Chapter XI (1)

The War of Liberation--Blücher crosses the Elbe--Battle of Lützen--The Allies retreat to Silesia--Battle of Bautzen--Armistice--Napoleon intends to intimidate Austria--Mistaken as to the Forces of Austria--Metternich's Policy--Treaty of Reichenbach--Austria offers its Mediation--Congress of Prague--Austria enters the War--Armies and Plans of Napoleon and the Allies--Campaign of August--Battles of Dresden, Grosbeeren, the Katzbach, and Kulm--Effect of these Actions--Battle of Dennewitz--German Policy of Austria favourable to the Princes of the Rhenish Confederacy--Frustrated Hopes of German Unity--Battle of Leipzig--The Allies reach the Rhine-- Offers of Peace at Frankfort--Plan of Invasion of France--Backwardness of Austria--The Allies enter France--Campaign of 1814--Congress of Châtillon-- Napoleon moves to the rear of the Allies--The Allies advance on Paris-- Capitulation of Paris--Entry of the Allies--Dethronement of Napoleon-- Restoration of the Bourbons--The Charta--Treaty of Paris--Territorial Effects of the War, 1792-1814--Every Power except France had gained--France relatively weaker in Europe--Summary of the Permanent Effects of this Period on Europe.

[Napoleon in 1813.]

The first three months of the year 1813 were spent by Napoleon in vigorous preparation for a campaign in Northern Germany. Immediately after receiving the news of York's convention with the Russians he had ordered a levy of 350,000 men. It was in vain that Frederick William and Hardenberg affected to disavow the general as a traitor; Napoleon divined the national character of York's act, and laid his account for a war against the combined forces of Prussia and Russia. In spite of the catastrophe of the last campaign, Napoleon was still stronger than his enemies. Italy and the Rhenish Federation had never wavered in their allegiance; Austria, though a cold ally, had at least shown no signs of hostility. The resources of an empire of forty million inhabitants were still at Napoleon's command. It was in the youth and inexperience of the new soldiers, and in the scarcity of good officers, [179] that the losses of the previous year showed their most visible effect. Lads of seventeen, commanded in great part by officers who had never been through a campaign, took the place of the soldiers who had fought at Friedland and Wagram. They were as brave as their predecessors, but they failed in bodily strength and endurance. Against them came the remnant of the men who had pursued Napoleon from Moscow, and a Prussian army which was but the vanguard of an armed nation. Nevertheless, Napoleon had no cause to expect defeat, provided that Austria remained on his side. Though the Prussian nation entered upon the conflict in the most determined spirit, a war on the Elbe against Russia and Prussia combined was a less desperate venture than a war with Russia alone beyond the Niemen.

[Blücher crosses the Elbe, March, 1813.]

When King Frederick William published his declaration of war (March 17), the army of Eugène had already fallen back as far west as Magdeburg, leaving garrisons in most of the fortresses between the Elbe and the Russian frontier. Napoleon was massing troops on the Main, and preparing for an advance in force, when the Prussians, commanded by Blücher, and some weak divisions of the Russian army, pushed forward to the Elbe. On the 18th of March the Cossacks appeared in the suburbs of Dresden, on the right bank of the river. Davoust, who was in command of the French garrison, blew up two arches of the bridge, and retired to Magdeburg: Blücher soon afterwards entered Dresden, and called upon the Saxon nation to rise against Napoleon. But he spoke to deaf ears. The common people were indifferent; the officials waited to see which side would conquer. Blücher could scarcely obtain provisions for his army; he passed on westwards, and came into the neighbourhood of Leipzig. Here he found himself forced to halt, and to wait for his allies. Though a detachment of the Russian army under Witgenstein had already crossed the Elbe, the main army, with Kutusoff, was still lingering at Kalisch on the Polish frontier, where it had arrived six weeks before. As yet the Prussians had only 50,000 men ready for action; until the Russians came up, it was unsafe to advance far beyond the Elbe. Blücher counted every moment lost that kept him from battle: the Russian commander-in-chief, sated with glory and sinking beneath the infirmities of a veteran, could scarcely be induced to sign an order of march. At length Kutusoff's illness placed the command in younger hands. His strength failed him during the march from Poland; he was left dying in Silesia; and on the 24th of April the Czar and the King of Prussia led forward his veteran troops into Dresden.

[Napoleon enters Dresden, May 14.]

[Battle of Lützen, May 2.]

Napoleon was now known to be approaching with considerable force by the roads of the Saale. A pitched battle west of the Elbe was necessary before the Allies could hope to win over any of the States of the Rhenish Confederacy; the flat country beyond Leipzig offered the best possible field for cavalry, in which the Allies were strong and Napoleon extremely deficient. It was accordingly determined to unite all the divisions of the army with Blücher on the west of Leipzig, and to attack the French as soon as they descended from the hilly country of the Saale, and began their march across the Saxon plain. The Allies took post at Lützen: the French advanced, and at midday on the 2nd of May the battle of Lützen began. Till evening, victory inclined to the Allies. The Prussian soldiery fought with the utmost spirit; for the first time in Napoleon's campaigns, the French infantry proved weaker than an enemy when fighting against them in equal numbers. But the generalship of Napoleon turned the scale. Seventy thousand of the French were thrown upon fifty thousand of the Allies; the battle was fought in village streets and gardens, where cavalry were useless; and at the close of the day, though the losses on each side were equal, the Allies were forced from the positions which they had gained. Such a result was equivalent to a lost battle. Napoleon's junction with the army of Eugène at Magdeburg was now inevitable, unless a second engagement was fought and won. No course remained to the Allies but to stake everything upon a renewed attack, or to retire behind the Elbe and meet the reinforcements assembling in Silesia. King Frederick William declared for a second battle; [180] he was over-ruled, and the retreat commenced. Napoleon entered Dresden on May 14th. No attempt was made by the Allies to hold the line of the Elbe; all the sanguine hopes with which Blücher and his comrades had advanced to attack Napoleon within the borders of the Rhenish Confederacy were dashed to the ground. The Fatherland remained divided against itself. Saxony and the rest of the vassal States were secured to France by the victory of Lützen; the liberation of Germany was only to be wrought by prolonged and obstinate warfare, and by the wholesale sacrifice of Prussian life.

[Armistice, June 4.]

[Battle of Bautzen, May 21.]

It was with deep disappointment, but not with any wavering of purpose, that the allied generals fell back before Napoleon towards the Silesian fortresses. The Prussian troops which had hitherto taken part in the war were not the third part of those which the Government was arming; new Russian divisions were on the march from Poland. As the Allies moved eastwards from the Elbe, both their own forces and those of Napoleon gathered strength. The retreat stopped at Bautzen, on the river Spree; and here, on the 19th of May, 90,000 of the Allies and the same number of the French drew up in order of battle. The Allies held a long, broken chain of hills behind the river, and the ground lying between these hills and the village of Bautzen. On the 20th the French began the attack, and won the passage of the river. In spite of the approach of Ney with 40,000 more troops, the Czar and the King of Prussia determined to continue the battle on the following day. The struggle of the 21st was of the same obstinate and indecisive character as that at Lützen. Twenty-five thousand French had been killed or wounded before the day was over, but the bad generalship of the Allies had again given Napoleon the victory. The Prussian and Russian commanders were all at variance; Alexander, who had to decide in their contentions, possessed no real military faculty. It was not for want of brave fighting and steadfastness before the enemy that Bautzen was lost. The Allies retreated in perfect order, and without the loss of a single gun. Napoleon followed, forcing his wearied regiments to ceaseless exertion, in the hope of ruining by pursuit an enemy whom he could not overthrow in battle. In a few more days the discord of the allied generals and the sufferings of the troops would probably have made them unable to resist Napoleon's army, weakened as it was. But the conqueror himself halted in the moment of victory. On the 4th of June an armistice of seven weeks arrested the pursuit, and brought the first act of the War of Liberation to a close.

[Napoleon and Austria.]

Napoleon's motive for granting this interval to his enemies, the most fatal step in his whole career, has been vaguely sought among the general reasons for military delay; as a matter of fact, Napoleon was thinking neither of the condition of his own army nor of that of the Allies when he broke off hostilities, but of the probable action of the Court of Vienna. [181] "I shall grant a truce," he wrote to the Viceroy of Italy (June 2, 1813), "on account of the armaments of Austria, and in order to gain time to bring up the Italian army to Laibach to threaten Vienna." Austria had indeed resolved to regain, either by war or negotiation, the provinces which it had lost in 1809. It was now preparing to offer its mediation, but it was also preparing to join the Allies in case Napoleon rejected its demands. Metternich was anxious to attain his object, if possible, without war. The Austrian State was bankrupt; its army had greatly deteriorated since 1809; Metternich himself dreaded both the ambition of Russia and what he considered the revolutionary schemes of the German patriots. It was his object not to drive Napoleon from his throne, but to establish a European system in which neither France nor Russia should be absolutely dominant. Soon after the retreat from Moscow the Cabinet of Vienna had informed Napoleon, though in the most friendly terms, that Austria could not longer remain in the position of a dependent ally. [182] Metternich stated, and not insincerely, that by certain concessions Napoleon might still count on Austria's friendship; but at the same time he negotiated with the allied Powers, and encouraged them to believe that Austria would, under certain circumstances, strike on their behalf. The course of the campaign of May was singularly favourable to Metternich's policy. Napoleon had not won a decided victory; the Allies, on the other hand, were so far from success that Austria could set almost any price it pleased upon its alliance. By the beginning of June it had become a settled matter in the Austrian Cabinet that Napoleon must be made to resign the Illyrian Provinces conquered in 1809 and the districts of North Germany annexed in 1810; but it was still the hope of the Government to obtain this result by peaceful means. Napoleon saw that Austria was about to change its attitude, but he had by no means penetrated the real intentions of Metternich. He credited the Viennese Government with a stronger sentiment of hostility towards himself than it actually possessed; at the same time he failed to appreciate the fixed and settled character of its purpose. He believed that the action of Austria would depend simply upon the means which he possessed to intimidate it; that, if the army of Italy were absent, Austria would attack him; that, on the other hand, if he could gain time to bring the army of Italy into Carniola, Austria would keep the peace. It was with this belief, and solely for the purpose of bringing up a force to menace Austria, that Napoleon stayed his hand against the Prussian and Russian armies after the battle of Bautzen, and gave time for the gathering of the immense forces which were destined to effect his destruction.

[Metternich offers Austria's mediation.]

Immediately after the conclusion of the armistice of June 4th, Metternich invited Napoleon to accept Austria's mediation for a general peace. The settlement which Metternich contemplated was a very different one from that on which Stein and the Prussian patriots had set their hopes. Austria was willing to leave to Napoleon the whole of Italy and Holland, the frontier of the Rhine, and the Protectorate of Western Germany: all that was required by Metternich, as arbiter of Europe, was the restoration of the provinces taken from Austria after the war of 1809, the reinstatement of Prussia in Western Poland, and the abandonment by France of the North-German district annexed in 1810. But to Napoleon the greater or less extent of the concessions asked by Austria was a matter of no moment. He was determined to make no concessions at all, and he entered into negotiations only for the purpose of disguising from Austria the real object with which he had granted the armistice. While Napoleon affected to be weighing the proposals of Austria, he was in fact calculating the number of marches which would place the Italian army on the Austrian frontier; this once effected, he expected to hear nothing more of Metternich's demands.

[Napoleon deceived as to the forces of Austria.]

It was a game of deceit; but there was no one who was so thoroughly deceived as Napoleon himself. By some extraordinary miscalculation on the part of his secret agents, he was led to believe that the whole force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only 100,000 men, [183] and it was on this estimate that he had formed his plans of intimidation. In reality Austria had double that number of men ready to take the field. By degrees Napoleon saw reason to suspect himself in error. On the 11th of July he wrote to his Foreign Minister, Maret, bitterly reproaching him with the failure of the secret service to gain any trustworthy information. It was not too late to accept Metternich's terms. Yet even now, when the design of intimidating Austria had proved an utter delusion, and Napoleon was convinced that Austria would fight, and fight with very powerful forces, his pride and his invincible belief in his own superiority prevented him from drawing back. He made an attempt to enter upon a separate negotiation with Russia, and, when this failed, he resolved to face the conflict with the whole of Europe.

[Treaty of Reichenbach, June 27.]

There was no longer any uncertainty among Napoleon's enemies. On the 27th of June, Austria had signed a treaty at Reichenbach, pledging itself to join the allied Powers in the event of Napoleon rejecting the conditions to be proposed by Austria as mediator; and the conditions so to be proposed were fixed by the same treaty. They were the following:--The suppression of the Duchy of Warsaw; the restoration to Austria of the Illyrian Provinces; and the surrender by Napoleon of the North-German district annexed to his Empire in 1810. Terms more hostile to France than these Austria declined to embody in its mediation. The Elbe might still sever Prussia from its German provinces lost in 1807; Napoleon might still retain, as chief of the Rhenish Confederacy, his sovereignty over the greater part of the German race.

[Austria enters the war, Aug. 10.]

[Congress of Prague, July 15-Aug. 10.]

From the moment when these conditions were fixed, there was nothing which the Prussian generals so much dreaded as that Napoleon might accept them, and so rob the Allies of the chance of crushing him by means of Austria's support. But their fears were groundless. The counsels of Napoleon were exactly those which his worst enemies would have desired him to adopt. War, and nothing but war, was his fixed resolve. He affected to entertain Austria's propositions, and sent his envoy Caulaincourt to a Congress which Austria summoned at Prague; but it was only for the purpose of gaining a few more weeks of preparation. The Congress met; the armistice was prolonged to the 10th of August. Caulaincourt, however, was given no power to close with Austria's demands. He was ignorant that he had only been sent to Prague in order to gain time. He saw the storm gathering: unable to believe that Napoleon intended to fight all Europe rather than make the concessions demanded of him, he imagined that his master still felt some doubt whether Austria and the other Powers meant to adhere to their word. As the day drew nigh which closed the armistice and the period given for a reply to Austria's ultimatum, Caulaincourt implored Napoleon not to deceive himself with hopes that Austria would draw back. Napoleon had no such hope; he knew well that Austria would declare war, and he accepted the issue. Caulaincourt heard nothing more. At midnight on the 10th of August the Congress declared itself dissolved. Before the dawn of the next morning the army in Silesia saw the blaze of the beacon-fires which told that negotiation was at an end, and that Austria was entering the war on the side of the Allies. [184]

[Armies of Napoleon and the Allies.]

Seven days' notice was necessary before the commencement of actual hostilities. Napoleon, himself stationed at Dresden, held all the lower course of the Elbe; and his generals had long had orders to be ready to march on the morning of the 18th. Forces had come up from all parts of the Empire, raising the French army at the front to 300,000 men; but, for the first time in Napoleon's career, his enemies had won from a pause in war results even surpassing his own. The strength of the Prussian and Russian armies was now enormously different from what it had been at Lützen and Bautzen. The Prussian Landwehr, then a weaponless and ill-clad militia drilling in the villages, was now fully armed, and in great part at the front. New Russian divisions had reached Silesia. Austria took the field with a force as numerous as that which had checked Napoleon in 1809. At the close of the armistice, 350,000 men actually faced the French positions upon the Elbe; 300,000 more were on the march, or watching the German fortresses and the frontier of Italy. The allied troops operating against Napoleon were divided into three armies. In the north, between Wittenberg and Berlin, Bernadotte commanded 60,000 Russians and Prussians, in addition to his own Swedish contingent. Blücher was placed at the head of 100,000 Russians and Prussians in Silesia. The Austrians remained undivided, and formed, together with some Russian and Prussian divisions, the great army of Bohemia, 200,000 strong, under the command of Schwarzenberg. The plan of the campaign had been agreed upon by the Allies soon after the Treaty of Reichenbach had been made with Austria. It was a sound, though not a daring one.

[Plan of the Allies.]

The three armies, now forming an arc from Wittenberg to the north of Bohemia, were to converge upon the line of Napoleon's communications behind Dresden; if separately attacked, their generals were to avoid all hazardous engagements, and to manoeuvre so as to weary the enemy and preserve their own general relations, as far as possible, unchanged. Blücher, as the most exposed, was expected to content himself the longest with the defensive; the great army of Bohemia, after securing the mountain-passes between Bohemia and Saxony, might safely turn Napoleon's position at Dresden, and so draw the two weaker armies towards it for one vast and combined engagement in the plain of Leipzig.

[Napoleon's plan of attack.]

In outline, the plan of the Allies was that which Napoleon expected them to adopt. His own design was to anticipate it by an offensive of extraordinary suddenness and effect. Hostilities could not begin before the morning of the 18th of August; by the 21st or the 22nd, Napoleon calculated that he should have captured Berlin. Oudinot, who was at Wittenberg with 80,000 men, had received orders to advance upon the Prussian capital at the moment that the armistice expired, and to force it, if necessary by bombardment, into immediate surrender. The effect of this blow, as Napoleon supposed, would be to disperse the entire reserve-force of the Prussian monarchy, and paralyse the action of its army in the field. While Oudinot marched on Berlin, Blücher was to be attacked in Silesia, and prevented from rendering any assistance either on the north or on the south. The mass of Napoleon's forces, centred at Dresden, and keeping watch upon the movements of the army of Bohemia, would either fight a great battle, or, if the Allies made a false movement, march straight upon Prague, the centre of Austria's supplies, and reach it before the enemy. All the daring imagination of Napoleon's earlier campaigns displayed itself in such a project, which, if successful, would have terminated the war within ten days; but this imagination was no longer, as in those earlier campaigns, identical with insight into real possibilities. The success of Napoleon's plan involved the surprise or total defeat of Bernadotte before Berlin, the disablement of Blücher, and a victory, or a strategical success equivalent to a victory, over the vast army of the south. It demanded of a soldiery, inferior to the enemy in numerical strength, the personal superiority which had belonged to the men of Jena and Austerlitz, when in fact the French regiments of conscripts had ceased to be a match for equal numbers of the enemy. But no experience could alter Napoleon's fixed belief in the fatuity of all warfare except his own. After the havoc of Borodino, after the even struggles of Lützen and Bautzen, he still reasoned as if he had before him the armies of Brunswick and Mack. His plan assumed the certainty of success in each of its parts; for the failure of a single operation hazarded all the rest, by requiring the transfer of reinforcements from armies already too weak for the tasks assigned to them. Nevertheless, the utmost that Napoleon would acknowledge was that the execution of his design needed energy. He still underrated the force which Austria had brought into the field against him. Though ignorant of the real position and strength of the army in Bohemia, and compelled to wait for the enemy's movements before striking on this side, he already in imagination saw the war decided by the fall of the Prussian capital.

[Triple movement, Aug. 18-26.]

[Battle of Dresden, Aug. 26, 27.]

[Battles of Grossbeeren, Aug. 23, and the Katzbach, Aug. 26.]

On the 18th of August the forward movement began. Oudinot advanced from Wittenberg towards Berlin; Napoleon himself hurried into Silesia, intending to deal Blücher one heavy blow, and instantly to return and place himself before Schwarzenberg. On the 21st, and following days, the Prussian general was attacked and driven eastwards. Napoleon committed the pursuit to Macdonald, and hastened back to Dresden, already threatened by the advance of the Austrians from Bohemia. Schwarzenberg and the allied sovereigns, as soon as they heard that Napoleon had gone to seek Blücher in Silesia, had in fact abandoned their cautious plans, and determined to make an assault upon Dresden with the Bohemian army alone. But it was in vain that they tried to surprise Napoleon. He was back at Dresden on the 25th, and ready for the attack. Never were Napoleon's hopes higher than on this day. His success in Silesia had filled him with confidence. He imagined Oudinot to be already in Berlin; and the advance of Schwarzenberg against Dresden gave him the very opportunity which he desired for crushing the Bohemian army in one great battle, before it could draw support either from Blücher or from Bernadotte. Another Austerlitz seemed to be at hand. Napoleon wrote to Paris that he should be in Prague before the enemy; and, while he completed his defences in front of Dresden, he ordered Vandamme, with 40,000 men, to cross the Elbe at Königstein, and force his way south-westwards on to the roads into Bohemia, in the rear of the Great Army, in order to destroy its magazines and menace its line of retreat on Prague. On August 26th Schwarzenberg's host assailed the positions of Napoleon on the slopes and gardens outside Dresden. Austrians, Russians, and Prussians all took part in the attack. Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, stood by the side of the Emperor Alexander, whom he had come to help against his own countrymen. He lived only to witness one of the last and greatest victories of France. The attack was everywhere repelled: the Austrian divisions were not only beaten, but disgraced and overthrown. At the end of two days' fighting the Allies were in full retreat, leaving 20,000 prisoners in the hands of Napoleon. It was a moment when the hearts of the bravest sank, and when hope itself might well vanish, as the rumour passed through the Prussian regiments that Metternich was again in friendly communication with Napoleon. But in the midst of Napoleon's triumph intelligence arrived which robbed it of all its worth. Oudinot, instead of conquering Berlin, had been defeated by the Prussians of Bernadotte's army at Grossbeeren (Aug. 23), and driven back upon the Elbe. Blücher had turned upon Macdonald in Silesia, and completely overthrown his army on the river Katzbach, at the very moment when the Allies were making their assault upon Dresden. It was vain to think of a march upon Prague, or of the annihilation of the Austrians, when on the north and the east Napoleon's troops were meeting with nothing but disaster. The divisions which had been intended to support Vandamme's movement from Königstein upon the rear of the Great Army were retained in the neighbourhood of Dresden, in order to be within reach of the points where their aid might be needed. Vandamme, ignorant of his isolation, was left with scarcely 40,000 men to encounter the Great Army in its retreat.

[Battle of Kulm, Aug. 29, 30.]

He threw himself upon a Russian corps at Kulm, in the Bohemian mountains, on the morning of the 29th. The Russians, at first few in number, held their ground during the day; in the night, and after the battle had recommenced on the morrow, vast masses of the allied troops poured in. The French fought desperately, but were overwhelmed. Vandamme himself was made prisoner, with 10,000 of his men. The whole of the stores and most of the cannon of his army remained in the enemy's hands.

[Effect of the twelve days, Aug. 18-30.]

[Battle of Dennewitz, Sept. 6.]

The victory at Kulm secured the Bohemian army from pursuit, and almost extinguished the effects of its defeat at Dresden. Thanks to the successes of Blücher and of Bernadotte's Prussian generals, which prevented Napoleon from throwing all his forces on to the rear of the Great Army, Schwarzenberg's rash attack had proved of no worse significance than an unsuccessful raid. The Austrians were again in the situation assigned to them in the original plan of the campaign, and capable of resuming their advance into the interior of Saxony: Blücher and the northern commanders had not only escaped separate destruction, but won great victories over the French: Napoleon, weakened by the loss of 100,000 men, remained exactly where he had been at the beginning of the campaign. Had the triple movement by which he meant to overwhelm his adversaries been capable of execution, it would now have been fully executed. The balance, however, had turned against Napoleon; and the twelve days from the 18th to the 29th of August, though marked by no catastrophe like Leipzig or Waterloo, were in fact the decisive period in the struggle of Europe against Napoleon. The attack by which he intended to prevent the junction of the three armies had been made, and had failed. Nothing now remained for him but to repeat the same movements with a discouraged force against an emboldened enemy, or to quit the line of the Elbe, and prepare for one vast and decisive encounter with all three armies combined. Napoleon drove from his mind the thought of failure; he ordered Ney to take command of Oudinot's army, and to lead it again, in increased strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened to Macdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assault upon Blücher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6): Blücher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoided battle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the brief interval which he had snatched from his watch on Schwarzenberg. Each conflict with the enemy, each vain and exhausting march, told that the superiority had passed from the French to their foes, and that Napoleon's retreat was now only a matter of time. "These creatures have learnt something," said Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart, as he saw the columns of Blücher manoeuvring out of his grasp. Ney's report of his own overthrow at Dennewitz sounded like an omen of the ruin of Waterloo. "I have been totally defeated," he wrote, "and do not yet know whether my army has re-assembled. The spirit of the generals and officers is shattered. To command in such conditions is but half to command. I had rather be a common grenadier."

[Metternich.]

[German policy of Stein and of Austria.]

The accession of Austria had turned the scale in favour of the Allies; it rested only with the allied generals themselves to terminate the warfare round Dresden, and to lead their armies into the heart of Saxony. For a while the course of the war flagged, and military interests gave place to political. It was in the interval between the first great battles and the final advance on Leipzig that the future of Germany was fixed by the three allied Powers. In the excitement of the last twelve months little thought had been given, except by Stein and his friends, to the political form to be set in the place of the Napoleonic Federation of the Rhine. Stein, in the midst of the Russian campaign, had hoped for a universal rising of the German people against Napoleon, and had proposed the dethronement of all the German princes who supported his cause. His policy had received the general approval of Alexander, and, on the entrance of the Russian army into Germany, a manifesto had been issued appealing to the whole German nation, and warning the vassals of Napoleon that they could only save themselves by submission. [185] A committee had been appointed by the allied sovereigns, under the presidency of Stein himself, to administer the revenues of all Confederate territory that should be occupied by the allied armies. Whether the reigning Houses should be actually expelled might remain in uncertainty; but it was the fixed hope of Stein and his friends that those princes who were permitted to retain their thrones would be permitted to retain them only as officers in a great German Empire, without sovereign rights either over their own subjects or in relation to foreign States. The Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg had gained their titles and much of their despotic power at home from Napoleon; their independence of the Head of Germany had made them nothing more than the instruments of a foreign conqueror. Under whatever form the central authority might be revived, Stein desired that it should be the true and only sovereign Power in Germany, a Power to which every German might appeal against the oppression of a minor Government, and in which the whole nation should find its representative before the rest of Europe. In the face of such a central authority, whether an elected Parliament or an Imperial Council, the minor princes could at best retain but a fragment of their powers; and such was the theory accepted at the allied head-quarters down to the time when Austria proffered its mediation and support. Then everything changed. The views of the Austrian Government upon the future system of Germany were in direct opposition to those of Stein's party. Metternich dreaded the thought of popular agitation, and looked upon Stein, with his idea of a National Parliament and his plans for dethroning the Rhenish princes, as little better than the Jacobins of 1792. The offer of a restored imperial dignity in Germany was declined by the Emperor of Austria at the instance of his Minister. With characteristic sense of present difficulties, and blindness to the great forces which really contained their solution, Metternich argued that the minor princes would only be driven into the arms of the foreigner by the establishment of any supreme German Power. They would probably desert Napoleon if the Allies guaranteed to them everything that they at present possessed; they would be freed from all future temptation to attach themselves to France if Austria contented itself with a diplomatic influence and with the ties of a well-constructed system of treaties. In spite of the influence of Stein with the Emperor Alexander, Metternich's views prevailed. Austria had so deliberately kept itself in balance during the first part of the year 1813, that the Allies were now willing to concede everything, both in this matter and in others, in return for its support. Nothing more was heard of the dethronement of the Confederate princes, or even of the limitation of their powers. It was agreed by the Treaty of Teplitz, signed by Prussia, Russia, and Austria on September 9th, that every State of the Rhenish Confederacy should be placed in a position of absolute independence. Negotiations were opened with the King of Bavaria, whose army had steadily fought on the side of Napoleon in every campaign since 1806. Instead of being outlawed as a criminal, he was welcomed as an ally. The Treaty of Ried, signed on the 3rd of October, guaranteed to the King of Bavaria, in return for his desertion of Napoleon, full sovereign rights, and the whole of the territory which he had received from Napoleon, except the Tyrol and the Austrian district on the Inn. What had been accorded to the King of Bavaria could not be refused to the rest of Napoleon's vassals who were willing to make their peace with the Allies in time. Germany was thus left at the mercy of a score of petty Cabinets. It was seen by the patriotic party in Prussia at what price the alliance of Austria had been purchased. Austria had indeed made it possible to conquer Napoleon, but it had also made an end of all prospect of the union of the German nation.

[Allies cross the Elbe, Oct. 3.]

Till the last days of September the position of the hostile armies round Dresden remained little changed, Napoleon unweariedly repeated his attacks, now on one side, now on another, but without result. The Allies on their part seemed rooted to the soil. Bernadotte, balanced between the desire to obtain Norway from the Allies and a foolish hope of being called to the throne of France, was bent on doing the French as little harm as possible; Schwarzenberg, himself an indifferent general, was distracted by the councillors of all the three monarchs; Blücher alone pressed for decided and rapid action. At length the Prussian commander gained permission to march northwards, and unite his army with Bernadotte's in a forward movement across the Elbe. The long-expected Russian reserves, led by Bennigsen, reached the Bohemian mountains; and at the beginning of October the operation began which was to collect the whole of the allied forces in the plain of Leipzig. Blücher forced the passage of the Elbe at Wartenburg. It was not until Napoleon learnt that the army of Silesia had actually crossed the river that he finally quitted Dresden. Then, hastening northwards, he threw himself upon the Prussian general; but Blücher again avoided battle, as he had done in Silesia; and on the 7th of October his army united with Bernadotte's, which had crossed the Elbe two days before.

The enemy was closing in upon Napoleon. Obstinately as he had held on to the line of the Elbe, he could hold on no longer. In the frustration of all his hopes there flashed across his mind the wild project of a march eastwards to the Oder, and the gathering of all the besieged garrisons for a campaign in which the enemy should stand between himself and France; but the dream lasted only long enough to gain a record. Napoleon ventured no more than to send a corps back to the Elbe to threaten Berlin, in the hope of tempting Blücher and Bernadotte to abandon the advance which they had now begun in co-operation with the great army of Schwarzenberg. From the 10th to the 14th of October, Napoleon lingered at Düben, between Dresden and Leipzig, restlessly expecting to hear of Blücher's or Bernadotte's retreat. The only definite information that he could gain was that Schwarzenberg was pressing on towards the west. At length he fell back to Leipzig, believing that Blücher, but not Bernadotte, was advancing to meet Schwarzenberg and take part in a great engagement. As he entered Leipzig on October 14th the cannon of Schwarzenberg was heard on the south.

[Battle of Leipzig. Oct 16-19.]

Napoleon drew up for battle. The number of his troops in position around the city was 170,000: about 15,000 others lay within call. He placed Marmont and Ney on the north of Leipzig at the village of Möckern, to meet the expected onslaught of Blücher; and himself, with the great mass of his army, took post on the south, facing Schwarzenberg. On the morning of the 16th, Schwarzenberg began the attack. His numbers did not exceed 150,000, for the greater part of the Russian army was a march in the rear. The battle was an even one. The Austrians failed to gain ground: with one more army-corps Napoleon saw that he could overpower the enemy. He was still without intelligence of Blücher's actual appearance in the north; and in the rash hope that Blücher's coming might be delayed, he sent orders to Ney and Marmont to leave their positions and hurry to the south to throw themselves upon Schwarzenberg. Ney obeyed. Marmont, when the order reached him, was actually receiving Blücher's first fire. He determined to remain and defend the village of Möckern, though left without support. York, commanding the vanguard of Blücher's army, assailed him with the utmost fury. A third part of the troops engaged on each side were killed or wounded before the day closed; but in the end the victory of the Prussians was complete. It was the only triumph won by the Allies on this first day of the battle, but it turned the scale against Napoleon. Marmont's corps was destroyed; Ney, divided between Napoleon and Marmont, had rendered no effective help to either. Schwarzenberg, saved from a great disaster, needed only to wait for Bernadotte and the Russian reserves, and to renew the battle with an additional force of 100,000 men.

[Storm of Leipzig, 19th. French retreat.]

[Battle of the 18th.]

In the course of the night Napoleon sent proposals for peace. It was in the vain hope of receiving some friendly answer from his father-in-law, the Austrian Emperor, that he delayed making his retreat during the next day, while it might still have been unmolested. No answer was returned to his letter. In the evening of the 17th, Bennigsen's army reached the field of battle. Next morning began that vast and decisive encounter known in the language of Germany as "the battle of the nations," the greatest battle in all authentic history, the culmination of all the military effort of the Napoleonic age. Not less than 300,000 men fought on the side of the Allies; Napoleon's own forces numbered 170,000. The battle raged all round Leipzig, except on the west, where no attempt was made to interpose between Napoleon and the line of his retreat. As in the first engagement, the decisive successes were those of Blücher, now tardily aided by Bernadotte, on the north; Schwarzenberg's divisions, on the south side of the town, fought steadily, but without gaining much ground. But there was no longer any doubt as to the issue of the struggle. If Napoleon could not break the Allies in the first engagement, he had no chance against them now when they had been joined by 100,000 more men. The storm of attack grew wilder and wilder: there were no new forces to call up for the defence. Before the day was half over Napoleon drew in his outer line, and began to make dispositions for a retreat from Leipzig. At evening long trains of wounded from the hospitals passed through the western gates of the city along the road towards the Rhine. In the darkness of night the whole army was withdrawn from its positions, and dense masses poured into the town, until every street was blocked with confused and impenetrable crowds of cavalry and infantry. The leading divisions moved out of the gates before sunrise. As the throng lessened, some degree of order was restored, and the troops which Napoleon intended to cover the retreat took their places under the walls of Leipzig. The Allies advanced to the storm on the morning of the 19th. The French were driven into the town; the victorious enemy pressed on towards the rear of the retreating columns. In the midst of the struggle an explosion was heard above the roar of the battle. The bridge over the Elster, the only outlet from Leipzig to the west, had been blown up by --the mistake of a French soldier before the rear-guard began to cross. The mass of fugitives, driven from the streets of the town, found before them an impassable river. Some swam to the opposite bank or perished in attempting to do so; the rest, to the number of 15,000, laid down their arms. This was the end of the battle. Napoleon had lost in the three days 40,000 killed and wounded, 260 guns, and 30,000 prisoners. The killed and wounded of the Allies reached the enormous sum of 54,000.

[Conditions of peace offered to Napoleon at Frankfort, Nov. 9th.]

[Allies follow Napoleon to the Rhine.]

The campaign was at an end. Napoleon led off a large army, but one that was in no condition to turn upon its pursuers. At each stage in the retreat thousands of fever-stricken wretches were left to terrify even the pursuing army with the dread of their infection. It was only when the French found the road to Frankfort blocked at Hanau by a Bavarian force that they rallied to the order of battle. The Bavarians were cut to pieces; the road was opened; and, a fortnight after the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon, with the remnant of his great army, re-crossed the Rhine. Behind him the fabric of his Empire fell to the ground. Jerome fled from Westphalia; [186] the princes of the Rhenish Confederacy came one after another to make their peace with the Allies; Bülow, with the army which had conquered Ney at Dennewitz, marched through the north of Germany to the deliverance of Holland. Three days after Napoleon had crossed the Rhine the Czar reached Frankfort; and here, on the 7th of November, a military council was held, in which Blücher and Gneisenau, against almost all the other generals, advocated an immediate invasion of France. The soldiers, however, had time to re-consider their opinions, for, on the 9th, it was decided by the representatives of the Powers to send an offer of peace to Napoleon, and the operations of the war were suspended by common consent. The condition on which peace was offered to Napoleon was the surrender of the conquests of France beyond the Alps and the Rhine. The Allies were still willing to permit the Emperor to retain Belgium, Savoy, and the Rhenish Provinces; they declined, however, to enter into any negotiation until Napoleon had accepted this basis of peace; and they demanded a distinct reply before the end of the month of November.

[Offer of peace withdrawn, Dec. 1.]

[Plan of invasion of France.]

[Allies enter France, Jan., 1814.]

Napoleon, who had now arrived in Paris, and saw around him all the signs of power, returned indefinite answers. The month ended without the reply which the Allies required; and on the 1st of December the offer of peace was declared to be withdrawn. It was still undecided whether the war should take the form of an actual invasion of France. The memory of Brunswick's campaign of 1792, and of the disasters of the first coalition in 1793, even now exercised a powerful influence over men's minds. Austria was unwilling to drive Napoleon to extremities, or to give to Russia and Prussia the increased influence which they would gain in Europe from the total overthrow of Napoleon's power. It was ultimately determined that the allied armies should enter France, but that the Austrians, instead of crossing the north-eastern frontier, should make a détour by Switzerland, and gain the plateau of Langres in Champagne, from which the rivers Seine, Marne, and Aube, with the roads following their valleys, descend in the direction of the capital. The plateau of Langres was said to be of such strategical importance that its occupation by an invader would immediately force Napoleon to make peace. As a matter of fact, the plateau was of no strategical importance whatever; but the Austrians desired to occupy it, partly with the view of guarding against any attack from the direction of Italy and Lyons, partly from their want of the heavy artillery necessary for besieging the fortresses farther north, [187] and from a just appreciation of the dangers of a campaign conducted in a hostile country intersected by several rivers. Anything was welcomed by Metternich that seemed likely to avert, or even to postpone, a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. Blücher correctly judged the march through Switzerland to be mere procrastination. He was himself permitted to take the straight road into France, though his movements were retarded in order to keep pace with the cautious steps of Schwarzenberg. On the last day of the year 1813 the Prussian general crossed the Rhine near Coblentz; on the 18th of January, 1814, the Austrian army, having advanced from Switzerland by Belfort and Vesoul, reached its halting-place on the plateau of Langres. Here the march stopped; and here it was expected that terms of peace would be proposed by Napoleon.

[Wellington entering France from the south.]

It was not on the eastern side alone that the invader was now entering France. Wellington had passed the Pyrenees. His last victorious march into the north of Spain began on the day when the Prussian and Russian armies were defeated by Napoleon at Bautzen (May 21, 1813). During the armistice of Dresden, a week before Austria signed the treaty which fixed the conditions of its armed mediation, he had gained an overwhelming triumph at Vittoria over King Joseph and the French army, as it retreated with all the spoils gathered in five years' occupation of Spain (June 21). A series of bloody engagements had given the English the passes of the Pyrenees in those same days of August and September that saw the allied armies close around Napoleon at Dresden; and when, after the catastrophe of Leipzig, the wreck of Napoleon's host was retreating beyond the Rhine, Soult, the defender of the Pyrenees, was driven by the British general from his entrenchments on the Nivelle, and forced back under the walls of Bayonne.

[French armies unable to hold the frontier.]

[Napoleon's plan of defence.]

Twenty years had passed since, in the tempestuous morn of the Revolution, Hoche swept the armies of the first coalition across the Alsatian frontier. Since then, French soldiers had visited every capital, and watered every soil with their blood; but no foreign soldier had set foot on French soil. Now the cruel goads of Napoleon's military glory had spent the nation's strength, and the force no longer existed which could bar the way to its gathered enemies. The armies placed upon the eastern frontier had to fall back before an enemy five times more numerous than themselves. Napoleon had not expected that the Allies would enter France before the spring. With three months given him for organisation, he could have made the frontier-armies strong enough to maintain their actual positions; the winter advance of the Allies compelled him to abandon the border districts of France, and to concentrate his defence in Champagne, between the Marne, the Seine, and the Aube. This district was one which offered extraordinary advantages to a great general acting against an irresolute and ill-commanded enemy. By holding the bridges over the three rivers, and drawing his own supplies along the central road from Paris to Arcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon could securely throw the bulk of his forces from one side to the other against the flank of the Allies, while his own movements were covered by the rivers, which could not be passed except at the bridges. A capable commander at the head of the Allies would have employed the same river-strategy against Napoleon himself, after conquering one or two points of passage by main force; but Napoleon had nothing of the kind to fear from Schwarzenberg; and if the Austrian head-quarters continued to control the movements of the allied armies, it was even now doubtful whether the campaign would close at Paris or on the Rhine.

[Campaign of 1814.]

For some days after the arrival of the monarchs and diplomatists at Langres (Jan. 22), Metternich and the more timorous among the generals opposed any further advance into France, and argued that the army had already gained all it needed by the occupation of the border provinces. It was only upon the threat of the Czar to continue the war by himself that the Austrians consented to move forward upon Paris. After several days had been lost in discussion, the advance from Langres was begun. Orders were given to Blücher, who had pushed back the French divisions commanded by Marmont and Mortier, and who was now near St. Dizier on the Marne, to meet the Great Army at Brienne. This was the situation of the Allies when, on the 25th of January, Napoleon left Paris, and placed himself at Châlons on the Marne, at the head of his left wing, having his right at Troyes and at Arcis, guarding the bridges over the Seine and the Aube. Napoleon knew that Blücher was moving towards the Austrians; he hoped to hold the Prussian general in check at St. Dizier, and to throw himself upon the heads of Schwarzenberg's columns as they moved towards the Aube. Blücher, however, had already passed St. Dizier when Napoleon reached it. Napoleon pursued, and overtook the Prussians at Brienne. After an indecisive battle, Blücher fell back towards Schwarzenberg. The allied armies effected their junction, and Blücher, now supported by the Austrians, turned and marched down the right bank of the Aube to meet Napoleon. Napoleon, though far outnumbered, accepted battle. He was attacked at La Rothière close above Brienne, and defeated with heavy loss (Feb. 1). A vigorous pursuit would probably have ended the war; but the Austrians held back. Schwarzenberg believed peace to be already gained, and condemned all further action as useless waste of life. In spite of the protests of the Emperor Alexander, he allowed Napoleon to retire unmolested. Schwarzenberg's inaction was no mere error in military judgment. There was a direct conflict between the Czar and the Austrian Cabinet as to the end to be obtained by the war. Alexander already insisted on the dethronement of Napoleon; the Austrian Government would have been content to leave Napoleon in power if he would accept a peace giving France no worse a frontier than it had possessed in 1791. Castlereagh, who had come from England, and Hardenberg were as yet inclined to support Metternich's policy, although the whole Prussian army, the public opinion of Great Britain, and the counsels of Stein and all the bolder Prussian statesmen, were on the side of the Czar. [188]

[Congress of Châtillon, Feb. 5-9.]

Already the influence of the peace-party was so far in the ascendant that negotiations had been opened with Napoleon. Representatives of all the Powers assembled at Châtillon, in Burgundy; and there, towards the end of January, Caulaincourt appeared on behalf of France. The first sitting took place on the 5th of February; on the following day Caulaincourt received full powers from Napoleon to conclude peace. The Allies laid down as the condition of peace the limitation of France to the frontiers of 1791. Had Caulaincourt dared to conclude peace instantly on these terms, Napoleon would have retained his throne; but he was aware that Napoleon had only granted him full powers in consequence of the disastrous battle of La Rothière, and he feared to be disavowed by his master as soon as the army had escaped from danger. Instead of simply accepting the Allies' offer, he raised questions as to the future of Italy and Germany. The moment was lost; on the 9th of February the Czar recalled his envoy from Châtillon, and the sittings of the Congress were broken off.

[Defeats of Blücher on the Marne Feb. 10-14.]

[Montereau, Feb 18.]