Sick of such a responsibility, Murat bethought himself that he also had a kingdom that might need his presence, and on January 16, 1813, he made over the command to Eugène Beauharnais.
There were seventeen thousand men in the army when Murat left it; Eugène increased its numbers until, by the 9th of March, 1813, it was an effective force of forty thousand. Taking a strong position, his line stretching from Magdeburg to Dresden, the loyal Eugène waited for his Emperor to bring up reënforcements.
CHAPTER XXXVII
There is no convincing evidence that the Russian war of 1812 was generally unpopular in France. There is no proof whatever that any national calamity growing out of it was expected or feared. So great was the confidence which the Emperor’s uninterrupted success had inspired, that the current belief was that Russia would be beaten and brought to terms. The glamour of the Dresden conference was sufficient to dazzle the French people, and the magnificent host which gathered under the eagles of the Empire left them no room for doubts. Led by such a captain as Napoleon, this army of half a million men would bear down all opposition. Bulletins from the front, dictated by the Emperor, did not fail to produce the impression desired; and when at length the victory of Borodino was followed by the French entry into Moscow, national enthusiasm and pride reached its height.
The first shadow that fell upon France, the first thrill of fear, was caused by the news that the Russians had given their capital to the flames. Still, when it became known that the Emperor was quartering the army amid the ruins, that there was shelter and food for all, that communications between Paris and Moscow were so well guarded that not a courier or convoy had been cut off, that Napoleon, seemingly quite at ease, was giving his attention to the internal affairs of France, was drawing up regulations for schools and theatres, was corresponding with his son’s governess upon the subject of the child’s teething, the French convinced themselves that the invasion had proved another triumph. They could not put their eyes upon that sombre figure in the Kremlin, the chief who had not a word to say to those about him, who lay listless upon the sofa day by day,—a leader without a plan,—wrapping himself in the delusion that even yet the Czar would accept his peaceful overtures.
So strong was the system which Napoleon had organized in France that it went on in his absence just as regularly as when he was present. Even when the daring General Malet, encouraged by the Emperor’s great distance from his capital, conspired with the priest, Abbé Lafon, to overthrow the government, the attempts never had the slightest chance of success. By means of a forged decree of the Senate, and the announcement that the Emperor was dead, the conspirators were for a moment enabled to secure control of a small body of troops, arrest the minister and the prefect of police, and to take possession of the city hall. But almost immediately the authorities asserted themselves, seized the conspirators, and put them to death.
The true significance of this episode lay in the fact that so violent a revolutionist as Malet, who had plotted to kill Napoleon because of the Concordat, was found in league with the Abbé Lafon, a royalist and clerical fanatic, and that they had agreed upon a programme which was so eminently sane as to be formidable.
According to their plan, Napoleon’s family were to be set aside, the conscription abolished, and the most oppressive taxes lifted. The Pope was to be restored to his temporal power, and France was to secure peace with the world by consenting to be reduced to her old boundaries of Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees. Those who had purchased the confiscated property of the Church and the nobles were to be quieted with the assurance that their titles should not be questioned.
When we remember that peace was finally established in France upon substantially the same lines as those marked out by the Abbé Lafon, it becomes evident that he was in touch with those royalist clericals who, failing miserably in 1812, succeeded completely two years later. Napoleon’s uneasiness when he heard of the conspiracy, and his curiosity in asking for the minutest details, can well be understood.