To Mayence the Empress Maria Louisa came, to spend a few days pending the peace negotiations. If Napoleon cherished the belief that her presence would have any bearing upon her father’s policy, the illusion soon vanished. Austrian diplomats were already saying, “Politics made the marriage; politics can unmake it.”
So confident was Austria that the Congress at Prague would accomplish nothing, that she had drawn up her declaration of war and held it ready, as the last day of the truce wore on toward midnight. At the stroke of the clock, the paper was delivered for publication, and the war signals were lit along the Bohemian mountains. When Napoleon’s courier arrived, a few hours later, bringing to the French envoys authority to sign the terms demanded, the Allies declined to consider the matter at all. It was too late. Technically they were acting within their rights; but if we really wish to know the truth about the negotiations, the conduct of those diplomats, watching the midnight clock, sending out midnight declarations of war, and lighting midnight fires to proclaim the failure of the Congress, belongs to the class of actions which speaks louder than words. If their real purpose had been to stop the shedding of blood and to liberate Europe from Napoleon’s “cruel yoke,” they would never have made so great a difference between midnight of the 10th and early morning of the 11th. Nothing was to be gained by such extreme rigor, beyond the ending of the Congress; for, by the terms of the treaty, six days’ notice was necessary before the resumption of hostilities.
Says Metternich: “As the clock struck twelve on the night of August 10, I despatched the declaration of war. Then I had the beacons lighted which had been prepared from Prague to the Silesian frontier, as a sign of the breach of the negotiations.”
* * * * *
Pasquier relates an interesting story which he had from Daru.
One day toward the end of July, Sébastiani, a Corsican, and a life-long friend of Napoleon, came to make a report, and was asked by the Emperor what was being said about the military situation. Sébastiani replied that the current opinion was that Austria would join the Allies, in which event Dresden could no longer be made the central point of the French line of defence.
“You are all right,” said Napoleon, “and my mind is made up. I am going to return to the banks of the Saale; I will gather there some three hundred thousand men, and, with my rear resting on Mayence, my right flank covered by the extremity of the mountains of Bohemia, I will show the enemy the bull’s horns. He will seek to manœuvre under my eyes; no sooner has he committed his first mistake than I will fall upon him, crush him, and the coalition will vanish more quickly than it appeared.”
Daru was sent for and told to go at once and prepare the necessary orders for this retrograde movement. As Daru was leaving the room, Bassano entered, and the Emperor put to him the usual question, “What is being said?” Bassano replied that certain persons who pretended to know everything were speaking of a backward movement, saying: “That your Majesty cannot remain here. They forget that the great Frederick, with forces vastly inferior to your own, held out all winter in the same position against the combined armies of Austria and Russia.”
This comparison made so deep an impression upon Napoleon that when Daru returned a few hours later with all the orders he had been told to prepare, he found the Emperor in a pensive mood, and was dismissed with these words, “The matter requires more thought.”
The result of this new meditation was that he persisted in his first system of operations: Dresden remained the central point of his line.