Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV

BATTLE OF LA ROTHIÈRE – TROYES

The result of the battle of Brienne was indecisive, and the more unsatisfactory to Buonaparte, as the part of Blucher's force engaged did not amount to 20,000 men, and the sole advantage gained over them, was that of keeping the field of battle. Napoleon's principal object, which was to divide Blucher from the grand army, had altogether failed. It was necessary, however, to proclaim the engagement as a victory, and much pains was taken to represent it as such. But when it was afterwards discovered to be merely a smart skirmish, without any material results, the temporary deception only served to injure the cause of Napoleon.

On the first of February, Blucher, strongly reinforced from the grand army, prepared in his turn to assume the offensive. It would have been Napoleon's wish to have avoided an engagement; but a retreat across the Aube, by the bridge of Lesmont, which was the only mode of passing that deep and scarce fordable river, would have exposed his rear to destruction. He therefore risked a general action. Blucher attacked the line of the French on three points, assaulting at once the villages of La Rothière, Dienville, and Chaumont. The conflict, in which the Prince Royal of Wirtemberg distinguished himself, was hard fought during the whole day, but in the evening, the French were repulsed on all points, and Buonaparte was compelled to retreat across the Aube, after losing 4000 prisoners, and no less than seventy-three guns. Ney, by the Emperor's orders, destroyed the bridge at Lesmont. The allies were not aware of the amount of their advantage, and suffered the French to retire unmolested.330

A general council of war, held at the castle of Brienne [Feb. 2,] now resolved that the two armies (although having so lately found the advantage of mutual support) should separate from each other, and that Blucher, detaching himself to the northward, and uniting under his command the division of D'Yorck and Kleist, both of whom had occupied St. Dizier and Vitry, should approach Paris by the Marne; while Prince Schwartzenberg and the grand army should descend on the capital by the course of the Seine. The difficulty of finding provisions for such immense armies was doubtless in part the cause of this resolution. But it was likewise recommended by the success of a similar plan of operations at Dresden, and afterwards at Leipsic, where the enemies of Buonaparte approached him from so many different quarters as to render it impossible for him to make head against one army without giving great opportunity of advantage to the others.331

Buonaparte reached Troyes, on which he retreated after crossing the Aube, in a disastrous condition; but his junction with his old guard, whose appearance and high state of appointments restored courage to the dejected troops who had been beaten at La Rothière, gave a new impulse to the feelings of his army, and restored the young levies to confidence. He resolved, taking advantage of the division of the two armies of the allies, to march upon that of Blucher. But, in order to disguise his purpose, he first sent a small division upon Bar-sur-Seine, to alarm the Austrians with an attack upon their right wing.332 Schwartzenberg immediately apprehended that Buonaparte was about to move with his whole force in that direction; a movement which, in fact, would have been most favourable for the allies, since it would have left the road to Paris undefended, and open to the whole. But, terrified by the idea that his left flank might be turned or forced, the Austrian general moved his chief strength in that direction; thus at once suspending his meditated march on the Seine, and increasing the distance betwixt the grand army and that of Silesia. Buonaparte having deceived Schwartzenberg by this successful feint, evacuated Troyes, leaving the Maréchals Victor and Oudinot to oppose the Austrians with very inadequate means, while he directed his own march against Blucher.

Blucher, in the meanwhile, having left Napoleon in front of the grand army, and not doubting that the Austrians would find him sufficient employment, hurried forward to the Marne, forced Macdonald to retreat from Chateau Thierry, and advanced his headquarters to Vertus; while Sacken, who formed his vanguard, pushed his light troops as far as Ferté la Jouarre, and was nearer to Paris than was the Emperor himself. General D'Yorck had advanced as far as Meaux, and Paris was in the last degree of alarm.

Even Buonaparte himself was so much struck by the inextricable situation of his affairs after the defeat of La Rothière, that a thought occurred to him, which posterity, excepting on his own avowal, would hardly give credit to. The plan which suggested itself, was that of sacrificing his own authority to the peace of France, and of abdicating the crown in favour of the Bourbons, while he had yet the means of resistance in his possession. He felt he had reigned and combated long enough for his own glory, and justly thought that the measure of his renown would be filled up by such an act of generous self-denial. But a maxim occurred to him, (suggested, he says, by Mr. Fox,) that restored monarchs could never forgive those who had occupied their place. Probably his thoughts turned also to the murder of the Duke d'Enghien; for there was no other point of personal offence betwixt Buonaparte and the exiled family, which their restoration, if the event took place by his intervention, might not have fully atoned for. If our conjecture be real, it serves to show how such a crime operates in its consequences to obstruct its perpetrator in future attempts to recover the path of virtue and honour. Had Napoleon been really capable of the generous act of self-denial which he meditated, he must have been ranked, in despite of the doubtful points of his character, as one of the greatest men who ever lived.

But the spirit of egotism and suspicion prevailed, and the hopes of accomplishing the discomfiture and defeat of the Silesian army, appeared preferable to meriting, by one act of disinterested devotion, the eternal gratitude of Europe; and the philosopher and friend of humanity relapsed into the warrior and conqueror. There is, no doubt, something meritorious in the conceiving of great and noble resolutions, even although they remain unrealised. But this patriotism of the imagination does not rise to a higher scale of merit, than the sensibility of those who cannot hear a tale of sorrow without weeping, but whose sympathy never assumes the expensive form of actual charity.

ATTACK ON BLUCHER

The army of Napoleon was now to be transferred from the high-road leading from Paris to Troyes, to that leading from Chalons to Paris, on which Blucher was operating, and that by flank marches through an impracticable country; but which, if they could be accomplished, would enable the French Emperor to attack the Silesian army at unawares in flank and rear. The lateral cross-roads, which connect one highway with another through France, are generally scarce passable in winter, even for the purpose of ordinary communication, much less for an army with its carriages and artillery. Buonaparte had to traverse a country intersected with thickets, marshes, drains, ditches, and impediments of every kind; the weather was execrable, and but for the extraordinary exertions of the Mayor of Barbonne, who collected 500 horses to extricate the guns, they must have been abandoned on the road. But by dint of perseverance, Buonaparte accomplished this forced march, on 10th of February, and the flank of the Silesian army was in consequence placed at his mercy.333 They were moving on without the least suspicion of such an attack. Sacken led the advance, the Russian General Alsusieff followed, and Blucher himself brought up the rear with the main body. All intent upon the advance to Paris, they were marching with careless haste, and had suffered such large intervals to take place betwixt their divisions, as to expose them to be attacked in detail.

Buonaparte fell upon the central division of Alsusieff, at Champ-Aubert, surrounded, defeated, and totally dispersed them, taking their artillery, and 2000 prisoners, while the remainder of the division fled into the woods, and attempted to escape individually. The whole force of the Emperor was now interposed between the advanced-guard under Sacken, and the main body under Blucher. It was first directed towards the former, whom Napoleon encountered sooner than he expected, for Sacken, on hearing of the action at Champ-Aubert, instantly countermarched his division to assist Alsusieff, or at least to rejoin Blucher; but he was overwhelmed by the superior force of the French, and having lost one-fourth of his division, about 5000 men, was forced to leave the high-road, upon which Blucher was advancing, and retreat by that on Chateau-Thierry. At this village Sacken was joined by General D'Yorck and Prince William of Prussia; but, still unable to make a stand, they could only secure a retreat by destroying the bridge over the Marne. War began now to show itself in its most hideous forms. The stragglers and fugitives who could not cross the bridge before its destruction, were murdered by the peasantry, while the allied soldiers, in revenge, plundered the village of Chateau-Thierry, and practised every excess of violence. The defeat of Sacken took place on the 12th of February.334

Blucher, in the meanwhile, ignorant of the extent of the force by which his vanguard had been attacked, pressed forward to their support, and, in a wide and unenclosed country, suddenly found himself in the front of the whole army of Napoleon, flushed with the double victory which they had already gained, and so numerous as to make a retreat indispensable on the part of the Prussians. Blucher, if surprised, remained undismayed. Having only three regiments of cavalry, he had to trust for safety to the steadiness of his infantry. He formed them into squares, protected by artillery, and thus commenced his retreat by alternate divisions; those battalions which were in motion to the rear, being protected by the fire of the others then standing fast, and covering them with theirs while they retired in turn. The French cavalry, though so strong as to operate at once on the flanks and rear, failed in being able to break a single square. After the Prussians had retired several leagues in this manner, fighting every foot of their way, they were nearly intercepted by a huge column of French horse, which, having made a circuit so as to pass them, had drawn up on the causeway to intercept their retreat. Without a moment's hesitation, Blucher instantly attacked them with such a murderous fire of infantry and artillery, as forced them from the high-road, and left the passage free. The Prussians found the village of Etoges, through which they were obliged to pass, also occupied by the enemy; but here also they cleared their way by dint of fighting. This expedition of the Marne, as it is called, is always accounted one of Napoleon's military chefs-d'œuvre; for a flank march undertaken through such a difficult country, and so completely successful, is not perhaps recorded in history. On the other hand, if Blucher lost any credit by the too great security of his march, he regained it by the masterly manner in which he executed his retreat. Had the army which he commanded in person shared the fate of his vanguard, it is probable there would have been no campaign of Paris.335

The Parisians, in the meantime, saw at length actual proofs that Napoleon had been victorious. Long columns of prisoners moved through their streets, banners were displayed, the cannon thundered, the press replied, and the pulpit joined, in extolling and magnifying the dangers which the citizens had escaped, and the merits of their preserver.336

MONTEREAU

In the midst of the joy natural on such an occasion, the Parisians suddenly learned that the town of Fontainbleau was occupied by Hungarian hussars, and that not Cossacks only, but Tartars, Baskirs, and Kalmouks, tribes of a wild and savage aspect, a kind of Asiatic Ogres, to whom popular credulity imputed a taste for the flesh of children, had appeared in the neighbourhood of Nangis. These renewed signs of approaching danger arose from the grand army of the allies having carried, at the point of the bayonet, Nogent and Montereau, and advanced the headquarters of the monarchs to Pont-sur-Seine. This alarm to Paris was accompanied by another. Schwartzenberg, learning the disasters on the Marne, not only pushed forward from three directions on the capital, but despatched forces from his right towards Provins, to threaten Napoleon's rear and communications. Leaving the pursuit of Blucher, the Emperor countermarched on Meaux, and, marching from thence to Guignes, he joined the army of Oudinot and Victor, who were retreating before Schwartzenberg. He here found the reinforcements which he had drawn from Spain, about 20,000 in number, tried and excellent troops. With this army he now fronted that of Schwartzenberg, and upon the 17th February, commenced the offensive at all points, and with success, possessing himself of Nangis, and nearly destroying the corps under Count Pahlen at Mormant. The Prince Royal of Wirtemberg was forced to retreat to Montereau.

So alarmed were the allies at the near approach of their terrible enemy, that a message was sent to Napoleon from the allied sovereigns, by Prince Schwartzenberg's aide-de-camp, Count Par, stating their surprise at his offensive movement, since they had given orders to their plenipotentiaries at Chatillon to sign the preliminaries of peace, on the terms which had been assented to by the French envoy, Caulaincourt.

This letter, of which we shall hereafter give a more full explanation, remained for some days unanswered, during which Napoleon endeavoured to push his advantages. He recovered the bridge at Montereau, after a desperate attack, in which the Crown Prince of Wirtemberg signalized himself by the valour of his defence. In the course of the action Napoleon returned to his old profession of an artilleryman, and pointed several guns himself, to the great delight of the soldiers. They trembled, however, when the fire attracted the attention of the enemy, whose balls began to be aimed at the French battery. "Go, my children," said Buonaparte, ridiculing their apprehensions; "the ball is not cast that is to kill me."

Having taken the place by storm, Buonaparte, dissatisfied with the number of men he had lost, loaded with reproaches some of his best officers. Montbrun was censured for want of energy, and Digeon for the scarcity of ammunition with which the artillery was served; but it was chiefly on Victor, the Duke of Belluno, that his resentment discharged itself. He imputed to him negligence, in not having attacked Montereau on the day before the action, when it was unprovided for resistance; and he ordered him to retire from the service. The marshal endeavoured to obtain a hearing in his own defence, but for some time could not succeed in checking the stream of reproaches. At length they were softened into a charge of broken health, and the love of repose, incident to wounds and infirmities. "The best bed," said the Emperor, "which the quarters afford must now be sought out for the once indefatigable Victor." The marshal felt the charge more severely in proportion as it became moderated within what was probably the bounds of truth; but he would not consent to quit the service. "I have not," he said, "forgot my original trade. I will take a musket. Victor will become a private in the Guard." – Buonaparte could not resist this mark of attachment. He held out his hand. – "Let us be friends," he replied; "I cannot restore to you your corps d'armée, which I have given to Girard; but I will place you at the head of two divisions of the Guard. Go – assume your command, and let there be no more of this matter betwixt us."337

It was upon such occasions, when he subdued his excited feelings to a state of kindness and generosity, that Buonaparte's personal conduct seems to have been most amiable.

The allies, in the meantime, remembering perhaps, though somewhat of the latest, the old fable of the bunch of arrows, resolved once more to enter into communication with the Silesian army, and, concentrating near Troyes, to accept of battle, if Buonaparte should offer it. The indefatigable Blucher had already recruited his troops, and, being reinforced by a division of the army of the North, under Langeron, moved southward from Chalons, to which he had retreated after his disaster at Montmirail, to Mery, a town situated upon the Seine, to the north-east of Troyes, to which last place the allied monarchs had again removed their headquarters. Here he was attacked with fury by the troops of Buonaparte who made a desperate attempt to carry the bridge and town, and thus prevent the proposed communication between the Silesian army and that of Schwartzenberg. The bridge, which was of wood, was set fire to in the struggle. The sharpshooters fought amid its blazing and cracking beams. The Prussians, however, kept possession of Mery.

RETREAT OF THE AUSTRIANS

A council of war was now held by the allies. Blucher urged the fulfilment of their original purpose of hazarding an action with Napoleon. But the Austrians had again altered their mind, and determined on a general retreat as far as the line between Nancy and Langres; the very position on which the allies had paused when they first entered France. The principal cause alleged for this retrograde movement, by which they must cede half the ground they had gained since their entering France, was, that Augereau, who had hitherto contented himself with his successful defence of Lyons, had been recruited by considerable bodies of troops from the army of Suchet, which had been employed in Catalonia. Thus reinforced, the French marshal was now about to assume the offensive against the Austrian forces at Dijon, act upon their communications with Switzerland, and raise in a mass the warlike peasantry of the departments of the Doubs, the Saonne, and the mountains of the Vosges. To prevent such consequences, Schwartzenberg sent General Bianchi to the rear with a large division of his forces, to support the Austrians at Dijon; and conceived his army too much weakened by this detachment to retain his purpose of risking a general action. It was therefore resolved, that if the headquarters of the grand army were removed to Langres, those of Blucher should be once more established on the Marne,338 where, strengthened by the arrival of the northern army, which was now approaching from Flanders, he might resume his demonstration upon Paris, in case Buonaparte should engage himself in the pursuit of the grand army of the allies.

This retrograde movement gave much disgust to the Austrian soldiers, who considered it as the preface to a final abandonment of the invasion. Their resentment showed itself not only in murmurs and in tearing out the green boughs with which, as in sign of victory, they usually ornament their helmets and schakos, but also, as is too frequently the case in similar instances, in neglect of discipline, and excesses committed in the country.

To diminish the bad effects arising from this discontent among the troops, Schwartzenberg published an order of the day,339 commanding the officers to enforce the strictest discipline, and at the same time explain to the army that the present retreat was only temporary, and that on joining with its reserves, which had already crossed the Rhine, the grand army would instantly resume the offensive, while Field-marshal Blucher, at present moving northward, so as to form a junction with Winzengerode and Bulow, should at the same time attack the rear and flank of the enemy. The publishing this plan of the campaign, went far to rouse the dejected confidence of the Austrian army.

On the evening of the 22d February, an answer to the letter of Schwartzenberg was received, but it was addressed exclusively to the Emperor of Austria; and while its expressions of respect are bestowed liberally on that power, the manner in which the other members of the coalition are treated, shows unabated enmity, ill-concealed under an affectation of contempt. The Emperor of France expressed himself willing to treat upon the basis of the Frankfort declaration, but exclaimed against the terms which his own envoy, Caulaincourt, had proposed to the plenipotentiaries of the other powers. In short, the whole letter indicated, not that Napoleon desired a general peace with the allies, but that it was his anxious wish to break up the coalition, by making a separate peace with Austria. This counteracted in spirit and letter the purpose of the confederates, distinctly expressed in their communication to Napoleon.

The Emperor Francis and his ministers were resolved not to listen to any proposals which went to separate the Austrian cause from that of their allies. It was therefore at first resolved that no answer should be sent to the letter; but the desire of gaining time for bringing up the reserves of the grand army, who were approaching the Swiss frontier under the direction of the Prince of Hesse-Homberg, as also for the union of the army of the north, under Bulow and Winzengerode, with that of Silesia, determined them to accept the offer of a suspension of hostilities. Under these considerations, Prince Wenceslaus of Lichtenstein was sent to the headquarters of Napoleon, to treat concerning an armistice. The Emperor seemed to be in a state of high hope, and called upon the Austrians not to sacrifice themselves to the selfish views of Russia, and the miserable policy of England. He appointed Count Flahault his commissioner to negotiate for a line of demarcation, and directed him to meet with the envoy from the allies at Lusigny, on 24th February.340

On the night of the 23d, the French bombarded Troyes, which the allied troops evacuated according to their latest plan of the campaign. The French entered the town on the 24th, when the sick and wounded, left behind by the allies, were dragged out to grace Napoleon's triumph; and a scene, not less deplorable, but of another description, was performed at the same time.

EXECUTION OF GOUAULT

Amid the high hopes which the entrance of the allies into France had suggested to the enemies of Buonaparte's government, five persons, the chief of whom were the Marquis de Vidranges, and the Chevalier de Gouault, had displayed the white cockade, and other emblems of loyalty to the exiled family. They had received little encouragement to take so decided a step either from the Crown Prince of Wirtemberg, or from the Emperor Alexander; both of whom, although approving the principles on which these gentlemen acted, refused to sanction the step they had taken, or to warrant them against the consequences.341 It does not appear that their declaration had excited any corresponding enthusiasm in the people of Troyes or the neighbourhood; and it would have been wiser in Napoleon to have overlooked such a trifling movement, which he might have represented as arising from the dotage of loyalty, rather than to have, at this critical period, called the public attention to the Bourbons, by denouncing and executing vengeance upon their partisans. Nevertheless, Napoleon had scarce entered Troyes, when the chevalier Gouault (the other Royalists having fortunately escaped) was seized upon, tried by a military commission, condemned, and immediately shot. He died with the utmost firmness, exclaiming, "Vive le Roi!"342 A violent and ill-timed decree promulgated the penalty of death against all who should wear the decorations of the Bourbons, and on all emigrants who should join the allies.343 The severity of the measure, so contrary to Napoleon's general conduct of late years towards the Bourbons and their followers, whom he had for a long period scarce even alluded to, made the world ascribe his unusual ferocity to an uncommon state of apprehension; and thus it gave farther encouragement to those into whom it was intended to strike terror.

At this period of the retreat of Schwartzenberg from Troyes, and the movement of Blucher towards the Marne, we must leave the armies which were contending in the interior of France, in order to retrace those movements upon the frontiers, which, though operating at a distance, tended at once to reinforce the invading armies, and to cripple Napoleon's means of defence.

It is difficult for the inhabitants of a peaceful territory to picture to themselves the miseries sustained by the country which formed the theatre of this sanguinary contest. While Buonaparte, like a tiger hemmed in by hounds and hunters, now menaced one of his foes, now sprung furiously upon another, and while, although his rapid movements disconcerted and dismayed them, he still remained unable to destroy the individuals whom he had assailed, lest, while aiming to do so, he should afford a fatal advantage to those who were disengaged – the scene of this desultory warfare was laid waste in the most merciless manner. The soldiers on both parts, driven to desperation by rapid marches through roads blocked with snow, or trodden into swamps, became reckless and pitiless; and, straggling from their columns in all directions, committed every species of excess upon the inhabitants. These evils are mentioned in the bulletins of Napoleon, as well as in the general orders of Schwartzenberg.