Victor's Failure at Montereau — Schwarzenberg's Ruse — The French Advance and the Austrian Retreat — Napoleon's Effort to Divide the Coalition — Vain Negotiations — The Treaty of Chaumont — Blücher's Narrow Escape — The Prussians Defeated at Craonne — Napoleon's Determination to Fight — His Misfortunes at Laon — Dissensions at Blücher's Headquarters — Napoleon at Soissons — Rheims Recaptured — Another Phase in Napoleon's Eclipse.
The eagerness of the Prussians and the Austrians to grant an armistice was at first due to the belief that Caulaincourt's request was a confession of exhaustion; the Czar's assent to reopening the congress on the eighteenth was wrung from him by the military operations between the fourteenth and that date. Convinced that Paris was menaced, Napoleon left Marmont to hold Blücher, and starting for La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the fifteenth, covered fifty miles with his army in a marvelous march of thirty-six hours, arriving on the evening of the sixteenth with his men comparatively fresh. Next morning the French began to advance, and the Austrians to withdraw toward the Seine. Victor was to seize Montereau that same day and hold the bridge. Compelled to drive an Austrian corps out of Valjouan, the marshal did not reach his goal until six or seven in the evening, and finding it beset by the Crown Prince of Würtemberg with fourteen thousand Germans, he merely drove in the outposts and then halted for the night. His ardor was far from intense, and though, like Macdonald at Château-Thierry, he might feel that he had done all that could be demanded, yet he lost the opportunity of annihilating a considerable portion of the enemy's force. Simultaneously Macdonald had now advanced until he stood before Bray, while Oudinot on the left was before Provins. Thus far Napoleon's advance had been a front movement to cover Paris, but that same day, the seventeenth, he drove Wittgenstein from Nangis, and then expected by a rush over the bridge at Montereau to prevent Schwarzenberg from extending his flank to Fontainebleau, a move which would surround the French right. As a matter of fact, strange riders speaking curious outlandish tongues, Cossack scouts in other words, had appeared for the first time that very day in Nemours and Fontainebleau, terrifying the inhabitants. It seems highly probable that if Napoleon's force could have made a quick push from Montereau early on the eighteenth, it would have cut off a considerable portion of Schwarzenberg's left. In any case the Emperor was deeply incensed by what he considered Victor's slackness, and degraded him. The humbled marshal confessed his fault, displaying profound contrition, and was speedily restored to partial favor, being intrusted with the command, under Ney, of a portion of the young guard.
This was the third of the marshals—Augereau, Macdonald, Victor, each in turn—who since the opening of the campaign had shown a physical and moral exhaustion disabling them from rising to the heights of Napoleon's expectation. "We must pull on the boots and the resolution of '93," wrote the Emperor to Augereau; he was quite right: nothing short of the unsapped revolutionary vigor of France could have saved his cause. On the eighteenth, after a six hours' struggle, the French under Gérard and Pajol seized Montereau. Napoleon had halted at Nangis, and there Berthier received by a flag of truce a letter from Schwarzenberg, declaring that he had ceased his offensive march in consequence of news that preliminaries of peace had been signed the day previous at Châtillon. This was probably as base a ruse as any ever practised by Napoleon's generals. It is likely that all the Austrian marches and countermarches for ten days past had been but a bustling semblance calculated for diplomatic effect. Be that as it may, before Napoleon's advance the Austrian commander had quailed, and, with the French at Montereau, his columns were already moving back to Troyes, where they were drawn up in battle array. Napoleon wrote indignantly to Joseph that the ruse was probably preliminary to a request for an armistice, and that he would now accept nothing short of the Frankfort proposals. "At the first check the wretched creatures fall on their knees." Meanwhile he led his army over the river to Nogent, and prepared to attack Schwarzenberg.
But Blücher had not been idle; by superhuman exertions he had collected and strengthened his army at Châlons, and on the twenty-first he appeared at Méry on the Seine, threatening Napoleon's left flank in case of an advance toward Troyes. By this time the flames of French patriotism were rekindled in town and country, and, the soldiers being flushed with victory, it was clearly the hour to strike at any hazard. Oudinot was despatched with ten thousand men to hold Blücher, and this task he actually accomplished, capturing that portion of Méry which lay on the left bank of the river, and fortifying the bridge-head against all comers. Marmont being at Sézanne with eight thousand men to cover Paris, and Mortier at Soissons with ten thousand to prevent the advance of York and Sacken, Napoleon marched on Troyes. It was late in the evening when his main army was drawn up, and in order to leave time for his rear to come in, he postponed operations until the morning. Schwarzenberg had seventy thousand in line, but at four in the early dawn of the twenty-second, leaving in place a front formation sufficient to mask his movements, he decamped with his main force and withdrew behind the Aube.
Arrived at Bar, the Austrian commander wrote on the twenty-sixth an admirable letter of justification for the course he had taken. Defeat would have meant a retreat, not behind the Aube, but the Rhine. "To offer a decisive battle to an army fighting with all the confidence gained in small affairs, manœuvering on its own territory, with provisions and munitions within reach, and with the aid of a peasantry in arms, would be an undertaking to which nothing but extreme necessity could drive me." This retreat put a new aspect on the diplomacy of Châtillon. On the nineteenth Caulaincourt received a despatch from Napoleon revoking the carte blanche entirely; the same day Napoleon received an ultimatum from the congress, written several days before, to the effect that he was to renounce all the acquisitions of France since 1792, and take no share in the arrangements subsequent to the peace. This last clause being a covert suggestion of abdication, the recipient flew into a passion; when finally he was soothed by the pleadings of Berthier and Maret, he gave such a meaningless reply as would enable negotiations to proceed, but his counter-project he addressed directly to the Emperor Francis. It was a refusal to give up Antwerp and Belgium, and an emphatic recurrence to the Frankfort proposals. "If we are not to lay down our arms except on the offensive conditions proposed at the congress, the genius of France and Providence will be on our side."
Napoleon's missive suggested to his father-in-law, as was its intention, that a continental peace on the Frankfort basis would leave France free to recuperate her sea power and continue the war with England alone. This was the wedge which for some time past the writer had been proposing to drive into the coalition so as to separate Austria from Russia. Castlereagh was very uneasy as to the possible effect of the message, and there was much anxiety among all the diplomats. Their first step was to send a pacific reply and renew their request for an armistice. Napoleon consented, but stipulated that hostilities should proceed during the preliminary pourparlers, and that in the protocol a clause should be inserted declaring that the plenipotentiaries were reassembled at Châtillon to discuss a peace on the basis proposed at Frankfort. A commission to arrange the terms of the armistice met on the twenty-fourth. That they were not in earnest is shown by Frederick William's despatch of the twenty-sixth to Blücher, saying, "The suspension of arms will not take place." That very day, also, in a council of war held by the allied generals, it was determined to form an invading army of the south. Blücher was authorized to make a diversion in favor of the main army—a move which he had really begun the day before by a march to the right. Napoleon, leaving Macdonald and Oudinot, with forty thousand men, to follow Schwarzenberg, hurried after Blücher with his remaining force. On the twenty-eighth the commission adjourned its sessions with a formal reiteration of the ultimatum already made by the allied powers.
The reason was that by that time its members believed Napoleon to be elsewhere engaged. Schwarzenberg's army had checked Oudinot, and as his troops recuperated their strength the leader recovered partial confidence. Blücher being off for Paris, with Napoleon on his heels, the main army of the allies had then turned on the forces of Macdonald and Oudinot, and had driven them westward until in the pursuit it reached Troyes, where it halted, ready, in case of Blücher's defeat, to recross the Rhine. The congress of Châtillon was formally reopened on March first, and continued its useless sessions until the nineteenth, when it closed. During this second period none of the important dignitaries, except Schwarzenberg and the King of Prussia, attended; the rest withdrew to Chaumont, where, on March ninth, the three powers signed a treaty with England, dated back to March first, binding themselves, in return for an annual subsidy of five million pounds sterling equally divided, that each would keep a hundred and fifty thousand men in the field, for twenty years if necessary, provided Napoleon would not accept the boundaries of royal France—a futile stipulation. This treaty was the precursor of that iniquitous triple alliance between Russia, Austria, and Prussia which was destined not merely to hamper England herself so seriously in the subsequent period of history, but to stop for some time the progress of liberal ideas throughout Europe.
Blücher crossed the Marne on February twenty-seventh with half his force, and then attempted to cross the Ourcq in order to attack Meaux from the north. But he was checked by Marmont and Mortier, with the sixteen thousand men they already had, and then, after six thousand new recruits came in from Paris, he was forced to retreat. Should Napoleon arrive in time he would be annihilated. Accordingly he hastened up the valley of the Ourcq with his entire force. Napoleon arrived on the Marne too late to attack Blücher's rear, and after some hesitation as to whether he should not return to complete his work with Schwarzenberg, he finally determined that, inasmuch as the fortress of Soissons was secure, and Blücher must therefore retreat to the eastward, he could himself deliver an easy but staggering blow on the Prussian flank when they should cross the Aisne at Fismes. Accordingly, on March third the worn-out columns of the French passed over the Marne. Unfortunately, Soissons had been left by Marmont in charge of an inexperienced commander, who had surrendered almost without resistance when, on March second, Bülow and Wintzengerode, having come in from the Netherlands, suddenly appeared before the place. This stroke of good fortune enabled Blücher not merely to find a city of refuge for his exhausted and disorganized force, but to recruit it by the two victorious and elated corps which thenceforth served him as an invaluable rear-guard. Napoleon, thwarted again, gave no outward sign of the despair he must have felt, but crossed the Aisne on March fifth, and occupied Rheims, in order at least to cut Blücher off from any connection with Schwarzenberg. He then turned to join Marmont and Mortier in order to drive Blücher still farther north, so that, as he wrote to Joseph, he might gain time sufficient to return by Châlons and attack Schwarzenberg.
In spite of all his discouragements, Blücher had no intention of retreating without a blow. There was constant friction between the Prussian commander and his subordinates, so that dissension prevented prompt action. Nevertheless, after much delay the army was got in motion to resume the offensive, the general plan being to move eastward instead of withdrawing due north, to cross the plateau of Craonne, and, descending into the plain north of Berry, to attack the French in force as they advanced to Laon. Napoleon had expected to meet his foe under the walls of that city; his quick advance was as much of a surprise to Blücher as Blücher's was to him. The first shock of battle, therefore, occurred at Craonne on the sixth, when neither army was in readiness. But Blücher secured the advantage of position. Though he had only a portion of his force, the troops he did have were on a commanding plateau above the enemy when the action began. The skirmishes of the first day, however, were indecisive. Napoleon's knowledge of the district being defective, he sought to secure the best possible information from the inhabitants. Some one mentioning incidentally that the mayor of a neighboring town was named de Bussy, Napoleon recalled, with his astounding memory, that in the regiment of La Fère he had had a comrade so named. The mayor turned out to be the sometime lieutenant, and, with superserviceable zeal, the former friend poured out worthless information which led the Emperor to believe that on the morrow there would be only Blücher's rear-guard to disperse. But it was not so. Blücher struggled with his utmost might to gather in his cavalry and artillery, while Sacken, with the Russians, stood like a wall, repelling the successive surges of Ney and Victor the whole day through. At nightfall the Prussian commander, finding it impossible to assemble guns or horsemen over the icy fields, gave orders for retreat, and his army passed on to Laon.
Though Craonne was a victory, the losses of the French were proportionately greater than those of the enemy, and the pursuit, though spirited, gained no advantage. "The young guard melts like snow; the old guard stands; my mounted guards likewise are much reduced," were the words of Napoleon's private letter. Yet he pressed on. The night of the seventh he spent in a roadside inn under the sign of "The Guardian Angel." There Caulaincourt's last messenger from Châtillon found him. The congress was still sitting, but the warrior knew the fact meant and could mean nothing to him; though the allies had increased their demands in proportion to their victories, they had not lessened them in proportion to their defeats. Whatever terms he might accept, and whatever Metternich might say, this war he felt sure was one for his extermination. As he said then and there, it was a bottomless chasm, and he added, "I am determined to be the last it shall swallow up." So he made no answer, and spent the night completing his plans for battle at Laon.