Napoleon, completely deceived by Winzingerode and Tettenborn, who had remained behind with merely a weak rearguard, first learned the advance of the main body upon Paris when too late to overtake it. After almost annihilating his weak opponents at St. Dizier, he reached Fontainebleau, where he learned the capitulation of Paris, and, giving way to the whole fury of his Corsican temperament, offered to yield the city for two days to the license of his soldiery would they but follow him to the assault. But his own marshals, even his hero, Ney, deserted him, and, on the 10th of April, he was compelled to resign the imperial crown of France and to withdraw to the island of Elba on the coast of Italy, which was placed beneath his sovereignty and assigned to him as a residence. The kingdom of France was re-established on its former footing; and, on the 4th of May, Louis XVIII. entered Paris and mounted the throne of his ancestors.
Davoust was the last to offer resistance. The Russians under Bennigsen besieged him in Hamburg, and, on his final surrender, treated him with the greatest moderation.[9]
On the 30th of May, 1814, peace was concluded at Paris.[10] France was reduced to her limits as in 1792, and consequently retained the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, of which she had, at an earlier period, deprived Germany. Not a farthing was paid by way of compensation for the ravages suffered by Germany, nay, the French prisoners of war were, on their release, maintained on their way home at the expense of the German population. None of the chefs-d'oeuvres of which Europe had been plundered were restored, with the sole exception of the group of horses, taken by Napoleon from the Brandenburg gate at Berlin. The allied troops instantly evacuated the country. France was allowed to regulate her internal affairs without the interference of any of the foreign powers, while paragraphs concerning the internal economy of Germany were not only admitted into the treaty of Paris, and France was on that account not only called upon to guarantee and to participate in the internal affairs of Germany, but also afterward sent to the great Congress of Vienna an ambassador destined to play an important part in the definitive settlement of the affairs of Europe, and, more particularly, of those of Germany.
The patriots, of whom the governments had made use both before and after the war, unable to comprehend that the result of such immense exertions and of such a complete triumph should be to bring greater profit and glory to France than to Germany, and that their patriotism was, on the conclusion of the war, to be renounced, were loud in their complaints.[11] But the revival of the German empire, with which the individual interests of so many princely houses were plainly incompatible, was far from entering into the plans of the allied powers. An attempt made by any one among the princes to place himself at the head of the whole of Germany would have been frustrated by the rest. The policy of the foreign allies was moreover antipathetic to such a scheme. England opposed and sought to hinder unity in Germany, not only for the sake of retaining possession of Hanover and of exercising an influence over the disunited German princes similar to that exercised by her over the princes of India, but more particularly for that of ruling the commerce of Germany. Russia reverted to her Erfurt policy. Her interests, like those of France, led her to promote disunion among the German powers, whose weakness, the result of want of combination, placed them at the mercy of France, and left Poland, Sweden, and the East open to the ambition of Russia. A close alliance was in consequence instantly formed between the emperor Alexander and Louis XVIII., the former negotiating, as the first condition of peace, the continuance of Lorraine and Alsace beneath the sovereignty of France.
Austria assented on condition of Italy being placed exclusively beneath her control. Austria united too many and too diverse nations beneath her sceptre to be able to pursue a policy pre-eminently German, and found it more convenient to round off her territories by the annexation of Upper Italy than by that of distant Lorraine, at all times a possession difficult to maintain. Prussia was too closely connected with Russia, and Hardenberg, unlike Blucher at the head of the Prussian army, was powerless at the head of Prussian diplomacy. The lesser states also exercised no influence upon Germany as a whole, and were merely intent upon preserving their individual integrity or upon gaining some petty advantage. The Germans, some few discontented patriots alone excepted, were more than ever devoted to their ancient princes, both to those who had retained their station and to those who returned to their respective territories on the fall of Napoleon; and the victorious soldiery, adorned with ribbons, medals, and orders (the Prussians, for instance, with the iron cross), evinced the same unreserved attachment to their prince and zeal for his individual interest. This complication of circumstances can alone explain the fact of Germany, although triumphant, having made greater concessions to France by the treaty of Paris than, when humbled, by that of Westphalia.
[Footnote 1: His principal thesis consisted of "We are not Prussians,
Westphalians, Saxons, etc., but Germans.">[
[Footnote 2: This prince took the title not of stadtholder, but of king, to which he had no claim, but in which he was supported by England and Russia, who unwillingly beheld Prussia aggrandized by the possession of Holland.]
[Footnote 3: Even in the May of 1813, an ode given in No. 270 of the Allgemeine Zeitung, appeared in Switzerland, in which it was said, "The brave warriors of Switzerland hasten to reap fresh laurels. With their heroic blood have they dyed the distant shores of barbarous Haiti, the waters of the Ister and Tagus, etc. The deserts of Sarmatia have witnessed the martial glories of the Helvetic legion.">[
[Footnote 4: Shortly before this, a report had been spread of the nomination of Marshal Berthier, prince of Neufchatel, as perpetual Landammann of Switzerland.—Muralt's Reinhard.]
[Footnote 5: Out of two thousand six hundred and fifty-four Badeners but five hundred and six returned from Spain.]