Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

  When he took stock of the situation after the battle he found he had lost 3,000 casualties, and Oudinot was wounded yet again. Retreating from Brienne to Bar-sur-Aube, the Prussians were joined by some of Schwarzenberg’s Austrian contingents in the plain between the two towns. Napoleon couldn’t refuse battle as the bridge over the Aube at Lesmont, the principal line of retreat, had been destroyed earlier in the campaign in order to stop Blücher’s advance on Troyes. He had stayed a day too long, and although his force had been reinforced by Marmont’s corps to number 45,000 men it was attacked across open ground by 80,000 Allies at La Rothière, 3 miles from Brienne, on February 1. The French defended the village until dark but Napoleon lost nearly 5,000 men which he could ill afford, although the Allies lost more. He also lost seventy-three guns, and was forced to retreat, sleeping in Brienne Château and ordering a retreat to Troyes over the barely rebuilt Lesmont bridge. The next day Napoleon wrote to Marie Louise telling her not to watch L’Oriflamme at the Opéra: ‘So long as the territory of the Empire is overrun by enemies, you should go to no performances.’31

  After La Rothière, believing Napoleon to be retreating to Paris, the Allies separated again, Schwarzenberg heading due west to the valleys of the Aube and Seine while Blücher marched to the Marne and Petit-Morin valleys on a parallel line, 30 miles to the north. Their armies were really too large to march together logistically, and the gap between them allowed Napoleon to operate deftly between the two forces. It was to these next four battles that Wellington was referring when he said of Napoleon’s 1814 campaign, it ‘has given me a greater idea of his genius than any other. Had he continued that system a little longer, it is my opinion that he would have saved Paris.’32

  ‘The enemy troops behave horribly everywhere,’ Napoleon wrote to Caulaincourt from a deserted Brienne. ‘All the inhabitants seek refuge in the woods; no more peasants are found in the villages. The enemy eat up everything, take all the horses, cattle, clothes and all the rags of the peasants; they beat everyone, men and women, and commit rape.’33 Of course Caulaincourt, who had been on the Russian campaign, knew perfectly well how invading armies, including the French, behaved. Was this letter written for the record? The next sentence gives a clue to its intent: ‘The picture which I have just seen with my own eyes should make you understand easily how much I desire to extricate my people as soon as possible from this state of misery and suffering, which is truly terrible.’34 Napoleon was presenting a humanitarian rationale to Caulaincourt for accepting decent terms if they were offered at the peace negotiations that had begun on February 5 at Châtillon-sur-Seine.*

  The Congress of Châtillon sat until March 5. Knowing that they had the upper hand through sheer weight of numbers, the Allies dropped the proposal for France to return to her ‘natural’ frontiers, as they had suggested at Frankfurt, and, led by the British plenipotentiary Lord Aberdeen, demanded that France return to her 1791 frontiers instead, which didn’t include any part of Belgium. At his coronation Napoleon had sworn ‘to maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic’ and he meant to keep to it. ‘How can you expect me to sign this treaty, and thereby violate my solemn oath!’ he asked Berthier and Maret, who were urging him to end the war even on these punishing terms.

  Unexampled misfortunes have torn from me the promise of renouncing the conquests that I have myself made, but shall I renounce those that were made before me! Shall I violate the trust that was so confidently reposed in me? After the blood that has been shed, and the victories that have been gained, shall I leave France smaller than I found her? Never! Can I do so without deserving to be branded a traitor and a coward?35

  He later admitted that he felt he couldn’t give up Belgium because ‘the French people would not allow [me] to remain on the throne except as a conqueror’. France, he said, was like ‘air compressed within too small a compass, the explosion of which was like thunder’.36 Against the advice of Berthier, Maret and Caulaincourt, therefore, Napoleon counted on Allied disunity and French patriotism – despite little evidence of either – and fought on. As his soldiers were now living off the backs of their own countrymen, he bemoaned the fact that ‘The troops, instead of being their country’s defenders, are becoming its scourge.’37

  The treasury’s bullion was loaded onto carts in the courtyard of the Tuileries on February 6 and secretly taken out of Paris. Denon requested permission for the Louvre’s pictures to be removed, which Napoleon did not grant on grounds of morale. Napoleon tried to keep Marie Louise’s spirits up, writing at 4 a.m. that day: ‘I’m sorry to hear you are worrying; cheer up and be gay. My health is perfect, my affairs, while none too easy, are not in bad shape; they have improved this last week, and I hope, with the help of God, to bring them to a successful issue.’38 The next day he wrote to Joseph, ‘I fervently hope that the departure of the Empress will not take place,’ otherwise ‘the consternation and despair of the populace might have disastrous and tragic results.’39 Later that same day he told him: ‘Paris is not in such straits as the alarmists believe. The evil genius of Talleyrand and those who sought to drug the nation into apathy have hindered me from summoning it to arms – and see to what pass they have brought us!’40 He had finally recognized the truth about Talleyrand – who with Fouché was planning a coup in Paris and openly discussing surrender terms with the Allies.* Napoleon could not bring himself to accept that the apathy of the nation in the face of invasion was a reflection of its loss of appetite for war. Writing to Cambacérès about the new mania for forty-hour ‘misery’ church services praying for salvation from the Allies, he asked, ‘Have the Parisians gone mad?’ To Joseph he commented, ‘If these monkey tricks are continued we’ll all be afraid of death. Long ago it was said that priests and doctors render death painful.’41

  All the leaders who were planning to oust him – Talleyrand, Lainé, Lanjuinais, Fouché and others – had opposed or betrayed him in the past, yet he hadn’t imprisoned them, let alone executed them. In this, Napoleon resembled his hero Julius Caesar, who was assassinated by people to whom he had shown clemency and decided not to mark down for the judicial murders that Sulla had employed before him, and Octavian would afterwards.

  As the political situation darkened at Châtillon, Napoleon began to think about his own death, writing to Joseph about the prospect of Paris falling. ‘When it comes I will no longer exist, consequently it is not for myself that I speak,’ he said on February 8. ‘I repeat to you that Paris shall never be occupied during my life.’42 Joseph replied, not very helpfully, ‘If you desire peace, make it at any price. If you cannot do so, it is left to you to die with fortitude, like the last emperor of Constantinople.’43 (Constantine XI had died in battle there in 1453 when the city was overwhelmed by the Ottomans.) Napoleon more practically replied, ‘That is not the question. I am just working out a way of beating Blücher. He is advancing along the road from Montmirail. I shall beat him tomorrow.’44 He did indeed, and then again and again in a series of high-tempo victories that, despite being very close to each other geographically and chronologically, were quite separate battles.

  Posting Victor at Nogent-sur-Seine and Oudinot at Bray, Napoleon marched north to Sézanne with Ney and Mortier, and was joined on the way by Marmont. The Army of Silesia was still moving parallel to the Army of Bohemia but at a much faster pace. As it pulled too far ahead it presented not just its flank but almost its rear to Napoleon, who was poised between the two Allied armies. Spotting that the Russians had no cavalry with them and were isolated, Napoleon struck at their open flank and fell upon the centre of Blücher’s over-extended army at Champaubert on February 10, destroying the best part of General Zakhar Dmitrievich Olsufiev’s corps and capturing an entire brigade, for the loss of only six hundred killed, wounded and missing. He dined with Olsufiev at Champaubert’s inn that evening, writing to Marie Louise, to whom he sent Olsufiev’s sword, ‘Have a salute fired at Les Invalides and the news published at every place of entertainment … I expect to reach Montm
irail at midnight.’45 The chorus of the Opéra, where Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Armide was being performed, sang ‘La Victoire est à Nous’.

  On the 11th General von Sacken broke from the Trachenberg strategy and attacked Napoleon directly at Marchais on the Brie plateau overlooking the Petit-Morin valley.* Ney defended Marchais while Mortier and Friant counter-attacked the Russians at L’Épine-aux-Bois and Guyot’s cavalry came around their rear, routing the Russians and Prussians. It was a classic example of Napoleon’s tactic of defeating the main enemy force (under Sacken) while successfully holding off the enemy’s secondary force (under the command of Yorck). Napoleon slept that night in a farmhouse at Grénaux, where, Fain recalled, ‘the dead bodies having been removed, the headquarters were established’.46 Writing to his wife at 8 p.m., Napoleon ordered a salute of sixty guns fired in Paris, claiming that he had taken ‘the whole of their artillery, captured 7,000 prisoners, more than 40 guns, not a man of this routed army escaped’.47 (He had actually captured 1,000 prisoners and 17 guns.)

  The fact that many of Sacken’s and Yorck’s soldiers had escaped was evident the next day, when Napoleon attacked them at Château-Thierry, despite his being outnumbered two to three. Spotting that a Russian brigade was isolated on the extreme right of the Allied line, Napoleon ordered his few cavalry to ride them down, which they did, capturing a further fourteen guns.48 Macdonald’s failure to capture the bridge at Château-Thierry allowed the Allies to escape to the north side of the Marne, however. ‘I’ve been in the saddle all day, ma bonne Louise,’ Napoleon told the Empress from the chateau, along with another tissue of propaganda data, ending ‘My health is very good.’49 For all these victories over the Army of Silesia, nothing could make it possible for Oudinot’s corps of 25,000 men and Victor’s of 14,000 to hold the five bridges over the Seine and prevent Schwarzenberg’s 150,000-strong Army of Bohemia from crossing.50

  On February 14 Napoleon scored yet another victory over Blücher, at Vauchamps. Leaving Mortier at Château-Thierry at 3 a.m., he doubled back to support Marmont, whom Blücher was forcing to retreat from Étoges to Montmirail. A sudden assault of 7,000 Guard cavalry forced Blücher and Kleist to retreat to Janvilliers, where Grouchy attacked their flank and Drouot’s fifty guns wrought further havoc. This secured the Marne from the Silesian army, which was beaten and dispersed, though not ‘annihilated’ as the official bulletin claimed. Napoleon could now hasten to confront the Army of Bohemia, which had forced Oudinot and Victor back from the bridges over the Seine and was driving deep into France, capturing Nemours, Fontainebleau, Moret and Nangis.* Further south, in a sure sign of national demoralization, French towns and cities were starting to surrender even to small Allied units. Langres and Dijon fell without a fight, Épinal surrendered to fifty Cossacks, Mâcon to fifty hussars, Reims to a half-company, Nancy to Blücher’s outriding scouts, and a single horseman took the surrender of Chaumont.51 Napoleon’s hopes for a national uprising against the invader, with guerrilla actions to rival those of Spain and Russia, were not going to be realized.

  Pausing only to send 8,000 Prussian and Russian prisoners-of-war to be marched down the Parisian boulevards to substantiate his (accurate) claim of four victories in five days at Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry and Vauchamps, Napoleon left his headquarters at Montmirail at 10 a.m. on February 15 to join Victor’s and Oudinot’s corps at Guignes, 25 miles south-east of Paris. By the evening of the 16th he had placed his army across the main road to the capital. He found Schwarzenberg’s force strung out over 50 miles and hoped to defeat it piecemeal, writing to Caulaincourt: ‘I am ready to cease hostilities and to allow the enemy to return home tranquilly, if they will sign the preliminary bases of the propositions of Frankfurt.’52 As Lord Aberdeen was still refusing to allow Napoleon to retain control over Antwerp, however, the fighting had to continue.

  On February 17 Napoleon marched on Nangis, where Wittgenstein had three Russian divisions. He attacked with Kellermann on the left and General Michaud on the right, broke the Russian squares and smashed them with Drouot’s guns. To secure the bridges over the Seine he then split his forces at the Nangis road junction. Victor headed for the bridge at Montereau 12 miles to the south and on the way attacked a Bavarian division at Villeneuve, but he failed to press home his advantage after a long march and many days of continual fighting. In one of his few unwarranted substitutions, Napoleon replaced him with General Étienne Gérard. He also humiliated General Guyot in front of his men, and ordered a court martial of General Alexandre Digeon when his battery ran out of ammunition. ‘Napoleon acted with a degree of severity in which he was himself astonished,’ wrote his apologist Baron Fain, ‘but which he conceived to be necessary in the imperious circumstances of the moment.’53 Military orders are naturally terse; Napoleon was often rude to his senior commanders, who were brave and conscientious soldiers, albeit of varying degrees of competence. Yet even now he could contemplate the situation with a degree of humour. ‘Should fortune continue to favour us’, he wrote to Eugène, ‘we shall be able to preserve Italy. Perhaps the King of Naples will then change sides again.’54

  Arriving at Montereau at the confluence of the Seine and the Yonne with the Imperial Guard at 3 p.m. on the sunny and cloudless day of February 18, Napoleon set up batteries on the Surville heights above the town, firing canister shot at full range at the Allied infantry crossing the two bridges and preventing the Württemberger engineers from demolishing them. (Looking up from the bridges the heights look like a hillock, but from the place he chose to site his guns on top of them it immediately becomes clear that they dominate the town.) The Austrians were attacked by General Louis Huguet-Chateau, whose force was beaten off, though Chateau himself was killed. Napoleon then sent in a cavalry charge led by General Pajol that crashed down the steep cobbled road, across both bridges and into the town itself.* ‘I am happy with you,’ he said to Pajol afterwards, as heard by Pajol’s aide-de-camp, Colonel Hubert Biot. ‘If all my generals had served me as you did, the enemy wouldn’t be in France. Go take care of your wounds, and when you’ve recovered I will give you ten thousand horses to say hello to the King of Bavaria from me! … If the day before yesterday in the morning I had been asked for four million francs to have the Montereau bridges at my disposal, I would have unhesitatingly given them.’55 Biot afterwards joked to Pajol that in that case the Emperor might have parted with 1 million to reward him without too much difficulty.

  The next day Napoleon denied to Caulaincourt that the Austrians had reached Meaux, but they had. Sacken’s cannon were now distinctly audible in Paris itself, although the Russian commander pulled back on the news that Napoleon was intending to attack Blücher again.56 That day Napoleon wrote angrily to his police minister, the usually reliable Savary, for permitting poems to be published in the Paris papers saying how great a soldier he was because he was constantly defeating forces thrice his number. ‘You must have lost your heads in Paris to say such things when I am constantly giving out that I have 300,000 men,’ wrote Napoleon, who had in fact commanded only 30,000 at Montereau; ‘it is one of the first principles of war to exaggerate your forces. But how can poets, who endeavour to flatter me, and to flatter the national self-love, be made to understand this?’57 To Montalivet, who had written of France’s desire for peace, Napoleon retorted, ‘You and [Savary] know no more of France than I know of China.’58

  In a desperate attempt to split the Allies, Napoleon wrote to Emperor Francis on February 21 asking for the Frankfurt bases of peace to be re-offered ‘without delay’, saying that the Châtillon terms were ‘the realisation of the dream of Burke, who wished France to disappear from the map of Europe. There are no Frenchmen who would not prefer death to conditions which would render them the slaves of England.’ He then raised the spectre of a Protestant son of George III on the throne of Belgium.59 As with all his earlier attempts, this had no effect.

  Concerned that Augereau, whom he had made commander of the Army of the Rhône but whose heart w
as no longer in the fight, had still not made a significant contribution to the campaign despite having been reinforced with troops from Spain, Napoleon wrote to him in Lyons: ‘If you are still the Augereau of Castiglione, keep the command; but if your sixty years weigh upon you, hand over the command to your senior general.’60 This only had the effect of further alienating the disillusioned old warrior, who failed to march north but instead evacuated Lyons and fell back to Valence. Ney and Oudinot broached the subject of peace in a conversation with Napoleon at Nogent on the 21st, which ended in a severe reprimand and an invitation to lunch. When Wellington crossed the Adour and defeated Soult soundly at Orthez on February 27, however, the strategic situation became even more desperate.61

  Although armistice discussions were carried on by the Comte de Flahaut at Lusigny between February 24 and 28, which Napoleon hoped might end with a return to the Frankfurt bases, he insisted that the fighting must carry on. ‘I do not intend to be fettered by these negotiations,’ he told Fain, as he had been during the Armistice of Pleischwitz the previous year. On March 1, 1814 the Allies signed the Treaty of Chaumont with each other, agreeing to make no separate peace with Napoleon, declaring their aim of each contributing an army of 150,000 men to oust him and end French influence over Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.

  As her husband’s Empire was on the brink of catastrophe, Marie Louise revealed herself to be a lightweight young woman quite unsuited to the rigours of a crisis. ‘I have had no news from the Emperor,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘He is so casual in his ways. I can see he is forgetting me.’ From his replies to the trivialities in her letters about court tittle-tattle, scenes with the King of Rome’s governess, matters of etiquette and so on, it seems she was either unaware of or uninterested in the earthquake taking place around her. Perhaps she was simply concentrating on the prattle of the pet parrot given her by her lady-in-waiting the Duchesse de Montebello (Lannes’ widow) in order to drown out the noise of a collapsing empire and the war between her husband and her father. She and her ladies-in-waiting shredded linen to make dressings for the wounded, but what really interested her were sketching, handkerchief-embroidery, music, cards and flowers. She even asked whether she could write to Caroline Murat, to which Napoleon replied: ‘My answer is No: she behaved improperly towards me, who of a mere nobody made a queen.’62 On March 2 Napoleon tried to put her to some useful work organizing the donation to the military hospitals of 1,000 stretchers, straw mattresses, sheets and blankets from Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Rambouillet and other palaces. He added that he was chasing the Prussians, ‘who are much exposed’, and the next day he erroneously reported the wounding of ‘Bulcher’ (sic).63