After the Emperor’s repulse at Laon, Schwarzenberg took heart and advanced toward Paris; but Napoleon, leaving Rheims, marched to Épernay, and the Austrians fell back, pursued by the French. The allied armies, however, concentrated at Arcis on the Aube, and, with one hundred thousand men, beat off the Emperor when he attacked them with thirty thousand.
Napoleon now made his fatal mistake—fatal because he could count on no one but himself. He moved his army to the rear of the Allies to cut their line of communications. This was a move ruinous to them, if the French armies in front should do their duty. The despatches in which Napoleon explained his march to the Empress Regent at Paris fell into the hands of the enemy, owing to Marmont’s disobedience of orders in abandoning the line of communications. They hesitated painfully, they had even turned and made a day’s march following Napoleon, when the capture of a bundle of letters from Paris, and the receipt of invitations from traitors and royalists in Paris, revealed the true situation there, and convinced them that by a swift advance they could capture the city and end the war. Accordingly they turned about, detaching a trifling force to harass and deceive the Emperor.
These movements, Napoleon to the rear and the Allies toward Paris, decided the campaign. The small force of eight or ten thousand, which the Allies had sent to follow the Emperor, was cut to pieces by him at St. Dizier, and from the prisoners taken in the action he learned of rumors that the Allies were in full march upon Paris. He soon learned, also, that through Marmont’s disobedience of orders a severe defeat had been inflicted upon the two marshals, and that Blücher and Schwarzenberg had united.
What should Napoleon now do? Should he continue his march, gather up the garrisons of his fortresses, enroll recruits, and, having cut the enemy’s communications, return to give him battle? He wished to do so, urged it upon the council of war, and at St. Helena repeated his belief that this course would have saved him. It might have done so. The army of the Allies, when it reached Paris, only numbered about one hundred and twenty thousand. Half that number of troops were almost within the Emperor’s reach, and there were indications that the peasantry, infuriated by the brutality of the invaders, were about to rise in mass. At this time they could have been armed, for Napoleon had captured muskets by the thousand from the enemy. If Marmont and Mortier would but exhaust the policy of obstruction and resistance; if Joseph and War-minister Clarke, at Paris, would but do their duty, the Allies would be caught between two fires, for the Emperor would not be long in marshalling his strength and coming back.
But the older and higher officers were opposed to the plan. They told Napoleon that he must march at once to the relief of Paris. After a night of meditation and misery at St. Dizier, he set out on the return (March 28, 1814). At Doulevent he received cipher despatches from Lavalette, postmaster-general in Paris, warning him that if he would save the capital he had not a moment to lose. This message aroused him for the first time to the extremity of the peril. He had expected a stubborner resistance from Marmont, had relied upon greater effectiveness in Joseph and Clarke. But even now he did not realize the awful truth, the absolute necessity for his immediate presence to save Paris—else he would have mounted horse and spurred across France as he had once done, to smaller purpose, across Spain: as he had done the year before when Dresden was beleaguered. In this connection let us remember what he had told Méneval,—that he was no longer able to endure horse exercise. For a cause which may have been physical, he did not mount a horse himself, for the long life-and-death ride, but he sent General Dejean. Through this messenger he told Joseph that he was coming at full speed, and would reach Paris in two days. Let the Allies be resisted for only two days—he would answer for the balance. Away sped Dejean, and he reached the goal in time.
The Empress and the King of Rome had been sent from the capital by Joseph, and Joseph had taken horse to follow; but Dejean spurred after him, and caught him up in the Bois de Boulogne. Brother’s message was delivered to brother, Napoleon’s appeal made to Joseph; and the answer, coldly given and stubbornly repeated, was, “Too late.”
The Allies had marched, dreading every hour to hear the returning Emperor come thundering on their rear; Marmont had made one of the worst managed of retreats, and had allowed the enemy to advance far more rapidly than they had dared to hope; Parisians had vainly clamored for arms, that they might defend their city; and while thousands of citizens stood on the heights of Montmartre, looking expectantly for the Emperor, who was known to be coming, and while the cry, “It is he! It is he!” occasionally broke out as some figure on a white horse was seen in the distance, the imbecile Joseph wrote to the traitorous Marmont the permission to capitulate. This note had not been delivered, the fight was still going on, and Dejean prayed Joseph to recall the note. “The Emperor will be here to-morrow! For God’s sake, give him one day!”
With a sullen refusal to wait, Joseph put spurs to his horse, and set out to rejoin Maria Louisa.
In the dark corridors of human passion and prejudice, who can read the truth? The rebukes of the outraged husband to a recreant brother may have swayed Joseph, just as the reproofs of an indignant chief to a disobedient subordinate may have controlled Marmont.
The note from Joseph did its work. The defence ceased, the French army marched out, and the chief city of France fell, almost undefended.