After the Allies made the Frankfurt terms public on December 1, stating that they would ‘guarantee the French Empire a larger extent of territory than France ever knew under her kings’, Pasquier and Lavalette informed Napoleon that their intelligence services indicated the French people wanted him to accept.75 ‘The moment of the rendezvous has arrived,’ Napoleon told Savary melodramatically; ‘they look at the lion as dead, who will begin taking his delayed vengeance? If France abandons me, I cannot do anything; but they’ll soon regret it.’76 The following day Caulaincourt wrote to Metternich agreeing to the ‘general and summary bases’.77 On December 10, as Wellington crossed the Nive river and Soult withdrew to the Adour, Metternich replied to say that the Allies were waiting for Britain’s reply to Caulaincourt’s offer. The Napoleonic Wars could have ended there and then, but the British were opposed to a peace that left France in possession of any part of the Belgian coast from which Britain could be invaded, specifically Antwerp. Castlereagh’s opposition to Metternich’s terms wrecked the Frankfurt peace attempt, especially once he had arrived in Europe in January 1814 and encouraged the Tsar to oppose peace of any kind with Napoleon.78 He did not believe that a lasting peace would be possible if Napoleon remained on the throne of France.
‘Brilliant victories glorified French arms during this campaign,’ Napoleon told the Legislative Body on December 19, ‘defections without example rendered those victories useless. Everything turned against us. Even France would be in danger were it not for the energy and unity of Frenchmen.’ Only Denmark and Naples remained faithful, he said – though privately he was having doubts about Naples, telling his sister the Grand Duchess Elisa of Tuscany not to send any muskets to their sister Caroline and her husband, Murat, who were back in Italy negotiating with the Austrians once more. He told the Legislative Body that ‘he would raise no objection to the re-establishment of peace’, and ended defiantly: ‘I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity shall find me superior to its blows.’79
Napoleon’s speech to the Senate was equally tough-minded. ‘At the sight of the whole nation in arms, the foreigner will flee or sign peace on the bases which he himself proposed. It is no longer a question of recovering the conquests we have made.’80 Although the Senate stayed loyal, on December 30 the Legislative Body voted by 223 to 51 in favour of a long critique of Napoleon’s actions, which ended with a demand for political and civil rights. ‘A barbarous and endless war swallows up periodically the youth torn from education, agriculture, commerce and the arts,’ it concluded.81 The French had allowed him his first defeat in Russia, but this second catastrophe at Leipzig, coming so soon afterwards, turned many of them against him. If he wished to remain in power, Napoleon had little alternative other than to banish the document’s authors, led by Joseph Lainé, and forbid its publication. The next day he prorogued the Legislative Body.
With fewer than 80,000 men under arms, Napoleon now faced 300,000 Russians, Prussians and Austrians on the Rhine, and 100,000 Spanish, British and Portuguese coming over the Pyrenees.82 ‘The moment when the national existence is threatened is not the one to come to talk to me about constitutions and the rights of the people,’ Napoleon told Savary. ‘We are not going to waste our time in puerile games while the enemy is getting closer.’83 Now that the Allies were crossing the Rhine, national unity was more important than political debate. France was about to be invaded and Napoleon was determined to fight.
28
Defiance
‘When an army is inferior in number, inferior in cavalry and in artillery, it is essential to avoid a general action.’
Napoleon’s Military Maxim No. 10
‘It was Rome that Pompey needed to keep; there that he should have concentrated all his forces.’
Napoleon, Caesar’s Wars
On earlier occasions when France was in danger of invasion – in 1709, 1712, 1792–3 and 1799 – her large army and great border fortresses built in the seventeenth century by the military engineer Sébastien de Vauban had protected her.1 This time it was different. The sheer size of the Allied forces enabled them to outflank her formidable line of north-eastern forts – such as Verdun, Metz, Thionville and Mézières – and besiege them. Moreover, for this they could rely on their second-line troops, such as Landwehr, militias and the soldiers of minor German states. In 1792–3, the Austrian and Prussian armies invading France had numbered only 80,000 men, but were confronted by 220,000 Frenchmen under arms. In January 1814 Napoleon faced a total of 957,000 Allied troops with fewer than 220,000 men in the field – 60,000 of whom under Soult and 37,000 under Suchet were fighting Wellington’s Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese army in the south-west of France and 50,000 under Eugène were defending Italy. Napoleon’s army rarely numbered 70,000 in the coming campaign and was always dangerously weak in artillery and cavalry.2
Many were new conscripts, with little more than a coat and forage cap to distinguish them as soldiers. Yet they stayed with the colours; only 1 per cent of the 50,000 young conscripts who passed through the main depot at Courbevoie deserted during the 1814 campaign.3 Often depicted as an ogre keen to shore up his rule by throwing children into the charnel-house of war, Napoleon in fact wanted no such thing. ‘It is necessary that I get men, not children,’ he wrote to Clarke on October 25, 1813. ‘No one is braver than our youth, but … it is necessary to have men to defend France.’ In June 1807 he had told Marshal Kellermann that ‘Eighteen-year-old children are too young to be going to war far away.’4
Although Napoleon attempted to recreate the patriotism of 1793, even allowing street musicians to play the republican anthem the ‘Marseillaise’, which he had formerly banned, the old revolutionary cry of ‘La Patrie en danger!’ no longer had its electrifying effect.5 Still, he hoped the army and his own abilities might be enough to prevail. ‘Sixty thousand and me,’ he said, ‘together one hundred thousand.’6* However, if the French had been as motivated as Napoleon had hoped, a guerrilla movement would have broken out in France when the Allies invaded, yet none arose. ‘Public opinion is an invisible, mysterious, irresistible power,’ Napoleon mused later. ‘Nothing is more mobile, nothing more vague, nothing stronger. Capricious though it is, nevertheless it is truthful, reasonable, and right much more often than one might think.’7
Napoleon had entrenched the political and social advances of the Revolution largely by keeping the Bourbons out of power for fifteen years, after the ten between the Revolution and Brumaire, so a generation had passed since the fall of the Bastille and the French had grown accustomed to their newfound freedoms and institutions. But for many these benefits had been eclipsed by the price they had to pay in blood and treasure for the series of wars that six successive Legitimist coalitions had declared against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. After twenty-two years of war the French people hankered for peace, and were willing to countenance the humiliation of Cossack campfires in the Bois de Boulogne to gain it. Napoleon soon discovered that he couldn’t even rely on his prefects, only two of whom – Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia at Strasbourg and De Bry at Besançon – obeyed his order to take refuge in the departmental capital and resist the invasion. The others either ‘retired’ – that is, fled to the interior at the first news of a skirmish – or, like Himbert de Flegny in the Vosges, simply surrendered. Some, such as Louis de Girardin of the Seine-Inférieure, hoisted the fleur-de-lys.8 Several prefects managed to rediscover their Bonapartism when Napoleon returned from Elba, only to re-rediscover their royalism after Waterloo.9 Claude de Jessaint, prefect of the Marne, managed to serve every regime without interruption or complaint from 1800 to 1838.
Napoleon was disappointed that so few Frenchmen answered the call to arms in 1814 – some 120,000 out of a nominal call-up several times that – but he hardly had the uniforms and muskets to furnish those who did arrive at the depots. The drafts of recent years had alienated the better-off peasants, his core constituency, and there had been violent anti-conscription riots. Under the Empire a total of 2,432
,335 men were called up for conscription in the fifteen decrees, eighteen sénatus-consultes and one order of the Conseil that were issued between March 1804 and November 1813. Almost half of these came in 1813, when army recruiters ignored minimum age and height requirements.10 (Young Guard recruits could now be 5 foot 2 inches where previously they had been required to be 5 foot 4.) Between 1800 and 1813 draft evasion had dropped from 27 per cent to 10 per cent, but by the end of 1813 it was over 30 per cent and there were major anti-draft riots in the Vaucluse and northern departments.11 In Hazebrouck a mob of over 1,200 people nearly killed the local sous-préfet and four death sentences were imposed. In 1804 Napoleon had predicted that the unpopularity of conscription and the droits réunis would one day destroy him. As Pelet recorded, his ‘anticipation came literally to pass, for the words Plus de conscription – plus de droits réunis furnished the motto on the flags of the Restoration in 1814’.12 Taxes were extended from alcohol, tobacco and salt to include gold, silver, stamps and playing cards. The French paid, but resented it.13
After the Russian disaster Napoleon had had four months to rebuild and resupply his army before fighting resumed; now he had only six weeks. With the self-knowledge that was one of the more attractive aspects of his character, he said in early 1814: ‘I am not afraid to admit that I have waged war too much. I wanted to assure for France the mastery of the world.’14 That was not now going to happen, but he hoped that by striking hard blows using interior lines against whichever enemy force seemed to pose the greater threat to Paris, he might force acceptance of the Frankfurt bases for peace and so save his throne. At the same time he was philosophical about failure. ‘What would people say if I were to die?’ he asked his courtiers, and continued with a shrug before they were able to frame anything suitably oleaginous: ‘They would say, “Ouf!” ’15
A spectator at Napoleon’s New Year’s Day levée in the Tuileries throne room in 1814 recalled: ‘His manner was calm and grave, but on his brow there was a cloud which denoted an approaching storm.’16 He considered the peace terms Britain had demanded at the end of 1813, but rejected the idea. ‘France without Ostend and Antwerp,’ he told Caulaincourt on January 4,
would not be on an equal footing with the other states of Europe. England and all the other powers recognised these limits at Frankfurt. The conquests of France within the Rhine and the Alps cannot be considered as compensation for what Austria, Russia and Prussia have acquired in Poland and Finland, and England in Asia … I have accepted the Frankfurt proposals, but it is probable that the Allies have other ideas.17
He might also have added Russian gains in the Balkans and British acquisitions in the West Indies to the list. The arguments he put for continued resistance were that ‘Italy is intact’, that ‘The depredations of the Cossacks will arm the inhabitants and double our forces’ and that he had enough men under arms to fight several battles. ‘Should Fortune betray me, my mind is made up,’ he said with defiant resolution. ‘I do not care for the throne. I shall not disgrace the nation or myself by accepting shameful conditions.’ He could take the betrayals of Bavaria, Baden, Saxony and Württemberg, and those of ministers such as Fouché and Talleyrand – even of Murat and his own sister Caroline – but not that of his greatest supporter up to that point: Fortune herself. Napoleon of course knew perfectly well intellectually that Destiny and Fortune did not control his fate, but the concepts nonetheless exercised a hold on him throughout his life.
‘Writing to a minister so enlightened as you are, Prince,’ Napoleon began a flattering letter to Metternich on January 16 in which he asked for an armistice with Austria.18 ‘You have shown me so much personal confidence, and I myself have such great confidence in the straightforwardness of your views, and in the noble sentiments which you have always expressed.’ He asked for the letter to remain secret. Of course it didn’t; Metternich shared it with the other Allies, but throughout the spring of 1814 Napoleon’s plenipotentiaries – principally Caulaincourt – kept up discussions with the Allies over the possibility of a peace treaty, whose terms fluctuated day by day with the fortunes of the armies. On January 21, in an attempt to win over popular opinion, the Pope was released from Fontainebleau and allowed to set off for the Vatican.
Murat’s treachery was sealed on January 11 when he signed an agreement with Austria to lead 30,000 men against Eugène in Italy in return for Ancona, Romagna and the security of his throne for himself and his heirs. ‘He isn’t very intelligent,’ Napoleon told Savary when Murat captured Rome just over a week later, ‘but he’d have to be blind to imagine that he can stay there once I’ve gone, or when … I’ve triumphed over all this.’19 He was right; within two years Murat would be shot by a Neapolitan firing squad. ‘The conduct of the King of Naples is infamous and there is no name for that of the queen’, was Napoleon’s response to his sister’s and brother-in-law’s behaviour. ‘I hope to live long enough to be able to revenge myself and France for such an insult and such fearful ingratitude.’20 By contrast, Pauline sent her brother some of her jewellery to help pay his troops. Joseph, who continued to call himself king of Spain even after Napoleon had allowed Ferdinand VII back to his country on March 24, stayed in Paris to guide the Regency Council.
‘To the courage of the National Guard I entrust the Empress and the King of Rome,’ Napoleon told its officers at an emotional ceremony in the Hall of the Marshals at the Tuileries on January 23. ‘I depart with confidence, am going to meet the enemy, and I leave with you all that I hold most dear; the Empress and my son.’21 The officers present cried ‘Vive l’Impératrice!’ and ‘Vive le Roi de Rome!’, and Pasquier ‘saw tears running down many faces’.22 Napoleon understood the propaganda value of his infant son, and ordered an engraving to be made of him praying, with the inscription: ‘I pray to God to save my father and France.’ He adored the boy, who could induce strange reflections in him; once when the infant fell and slightly hurt himself, causing a great commotion, ‘the Emperor became very pensive and then said: “I’ve seen one cannonball take out a single line of twenty men.” ’23 For all his proclaimed ‘confidence’ in victory, Napoleon burned his private papers on the night of the 24th, before leaving Paris for the front at six o’clock the next morning. He was never to see his wife or son again.
The Champagne region lies to the east of Paris and is crossed by the Seine, the Marne and the Aisne, river valleys that were the natural corridors for the Allied advance on the capital. The fighting there was to take place during the harshest winter in western Europe in 160 years; even the Russians were astonished at how cold it was. Hypothermia, frostbite, pneumonia, exhaustion and hunger were ever present. Typhus was again a particular concern, especially after a major outbreak at the Mainz camp. ‘My troops! My troops! Do they really imagine I still have an army?’ Napoleon told his prefect of police, Pasquier, at this time. ‘Don’t they realise that practically all the men I brought back from Germany have perished of that terrible disease which, on top of all my other disasters, proved to be the last straw? An army indeed! I shall be lucky if, three weeks from now, I manage to get together 30,000 to 40,000 men.’24 Nine of the campaign’s twelve battles were fought in an area of just 120 miles by 40 – half the size of Wales – on land that was flat and covered in snow, which was ideal country for cavalry, had he had any. Facing him were the two main Allied armies, Blücher’s Army of Silesia and Schwarzenberg’s Army of Bohemia, about 350,000 men. In all, the Allies fielded nearly a million troops.*
Whereas in 1812 Napoleon’s army had grown so large that he had been forced to rely on his marshals taking largely independent commands, once it had contracted to 70,000 he was able to control it in the direct and personal way he had in Italy. Berthier and seven other marshals were with him – Ney, Lefebvre, Victor, Marmont, Macdonald, Oudinot and Mortier – and he was able to use them much as he had when some of them had been mere generals or divisional commanders over a decade before; each of them had only 3,000 to 5,000 troops under his command. (Of the others
, Bernadotte and Murat were now fighting against him, Saint-Cyr had been captured, Jourdan, Augereau and Masséna were governing military districts, Soult and Suchet were in the south, and Davout was still holding out in Hamburg.)
Taking command of only 36,000 men and 136 guns at Vitry-le-François on January 26, Napoleon ordered Berthier to distribute 300,000 bottles of champagne and brandy to the troops there, saying, ‘It’s better that we should have it than the enemy.’ Seeing that while Blücher had pushed well forward, Schwarzenberg had veered slightly away from him, he attacked the Army of Silesia at Brienne in the afternoon of the 29th.25 ‘I could not recognize Brienne,’ Napoleon said later. ‘Everything seemed changed; even distances seemed shorter.’26 The only place he recognized was a tree under which he had read Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. Napoleon’s guide during the battle was the local curate, one of his old schoolmasters, who rode Roustam’s horse, which was later killed by a cannonball immediately behind Napoleon.27 It was the surprise storming of the chateau at Brienne, during which Blücher and his staff were nearly captured, and its retention despite vigorous Russian counter-attacks, that helped give Napoleon his victory. ‘As the battle did not begin until an hour before nightfall, we fought all night,’ Napoleon reported to his war minister, Clarke. ‘If I had had older troops I should have done better … but with the troops I have we must consider ourselves lucky with what happened.’28 He had come to respect his opponent and said of Blücher, ‘If he was beaten, the moment afterwards he showed himself ready as ever for the fight.’29 On Napoleon’s return to his headquarters at Mézières, a Cossack band came close enough for one of them to thrust a lance at him, only to be shot dead by Gourgaud. ‘It was very dark,’ recalled Fain, ‘and amidst the confusion of the night encampment, the parties could only recognize each other by the light of the bivouac fires.’30 Napoleon rewarded Gourgaud with the sword he had worn at Montenotte, Lodi and Rivoli.
Napoleon the Great Page 84
