[Footnote 15: Dantzig had formerly sixty thousand inhabitants, the population was now reduced to thirteen thousand. Numbers died of hunger, Rapp having merely stored the magazines for his troops. Fifteen thousand of the French garrison died, and yet fourteen generals, upward of a thousand officers, and about as many comptrollers belonging to the grand army, who had taken refuge in that city, were, on the capitulation of the fortress, made prisoners of war.]
[Footnote 16: The injustice thus favored by the first peace was loudly complained of.—Manso.]
CCLXII. Napoleon's Fall
Napoleon was no sooner driven across the Rhine, than the defection of the whole of the Rhenish confederation, of Holland, Switzerland, and Italy ensued. The whole of the confederated German princes followed the example of Bavaria and united their troops with those of the allies. Jerome had fled; the kingdom of Westphalia had ceased to exist, and the exiled princes of Hesse, Brunswick, and Oldenburg returned to their respective territories. The Rhenish provinces were instantly occupied by Prussian troops and placed under the patriotic administration of Justus Gruner, who was joined by Görres of Coblentz, whose Rhenish Mercury so powerfully influenced public opinion that Napoleon termed him the fifth great European power.[1] The Dutch revolted and took the few French still remaining in the country prisoner. Hogendorp was placed at the head of a provisional government in the name of William of Orange.[2] The Prussians under Bulow entered the country and were received with great acclamation. The whole of the Dutch fortresses surrendered, the French garrisons flying panic-stricken.
The Swiss remained faithful to Napoleon until the arrival of Schwarzenberg with the allied army on their frontiers.[3] Napoleon would gladly have beheld the Swiss sacrifice themselves for him for the purpose of keeping the allies in check, but Reinhard of Zurich, who was at that time Landammnann, prudently resolved not to persevere in the demand for neutrality, to lay aside every manifestation of opposition, and to permit, it being impossible to prevent, the entrance of the troops into the country, by which he, moreover, ingratiated himself with the allies. The majority of his countrymen thanked Heaven for their deliverance from French oppression, and if, in their ancient spirit of egotism, they neglected to aid the great popular movement throughout Germany, they, at all events, sympathized in the general hatred toward France.[4] The ancient aristocrats now naturally reappeared and attempted to re-establish the oligarchical governments of the foregoing century. A Count Senfft von Pilsach, a pretended Austrian envoy, who was speedily disavowed, assumed the authority at Berne with so much assurance as to succeed in deposing the existing government and reinstating the ancient oligarchy. In Zurich, the constitution was also revised and the citizens reassumed their authority over the peasantry. The whole of Switzerland was in a state of ferment. Ancient claims of the most varied description were asserted. The people of the Grisons took up arms and invaded the Valtelline in order to retake their ancient possession. Pancratius, abbot of St. Gall, demanded the restoration of his princely abbey.—Italy, also, deserted Napoleon. Murat, king of Naples, in order not to lose his crown, joined the allies. Eugene Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, alone remained true to his imperial stepfather and gallantly opposed the Austrians under Hiller, who, nevertheless, rapidly reduced the whole of Upper Italy to submission.
The allies, when on the point of entering the French territory, solemnly declared that their enmity was directed not against the French nation, but solely against Napoleon. By this generosity they hoped at once to prove the beneficence of their intentions to every nation of Europe and to prejudice the French, more particularly, against their tyrant; but that people, notwithstanding their immense misfortunes, still remained true to Napoleon nor hesitated to sacrifice themselves for the man who had raised them to the highest rank among the nations of the earth, and thousands flocked anew beneath the imperial eagle for the defence of their native soil.
The allies invaded France simultaneously on four sides, Bulow from Holland, Blucher, on New Year's eve, 1814, from Coblentz, and the main body of the allied army under Schwarzenberg, which was also accompanied by the allied sovereigns. A fourth army, consisting of English and Spaniards, had already crossed the Pyrenees and marched up the country. The great wars in Russia and Germany having compelled Napoleon to draw off a considerable number of his forces from Spain, Soult had been consequently unable to keep the field against Wellington, whose army had been gradually increased. King Joseph fled from Madrid. The French hazarded a last engagement at Vittoria, in June, 1813, but suffered a terrible defeat. One of the two Nassau regiments under Colonel Kruse and the Frankfort battalion deserted with their arms and baggage to the English. The other Nassau regiment and that of Baden were disarmed by the French and dragged in chains to France in reward for their long and severe service.[5] The Hanoverians in Wellington's army (the German Legion), particularly the corps of Victor von Alten (Charles's brother), brilliantly distinguished themselves at Vittoria and again at Bayonne, but were forgotten in the despatches, an omission that was loudly complained of by their general, Hinuber. Other divisions of Hanoverians, up to this period stationed in Sicily, had been sent to garrison Leghorn and Genoa.[6]—The crown prince of Sweden followed the Prussian northern army, but merely went as far as Liege, whence he turned back in order to devote his whole attention to the conquest of Norway.
In the midst of the contest a fresh congress was assembled at Chatillon, for the purpose of devising measures for the conclusion of the war without further bloodshed. The whole of ancient France was offered to Napoleon on condition of his restraining his ambition within her limits and of keeping peace, but he refused to cede a foot of land, and resolved to lose all or nothing. This congress was in so far disadvantageous on account of the rapid movements of the armies being checked by its fluctuating diplomacy. Schwarzenberg, for instance, pursued a system of procrastination, separated his corps d'armee at long intervals, advanced with extreme slowness, or remained entirely stationary. Napoleon took advantage of this dilatoriness on the part of his opponents to make an unexpected attack on Blucher's corps at Brienne on the 29th of January, in which Blucher narrowly escaped being made prisoner. The flames of the city, in which Napoleon had received his first military lessons, facilitated Blucher's retreat. Napoleon, however, neglecting to pursue him on the 30th of January, Blucher, reinforced by the crown prince of Wurtemberg and by Wrede, attacked him at La Rothière with such superior forces as to put him completely to the rout. The French left seventy-three guns sticking in the mud. Schwarzenberg, nevertheless, instead of pursuing the retreating enemy with the whole of his forces, again delayed his advance and divided the troops. Blucher, who had meanwhile rapidly pushed forward upon Paris, was again unexpectedly attacked by the main body of the French army, and the whole of his corps were, as they separately advanced, repulsed with considerable loss, the Russians under Olsufief at Champeaubert, those under Sacken at Montmirail, the Prussians under York at Château-Thierry, and, finally, Blucher himself at Beaux-champ, between the 10th and 14th of February. With characteristic rapidity, Napoleon instantly fell upon the scattered corps of the allied army and inflicted a severe punishment upon Schwarzenberg, for the folly of his system. He successively repulsed the Russians under Pahlen at Mormant, Wrede at Villeneuve le Comte, the crown prince of Wurtemberg, who offered the most obstinate resistance, at Montereau, on the 17th and 18th of February.[7] Augereau had meantime, with an army levied in the south of France, driven the Austrians, under Bubna, into Switzerland; and, although the decisive moment had arrived, and Schwarzenberg had simply to form a junction with Blucher in order to bring an overwhelming force against Napoleon, the allied sovereigns and Schwarzenberg resolved, in a council of war held at Troyes, upon a general retreat.
Blucher, upon this, magnanimously resolved to obviate at all hazards the disastrous consequences of the retreat of the allied army, and, in defiance of all commands, pushed forward alone.[8] This movement, far from being rash, was coolly calculated, Blucher being sufficiently reinforced on the Marne by Winzingerode and Bulow, by whose aid he, on the 9th March, defeated the emperor Napoleon at Laon. The victory was still undecided at fall of night. Napoleon allowed his troops to rest, but Blucher remained under arms and sent York to surprise him during the night. The French were completely dispersed and lost forty-six guns. Napoleon, after this miserable defeat, again tried his fortune against Schwarzenberg (who, put to shame by Blucher's brilliant success, had again halted), and, on the 20th of March, maintained his position at Arcis sur Aube, although the crown prince of Wurtemberg gallantly led his troops five times to the assault. Neither side was victorious.
Napoleon now resorted to a bold ruse de guerre. The peasantry, more particularly in Lorraine, exasperated by the devastation unavoidable during war time, and by the vengeance here and there taken by the foreign soldiery, had risen to the rear of the allied army. Unfortunately, no one had dreamed of treating the German Alsatians and Lothringians as brother Germans. They were treated as French. Long unaccustomed to invasion and to the calamities incidental to war, they made a spirited but ineffectual resistance to the rapine of the soldiery. Whole villages were burned down. The peasantry gathered into troops and massacred the foreign soldiery when not in sufficient numbers to keep them in check. Napoleon confidently expected that his diminished armies would be supported by a general rising en masse, and that Augereau, who was at that time guarding Lyons, would form a junction with him; and, in this expectation, threw himself to the rear of the allied forces and took up a position at Troyes with a view of cutting them off, perhaps of surrounding them by means of the general rising, or, at all events, of drawing them back to the Rhine. But, on the self-same day, the 19th of March, Lyons had fallen and Augereau had retreated southward. The people did not rise en masse, and the allies took advantage of Napoleon's absence to form a grand junction, and, with flying banners, to march unopposed upon Paris, convinced that the possession of the capital of the French empire must inevitably bring the war to a favorable conclusion. In Paris, there were numerous individuals who already regarded Napoleon's fall as un fait accompli, and who, ambitious of influencing the future prospects of France, were ready to offer their services to the victors. Both parties speedily came to an understanding. The corps d'armee under Marshals Mortier and Marmont, which were encountered midway, were repulsed, and that under Generals Pacthod and Amey captured, together with seventy pieces of artillery, at La Fère Ohampenoise. On the 29th of March, the dark columns of the allied army defiled within sight of Paris. On the 30th, they met with a spirited resistance on the heights of Belleville and Montmartre; but the city, in order to escape bombardment, capitulated during the night, and, on the 31st, the allied sovereigns made a peaceful entry. The empress, accompanied by the king of Rome, by Joseph, ex-king of Spain, and by innumerable wagons, laden with the spoil of Europe, had already fled to the south of France.