Prussia was now the ablest as well as the bitterest of Napoleon's foes, Stein, Blücher, Gneisenau, and their friends aiming at nothing short of annihilating the Napoleonic power. This was, no doubt, due in part to a thirst for revenge; but in the main it was due to the longing for such a leadership in Germany as would spread abroad the new doctrines of liberal and constitutional monarchy, in order to restrain Austria's ever-increasing influence. The councils of the allies presented an amusing spectacle. The Prussians urged an immediate advance by the best line for invasion, that, namely, from Liège and Brussels; but the Austrians, except Radetzky, drew back, fearing Prussia almost equally with France. The Czar held the balance, but his scales were very sensitive, inclining often toward Prussia, but settling in the end to a compromise suggested by Schwarzenberg and Metternich. Having imitated Napoleon in his practice of war requisitions, the allies now determined to imitate him in contempt for international law, and to violate Swiss neutrality. The plan which they adopted was to throw their main army into France by way of Basel, and thus turn the line of frowning fortresses behind the Rhine, as well as the Vosges Mountains. Blücher was to cross the middle Rhine, and Bülow, with thirty thousand men, was to coöperate with the English troops under Graham in the Netherlands. The whole scheme was unmilitary, but it exactly suited Metternich, who, having on January thirteenth first learned of Bernadotte's understanding with the Czar about the crown of France, was very uneasy. Both he and Schwarzenberg desired to end the war on the frontier, if possible; Prussia's power and Alexander's ambitions for European preponderance were far more dangerous to Austria than a Napoleonic empire confined to France.
Blücher, leaving twenty-eight thousand men before Mainz, crossed the Saar on January ninth with forty-seven thousand; Schwarzenberg, with the main army arrayed in four columns, two hundred and nine thousand strong, crossed the Rhine at or near Basel and moved toward Langres. The thin, straggling French columns began to retreat concentrically toward Châlons on the Marne. At the opening of the second stage in the campaign Blücher had invested the Mosel fortresses, and was advancing, with less than thirty thousand men, toward Arcis on the Aube; Schwarzenberg was in and about Langres; and the French were concentrated on a line from Vitry-le-François to St. Dizier. Napoleon reached Châlons on the twenty-sixth, having left Joseph to represent him in Paris. The wily strategist, feeble as was his strength, had momentarily secured the advantage over his unwieldy foe, having wedged himself between the invading armies, and being quite strong enough, with the forty thousand soldiers in his ranks, to cope with Blücher.
CHAPTER VI
Napoleon's Supreme Effort[6]
The Fertility of Genius — The Battles of Brienne and La Rothière — The French Retreat — Victory at Champaubert — Victory at Montmirail — Victory at Vauchamps — Success Engenders Delusion — Insincerity of the Allies — Their Clashing Interests — The Congress of Châtillon — Napoleon's Procrastination — French Victory and French Diplomacy.
1814
The year 1814 is the most astonishing of Napoleon's military life. He first conceived a plan for combining the resources of Italy, Switzerland, Naples, and France. This failed by Augereau's sloth and Murat's ingratitude. Nothing daunted, the fertile brain then outlined schemes for meeting the quick advance of the allies through the Netherlands, for defending the Rhine frontier, and for a levy en masse of the French people to hurl back invasion under the walls of Paris. After taking the field, the daring of his conceptions, the rapidity of his movements, the surprises he prepared for his enemy, the support he wrung from an exhausted land, the devotion he received from a panting, ill-clothed army at bay—all are so remarkable that by contrast the allies appear to be a lumbering, stupid mass. With another antagonist they would have appeared in a very different light; Gneisenau's clear head, Blücher's daring, Radetzky's good sense and courage, together with the valor of the forces at their back, would have won the goal far more easily with an ordinary, or even an extraordinary, combatant in Napoleon's plight. The Emperor of the French had not merely a prestige worth a hundred thousand men, as he was fond of reckoning: he had an activity of mind and body, a reservoir of resources, which made his single blade cover the whole circumference of defense like the whirling spokes of a fiery wheel.
After a skirmish for the possession of St. Dizier, the campaign opened at Brienne, where Blücher, hurrying to gain touch with the main army of the allies, was caught on January twenty-ninth. The conflict probably did not recall to Napoleon his mock conflicts when a schoolboy near the same spot. The terrific struggle began late in the afternoon, and lasted in full fury until midnight, when the Prussian general, narrowly escaping capture, abandoned the town and hurried toward Trannes. Thoroughly beaten, he needed not touch alone, but actual union with the Austrians, and this he gained near Bar on the Aube, whence Schwarzenberg was passing on toward Auxerre. Ignorant of this success, Napoleon now drew up his line with its center at La Rothière, hoping in the first place to hold the bridge over the Aube at Lesmont, and thus secure the moral effect of his victory at Brienne, and in the second to bring on another engagement with Blücher, whom he believed to be still isolated. Marmont was at Montierender, Mortier was summoned from before Troyes. This stand of Napoleon's was a desperate attempt to overawe the allied sovereigns, for strategically it was fatal, since in the case of either victory or defeat the French army was in danger of being outflanked by Schwarzenberg's advance, and thus cut off from Paris. On February first, Blücher, reinforced by twelve thousand of the Russian guard, attacked. The battle lasted, with fluctuating success for the allies, during two days, and at its close Napoleon safely retreated over the Aube to make another stand at Troyes. The various conflicts were terrific; in the end Blücher lost six thousand dead and wounded, the French about four thousand. The odds against the latter were never less than two to one, sometimes more. Had the allies first thrown their full strength into the contest, and had they then followed up their victory by a well-organized pursuit, the campaign would have ended there. As it was, they paused, permitted a disorganized, feeble enemy to escape, and gained nothing from the bloody conflict except an ill-founded self-confidence. Blücher wrote on the evening of the battle that they would be in Paris within eight days. To General Reynier, who was to be liberated by an exchange of prisoners, the Czar said: "We shall be in Paris before you." A council of war was called which decided for an advance on the French capital in two columns; to Blücher, as the conqueror of La Rothière, was assigned the shortest line, that down the Marne.
For several days the allied lines moved onward, slowly, widely scattered, and carelessly. Napoleon was as calm and undaunted as if he had been the victor. Retreating on the defensive with careful deliberation, he strengthened his forces by well-chosen periods of rest, and by hurrying in reinforcements from the various depots about and beyond Paris. On the afternoon of February ninth, when leaving Nogent for Sézanne, he wrote to his brother Joseph, whom he had left to represent his interests at Paris, that he could now reckon, all told, on between sixty and seventy thousand men, including engineers and artillery; that he estimated the Silesian army under Blücher at forty-five thousand, and the main army under Schwarzenberg at a hundred and fifty thousand, including Bubna and the Cossacks. "If I gain a victory over the Silesian army, and put it out of account for some days, I can turn against Schwarzenberg, reckoning on the reinforcements you will send, with from seventy to eighty thousand men, and I think he cannot oppose me at once with more than from a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty thousand. If I find myself too weak to attack, I shall be at least strong enough to hold him in check for a fortnight or three weeks, and this would give me the opportunity for new combinations." To hold Schwarzenberg temporarily, Oudinot with twenty-five thousand men was stationed on the line from Provins to Sens, and Victor with fourteen thousand was sent to Nogent. The Emperor himself, with the old guard, about eight thousand strong, with Ney and Marmont each commanding six thousand infantry, and with ten thousand cavalry under Nansouty and Doumerc, set out from Sézanne to try his fortunes with Blücher.
This was the last of Napoleon's great strategic schemes which was destined to be crowned with success. It had but a single drawback. While Napoleon was still the boldest man in war that ever lived, as at St. Helena he declared himself to be, his marshals were uneasy and depressed; Marmont, in this moment of infinite chance, as it seemed to him, fell into a panic. The marshal's fears were not justified, for his Emperor's daring was not foolhardy. It was calculated on the myriad chances of his enemy's opportunity and his enemy's ability, and in this case it was perfectly calculated. Blücher, in spite of Gneisenau's continuous warnings, was over-confident. Having dispersed his detachments more than ever, he had for two days been moving swiftly in the hope of cutting off Macdonald by a dashing feat of arms. In his haste he had not taken up two Russian corps which had been separated from his main line, but on the contrary he had left them so far out that they were beyond support. By a blunder of the Czar's, reinforcements which had been promised were still a long distance in the rear. Schwarzenberg's movements were marked by an over-confident deliberation as characteristic of him as overhaste was of Blücher. Accordingly when on the tenth Marmont advanced from Sézanne, he found the corps of Olsusieff, about forty-five hundred strong, virtually isolated at Champaubert. His own numbers were slightly superior, and with a swift rush he annihilated the unready Russians. Napoleon was beside himself with joy, and began to talk of the Vistula once more; but he stopped when he saw how sour the visages of Marmont and the other marshals grew at the very mention of such an idea. Nevertheless, if the process begun at Champaubert could be continued, victory and ultimate recovery of something more than French empire were assured. He therefore hurried Nansouty and Macdonald on toward Montmirail for a second stroke of the same kind.