies, in their turn, neglected the fortified places, and, taking a lesson from the conqueror, advanced on the capital. When Napoleon left Paris, the two armies of Schwartzenberg and Blücher were on the point of effecting a junction in Champaigne. Deprived of the support of the people, who were only lookers on, Napoleon was left alone against the whole world with a handful of veterans and his genius, which had lost nothing of its daring and vigour. At this moment, he stands out nobly, no longer an oppressor; no longer a conqueror; defending, inch by inch, with new victories, the soil of his country, and at the same time, his empire and renown.