By stringently enforcing the Orders in Council Canning had seriously injured Great Britain. It was in some sense the outcome of general exasperation that early in May, 1812, Perceval, the Tory premier, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a bankrupt of disordered mind. In the consequent reconstruction of the cabinet, Castlereagh had succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley. On May thirteenth the disastrous orders were repealed, but the United States had already declared war. By land the Americans failed dismally at the outset; but at sea they were five times victorious in as many different engagements, two English frigates striking their flags to what was then considered as fairly equal force. This was a moral victory of immense importance. It was disproportionate of course to the actual English loss, which was easily reparable, but it was an appalling novelty to the British, who unwillingly realized that the sons had shown a seamanship of the highest quality and were not unworthy of their sires. The anxiety of Wellington and the maritime successes of the Americans were not unwelcome lights in the otherwise dark picture of European affairs upon which Napoleon was forced to look after his return from Moscow.
The prodigal Emperor was undismayed; as he had recuperated his physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were not slow in their response—from the police, from the university, from the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French nation but the whole Empire was once again under the magician's spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts of France itself, but from the great cities of central and western Europe, from Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz, and Amsterdam, and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies were limited only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits recalled the famous scene from Molière, in which the infatuated Orgon displays indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in Tartufe.
But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained, there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able, devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, with all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard against the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of the Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their own account.
That the schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to a combination of small things—each perhaps trivial in itself, but the whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French. During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force. Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously displayed, was yet seen and widely discussed. In the thick of Russian horrors he had found time to correspond with his infant's governess concerning the difficulties and dangers of teething; it was felt that while the emperor and general was warring on the steppes of Muscovy, the husband and father was present in spirit on the banks of the Seine. On his return it was generally remarked that his reception into the bosom of his family was tender and affectionate, and that parental pride in a thriving child was paramount to the ruler's ambition for an established dynasty. The imperial pair were seen in company alike on the thronged thoroughfares and on the outer boulevards of Paris. They were always greeted with enthusiasm, sometimes there was a display of passionate loyalty. When the Emperor visited his invalid veterans, he tasted their food and would have the Empress taste it too; she graciously assented and there was universal delight. In short, the domestic bliss of the Tuileries radiated happiness into the plain homes of the nation, and made the common people not merely tolerant but fond of such a paternal despotism.
Napoleon returned from Russia sincerely protesting that what he most desired was peace. Yes, peace; but of what kind? The answer was inclusive of the whole European question. It was easy to believe that Spain was nearly exhausted, that if the process of devastation could be continued three years longer, her shattered society would finally accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not unnatural for the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as safe and loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative strategy far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed, embodiment of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in fully estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and southern Germany. Some inkling of the national movement he must have had, for Schwarzenberg's lukewarmness had awakened suspicions of Austria, and Prussia's new strength could not be entirely concealed. Soon after reaching Paris he learned with dismay that his Prussian auxiliaries had made terms with the Czar. This was done in defiance of their king; but it indicated the national temper, which, seeing the hand of God in the disasters of the monster who after humiliating Prussia had dared to invade Russia, made it impossible for Prussian troops to serve again in the ranks of a French army. The bolts of divine wrath had fallen on the French and the French dependants, the Prussian and the Austrian contingents had escaped unscathed; both German armies must surely have been spared for a special purpose.
In his interview at Warsaw with de Pradt, Napoleon had predicted that he would speedily have another army of three hundred thousand men afoot. In this rough calculation he had included both Prussians and Austrians. With a spirit of bravado, he there referred to the narrow escapes of his life: defeated at Marengo until six, next morning he had been master of Italy; at Essling, the rise of the Danube by sixteen feet in one night had alone prevented the annihilation of Austria; having defeated the Russians in every battle, he had expected peace; was it possible, he asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more. Kutusoff wanted peace quite as much as did Napoleon, and the ineffective Russian pursuit was intrusted to Yermoloff, an untried officer; to Wittgenstein; and to the incapable Tchitchagoff. The bickerings and insubordination of the French marshals had now become notorious, but they were fully offset by the discord and inefficiency of the Russian generals.
Alexander, however, was not for peace. Out of the rude experiences he had been undergoing there had been formed two fixed ideas: that Napoleon could not, even if he would, surrender his preponderance in Europe, and that he himself might hope to appear as the liberator of European nationality. For a moment it appeared possible for the Czar to establish himself as king of Poland by the aid of the Jesuits and of Czartoryski's friends. But the Jesuit leader knew that Napoleon's strength was far from exhausted, and fled to Spain. Czartoryski entertained the idea that in case of Napoleon's overthrow he might unite Poland under his own leadership and demand a truly liberal constitution, such as could not be worked by a Russian autocrat with three hundred thousand Russian soldiers at his back. Should the virtual independence of Poland be wrung from Alexander, and not be secured by the French alliance, then the only available constitutional ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own princely family and not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat did not clearly understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw enough to render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form distasteful, and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible resolution to recruit his strength, not by emptying his own lean purse, but by securing the coöperation with his forces of the strong armies built up by Prussia and Austria. It was therefore with a fairly definite purpose that, on December eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg for Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.
Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Königsberg. The day before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York, who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not. Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His own sympathies being identical with those of his men, and considering that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he therefore, on December thirtieth, concluded the convention of Tauroggen, in which he agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia which he occupied, and to await orders from Berlin. Six days later an envoy arrived from Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in reality to conclude a treaty of alliance with Russia.
By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugène at Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other corps,—those of Reynier and Poniatowski,—could easily have checked the foe; but the convention of Tauroggen had quickened the Austrian memory of Russia's friendly lukewarmness in 1809, Francis was in no humor to bolster the falling cause of his terrible son-in-law, and after some show of negotiation a temporary neutrality was arranged. When a few Cossacks appeared before Warsaw, on February sixth, the Austrian general evacuated the city as if yielding to superior force, and withdrew across the Vistula toward the frontier.
These blows seemed to fall lightly on the armor of Napoleon's intrepidity. So far from feeling any dismay, the Emperor did not contemplate curtailing his ambition. Perhaps he was not entirely deceived; quite possibly, by the slightest exhibition of diminished activity he might have weakened his influence in the great land which formed the heart of his dominions. As one piece of bad news after another reached Paris, each in turn seemed only a goad to new exertion for Emperor and people. France was by that time not merely enthusiastic; she was fascinated and adoring. The ordinary conscription of 1813 yielded a hundred and forty thousand recruits; four regiments were formed for artillery service from the idle sailors, three thousand men were taken from the gendarmerie, some even from the national guard. On January thirteenth the senate decreed a further draft of a hundred thousand from the lists of 1813, and ordered that the conscription for 1814 should be forestalled in order that the hundred and fifty thousand boys thus collected might be hardened by a year's camp life, and rendered available for immediate use when their time arrived. There is truth in the charge that Napoleon robbed the cradle and the grave. In order to officer this mighty host, which included about a third of the able-bodied men of France between seventeen and forty-five, such commanders as could be spared were called home from Spain, and the rabble of non-commissioned and commissioned officers which began to straggle in from Russia was drawn back into the service. These survivors were treated like conquerors, being praised and promoted until the nation became bewildered, and thought of the Russian campaign as a series of victories. Foreign visitors wrote that the Emperor had but to stamp his foot and armed men sprang up on every side like Æetes' corps of Colchian warriors on the field of Mars.