Chapter VIII: NAPOLEON (continued)

I must pass over the attempt to resettle the boundaries, at Vienna, of a changed Continent; nor can I dwell on the pretensions of the Czar to sit in the seat of Napoleon without his genius, on the rapacity of Prussia and the craft of Talleyrand, and on the league between Austria, England, and France, to restrain the ambition of the Northern Powers. Nor can I notice Napoleon’s brief rule in Elba, though the administrative powers of the fallen Lord of the Continent were exhibited in this narrow sphere, and have left honourable traditions not yet forgotten. I must also avoid even a short account of the failure of the Restoration in France; how Louis XVIII., well-meaning but feeble, spite of the memories of the old _régime_, fell into the hands of Royalist zealots, and marred the grace of the freedom he claimed to concede; how impossible it became to reconcile the pretensions of returned _émigrés_ and a ruined _noblesse_ with the interests grown out of the Revolution; how the army, transformed and made the appanage of a Court, chafed in silence, and regretted its unrivalled chief; how the nation after a brief hour of repose, felt humiliated that it had been reduced to the position of a lesser Power of Europe. The discords of the Coalition, and the unsettled state of France, were not lost on the extraordinary man who watched events from his speck in the sea, and who had not forgotten his vanished Empire. Napoleon quitted Elba in February 1815, on the most wonderful enterprise of his whole career. A flotilla bore the few hundred men imprudently left him by the Allies; Fortune smiled treacherously on her audacious favourite, and he had soon landed on the shores of Provence, in order, in the face of embattled Europe, to subvert a Government founded on an European triumph. The very thought seemed akin to folly, and yet it became an accomplished fact in a fortnight. With that insight which was one of his greatest gifts, Napoleon avoided the cities of the coast and the great military stations of his old marshals; he flung himself into the valleys of Dauphiné, a district hostile to the restored Monarchy, and his march seemed like the spread of some mighty influence, which power and authority were unable to withstand. Grasse, Sisteron, and Gap were rapidly passed; a regiment near Grenoble welcomed the sight of its old commander, and fell at his knees; the garrison of the town greeted him with exulting shouts, and wherever a part of the army beheld Napoleon, it followed him, swayed as by an enchanter’s spell. Macdonald, with his staff, was expelled from Lyons; Ney, meaning to be loyal, was carried away in the universal military revolt; other chiefs found it impossible to resist; and the discrowned exile was soon on his way to the capital at the head of a great and hourly increasing force.

Napoleon was at the Tuileries once more on the 20th of March; “his eagles,” in his expressive language, “had flown from steeple to steeple to the towers of Nôtre Dame,” and France, dazzled, surprised, and disliking the Bourbons, accepted a revolution which seemed a kind of portent. The King fled into Belgium with his Court, his nobles, and a few officers of the Empire, who would not break their oaths; the army easily put down two or three risings of Royalists in the Southern Provinces; and Napoleon boasted, with truth, that he regained his throne at the cost of scarcely a drop of blood. After this astonishing return to Empire, Napoleon offered peace, and to remain satisfied with the France of the Treaties of 1814; and probably he was sincere in these overtures. Yet it is not surprising that he was not believed; he had broken faith with Europe in leaving Elba, and, partly through terror and partly from hate, the Allies proscribed him as an enemy of mankind. He addressed himself to the defence of France, but the movement which had set him on the throne was essentially a military revolt; the fierce animosities of French factions embarrassed his Government and weakened the State; the restored Empire was viewed with distrust by Royalists, Liberals, and the old Republicans; the nation treated with indifferent contempt free institutions offered by Imperial hands; and the Chambers, which Napoleon convened to give popular support to his imperilled power, were full of secret or avowed conspirators. Nevertheless, let detractors say what they please, his exertions were mighty and worthy of him; his genius as an administrator shone with fresh brightness, though his health was evidently on the decline, and in a few weeks he had made preparations to resist the Coalition which must be deemed wonderful. One circumstance gave him precious resources; more than 100,000 prisoners of war, trained and excellent soldiers, had been restored to France; and by making use of these and additional veterans, and by employing conscripts and National Guards, he raised the army, which had been reduced to impotence, to a state of formidable strength and efficiency. Meanwhile, he gave its old organization and structure to the instrument of war he had so long wielded; the Guard reappeared, and the loved eagles; corps, divisions, and reserves were again formed; great exertions were made to provide arms, horses, and _impedimenta_ of all kinds; and Paris, which had fallen at once in 1814, was to a considerable extent, fortified. By June 1815, half-a-million of men were on foot to take part in the impending conflict; about 250,000 of these were ready; and paper money supplied the Treasury with the means of seconding a great effort which, in existing circumstances, was, I repeat, astonishing.

Two plans of operations presented themselves. Had France been united and loyal as a whole, Napoleon would have, no doubt, followed the grand precedent of the year before, under conditions much more favourable to success; he would have encountered the Coalition in Champagne with forces far more powerful than in 1814, and with Paris a strong entrenched camp in his rear, and recollecting what he achieved on the Marne and the Seine, his triumph would have been not at all improbable. The second plan was much more hazardous; but it was in harmony with Napoleon’s genius, and it followed methods which had often secured him victory. The Coalition had a million of men in arms; but these masses were spread from the Scheldt to the Po, and easterly, from the Rhine to the Oder; and the extreme right of the immense line of invasion, the two armies of Blücher and Wellington was isolated and thrown forward in Belgium. It might be practicable then, as it had been at Ulm, to cut off and destroy this detached force; and many circumstances concurred to give a well-directed attack a real chance of success. The armies of Blücher and Wellington were widely apart; they rested upon divergent bases; they were commanded by chiefs of opposite natures; their centre was weak and greatly exposed; their line of communication was a single road, at a short distance only from the French frontier, and behind this line lay a difficult country which would make their subsequent concentration no easy matter.

Seizing the situation with the eye of a master, Napoleon saw in this position of affairs an admirable opportunity to strike with effect; and he resolved to assail and break through the allied centre, and to try to defeat Blücher and Wellington in detail, as he had defeated Beaulieu and Colli in the campaign of Italy. The means he adopted to carry out his project rank among the finest operations of his life, and form a conspicuous instance of his gift of stratagem. Concealing the movement with consummate skill, he drew together four corps from the vast space between Lille and Metz to the edge of the frontier; the Guard, another corps, and the cavalry marched from the interior; and the collected masses, perfectly arranged, converged gradually along this immense front, under the eye of the enemy, yet without his knowledge! No more splendid effort has been made in war; and had the Emperor had the complete force--150,000 men--which he reckoned on to begin the campaign, in all probability he would have triumphed. A rising in La Vendée deprived him, however, at the last moment, of 20,000 soldiers; but the die was cast, and he did not hesitate; and he set off from Paris on the 12th of June to challenge Fortune in a supreme trial. His admirable directions had been admirably fulfilled. On the evening of the 14th June 1815, 128,000 Frenchmen, comprising 22,000 horse and 350 guns, were assembled from near Maubeuge to near Philippeville, where the French frontier then entered Belgium; and screened by the Sambre, they were a few miles from Charleroi, where the great road to Brussels gave an easy approach to the comparatively feeble centre of the Allies.

The army was in motion at daybreak on the 15th, the Emperor’s object being to cross the Sambre, to occupy Charleroi, and by a forced march to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, on the great cross road between Nivelles and Namur, the only line on which his foes could unite without obstacles of no small difficulty. The operation was not quite successful; delays and different accidents occurred. Ziethen, too, one of Blücher’s lieutenants, had checked the advance, not without skill, but Napoleon’s project was nearly realised; the great mass of the French was beyond Charleroi, and within easy reach of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe before night closed on the 15th; and the allied centre was threatened if not severed, and could only close up in effective force, under, so to speak, the guns of the enemy. The conduct, meanwhile, of the hostile chiefs had perfectly fulfilled Napoleon’s previsions, and had given him already an immense advantage. Blücher had, characteristically, placed three of his corps in positions around, or not far from, Sombreffe, even now almost in Napoleon’s grasp; but his fourth corps was many leagues distant, and could not reach Sombreffe for a battle next day. On the other hand, Wellington, circumspect and cautious, and without experience of Napoleon’s strategy, had hesitated and delayed at Brussels; he had not taken a step to join his colleague until late in the night of the 15th; and even then, fearing for his communications and his right, he had not advanced in force towards Quatre Bras, where his junction with Blücher would be accomplished. The allied line of communication, therefore, on the lateral road of Nivelles-Namur was not held by the Allies in force; it was all but in the hands of the enemy. The allied centre was completely exposed, and Napoleon might reasonably expect either to beat in detail the allied chiefs, should they venture to offer battle, or to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, and to interpose between Blücher and Wellington.

Theatre of the
CAMPAIGN
of 1815.]

This was the situation on the morning of the 16th, and it was full of great, nay, of splendid, promise. Napoleon was now at Charleroi, about to start for Fleurus, and to take the command of his corps near Sombreffe. He has been charged with delay, I think unjustly, and he was not fully aware of the enemy’s movements; but his general position was so good, and his general directions were so well planned, that accidents only robbed him of a decisive victory. He ordered Ney on his left to seize Quatre Bras, driving back any forces of the Duke at hand. The Marshal was then to descend on the rear of Blücher, who was to be attacked near Sombreffer, in front, by the Emperor; and had this grand manœuvre been properly carried out, Blücher must have been routed and forced away to the Meuse, and Wellington would have been in the extreme of peril, for both generals were now trying to join hands at Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, and were laying themselves open to the whole force of Napoleon. Ney could have easily fulfilled his mission; but he had lost the confidence of better days; he waited many hours before he even tried to move; and he failed to accomplish his main task, falling from Quatre Bras on the rear of Blücher.

Napoleon, meanwhile, marching from Fleurus, had attacked Blücher between Sombreffe and Ligny. The battle raged furiously for a considerable time, to the disadvantage of the Prussians on the whole, but no decisive success had been won; and the Emperor, perceiving that no force was closing on Blücher from the direction of Ney, tried to attain his object by another method. One of Ney’s corps had advanced slowly; the Emperor directed this towards Blücher’s flank, while Blücher was to be assailed, as before, in front; and had this stroke been pressed home, the result would have been the same as that of the first projected attack. D’Erlon, however, the unlucky chief of this corps, was, when on the path of victory, called up by Ney, hard pressed by Wellington at this moment; and Napoleon, I think, must have concurred in this, for the defeat of Ney would have been disastrous, though this extreme caution was, perhaps, an error. Blücher escaped destruction through these mishaps; but Napoleon’s attack in front had partial success, and the Prussian army was driven, in defeat, from the field. On the other side of the scenes of manœuvre, Ney, we have seen, had not reached Blücher, and had missed his mark; he had most unfortunately recalled D’Erlon, and he had suffered a repulse from the hands of Wellington, who had kept Quatre Bras though with much difficulty. Ney, however, had gained a strategic advantage; he had prevented Wellington from joining Blücher, and as Blücher had been forced away from Sombreffe, the Duke would be compelled to retreat; the line of communication of the allied armies was practically already in Napoleon’s hands; and his operations had been largely successful, if they had not led to a second Jena, as he had reason to expect a few hours before. Such had been the result of his fine strategy, although that result had not been complete; and it should be borne in mind that the allied armies were not far from double his own in numbers.

The allied generals, obliged, through the defeat of Ligny, to abandon their proper line of junction--the great road between Nivelles and Namur--were now thrown back into the country behind it, the thick-wooded and marshy valley of the Dyle, very difficult for the passage of armies. The real student of war will not doubt as to what their movements ought to have been; they should either have united their forces at once, a few miles behind Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, or they should have retreated two marches away to Brussels, where, having an overwhelming superiority of strength, they might have derided Napoleon’s efforts. They took, however, an intermediate course--a half measure often disastrous in war; Blücher fell back some twenty miles to Wavre, the Duke fell back from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, and holding these positions they meant to join hands and accept, if offered, a great battle.

The idolaters of success, supposed to cover everything, have praised this as scientific strategy, but it was bad strategy, and dangerous in the extreme. Wavre is considerably farther from Waterloo than Sombreffe is from Quatre Bras; what is more important, a most intricate country divides Wavre from Waterloo, and in this operation Blücher and Wellington were playing into the hands of their renowned adversary. Napoleon was given three alternatives, each big with the promise of immense success. He might call on his victorious army to make a forced march, might fall either on Blücher or Wellington, and defeat either within a few hours, before Wavre or Waterloo were reached; or collecting together all his forces, he might attack Blücher at Wavre, or the Duke at Waterloo, before either could join the other; or, in truer accordance with the principles of the art, he might restrain Blücher, with a retarding force, sent quickly from Ligny to hold him in check, and might attack Wellington with the mass of his army--the favourite manœuvre, in which he has had no rival--and in any of these cases he must have triumphed, over-matched as he was by his foes in numbers. The double retreat on Wavre and Waterloo was therefore a thoroughly false movement; and the General of Rivoli would have made it fatal. But the General of Rivoli, full of genius as ever, had lost the iron strength of twenty years before. Napoleon returned after Ligny, to Fleurus, ill; he went to sleep and could not see his staff, and this illness, at a crisis in the campaign, saved the Allies, and had momentous results.

During the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, the French army remained motionless. Soult and Ney literally did nothing, no preparations for marching were made; the Emperor sent no orders from Fleurus; and, worst of all, Grouchy given the command of the right on the 16th, made no real effort to reconnoitre the Prussians, and to find out where they had gone. Disease, in fact, had weakened the energy of the chief; his lieutenants, fashioned to servitude, let things drift, and the opportunity of the 16th, given on the 17th once more, was lost never again to return. Napoleon was back at Ligny in the forenoon of the 17th; a letter of Soult, the Chief of the Staff, proves that his first intention was to halt for the day, for he believed that the Prussians, completely routed, were falling back on their base, towards the Meuse, and there would be time, he thought, to turn against and defeat Wellington. On learning, however, from Ney, on the left, that parts of the Duke’s forces were still at Quatre Bras, he resolved to advance, and try to destroy them; and he made preparations, now very late, for a combined movement against the Allies. He divided his army into two groups; at the head of the first, about 72,000 men, he meant to attack Wellington and bring him to bay; he gave Grouchy the second, about 34,000 strong, and he informed the Marshal that his mission was to pursue Blücher and to keep him in sight, and to interpose between Blücher and Wellington who, the Emperor added, was to be assailed should he stand near the neighbouring forest of Soignies.

Napoleon broke up from Ligny early in the afternoon; he was soon joined by Ney at Quatre Bras, and he endeavoured to harass the rearguard of the Duke, who by this time had his main force at Waterloo. The pursuit, however, had no results--it was too late, in fact, to be of use--and an extraordinary tempest of rain had broken over the country, and all but stopped marching. Before night fell, the heads of the French army had reached the low hills that overlook Waterloo, and a large army was evidently in position before them. Napoleon halted, hopeful of a great coming battle; but some hours before he sent directions to Grouchy, on his right, which require attention. Before leaving Ligny the Emperor, we have seen, believed that Blücher was making for his base, and had spoken to Grouchy in that sense; but on his way from Ligny to Quatre Bras he was made aware that a large Prussian force had been seen on the Orneau, near Gembloux. He immediately sent new orders to Grouchy, and directed him to advance on Gembloux, and, of course, generally to comply with his first orders. Grouchy, who had broken up from Ligny late, set off for Gembloux in the afternoon; and though Blücher had had a long start, and Gembloux was by no means the best position to be taken for an advance on Wavre, still the Emperor’s directions were correct enough to have enabled a bold and capable chief to have fulfilled his all-important mission, to have attained Blücher and kept him off from Wellington. Grouchy reached Gembloux rather late at night--the state of the roads and the weather excuse him--and he can hardly be blamed, though the fact is strange, that even at this time he was not informed with perfect accuracy about the Prussian movements. Within a short time, however, he had ascertained that a great part of Blücher’s army had made for Wavre; another part, he was told, was marching on Perwez, towards the Meuse. He communicated this important news to the Emperor, and he expressly added, “that he would advance on Wavre, should the mass of the Prussians go that way, in order to separate Blücher from Wellington,” proving that he perfectly understood his mission.

This intelligence--received during the night of the 17th--was calculated to make Napoleon certain, especially as it was his own idea, that he had nothing to fear from the Prussian army; he thought only of fighting Wellington, and he made preparations to attack on the morrow. The Prussian veteran, however, who more than once had baffled the Emperor by his audacious movements, had resolved, whatever the risk, to advance on Waterloo. He had rallied his whole army around Wavre, his first corps, that of Bülow, had come into line, and he had given his word to the Duke, who on the faith of the pledge was in position to fight at Waterloo, that “the whole Prussian army would be on the field by the early forenoon of the 18th of June.” Blücher nobly endeavoured to fulfil his promise. Bülow broke up from Wavre at daybreak on the 18th, but the obstacles he met were formidable in the extreme; he was still far from Wellington’s lines at noon, and his three colleagues, Ziethen, Pirch and Thielmann, were still close to Wavre, nearly a march distant, and were on a perilous flank march, in long straggling columns.

Meanwhile Grouchy had left Gembloux for Wavre, to follow up the enemy--he had now ascertained that all Blücher’s army had gathered round the place the night before--but his operations were simply wretched. He knew that Napoleon meant to fight Wellington, should Wellington make a stand at Soignies; he knew that he was detached to hold Blücher in check, and to keep him completely apart from Wellington; he knew that the Prussians had been round Wavre, and had informed his master, in part, of the fact; he knew that Wavre was a march from Soignies and Waterloo, and he knew that at Gembloux he was some fourteen miles from Wavre. Knowing all this, he should have left Gembloux at the first peep of dawn on the 18th of June, and have advanced as quickly as possible; and common sense should have taught him so to make for Wavre as to get across the Dyle, in order to draw near Napoleon and to cut off Blücher on his way to Wellington, for probably Blücher was making the attempt. He took exactly the opposite course; he left Gembloux many hours too late; his movement on Wavre was pitiably slow, and he made for Wavre, not over the Dyle, which would have soon placed him on the flank of Blücher, but along the stream, striking Blücher, if reached, in the rear, and pushing him, so to speak, on Wellington. This miserable generalship led to what followed; and Grouchy was so obstinate, and so blind to fact, that when he heard the far-distant thunder of Waterloo, he refused to follow the sagacious advice of Gérard and to march, at the eleventh hour, towards the flank of the enemy!

While these operations, big with a great future, had been taking place on Napoleon’s right, the Emperor had attacked Wellington, who, with faith in his colleague, awaited his foe in a long-studied position. Napoleon had intended to attack early, but the state of the roads and the weather made an attack hazardous, and he delayed some hours, greatly to the Duke’s advantage. The Emperor’s general plan--the last exhibition of his genius in the sphere of higher tactics--was to turn Wellington’s left and to force his centre, making a demonstration to engage his right; his adversary’s was to hold his ground until the arrival of Blücher would make success certain. The grand attack on the British left and centre failed, partly owing to the excellence of the British troops, and partly to the density and cumbrousness of the French columns; and the feint on Wellington’s right had no more success, and led to terrible waste of blood.

By this time Napoleon had learned that Bülow was gathering on his flank with 30,000 men, but he hoped this was a stray column which Grouchy might arrest and perhaps destroy, and he turned fiercely against the centre of his foe, abandoning the effort against the British left, which, with Bülow at hand, would have been too hazardous. This attack was successful to some extent; La Haye Sainte, a fortified post, was captured. This made a gap in Wellington’s defence, and Napoleon, confident that victory was at hand, launched a great mass of cavalry against the Duke’s centre, intending to support the movement with the Imperial Guard. But at this crisis of the battle Blücher was near. Despising wounds, defeat, and days of fatigue, he ordered Bülow to fall on the Emperor’s flank. This prevented the attack the Guard was to make, and though the French horsemen made heroic exertions, the British and German infantry “stood rooted in the earth”; and the cavalry, recklessly squandered by Ney but not supported by foot, were at last beaten.

During all this time, Bülow had been striking Napoleon’s right; but at about 7 this attack seemed spent. The French still occupied the thin red line of Wellington, the artillery of Grouchy was heard at Wavre--a pledge that he was keeping the Prussians back--and victory for France seemed yet possible. Napoleon formed the Guard into two great columns, but Wellington had admirably strengthened his centre; the first column was fairly beaten, and the second, kept in reserve, could give it no aid. A sudden change now came over the battle; parts of the corps of Ziethen and Pirch appeared on the field; the attack of Bülow was fiercely renewed; British squadrons, let loose, swept over the plain; and the Duke, seeing the day was won, ordered a general advance of his worn-out army. The French, routed and surrounded, had soon no army, and night closed on a scene of carnage and ruin, the presage of Napoleon’s second fall.

Napoleon’s plan of attack on his last field was perfect, but his tactics at Waterloo show many errors. He was certainly in difficulties after the flank attack of Bülow, but he allowed his troops to be wasted in the feint on our right; he made a premature use of his noble cavalry, and he perhaps missed an opportunity to strike with the Guard before Bülow’s diversion had become serious. For these mistakes he must be held responsible, though he was badly seconded by his lieutenants, especially by Ney--desperate, and stung by conscience--but all this was because, as is now well known,[23] he was ill and worn out on the 18th of June. The Duke, on the other hand, was the soul of the defence. He made, indeed, a grave strategic mistake in leaving a large detachment far off on his right, but his conduct of the battle was above praise; and though he must have lost Waterloo had not the Prussians come up, still the defeat would not have been the rout to which Napoleon had looked with confidence.

Nevertheless, the result of Waterloo flowed from combinations outside the field. It was caused by the junction of part of Blücher’s army with Wellington; and the question for the student of war is, ought this junction to have been prevented by Grouchy, detached by the Emperor to make it impossible? The answer must largely depend on conjecture; but I, for one, can have few doubts. Had Grouchy left Gembloux at daybreak on the 18th, and, crossing the Dyle, made for Blücher’s flank, he would have surprised the Prussian army in divided columns on a flank march of extreme peril; and, giving Blücher credit for his splendid energy, I am convinced he would have paused to confront his enemy, and this must have prevented him reaching Wellington. The same result would have, perhaps, followed, and this is Napoleon’s deliberate view[24]--not impartial, perhaps, but not to be dismissed--had Grouchy simply marched on Wavre in time, and fastened upon the rear of Blücher. The Emperor insists that, even in this case, not a Prussian division would have attained Waterloo. The arguments urged against these conclusions disregard the peril of the march from Wavre, and the very events of the day confute them. Grouchy, who should have been near Wavre at 11 A.M., did not reach it until 4 P.M., and yet his apparition stopped the Prussian army; Ziethen and Pirch were delayed, Thielmann was left at Wavre, and Blücher brought only 45,000 men, out of 90,000, to the field of Waterloo, and that too only between 4 A.M. and 8 P.M. In view of this fact, I can draw but one inference, and in this controversy all that has been written by Charras, and authors of his school, seems to me worthless.

A word on this memorable campaign, as a whole, and as to the lessons it really teaches. Napoleon’s first operations were a masterpiece of war; and these, and the grave strategic faults of the Allies--Blücher ran into the lion’s mouth, the Duke did not know how sudden was his spring--exposed both to alarming danger, and ought to have secured the Emperor a decisive victory. The errors, however, of Ney and D’Erlon saved Blücher at Ligny from utter ruin, and Napoleon’s over caution as regards D’Erlon--though this is theory after the event--was certainly unfortunate to the interests of France. The double retreat at Wavre and Waterloo--another palpable strategic fault--gave Napoleon a second great opportunity. No doubt can exist for those who understand his career, that he would have seized it early on the 17th had he been the chief of a few years before,[25] but he was no longer equal to prolonged fatigue, and the negligence of his lieutenants and his slumber at Fleurus lost him a chance not again afforded by fortune. His prospects were not equally good on the 18th; he calculated on destroying Wellington, but this, I believe, was beyond his powers, and his delays, and the direction given to Grouchy and his wing, made it possible for Blücher to join Wellington, a possibility that might have been wholly excluded. Nevertheless, he ought to have gained Waterloo. The arrangement of Grouchy’s force was sufficiently correct to have enabled Grouchy to stop Blücher, and though the Emperor made more than one mistake--and supreme genius is not omniscience--we still see in this campaign the matchless strategist, great as ever in intellect, but no longer equal, through physical weakness, to work out his conceptions. Yet when this has been said, justice should be done to the allied chiefs; and they deserved their triumph. Both, no doubt, made serious strategic errors; from first to last they proved themselves to be, strategically, unfit to cope with Napoleon, but both exhibited as soldiers the finest qualities. Blücher’s conduct in rallying his defeated army, and in attempting the march on Waterloo, shows energy of the highest order. Wellington’s constancy and tactical skill at Waterloo are admirable specimens of his genius in defence. The test of the merits of the two commanders is to compare their conduct with what would have been the conduct of any other chief of the Coalition opposed to Napoleon; Schwartzenburg would not have risked the march from Wavre, the Archduke Charles would have fallen back from Waterloo when he found that the promised support was late, and in either event the Emperor would have won the battle. Two subordinate causes of the issue of the campaign cannot, in addition, be passed over. Napoleon’s army was too small; 128,000 men could, with difficulty, be opposed to 224,000, and this led to a distribution of his force--his wings not being well connected with a weak centre--which partly explains his lieutenants’ faults, if it does not afford an excuse for them. The Prussian army, besides, was a different army from that which had succumbed at Jena. Napoleon refused to see the distinction; he would not believe--as, in all instances, disregarding national and popular feeling--that it could rally after Ligny, and draw near Wellington, and this had something to do with his overthrow, though, I repeat, Blücher could not have succeeded had Grouchy been a capable chief.

I shall not dwell on the closing scenes of a most strange and eventful history. Napoleon at St. Helena realised the legend of the fabled Prometheus; Genius, in conflict with Supreme Fact, was chained to a rock, and held down by Force, and humanity turns away from the agony. Yet impartial history will truly say that it was just to deprive the great troubler of the world of liberty, and the animosities and fears of the time account for, if they do not excuse, the indignities suffered by the fallen Emperor. The student of war will turn with gratitude to the rich fruits of Napoleon’s exile, his writings on the art, in thought and style superior to all productions of the kind, and those who imagine that German genius has created the latest developments of war will be surprised to learn that if we omit what belongs to purely material inventions, it has been anticipated at every point by Napoleon.

My estimate of this extraordinary man can be easily gathered from what I have written. Nature gave her prodigy an imagination such as she gave to Dante and Milton; she added a power of calculation and thought, such as she bestowed on Newton and Laplace; she contributed a superabundant and practical energy, embracing alike what was great and small, such as scarcely ever has been seen in man, and she conferred craft, dexterity, readiness, and firmness of character in a most ample measure. Gifts such as these would have made Napoleon one of the greatest of generals in any age; but he fell on a time when the progress of husbandry and facilities of locomotion, greatly increased, had created new conditions for the military art; and when, too, Revolution in France had given a powerful impulse to the human mind, and had made it singularly bold and aspiring. Genius and circumstance thus concurred to place Napoleon almost at once at the head of all warriors of modern times; and for years it seemed, as if Fortune, whatever he did in the field, assured him victory. He was unrivalled, from the first, as a strategist; the plans of his early campaigns are marvels of genius as distinctive as those of Shakspeare or Raphael; but though imagination is their most striking feature, this as yet, as a rule, is controlled by judgment, and astonishing as they are, they are thoroughly practical. The peculiar excellence of these prodigies of art is the mastery of the theatre of war, and Napoleon’s power in making it answer his ends; the campaign on the Adige, that which led to Marengo, and that of Austerlitz are perhaps the finest specimens of this supreme merit. Conceptions, however, in war are useless unless skilful execution follows; and Napoleon’s execution of his strategic projects was more wonderful than the projects themselves. In these operations he, of course, adhered to the methods of his great predecessors, for these were in accord with the nature of things, and carried out principles always true; for example, like every real strategist, his constant object was to bring superior force to the decisive point, and so to baffle and defeat the enemy; and, with these ends in view, like Turenne, he struck repeatedly at the communications of his foe, and endeavoured to gain his flank or rear; or, throwing himself between divided enemies, attacked them in detail, and beat them down in succession. But all this he did with an originality of design, with a force of calculation, and, above all perhaps, with a power of stratagem unequalled by Turenne or by any commander of modern times.

Nothing since the days of Hannibal can be compared to the descent from the Alps, which conquered Italy, and to the march from the Channel to the Danube, which destroyed a whole army by manœuvres, and threw the gates of distant Vienna open. These marvels of war, it must be borne in mind, however, were due not to Napoleon alone; they were to be attributed, in a great degree, to circumstance and to his perfect appreciation of it. From the new conditions made possible in war, from the growth of agriculture and the multiplication of roads, armies could subsist, in every fertile country, for the most part, on resources on the spot, and could therefore dispense, to a certain extent, with _impedimenta_ necessary before; they could also march on a variety of lines with a rapidity never before possible; and the art, so to speak, was given wings, and could take a flight into a new sphere. First of the men of his time, Napoleon grasped these facts; his armies living on the tracts they passed through, and making use of every available road that was compatible with their safety on the march, moved, not without magazines, indeed, nor without a solid base and all kinds of supplies, but with a celerity never before known; and the young chief out-manœuvred and terrified generals accustomed only to the methods of the past. This was one of the secrets of Napoleon’s early success; his genius fell in with and made the most of the new conditions of the art of war, and for a long time he came, he saw, and he conquered. Yet what had been a talisman might prove a peril, should these conditions happen to fail; and history was to illustrate this by most striking examples.

Napoleon was thus the first of strategists; he stands supreme, like a Himalayan peak; there is nothing equal to him in this sphere of the art. He has been surpassed in the lesser tactics; he never was a regimental leader; he commanded in chief at too early an age to have had practical experience of the three arms; he perhaps underrated the strength of infantry, and rather exaggerated the force of cavalry, and the only arm he thoroughly understood was artillery. But in the province of the higher tactics, where strategy and tactics blend with each other, his pre-eminence nearly, if not quite, reappears. He detected the decisive point on a field of battle, and the true way to cope with an enemy, almost as surely as on a great field of manœuvre; but faults I shall notice were here sometimes seen, and I do not think he excelled Marlborough, a tactician of the very first order. As a military administrator he was, perhaps, unrivalled. His industry, his grasp of facts in the mass, and his extraordinary mastery of details were marvellous; and though the Grand Army had many defects, for it was the hasty creation of an age of war, still it was the best army that had been seen since the Legions; and, unlike the conscript armies of our age, it was subjected to trials they have never endured. Napoleon’s _Correspondence_ can alone give us a notion of his administrative powers; and their results are most conspicuous in his immense preparations for the campaign of 1807, for the passage of the Danube in 1809, for the invasion of Russia in 1812; and for the restoration of the military strength of France in 1813 and 1815.

No wonder, then, that this prodigious genius, backed by favouring circumstances, and the French Revolution, should have transformed the art, to a great extent, and have given it an aspect of new grandeur. Turenne did great things between the Scheldt and the Inn; Marlborough did great things between the Meuse and the Danube; Frederick did great things on the Elbe and the Oder; but what were these achievements, splendid as they are, compared to Napoleon’s march of conquest? He moves from the Var to the Po and the Adige, strikes down the power of the House of Hapsburg, and dictates peace within sight of Vienna. He issues from Switzerland across the Alps, envelops his enemy and gains Italy; and had he had a lieutenant equal to himself, he would have destroyed the Austrian armies in Swabia in 1800. He imprisons Mack in 1805, enters Vienna with an army encamped, a few weeks before, within sight of our coasts, and annihilates for a time the military power of Austria and Russia on the great day of Austerlitz, the most perfect battle of the nineteenth century. The tale is the same the following year; the operations are less striking, but Jena overwhelms the army of Frederick, and a few days of well-planned manœuvres makes Napoleon master of the Prussian monarchy.

His unbroken success comes here to an end; but even in his campaigns of chequered fortunes, nay of disasters, we see the same grandeur, marred as it often is, of conception and action. He defies Nature, and receives her warnings in Poland; he narrowly escapes defeat at Eylau, but his genius and will re-establish his power, and he strikes the Czar down on the verge of old Europe. He defies national right and feeling in Spain and Portugal, and meets reverses justly deserved; but he hastens across the Somo Sierra to Madrid, and for the time he subdues the Peninsula. When called back to France by the sound of war on the Danube, he rectifies errors made in his absence by operations of consummate skill; he once more reaches and conquers Vienna, and having challenged Fortune at Aspern and Essling, he answers her rebuff by a prodigious effort of energy and perseverance at Lobau, and he ultimately triumphs on the field of Wagram.

The Nemesis of power attains him at last; his army is engulfed in the snows of Russia, beyond the confines of the Western World, and yet his movements are admirably designed, and his capacity was, perhaps, never more conspicuous than at the Beresina. He reorganizes his forces in 1813, with a rapidity and completeness that confound the Allies; and though he loses at last his hold on Germany, he wins four great battles, is able to make the issue of the contest doubtful for months, and succumbs at Leipsic perhaps through defection only.

In the campaign of 1814 he aims at too much, yet his genius shines out with such malignant splendour that his enemies shrink in terror from it; he is victorious over and over again, and he is only overwhelmed because France and Paris will not support his Empire. In 1815 he sinks at last, through the effects of a crushing military reverse; yet even in this campaign, spite of the faults of lieutenants and the determination and energy of foes, the presence of the great master is seen everywhere; and he only just misses splendid success.

Humanity, however, is never perfect, and there were many flaws in this marvellous nature. The intensity of his imagination occasionally mastered the prudence and calculating powers of Napoleon; we see this even in his early years, in his project to march from the Nile to the Indus, in his scheme of a descent on our coasts in the face of immensely superior fleets; and we see it more clearly in his later campaigns, in the advance from Smolensk into the depths of Muscovy, in the attempt to reconquer the continent in 1813, in the resolution to strike for the whole Empire, and not to recall all his forces to the decisive point on the theatre in 1814. This dangerous quality sometimes marred the strategy of Napoleon, and marked it with extravagance. He was not so safe a strategist as Turenne, and his strategic reverses were as great as his triumphs. Over confidence, too, and extreme arrogance, combined with this excess of imaginative force, form distinctive faults of Napoleon in war. We see them, even from the first, in the campaigns of Italy; they appear plainly in his march on Marengo, and nearly caused him to lose the battle; they are visible in his advance on Austerlitz; they are conspicuous in his campaigns in Poland; they largely contributed to the ruin of 1812; they prevented him from saving his army at Leipsic; they lured him on to his fall in 1814; they are exhibited in 1815, in the false conviction that Blücher, after Ligny, was utterly routed, and could not rally his shattered army.

To this fault must be added another, a kind of passionate desire to crush an enemy, whatever the risk, on the field of battle. Napoleon showed this at Caldiero in 1796; perhaps at Eylau in 1807, distinctly in 1809 at Aspern and Essling; and most remarkably, and with the worst results, at La Rothière, Craonne, Laon, and Arcis in 1814. This even lessens his excellence as a tactician. With his marvellous insight, in comprehending the ground and the weak points of a foe, he sometimes attacked imprudently, and deserved defeat. He had not the calm intelligence of Marlborough on the field, and here he is certainly less great than Marlborough. Napoleon, too, had another defect, of a moral kind, not to be overlooked; no one could hold a prouder or a more daring attitude, no one knew better the power of the renown of arms, but he did not confront misfortune, when hope seemed lost, with the indomitable constancy of some warriors. He was unequal to himself during the retreat from Russia--he ought not, I think, to have quitted his army; he tried to kill himself in 1814; and in this respect he falls below Frederick, who, in all others, is not to be compared to him.

Yet the most marked of his failures and shortcomings as a leader in war have yet to be noticed. He thoroughly understood the material conditions which made his grand offensive strategy possible. Yet he disregarded the fact when these largely failed; he endeavoured to make the same daring movements in barren Poland as in fertile Italy, in the swamps and forests of Russia as in the plains of Germany; and though he laboured to avert the resulting dangers, he could do so only in a slight degree, and he failed when nature began to fail him.

Napoleon, too, had this special fault; he had many of the instincts of the old _régime_; he simply abhorred Jacobinism, and all its doings; he believed in force only as the means of ruling; and throughout his career he had a rooted dislike and contempt of all popular movements and feelings. This tendency led him into capital errors, even from a purely military point of view; he believed that he could conquer England by a descent; he scorned the national rising in Spain, though it destroyed the flower of his best armies; he would not lift a hand to liberate Poland, though this must have disabled the Czar; he would not even at Moscow set the serfs free; he laughed at German and Russian patriotism, and found the results of his scoffs at Leipsic; he called the liberal movement of France at the close of his reign, “metaphysical nonsense and visionary stuff,” and this contributed to his fall in 1814.

In politics in the highest sense, and even in the larger affairs of State, Napoleon did not attain supreme greatness. In this noble province of wisdom and conduct, his genius was not in its true sphere, the force of his intellect was out of its place; he followed false lights, and fell into the gravest errors. His ideas of politics were derived from the ambitious traditions of the old Monarchy, and from the frightful scenes of the French Revolution, and his conception of ruling was to extend the domination of France over a subject Continent, and to keep down anarchy at home by despotic power, magnificent, even national, but sternly repressive. His capacity, his craft, his untiring energy were tasked to the utmost to compass these ends. The Empire bestrode three-fourths of Europe; it extinguished Jacobinism for some years in France, it nursed her in dreams of warlike glory, it established order, prosperity, and material grandeur. Yet this vast fabric of conquest and force, which, like the Satanic temple of the poet’s vision, “rose like an exhalation,” as quickly vanished. The Empire, founded on international wrong, and depending for its existence on the enforced submission of great races conquered, but spurning the yoke, was a defiance to Law divine and human; it was a contradiction to the nature of things; and the methods by which its author upheld it, harsh tyranny, statecraft, and the Continental system, were assurances of his speedy overthrow.

As for Napoleon’s system of domestic government, splendid as it seemed, and as it was for a time, it had no stability and could not endure; it rested on the mere rule of the sword; it had no solid support in old institutions, in settled traditions, in powerful orders of men; it was a despotism controlling a demoralised people, in which revolution had destroyed faith and loyalty. The character, too, of this rule was bad; the execution of the Duc D’Enghien, and many similar deeds of blood, were crimes that shocked the conscience of mankind. Napoleon’s Bodies of State, his spy system, his organized informers, his repression of thought, remind us of the Rome of the later Cæsars; and, curiously enough, he hated Tacitus, the immortal censor of Imperial tyranny. Yet the Empire was not a mere scheme of oppression. It had a grand and beneficent side; it bears the marks of the administrative gifts and capacity of its great creator; it largely civilized while it subdued; it saved France from the vile rule of demagogues; it gave her all that is solid in her social fabric, and the Codes will outlive Marengo and Jena.

A word on Napoleon in his tent and his camp, the natural home of this mighty spirit. The great captain was, in the main, a kind master to submissive lieutenants; he lavished wealth and honours on his generals and marshals; he was usually good-natured to these docile servitors. But his personality was so overpowering that he made his subordinates mere pawns on the board; he deprived them of self-reliance and freedom, and as his nature was not magnanimous, he repeatedly blamed them for his own errors. The results were injurious to him as a chief. Few of his marshals were fit for independent command; they had little power of initiative or true capacity, and they indemnified themselves for his rebukes and gibes by squabbling, and often thwarting each other, as was notably seen in Spain and Portugal. It was otherwise with the mass of the army; here Napoleon’s influence was immense for good. He obtained efforts from French soldiers, which no other chief has ever obtained; his presence among them it has been said, was equal to 40,000 men; he was prodigal of their blood, and set at nought their sufferings, if any object was to be attained; but he was careful of their wants, knew how to win their hearts, and was adored with a truly idolatrous passion.

As has been seen in the case of other great men, the inner life of Napoleon had repulsive features; the figure loses majesty, when undraped of its trappings. He had been brought up in an age of wickedness, and Napoleon could lie, cheat, and forge with complete indifference, if anything was to be gained by it. His manner and voice could charm and fascinate, but his imperious nature made him rude and brusque; he could scold and fly into fits of temper; “his very caresses,” it has been said, “were feline”; he could be coarsely familiar and suddenly savage. In his general bearing there was a want of repose, of true self-respect, of natural dignity. In all these respects, as in the weightier matters which pertain to the master art of Empire, Napoleon falls far behind Cæsar through unquestionably the superior of Cæsar in war.