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men, and joined Eugène and the survivors of the retreat, and he advanced boldly into the plains of Saxony. He was, however, fiercely assailed by Blücher, and if the heroism of his young soldiery and his own admirable forethought and skill saved his arms from a defeat that for a time seemed certain, Lützen was a barren victory, owing to his want of horsemen. Bautzen, too, was another fruitless triumph, though, as Pasquier truly observes, the Emperor's movements were perfectly designed; but they failed to strike the decisive stroke, and a rude army proved once more unequal to carry into effect the plans of its chief. The Allies, nevertheless, were beaten; the French army approached the Oder, and had the Emperor pushed his advantage home, he might have gained most important success. At this juncture, however, he signed the truce of Pleistnitz, perhaps the most palpable mistake of his career; for he had no conception that all Europe was even now ready to rise in arms against him should hostilities be prolonged to the summer. His motive in taking this course, he has told us himself, was to give time to improve his raw levies, and especially to strengthen and increase his cavalry; and probably he thought that he might succeed in separating Prussia from the Czar, and in taking vengeance on Austria, an object of his wrath.* The policy of that great Power is well known; she held the position of Prussia before Austerlitz, but was not directed by false and shallow counsels; and Metternich had passed with consummate craft from the attitude of an ally to that of an arbiter, at heart a friend of monarchic Europe and an enemy of revolutionary France. This infuriated Napoleon in the highest degree, and though he tried to cajole his father-in-law, in letters to which Pasquier alludes, his main purpose at this moment was to punish Austria. This compelled Metternich more and more to turn his eyes towards Prussia and Russia; and the three Powers probably became fast allies a few days after the armistice of Pleistnitz. The interests of Austria and her sympathies lay altogether in this direction; and Pasquier, we think, ascribes too much to the influence on this occasion

The indignation of Napoleon against Austria at this conjuncture appears in many passages of his Correspondence. We quote a few words: L'insolence de l'Autriche n'a pas de terme; avec son style mielleux, je dirais même sentimental, elle voudrait m'ôter la Dalmatie, etc. .. Il est impossible d'être plus perfide que cette cour,' Corr. xxv. pp. 347-8.

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of Pozzo di Borgo-though undoubtedly that very able man hated Napoleon with a Corsican hatred :

'His ability consisted in placing Austria in a position which Napoleon persistently refused to give her. While the Emperor insisted that she was to play the part of a disinterested mediator, and to look for nothing on her own account, M. Pozzo di Borgo, in the name of Russia, gave her to understand that, as she had an immense interest in the balance of power in Europe, she must not let slip an admirable opportunity to gain for herself whatever was required to secure the power and the influence which she needed in order to take her proper place and to maintain the general equilibrium of the Continent.'

Considerable obscurity still hangs over the celebrated negotiations that followed. Vittoria was a heavy blow for Napoleon; the pretensions of Russia and Prussia increased, and Austria, having assembled a great army behind the screen of the Bohemian hills, assumed gradually a distinctly hostile attitude. Very possibly the Powers were not sincere on either side in the Councils at Prague; the Allies-for Austria had become a member of the League-inclined, perhaps, to the arbitrament of war; Napoleon certainly had resolved to fight, sooner than abandon a shred of his empire. An impassable gulf lay between the disputants; and though Pasquier looks at the facts from a French point of view, these conclusions are probably not incorrect:

'A mutual understanding was impossible, for they approached the subject from ways that brought them into conflict. The negotiations at Dresden, the semblance of a congress at Prague, were merely expedients to gain time. It may be laid to the charge of Napoleon that he put himself in the wrong in refusing to make concessions, and that he so arranged matters that he made the only overture which could lead to anything when the rupture was complete. I think his adversaries were, like himself, eager to risk a final effort, and not to lose an occasion in which, united in their movements to gain the same ends, they were about, for the first time perhaps, to make use of their entire forces in war.'

It is certain, however, that at the last moment the Allies offered Napoleon conditions which would have left him the France of the natural boundaries,' with Italy, Holland, and even Naples-that is, would have kept him the Lord of the Continent. It is astonishing the Emperor did not take them at their word, even if, as he insisted, they were playing him false; but his confidence in his sword and his unbending pride induced him to throw the dice' more, and precipitated him on the path of ruin.

once

Culm was the turning-point in the campaign; Pasquier,

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quoting the very words of Daru, Napoleon's confidential secretary on the spot, confirms the tradition that the defeat of Vandamme was caused by the Emperor's accidental ill

ness :

'Napoleon explained to me that two days before he had been suddenly attacked by such violent pains in the stomach that he had been unable to proceed in his march, and that he had been obliged to go back. . . . In fact, he thought he had been poisoned; he easily entertained fears of the kind. "And so," he added, "great events hang on trifles! This may be irreparable."'

Daru, too, in opposition to the assertions of Thiers, and of other historians of the campaign, told Pasquier that, even before war had been declared, Napoleon thought of holding the line of the Saale, in preference to the great line of the Elbe-a position less imposing, but less dangerous:

"I have made up my mind," he said; "I will fall back on the Saale; I will concentrate 300,000 men; and with my rear resting on Mayence, and my right flank covered by the last ranges of the Bohemian mountains, I will be a bull with his horns in front of the enemy. He will try and manœuvre before me. When he makes his first mistake I will fall upon him; I will crush him, and the Coalition will be dissolved more quickly than it was formed."'

Daru informed Pasquier that a few soft words of Bassano's changed the Emperor's purpose; but this, we think, is simply incredible. Nor have we much faith in the whole story. Napoleon repeatedly argued with Soult and others that he had but two alternatives in the theatre of war: if he was to contend for Germany, he must hold the Elbe; if he was to fight for France only, he would fall back on the Rhine. And he condemned the Saale as a bad line, and an attempt to stand on it as a weak half-measure.

The military power of France was broken, after the retreat of the Grand Army from Leipzig-a retreat almost as disastrous as that from Moscow-though irradiated by a passing gleam of light at Hanau. Not 90,000 Frenchmen reached the Rhine; the garrisons on the Elbe, the Oder, and Vistula, at least 150,000 strong, were cut off and irrevocably lost; the auxiliaries of the Confederate vassals had joyfully supported the great German rising; and the Allied armies were already upon the Main. Meanwhile Wellington had crossed the Pyrenees, and, forcing back Soult, stood on the verge of Gascony; Eugène had been driven, in defeat, from the Adige; and Murat, treading in the steps of Bernadotte, and tempted by a wife, false to every tie of blood, was preparing to betray his master and

to join the Allies-an act of baseness paralleled only in the France of that time. This was the most unkindest cut of all, worse even than Bavaria's defection, to be avenged, Napoleon exclaimed, by Munich in flames'; and Pasquier informs us that orders were given for the arrest of the recreant King of Naples before he desperately threw off the mask:

'Murat abandoned the Emperor during the first days of the retreat, and this desertion, it would appear, was accompanied by circumstances of extreme gravity; for the Minister of Police received an order, through a courier despatched in hot haste, to arrest the King should he present himself at the gates of Paris, and to imprison him at Vincennes. I have no doubt of the fact, for the Duc de Rovigo told me so, and directed me to set the agents of the police on the watch, and to let him know when the first news arrived of the apparition of the fugitive.'

The Empire, too, was breaking up from within: the obsequious Senate might vote addresses; the official organs of administration in France might get up displays of factitious loyalty; but Holland and Belgium were throwing off the yoke; and France, exhausted by her late efforts, was prostrate, hopeless, and longing for repose. The machinery of despotism, all powerful for years, failed suddenly to fulfil its functions; the Treasury yielded little, for the taxes were not paid; the conscription did not supply its tale of recruits; and the nation was in a mood which might become most dangerous. The Allies, however, were not aware of the real state of the tottering Empire; the memories of Valmy and Jemappes, and of 1793, were still the means of protecting France; and Austria and the Czar at least made the celebrated overture, through Saint-Aignan, which would have left Napoleon France with the natural 'boundaries.' Pasquier dwells at some length on the terms proposed at Frankfort, quoting documents long ago published; and he has no doubt that, on this occasion, the Coalition was not playing false :

'Austria and Russia were sincerely desirous of peace; the Emperor Francis had no wish to dethrone his daughter, and the character of the Emperor Alexander was one of too much caution not to make him apprehensive, should he continue the war, to endanger success and glory surpassing all that his imagination had ventured to presage in his most exalted moments. I have it from M. Labouchère, a person who often was in his presence during his stay at Frankfort, that he exclaimed more than once: "I must not be thought to be so foolish as to carry the war to the other bank of the Rhine. I will not commit the fault which has cost my enemy so dear; I will not go seek in Paris the fate he met in Moscow.""

" be little doubt that England and Prussia would d to these conditions, even if Castlereagh-not yet y-would have certainly tried to detach Antwerp from But, in this instance as at Prague before, Napoleon wwe his best chance of safety; he sent an unwise Metternich, and the opportunity was finally lost. er this was owing to his unconquerable pride, or not y to his conviction that his dynasty of conquest survive the imposition of terms of defeat, extray favourable as these were, it is impossible to know conjecture; but these remarks of Pasquier are acute

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was severely punished for the fault he had committed. de his conduct worse was that in this situation of affairs he • de interests of France much less than his own. It was in c, even after all these disasters, to leave her in a state of great diluence; he sacrificed her to the difficulties of his own

that especially of finding himself after the ruin of his A projects face to face with a nation which had done g for him, and which had a right to demand from him an o the treasure which had been wasted and for the blood d he been shed in so many reckless adventures. Peace in these Va appeared to him the worst of misfortunes. Deprived of dar of renown that attends conquerors, surrounded by all Now covedants to whom he could no longer fling the wealth of whole e did not believe it possible that he could retain a throne I would have been his first duty to endeavour to have his past c. In this he misunderstood the generosity of Frenchmen, koow how to place trust in a quality not to be found in his He did not even do justice to himself, for in the memories gatadid career, even in his reverses and mistakes, there was a da brilliancy which would have upheld him. His pride

mit the slightest diminution of his reputation. In the his heart he always preferred to run the risks of war, and he iy wish to treat until he was convinced that his military were about wholly to fail. But when he saw this at last, his equally well informed, and they acted accordingly.' poca endeavoured to make head against a sea of end even as late as November 1813 his letters e most perfect confidence.* He obtained votes taxation, and, according to Pasquier- who decal returus--he called out levies amounting to

o Cembacerès, Corresp. xxvi. p. 395: Aussitôt que a les ennemis auxquels j'ai affaire, et que je n'aurais he des trahisons, ni des crocs en jambe, je les battrai its audes,

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