The affair at Montmirail was more of a battle than that at Champaubert, for Blücher had been able to gather in the divisions of Sacken, York, Kleist, and Kapzewitch. The battle opened about an hour before noon on the eleventh by a fierce artillery fire from the French, behind which Napoleon manœuvered so as to concentrate his own force against the Russians, and separate them from York with his Prussians. At two o'clock Napoleon attacked the Russians, Mortier engaging the Prussians separately. The plan succeeded, and by nightfall the enemy was in full retreat for Château-Thierry, where was the nearest bridge over the Marne. Napoleon had hoped that Macdonald would arrive from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in time to seize the bridge, cut off the retreat, and make the victory decisive. But in spite of heroic exertion, that marshal could not or did not move with sufficient rapidity over the heavy dirt roads. The flying allies sacked the town with awful cruelty, and destroyed the bridge without any molestation except from the inhabitants, who wreaked their vengeance on numerous stragglers. On the thirteenth the French occupied the place, repaired the bridge, and crossed to the right bank. Next morning Marmont started in pursuit of Blücher.
Somewhat flushed by such success, Napoleon deliberated whether he should not now turn and attack Schwarzenberg. The Emperor thought these victories might give pause to a mediocre Austrian, ever mindful of the terrific blows his country had received once and again from France. He was mistaken; Schwarzenberg had moved, though slowly, yet steadily forward. On the twelfth Victor abandoned the bridge at Nogent, and Napoleon sent Macdonald with twelve thousand men to join Victor at Montereau. Early on the fourteenth came news that Blücher had driven Marmont back to Fromentières. By noon Napoleon had effected a junction with this marshal near Étoges, making a famous and successful flank march over a marshy country, a manœuver which is justly considered worthy of his great genius. Advancing then to the neighborhood of Vauchamps, his infantry attacked in front, while the cavalry, under Grouchy, outflanked the enemy's line and fell on the rear. Blücher was apparently doomed, for he had only three regiments of cavalry, and while facing one powerful enemy he would be forced to break the ranks of another in order to open a line of retreat. He solved the problem, but at enormous cost. Forming his troops into a line of solid squares, one stood to support the artillery and receive the onset in front, while the others dashed at Grouchy's horsemen, each square standing and retreating behind the next alternately as the bloody retreat went on. At last the butchery ceased, and Blücher fled to Bergères. The French pursued only as far as Étoges. Napoleon had hoped to follow all the way to Châlons, annihilate what was left of Blücher's army, and then to return and throw himself on Schwarzenberg. He was arrested by the news that the Seine valley, as far as Montereau, was in the hands of the Austro-Russians; that Oudinot and Victor had been driven back to Nangis; in short, that Paris was seriously menaced.
It was long asserted that in the three actions just recorded the French far outnumbered their opponents, and that Napoleon's generalship was consequently inferior to his high average. The sufficient answer to this is in the facts now universally accepted. At Champaubert there were four thousand eight hundred and fifty French against four thousand seven hundred Russians; at Montmirail there were twenty-two thousand seven hundred Russians and Prussians against twelve thousand eight hundred French; and in the third engagement, near Étoges, Blücher had twenty-one thousand five hundred to ten thousand three hundred. It is therefore natural to compare these three victories with those at Montenotte, Millesimo, and Dego. But they were far greater. At forty-four Napoleon displayed exactly the same boldness, steadfastness, and skill which he had displayed in youth; but in addition he overcame the stolid enmity of winter, of variable weather, of roads almost impassable, of swampy fields that were almost impassable by reason of overflowing ditches and half-frozen morasses. He overcame, too, the resisting power created by his own example; for here were the choicest soldiers of the Continent, commanded by men inured for eighteen years to the hardships, the shifts, the rapidity of warfare as he himself had taught the art. Momentarily Napoleon seems to have wondered whether allied and co-allied Europe had learned nothing in half a generation, and whether an army twice and a half larger than his own, under veteran generals, was to withdraw again behind the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, perhaps the Vistula. It is hard to believe that he dreamed such dreams as we read the prosaic, scientific, hard common sense of his military correspondence between January twenty-sixth and February fourteenth. Yet there is certainly an appearance of self-deception and vacillation in his political and diplomatic plans, due apparently to the intoxication of success, as when he spoke of the Vistula to Marmont after Champaubert.
The innermost thoughts of Metternich, and of the diplomats associated with him, are very hard to fathom. For two generations the world believed that after Leipsic, Napoleon, in his sanguine conceit, rejected offer after offer from the allies, and finally perished utterly because of a folly which made him believe he could recover his predominance. There is now every reason to believe the contrary, and to suppose that Napoleon clearly understood the situation. The war was one of extermination on the part of the allies; in the interest of their dynasties they intended not only to destroy Napoleon, but also thereby to root out the ideas for which he was supposed to stand. By the light of recent memoirs, especially those of Metternich himself, we seem forced to the conclusion that in all the offers after Leipsic there was, if anything, far less of reality and sincerity than in those between the armistice of Poischwitz and the battle. When Castlereagh arrived at the allied headquarters early in January, 1814, he found them established in Basel. Schwarzenberg had found no difficulty in crossing Switzerland. Geneva surrendered its keys without a struggle, and generally the Swiss seemed indifferent to the violation of their neutrality. As the advance continued, it appeared that the French were equally apathetic. Bubna was driven from before Lyons by Augereau, but Dijon surrendered to a squad of cavalrymen which, at the request of the conscientious mayor, made a show of force to oblige him. It was not difficult under such circumstances for the sovereigns and their ministers to convince themselves that any peace with Napoleon would be nothing but a "ridiculous armistice," and that the Emperor of the French must, in any case, be utterly overthrown.
In response to the Frankfort proposals, the pacific Caulaincourt had promptly arrived to conduct negotiations. The invaders had almost at once suggested that they must abandon the Frankfort proposals, and confine France to her royal limits; that is, refuse her Belgium with the great port of Antwerp. So far they were agreed, but there the unanimity ceased. The Czar desired first to conquer France, and then leave her to choose her own government; he intended to take the whole of Poland, and give Alsace to Francis in return for Galicia, thus checking Austria by both Prussia and France, so that he could work his will in the Orient. Metternich wished the old balance of power, and had determined on the restoration of the Bourbons. Francis was writing to his daughter that he would never separate her cause and that of her son from France. The Prussian king and ministers desired only such an arrangement as would secure to their country what she had regained. Stein and his associates wished the utter humiliation of their foe. Castlereagh spoke with the authority of a paymaster; he was determined to keep the Netherlands from falling under French influence, to restore the Bourbons, and to establish so nice an equilibrium in Europe that Great Britain would be unhampered elsewhere in the world. There was to be no mention of colonial restitution or neutral rights. Being a second-rate statesman, he was much influenced by Metternich, and the two sought to form an impossible alliance between constitutional liberty and feudal absolutism.
A so-called congress was opened at Châtillon on February fifth.[7] It must be remembered that the treaty of Reichenbach was still a secret. That agreement was the reality behind the congress of Prague, the Frankfort proposals, and the meeting at Mannheim. None of those gatherings consequently was serious; that at Châtillon was even less so. The memoirs of Metternich explain all the facts: Swiss neutrality was violated by Austrian influence in order to restore the aristocratic constitution of Bern and the ascendancy of that canton; Alexander, posing still as a liberal, was angry at this violation of international law, and forbade the restoration of Vaud to its old master. Schwarzenberg's deliberate movements were due primarily to timidity, but they stood in good stead Metternich's desire to restore the Bourbons. It has been asserted, and there is much probability in the conjecture, that not only the plan adopted for invading France, but the slowness of the Austrians in advancing toward Langres, toward Troyes, across into the Seine valley, together with the spurious activity they displayed before Montereau, Sens, and Fontainebleau, was part of a scheme to wear out but not to exhaust France, and then compel her to take back her dynastic rulers. Blücher, who wanted glory and revenge, and the Prussian liberals, who desired so to crush France that Prussia might be free to slough off her militarism and build up a constitutional government, were alike furious at being chained to the frontier. All these cross-purposes and bitterness were mirrored in the ostentatious proceedings of the congress of Châtillon. Napoleon, either divining the facts, or, more probably, informed by spies, seemed indifferent, and refused at first to give full powers to Caulaincourt; finally the marshals, terrified at the prospect of indefinite war opened by the unlucky mention of the Vistula, made their influence so felt that the Emperor yielded.
Maret's name was long held up to detestation as the instigator of Napoleon's procrastinating policy at Dresden, the line of conduct which seemed to have made it possible for Austria to join the coalition. Among the papers of that minister is an account of his relations with Napoleon during the congress at Châtillon, which displays the evident motive of an attempt to prove how pacific his nature really was. He declares that after the defeat at La Rothière, Caulaincourt wrote a panic-stricken letter demanding full authority to treat. Maret handed it to the Emperor, beseeching him to yield. Napoleon seemed scarcely to heed, but indicated a passage in Montesquieu's "Grandeur and Fall of the Romans," which he happened to be reading: "I know nothing more magnanimous than the resolution taken by a monarch who ruled in our time, to bury himself under the ruins of the throne rather than to accept proposals which a king may not entertain. He had a soul too lofty to descend lower than his misfortunes had hurled him." "But I, sire," rejoined the secretary—"I know something more magnanimous—to cast aside your glory in order to close the abyss into which France would fall along with you." "Well, then, gentlemen, make your peace," came the reply. "Let Caulaincourt make it; let him sign everything necessary to obtain it. I can support the disgrace, but do not expect me to dictate my own humiliation." Maret informed Caulaincourt, but the latter recoiled before the responsibility, and asked for particular instructions. The Emperor persistently refused, but wrote giving the minister "carte blanche" to take any measure which would save the capital. Again Caulaincourt begged for details, and again Napoleon refused, persisting until Bertrand joined his supplications to those of Maret, whereupon he consented to abandon Belgium, and even the left bank of the Rhine.
The formal despatch containing these concessions was to be signed next morning, on February eighth, but in the interval came news of Blücher's movements. Maret found the Emperor buried in the study of his map. "I have an entirely different matter in hand," was the greeting; "I am at present occupied in dealing Blücher a blow in the eye." The signature was indefinitely postponed. On the tenth Alexander suspended the congress on the plea of Caulaincourt's refusal to state his own or accept the offered terms. Then followed the three victories, and Napoleon, on the night of the twelfth, wrote to Châtillon demanding the Frankfort proposals. Caulaincourt urgently besought the allies for an armistice, and begged Napoleon to be less exacting. Prussia and Austria were eager for the armistice, but Alexander obstinately refused to reopen the congress until the eighteenth, when everything seemed changed, and all the allies really desired peace. Caulaincourt, warned by Napoleon's letter of the twelfth, refused to treat without full instructions, and as he had none he began to procrastinate. In the end he bore the blame for not having used the carte blanche when he had it in order to save his country, for subsequently he had no opportunity.