That place stands on a terraced hill rising somewhat abruptly from the plain, and throughout the eighth Blücher arrayed his army in and on both sides of the city, which itself was of course the key. Napoleon, being a firm believer in such movements when on friendly soil, made a long night march. He reached the enemy's fore-posts early on the ninth, and drove them in. At seven Ney and Mortier began the battle under cover of a mist, and captured two hamlets at the foot of the hill. Marmont was on the right, and had already been cut off from the center by a body of Cossacks; but he attacked the village of Athies. After a long day's hard fighting, he succeeded in capturing a portion of it. Further exertion being impossible, his men bivouacked, while he himself withdrew to the comforts of Eppes, a château three miles distant. It was noon when Napoleon learned that Marmont had been severed from the line; at once he renewed his attack on Laon, but though he gained Clacy on his left, he lost Ardon, and was thus more completely cut off from Marmont. That night York fell upon Marmont's men unawares, and routed them utterly.
Napoleon heard of this disaster shortly after midnight. He was, of course, deeply agitated—did he dare risk being infolded on both sides, or should he brave his fate in order to mislead the enemy? He chose the desperate course, and when day broke stood apparently undismayed. Even when two fugitive dragoons arrived and confirmed in all its details the terrible news from Athies, he issued orders as bold as if his army were still entire. This was a desperate ruse, but it succeeded, for the pursuit of Marmont's men was stayed. At four the main French army began its retreat, and the next morning saw it at Soissons; six thousand had been killed and wounded. Again Napoleon's name had stiffened the allies into inactive horror, for they did not pursue. York was so disgusted with the dissensions at Blücher's headquarters that he threw up his command and left for Brussels. Blücher was literally at the end of his powers. "For heaven's sake," said Langeron, a French refugee in the Russian service, on whom the command would have devolved, "whatever happens, let us take the corpse along." "The corpse," with dimmed eyes and trembling hands, traced in great rude letters an epistle beseeching York to return, and this, indorsed by another from the Prince Royal of Prussia, brought back the able but testy refugee.
Meantime Rheims, intrusted to a feeble garrison, had been taken by Langeron's rear-guard under St. Priest, another French emigrant in the service of the allies. By this disaster communication between Schwarzenberg and Blücher had been reëstablished. In the short day Napoleon could spend at Soissons, he took up twenty-five hundred new cavalrymen, a new line regiment of infantry, a veteran regiment of the same, and some artillery detachments. It is not easy to conceive of recuperative power more remarkable than that which was thus exhibited both by France and her Emperor. These men had been sent forward from Paris in spite of the profound gloom now prevalent there. The truth was at last known in the capital; Joseph was hopeless; the Empress and her court were preparing for extremities. News had come that in the south Soult had been thrown back on Toulouse; that in the southwest royalist plots were thickening; that in the southeast Augereau had been forced back to Lyons; Macdonald was ready to abandon Provins at the first sign of advance by Schwarzenberg; and the sorry tale of Laon was early unfolded. Yet the administrative machinery was still running, and soldiers were being manufactured from the available materials. Those who had been sent to Soissons had been hastily gathered, equipped, and drilled almost without hope, but they were precious since they enabled Napoleon to refit his shattered battalions.
Marmont had unwisely abandoned Berry-au-Bac, and that in disregard of orders. But otherwise he had done his best to make good a temporary lapse, and had got together about eight thousand men at Fismes. His narratives give a graphic picture of the situation—of disorder, confusion, chaos among his troops, of artillery served by inexperienced sailors, of undrilled companies whose members had neither hats, clothes, nor shoes. There were plenty of captured uniforms and head-coverings, but they were so infested with vermin that the French, sorry as was their plight, refused to wear them, and clung to their old tatters. Marmont's men were heroes, he himself was not yet a traitor. Though overborne by a sense of Napoleon's recklessness, and therefore unfit for the desperate self-sacrifice which would have made him a fit coadjutor for his chief, he was prepared to atone for his disgrace at Athies. Early in the morning of the thirteenth the main French army moved from Soissons; at four in the afternoon Marmont opened the attack on Rheims. Napoleon himself had arrived, but his troops were slow in coming up, and there was no heavy artillery wherewith to batter in the gates. The struggle went on with desperate courage and gallantry on both sides. St. Priest was killed by the same gunner whose aim had been fatal to Moreau. "We may well say, O Providence! O Providence!" wrote Napoleon to his brother. At ten the beleaguered garrison began to sally and flee. Napoleon rose from the bearskin on which he had been resting before a bivouac fire, and storming with rage lest his prey should escape, hurried in the guns, which were finally within reach. Amid awful tumult and carnage the place fell; three thousand of the enemy were slain, and about the same number were captured. The burghers were frenzied with delight as the Emperor marched in, and the whole city burst into an illumination.
Next morning Napoleon and Marmont met. The culprit was loaded with reproaches for the affair at Athies, and treated as a stern father might treat a careless child. No better evidence of the Emperor's low state is needed. Marmont was now the hero of the hour; his peccadillos might well have been forgotten for the sake of securing his continued faithfulness. With Napoleon at his best, this would surely have been the case; but aware that at most the war could be a matter of only a few weeks, the desperate man overdid his rôle of self-confidence, being too rash, too severe, too haughty. Not that he was without some hope. Although for two years the shadow had been declining on the dial of Napoleon's fortunes, and although under adverse conditions one brilliant combination after another had crumbled, yet his ideas were as great as ever, the adjustment of plans to changing conditions was never more admirable. The trouble was that effort and result did not correspond, and this being so, what would have been trifling misdemeanors in prosperity seemed to him in adversity to be dangerous faults. The great officers of state and army, imitating their master's ambitions, had acquired his weaknesses, but had failed in securing either his strength or his adroitness. With him they had lost that fire of youth which had carried them and him always just over the line of human expectation, and so his nice adjustments failed in exasperating ways at the very turn of necessity. Hard words and stinging reproofs are soon forgotten in generous youth; they rankle in middle life; and even the invigorating address or inspiring word, when heard too often for twenty years, fails of effect. The beginning of the end was the loss of Soissons at the critical instant. Napoleon was uncertain and touchy; his marshals were honeycombed with disaffection; the populations, though flashing like powder at his touch, had nowhere risen en masse. Thereafter the great captain was no longer waging a well-ordered warfare. Like an exhausted swordsman, he lunged here and there in the grand style; but his brain was troubled, his blade broken. Some untapped reservoirs of strength were yet to be opened, some untried expedients were to be essayed, but the end was inevitable. The movement on Rheims was the spasmodic stroke of the dying gladiator.
CHAPTER VIII
The Struggles of Exhaustion[9]
The Allies Demoralized — Napoleon's Desperate Choice — The Battle at Arcis — The Correspondence of Caulaincourt and Napoleon — Panic at Schwarzenberg's Headquarters — Cross-purposes of the Allies — Napoleon's Determination Confirmed — His Over-confidence — The Resolution to Abandon Paris — The French Brought to a Stand — Their Masked Retreat — Inefficiency of Marmont and Augereau — Napoleon's March toward St. Dizier — His Terrible Disenchantment — How the Allies had Discovered Napoleon's Plans — Their Determination to Pursue — The Czar's Resolution to March on Paris — Successful Return of the Invaders.
Though unscientific as a military move and futile as to the ultimate result of the war, the capture of Rheims was, nevertheless, a telling thrust. On receipt of the news from Laon, Schwarzenberg had immediately set his army in motion against Macdonald, and Blücher, after waiting two days to restore order among his worried troops and insubordinate lieutenants, had advanced and laid siege to Compiègne. The capture of Rheims checked the movements of both Austrians and Prussians; dismay prevailed in both camps, and both armies began to draw back. The French halted at Nangis in their retreat before Schwarzenberg, and the people of Compiègne were released from the terrors of a siege. "This terrible Napoleon," wrote Langeron in his memoirs—"they thought they saw him everywhere. He had beaten us all, one after the other; we were always frightened by the daring of his enterprises, the swiftness of his movements, and his clever combinations. Scarcely had we formed a plan when it was disconcerted by him." Besides this, in obedience to Napoleon's call, the peasantry began an organized guerrilla warfare, avenging the pillage, incendiarism, and military executions of the allies by a brutal retaliation in kind which made the marauding invaders quake. Finally the momentary consternation of the latter verged on panic when the report reached headquarters that Bernadotte, lying inactive at Liège with twenty-three thousand Swedes, had permitted a flag of truce from Joseph to enter his presence. Could it be that the sly schemer, for the furtherance of his ambition to govern France, was about to turn traitor and betray the coalition?
But the consternation of the allies was the least important effect of the capture of Rheims by Napoleon.[10] It initiated certain ideas and purposes in his own mind about which there has been endless discussion. Many see in them the immediate cause of his ruin, a few consider them the most splendid offspring of his mind. Reinforcements from Paris, slender as they were, flowed steadily into his camp; and when he learned that both Schwarzenberg and Blücher had virtually retreated, he believed himself able to cope once more with the former. Accordingly he dictated to his secretary an outline of three possible movements: to Arcis on the Aube, by way of Sézanne to Provins, and to Meaux for the defense of Paris. The first was the most daring; the second would cut the enemy off from the right bank of the Seine, but it had the disadvantage of keeping the troops on miry cross-roads; the third was the safest. Of course he chose the way of desperation—all or nothing. Leaving Marmont with seven thousand men at Berry-au-Bac, and Mortier with ten thousand at Rheims and Soissons, he enjoined them both to hold the line toward Paris against Blücher at all hazards, and himself set out, on March seventeenth, for Arcis on the Aube. This he did, instead of marching direct to Meaux for the defense of Paris, because it would, in his own words, "give the enemy a great shock, and result in unforeseen circumstances."