The nature of Napoleon's victory at Bautzen was his undoing. Had it been a second Friedland, Caulaincourt no doubt would have met Alexander; but, as it was, the allies had saved their army, and Austria's accession to the coalition would still insure their success. Nesselrode was convinced that Metternich would assent, and, dark as was the hour, persisted in refusing to communicate with France except by way of Austria. Wittgenstein lost his command, Barclay was fully reinstated as commander-in-chief, and, to gain time for Austria to try her vaunted mediation, a short armistice was proposed to Napoleon. Had the latter known the weakness, the discord, the exhaustion of his foe, wretched as was the state of his own army and depressed as were his spirits, he might have refused, and even the monumental error of 1812 might now have been made good. As it was, the year 1813 is the date of his one irreparable blunder, the initiation of his final disaster. Other mistakes he had made, but they were all petty compared with the great one to which he was now tempted. But his faithful officers were falling like standing grain under a hail-storm; his boy soldiers, though fighting like veterans, inspired little confidence, for there was the same uneasiness among the humble privates as among the great officers; he had neither cavalry nor artillery, and his available force was reduced to a hundred and twenty thousand, men and boys; Barclay might, as for a moment he contemplated doing, draw off into the Russian steppes; the traitors in Paris were already stirring; in short, the Emperor felt that he must at least consider. This was the monumental blunder of his life because it put him at Austria's mercy without her being forced to reveal her policy.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Nations in Grand Array.[49]
Condition of Affairs after Bautzen — The Armistice of Poischwitz — Austria's New Terms — Napoleon's Reliance on his Dynastic Influence — Intervention of British Agents — Napoleon's Interview with Metternich — The Emperor's Wrath — Metternich's Determination — Wellington's Victories — Napoleon at Mainz — The Coalition Completed — Diplomatic Fencing — Renewal of Hostilities — The Responsibility.
Napoleon determined, however, to deliberate on the strongest possible vantage-ground, and for this reason continued his pursuit as far as Breslau, which was occupied by the end of the month. Simultaneously Berlin was threatened by Oudinot, Victor had relieved Glogau, and Vandamme was marching to Davout's assistance, so that Hamburg was safely in hand. The allied forces stood behind Schweidnitz, and by the same marvelous strategy as of old the various corps of the French army were disposed, under Ney, Lauriston, Reynier, Macdonald, and Bertrand, so as virtually to engirdle the enemy. Napoleon was at Neumarkt with the guard; a single bold dash southward toward the Eulen Mountains with his concentering force, and he would have crushed his opponents. But another victory like Lützen and Bautzen would reduce his army still further, and then in his weakness he would be confronted by the hundred thousand Austrians which, according to the best advices, his father-in-law had assembled in Bohemia. In that juncture Francis might risk a battle, and if successful he could dictate not merely an armistice, but the terms of peace—a contingency more terrible than any other. Time, moreover, seemed quite as valuable to the Emperor of the French as to his foe: while they were calling in reserves and strengthening their ranks, his hundred and eighty thousand conscripts of 1814 could be marched to the Elbe, and Eugène could complete his work in Italy. Ignorant of the panic at his enemy's headquarters, the uneasy conqueror decided therefore that his best course was, by exhibiting a desire for peace and assenting to an armistice, to avoid the general reprobation of Europe. Accordingly, he took another disastrous step, and accepted the proposal of the allies for a conference.
How earnestly Napoleon desired peace appears from his spontaneous concessions. He would agree to the evacuation of Breslau for the sake of harmony, and would consent to such a truce as the majesty of a ruler and the rights of a successful general might alike exact; but he would not be treated like a besieged commander. Hamburg should remain as it was at the conclusion of negotiations, and the duration of the armistice must be longer than the term proposed—six weeks at the least. On these two points he took his stand. The fatal armistice of Poischwitz was signed at that village on June fourth by three commissioners, Shuvaloff for Russia, Kleist for Prussia, and Caulaincourt for France. It was a compromise providing for a neutral zone, stretching from the mouth of the Elbe southeastward to Bohemia, which was to separate the combatants until July twentieth. Hostilities might not be renewed until August first. Breslau was to be evacuated; Hamburg was to remain as the truce found it. These terms were reached only after much bluster, the allies, weak and disorganized as they were, demanding at first the evacuation of both Breslau and Hamburg, with a cessation of arms for a month. This stand they took in reliance partly on England, partly on Austria. The compromise, as mutually accepted, was reached in spite of British influence when Francis, apparently nervous and anxious, arrived at Gitschin, near the Bohemian frontier, and opened a conference with Nesselrode.
At Vienna men had said, when the news of Bautzen came, that the conqueror was perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—certainly not a man. The cabinet had seen with alarm his attempt to negotiate directly with the Czar. Success in winning Russia would put Austria again at Napoleon's mercy; Alexander must be kept in warlike humor at all hazards. Nesselrode demanded nothing less than Austria's adherence to the coalition; Francis was still unready to fight; and Metternich, displaying all his adroitness, finally wrung from Nesselrode a basis for mediation comprising six articles: the extinction of Warsaw, the enlargement of Prussia by her Polish provinces and Dantzic, the restoration of Illyria to Austria, the independence of the Hanseatic towns, the dissolution of the Rhenish Confederacy, and the restoration of Prussia's western boundaries to the lines of 1806. This was a "minimum" considerably smaller than that proposed before Bautzen; but the allies could well accept it if Austria would promise never to take sides with France, as Metternich is said to have verbally assured the Czar in a secret meeting would be the case. On June twenty-seventh it was formally arranged that a congress to pacify the Continent on this basis should be held preliminary to a general peace including England; and the treaty binding Russia, Prussia, and Austria to alliance in case of Napoleon's refusal was signed that day in secret at Reichenbach. Should Napoleon reject Austria's articles of mediation, she was, on July twentieth, to join the coalition, and fight not only until he was driven behind the Rhine, but until the fortresses on the Oder and the Vistula were evacuated, Italy liberated, Spain restored to the Bourbons, and Austria reënlarged to her boundaries of 1805.
"If the allies do not in good faith desire peace," said Napoleon on June fifth, as he left his headquarters for Dresden, "this armistice may prove fatal to us." Late in life he believed that if he had in his great crisis marched right on, Austria would not have declared against him. Shrewd as he was, he was a tyro in dynastic politics. Austria has been made, aggrandized, and saved by marriages; but no conception of the duty imposed on families by that relation as understood in private life has ever controlled her politics. Francis was never unwilling to use his daughter for public ends, and seems to have delighted in the construction of family feeling formed in his son-in-law's mind by homely sentiment. It is preposterous to suppose that Napoleon really entertained such a view of his marriage as that of the Parisian bourgeois; but viewing himself as an established dynastic ruler, he could well imagine that when Austria had her choice between two purely dynastic alliances, she would, for the sake of Maria Louisa, have chosen that with France. This rather simple conception he seems to have entertained for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met, the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough—"yes, the marriage; it was a match founded on political considerations, but—" and the conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head.
Napoleon's first instinct of treachery was that of the general, and it was sound. His suspicions were fully aroused as soon as he reached Dresden; for Bubna began at once to stickle for antiquated formalities in negotiation, and stung Napoleon to exasperation by his evident determination to procrastinate. Accordingly the Emperor summoned Metternich to a personal meeting. The minister could not well explain. Since Castlereagh's return to power in January, 1812, Great Britain had kept at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna able diplomats ready, with purse in hand, to pay almost any sum for a strong coalition. It had been the appearance of Sir Charles Stewart from Berlin, and of Lord Cathcart from St. Petersburg, at the allied headquarters which accounted for the arrogant firmness of Shuvaloff and Kleist, and determined the character of the armistice. On June fourteenth and fifteenth those envoys further concluded treaties with Prussia and Russia respectively which explain the performances of Bubna at Dresden, and of the congress which later met at Prague. Prussia promised, in return for a subsidy of two thirds of a million pounds sterling, to cede a certain portion of lower Saxony, with the bishopric of Hildesheim, to the electorate of Hanover, and agreed to keep on foot eighty thousand men; Russia was to maintain a hundred and sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million pounds, and for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to receive a further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were in conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England, Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate separately with France.
In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,—namely, the armistice, these two subsidy treaties, and the secret treaty of June twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,—it seems futile to discuss the question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in his famous interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh—an interview which lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until nearly nine at night, and has improperly been considered as the turning-point in Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's intervention had amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing. Of this Napoleon had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister described his interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects, of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet silence as to certain points—a trick he may have learned from Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to have charged his princely interlocutor with venality!