Germans advance to the Rhine.
Napoleon quitted Paris to take the command of his army in April. The details of the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, and Hochkirche, which followed, are too well known to be here recounted. Austria, instigated by England, on the 15th of August declared war against France; but Napoleon seemed still favoured by fortune, as he repulsed the attack of the main army at Dresden on the 27th of that month; and it was only at the great battle of Leipsic, where Napoleon had concentrated his forces, when the Saxon and Würtemburg troops passed over from the French ranks and joined the Allies, that his army was completely routed. Then the conqueror of a hundred battles fell back upon the Rhine, breaking through the Bavarian army, which obstructed his passage, and soon afterwards returned to Paris once more utterly defeated.[305] The Germans now raised the thrilling and invigorating cry “To the Rhine!” and the Allies issued, on the 4th of December, their declaration from Frankfort, still offering peace, which Napoleon answered by raising another three hundred thousand men by conscription. The Allied armies crossed that far-famed river, while Schwartzenburg entered France through Switzerland.
Treaty of Chaumont.
The struggles and guerilla warfare which followed are too familiar to every reader of history to require recapitulation. Even after the battle of La Rothière Napoleon might have concluded terms of peace if he had chosen to make concessions. Before the final blow he haughtily said that he was nearer Munich than the Allies were to Paris; and to renounce even the frontier of the Rhine after so much bloodshed was worse than death to him. To the last he struggled against Lord Castlereagh’s influence, whose presence in the Allied camp was worth a host of generals in circumventing his intrigues. England had already concluded a treaty with Joachim Murat of Naples, and Soult had been once more defeated by Wellington at Orthes (Feb. 27, 1814), on French ground, when on the 1st of March the treaty of Chaumont was agreed on by the Allied powers. By this celebrated diplomatic instrument it was stipulated that in the event of Napoleon refusing the terms which had been offered to him—viz., the reduction of France to the limits of the old monarchy, as they stood prior to the Revolution, the four Allied powers, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and England should each maintain one hundred and fifty thousand men in the field; and that England should pay an annual subsidy of five millions sterling, to be equally divided between the three continental powers, besides maintaining her own contingent complete from her own resources. Such were the prodigious efforts made to put the crowning act to all her previous efforts to accomplish the utter destruction of the common enemy.
The Allies enter Paris.
The Allies now made rapid advances upon Paris; on the 1st of April their victorious armies entered the capital of France; and on the 10th of April the dynasty of the Bourbons was restored by a decree of the Senate. The battle of Toulouse, fought after the events in Paris,[306] terminated the brilliant campaign carried on by the Duke of Wellington; and, after one of the most sanguinary wars ever waged in history, the pacification of Europe was for a time restored, Napoleon being assigned to the island of Elba, where he was allowed to retire with a liberal and independent revenue.
End of the war by the Treaty of Paris, 1814.
These acts were confirmed by the treaty of Paris, 30th of May, 1814; and in a short time after Denmark made peace, having been compelled to cede the kingdom of Norway to Sweden. It may be added, though the facts must be familiar to most of our readers, that by the treaty of Paris France was reduced to the limits of 1792; Belgium was united to Holland, and constituted the kingdom of the Netherlands; Savoy and Piedmont were restored to the King of Sardinia; Tuscany to its former grand-duke, Ferdinand III.; and Lombardy was given to Austria.
But no sooner had the powers assembled at Vienna to settle the delineations of territory which had been so grievously disturbed by Napoleon, than difficulties met them at every stage. The Bourbons at Paris were beset with claims quite impossible to be conceded. Insolvency, consequent upon Napoleon’s wars, stared them in the face. Russia demanded the whole grand-duchy of Warsaw as the reward of her sacrifices, and adduced abundant arguments to support her claims. Prussia wished to be reinstated in all respects, statistical, financial, and geographical, as she stood at the commencement of the war in 1806, with such additions as might be practicable according to the treaty of Kalitsch. Accordingly, besides various provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, she claimed the whole of Saxony, while Prussia and Russia, by friendly concessions, were united in their demands.
Napoleon’s escape from Elba.