[1812 A.D.]

of a complete rout, the corps of Victor as disorganised as those of its more wearied comrades. Here a stand might be made at least, a momentary one. But to repair the great disaster without another army, such as Napoleon's personal presence and exertion could alone command from France now reluctant and despondent, was impossible.

The political tidings from the capital were also disquieting. A conspiracy for the overthrow of the imperial power had nearly succeeded.d General Malet, imprisoned for a plot in 1808, had managed to escape; by announcing that Napoleon had died in Moscow and showing a forged order from the senate making him commander-in-chief, he had seized the heads of government and obtained a following in the national guard. At length he had met resistance, however, and this put an end to his hopes. He had been tried and shot with fifteen of his accomplices. Paris had known nothing of this till its failure, and as Martin says, "learned simultaneously of the overthrow and the re-establishment of the empire." Ludicrous as the fiasco was

b

in many ways, it came so near success that Napoleon exclaimed, realising how personal was his hold on France, "Is one man, then, everything-are institutions, oaths nothing?" He resolved to return to Paris at once. a

Napoleon left the wreck of his army at Smorgoni on December 5th (as he had left his Egyptian army thirteen years before), travelling in a carriage placed upon a sledge and accompanied by Caulaincourt and Duroc. He had an interview with Maret outside Vilna, and then travelled to Warsaw, where he saw his ambassador De Pradt, who has left an account of his confused talk. Here, as in the famous 29th bulletin, published a little after, we observe that he consoles himself for the loss of his army by reflecting that his own health was never better- he kept on repeating this. Then he said, "From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step"; for the retreat from Moscow struck him as ridiculous! From Warsaw he passed to Dresden, where he saw his ally the king of Saxony, and wrote letters to the emperor of Austria and to the king of Prussia. He then made his way by Erfurt and Mainz to Paris, where he arrived on December 18th. The bulletin had appeared two days before.e

Murat, to whom Napoleon had left the command, had neither the authority nor the energy which such circumstances required. Besides, the cold reached twenty degrees and 20,000 men perished in three days. The enemy, which could march only very slowly, caught up with the French at Vilna. Ney held them in check for a long time at the head of a handful of braves; again he defended the bridge of Kovno fighting like a grenadier, gun in hand; he was the last to pass the Niemen, December 20th. That ended the retreat and the fatal campaign. Behind the river the French left dead or captives 300,000 soldiers. And yet they had not really been defeated once. It was winter and hunger, not the enemy that killed the grand army. The Russians themselves, accustomed as they were to their terrible climate, suffered horribly; in three weeks Kutusoff had lost three-fourths of his effective forces.s

:

Alison comments on Kutusoff's policy as follows: "Justice requires that due credit should be given to the Russian mode of pursuit by a parallel march a measure which was unquestionably one of the greatest military achievements of the last age. Had Kutusoff pursued by the same road as the French, his army, moving on a line wasted by the triple curse of three previous marches, would have melted away even more rapidly than his enemy's. But caution was the great characteristic of the man. By acting a bolder part, he might have gained more brilliant, but he could not have

[1812 A.D.] secured more lasting success: he would have risked the fate of the empire, which hung on the preservation of his army: he might have acquired the title of Napoleon, but he would not have deserved that of saviour of his country.

But it would have been in vain that all these advantages lay within the reach of Russia, had their constancy and firmness not enabled her people to grasp them. them. Justice had not hitherto been done to the heroism of their conduct. We admire the Athenians, who refused to treat with Xerxes after the sack of their city, and the Romans, who sent troops to Spain after the defeat of Cannae; what then shall we say of the generals who, while their army was yet reeking with the slaughter of Borodino, formed the project of enveloping the invader in the capital which he had conquered? what of the citizens, who fired their palaces and their temples lest they should furnish even a temporary refuge to the invader? and what of the sovereign who, undismayed by the conflagration of Moscow, announced to his people, in the moment of their greatest agony, his resolution never to submit, and foretold the approaching deliverance of his country and of the world? Time, the great sanctifier of events, has not yet lent its halo to these sacrifices."t

Napoleon had said to Pradt that he intended to raise 300,000 men and be on the Niemen again in the spring. The first part of this intention he fulfilled, for in April he reappeared in the field with 300,000 men; but the campaign was not fought on the line of the Niemen, nor of the Vistula, nor of the Oder, and he had to fight a battle before he could even reach the Elbe. For a great event took place less than a fortnight after his arrival in Paris, the defection of the Prussian contingent under York from the grand army; this event led to the rising of Prussia against Napoleon.e

The winter of 1812-1813 had been very sombre for France; the winter of 1813-1814 opened full of presages yet more dismal. After the great generation of soldiers that had been swallowed up in the snows of Russia, a second generation was to be devoured by the battlefields of Germany. - HENRI MARTIN.O

THERE was now no pretext for war except the so-called maritime tyranny of England; but yet the magnitude of wars had increased beyond all measurement. The campaign of 1812 left everything in civilised history far behind it. All the abuses of the old monarchy and all the atrocities of the Revolution put together were nothing compared to this new plague, bred between the Revolution and the old monarchy, having the violence of the one and the vainglory of the other, with a barbarous destructiveness peculiar to imperialism superadded. But what was Napoleon's position? Any government but the strongest would have sunk under such a blow, but Napoleon's government was the strongest, and at its strongest moment. Opposition had long been dead; public opinion was paralysed; no immediate rising was to be feared. Should he then simply take the lesson home, and make peace with Alexander? This was impossible; he must efface the disaster by new triumphs. But, as this was evident to all, Alexander could not but perceive that he must not lose a moment, but must hasten forward and rouse Germany before Napoleon should have had time to levy a new army; 1813 must be filled with a war in Germany, as 1812 with a war in Russia.c

THE SIXTH COALITION

The coalition began to make ready for the grand struggle which seemed likely to be the last. England strengthened her alliance with Russia, and made a treaty with Sweden, by which she undertook to take in her pay the

[1812-1813 A.D.] 30,000 men commanded by Bernadotte.1 She sent proclamations all over Germany, and subsidised secret societies; she summoned the king of Prussia to enter the coalition, threatening to establish a provisional government in his states; she entreated Austria to avenge her former defeats, offering her Italy, and assuring her that Germany was ready to rise against France, and that France herself was on the eve of a great revolution. On the decisions of Prussia and Austria depended the success of the struggle.

Prussia, to gain time, proposed a truce between Russia and France, and even offered to mediate. Napoleon rejected this. Then Frederick William signed a secret treaty of alliance (February 22nd, 1813) with Alexander "to insure the independence of Europe and re-establish Prussia within her limits of 1806." Russia could command 150,000 men, and Prussia 80,000; they were not to make peace separately, and Russia promised to get subsidies from England for Prussia. Prussia continued, nevertheless, to negotiate with France on the basis of alliance, then suddenly declared war (March 17th, 1813). Two days later Alexander and Frederick concluded the convention of Breslau, by which all the German princes were called to concur in the enfranchisement of their country, under penalty of being deprived of their states. The confederation of the Rhine was declared dissolved; a council was appointed to administer the conquered provinces for the benefit of the allies, and to organise a simultaneous rising in the states of the confederation. Orders were given to the Landsturm to harass the enemy, to kill isolated soldiers, to destroy provisions, etc.

Then the great movement of German independence, so skilfully manœuvred by the sovereigns, began. The Germans had looked on Napoleon only as a conqueror, and on his acts as war, and they had suffered the most in the war between France and old Europe, without deriving any profit. "That they should hate me," said Napoleon, "is natural enough. For ten years I have been forced to fight while treading on their dead. They have never known my real intentions." So they believed that by taking arms against France they would obtain their liberty; their movement was purely revolutionary; courts and cabinets were carried away by them and had to simulate the enthusiastic passion of Prussian and Westphalian students. Kings, ministers, generals became demagogues, borrowed the style of '93, promised to grant constitutions in order to excite the people against the modern Attila. "People- ran their proclamations, "be free, join with us! God is on our side. We will defy hell and its allies! All distinctions of rank, birth, and country are banished from our ranks; we are all free men!" "Germans," said Wittgenstein, "we open the Russian ranks to you; there you will find the labourer side by side with the prince. All distinctions of rank are effaced before the great ideas of king, liberty, honour, and country." "Liberty or death!" cried another; "Germans, from 1812, our genealogical trees shall count as nothing. The exploits of our ancestors are effaced by the degradation of their descendants. The regeneration of Germany alone can produce fresh noble families, and restore their splendour to those who formerly possessed it."

Thus the revolutionary weapons which Napoleon had refused to employ against kings were used by the kings themselves against him, and he had nothing more to employ against them than the regular resources of ancient

[1 Napoleon said of Bernadotte, who owed to France his crown, "In taking a wife it is not necessary to renounce a mother: still less need one pierce her bosom and tear out her entrails."'d Seeley,c however, credits Bernadotte with a desire to appease France and succeed Napoleon as monarch.]