Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume IV.

by Walter Scott

FRENCH GARRISONS IN GERMANY.

Two circumstances are remarkable concerning the capture of the surrendered fortresses. The first is the dismal state of the garrisons. The men, who had survived the Russian campaign, and who had been distributed into these cities and fortresses by Murat, were almost all, from the hardships they had endured, and perhaps from their being too suddenly accommodated with more genial food, subject to diseases which speedily became infectious, and spread from the military to the inhabitants. When the severities of a blockade were added to this general tendency to illness, the deaths became numerous, and the case of the survivors made them envious of those who died. So virulent was the contagion at Torgau, that the Prussians, to whom the place was rendered on the 26th December, did not venture to take possession of it till a fortnight afterwards, when the ravage of the pestilence began to decline. Thus widely extended, and thus late prolonged, were the fatal effects of the Russian expedition.

The other point worth notice is, that the surrender of each fortress rendered disposable a blockading army of the allies, proportioned to the strength of the garrisons, which ought, according to the rules of war, to be at least two to one.[295] Thus, while thousands after thousands of the French were marched to distant prisons in Austria and Russia, an addition was regularly made to the armies of the allies, equal at least to double the number of those that were withdrawn from the French army.

While these successes were in the act of being obtained in their rear, the allied sovereigns of Russia and Prussia advanced upon the Rhine, the left bank of which was almost entirely liberated from the enemy. It is a river upon which all the Germans look with a national pride, that sometimes takes almost the appearance of filial devotion. When the advanced guard of the army of the allies first came in sight of its broad majesty of flood, they hailed the Father River with such reiterated shouts, that those who were behind stood to their arms, and pressed forward, supposing that an action was about to take place. The proud and exulting feeling of recovered independence was not confined to those brave men who had achieved the liberation of their country, but extended every where, and animated the whole mass of the population of Germany.

The retreat of the French armies, or their relics, across the land which they had so long overrun, and where they had levelled and confounded all national distinctions, might be compared to the abatement of the great deluge, when land-marks which had been long hid from the eye began to be once more visible and distinguished. The reconstruction of the ancient sovereignties was the instant occupation of the allies.

From the very field of battle at Leipsic, the Electoral Prince of Hesse departed to assume, amid the acclamations of the inhabitants, the sovereignty of the territories of his fathers. The allies, on 2d November, took possession of Hanover and its dependencies in name of the King of England. The gallant Duke of Brunswick, whose courage, as well as his ardent animosity against Buonaparte, we have already had occasion to commemorate, returned at the same time into the possession of his hereditary estates; and the ephemeral kingdom of Westphalia, the appanage of Jerome Buonaparte, composed out of the spoils of these principalities, vanished into air, like the palace of Aladdin in the Arabian tale.

Those members of the Confederacy of the Rhine who had hitherto been contented to hold their crowns and coronets, under the condition of being liege vassals to Buonaparte, and who were as much tired of his constant exactions as ever a drudging fiend was of the authority of a necromancer, lost no time in renouncing his sway, after his talisman was broken. Bavaria and Wirtemberg had early joined the alliance—the latter power the more willingly, that the Crown Prince had, even during Napoleon's supremacy, refused to acknowledge his sway. The lesser princes, therefore, had no alternative but to declare, as fast as they could, their adherence to the same cause. Their ministers thronged to the headquarters of the allied sovereigns, where they were admitted to peace and fraternity on the same general terms; namely, that each state should contribute within a certain period, a year's income of their territories, with a contingent of soldiers double in numbers to that formerly exacted by Buonaparte, for maintaining the good cause of the alliance. They consented willingly; for though the demand might be heavy in the meantime, yet, with the downfall of the French Emperor, there was room to hope for that lasting peace which all men now believed to be inconsistent with a continuance of his power.

Waiting until their reinforcements should come from the interior of Germany, and until the subordinate princes should bring forward their respective contingents of troops, and desirous also to give Napoleon another opportunity of treating, the allied sovereigns halted on the banks of the Rhine, and cantoned their army along the banks of that river. This afforded a space to discover, whether the lofty mind of Napoleon could be yet induced to bend to such a peace as might consist with the material change in the circumstances of Europe, effected in the two last campaigns. Such a pacification was particularly the object of Austria; and the greater hope was entertained of its being practicable, that the same train of misfortunes which had driven Napoleon beyond the Rhine, had darkened his political horizon in other quarters.

ITALY—SPAIN.

Italy, so long the scene of his triumphs, was now undergoing the same fate as his other conquests, and rapidly melting away from his grasp. At the beginning of the campaign, the Viceroy Eugene, with about 45,000 men, had defended the north of Italy, with great skill and valour, against the Austrian general, Hiller, who confronted him with superior forces. The frontiers of Illyria were the chief scene of their military operations. The French maintained themselves there until the defection of the Bavarians opened the passes of the Tyrol to the Austrian army, after which, Eugene was obliged to retire behind the Adige. The warlike Croatians declaring in favour of their ancient sovereigns of Austria, mutinied, and rose in arms on several points. The important seaport of Trieste was taken by the Austrians on the 21st of October. General Nugent had entered the mouth of the Po with an English squadron, with a force sufficient to occupy Ferrara and Ravenna, and organise a general insurrection against the French. It was known also, that Murat, who had begun to fear lest he should be involved in the approaching fall of Napoleon, and who remembered, with more feeling, the affronts which Napoleon had put upon him from time to time, than the greatness to which he had been elevated by him, was treating with the allies, and endeavouring to make a peace which should secure his own authority under their sanction. Thus, there was no point of view in which Italy could be regarded as a source of assistance to Buonaparte: on the contrary, that fair country, the subject of his pride and his favour, was in the greatest danger of being totally lost to him.