READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER XI.

WAR OF LIBERATION TO THE PEACE OF PARIS.

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, 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.

When King Frederick William published his declaration of war (March 17), the army of Eugene 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 Blucher, 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: Blucher 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. Blucher 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. Blucher 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 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 Blucher 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 Lutzen: the French advanced, and at midday on the 2nd of May the battle of Lutzen 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 Eugene 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; 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 Blucher 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 Lutzen; the liberation of Germany was only to be wrought by prolonged and obstinate warfare, and by the wholesale sacrifice of Prussian life.

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 Lutzen. 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’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. “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 no longer remain in the position of a dependent ally. 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.

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.

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 forces of whole force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only 100,000 men, 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.

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.

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.

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 Lutzen 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. Blucher 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.

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. Blucher, 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.

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, Blucher 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 Blucher, 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 Lutzen 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.

On the 18th of August the forward movement began. Oudinot advanced from Wittenberg towards Berlin; Napoleon himself hurried into Silesia, intending to deal Blucher 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 Blucher 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 Blucher 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 Konigstein, 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. Blucher 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 Konigstein 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. 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.

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 Blucher 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: Blucher 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 Blucher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6): Blucher, 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 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 Blucher 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”.

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. 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 Wurtemberg 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.

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; Blucher 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. Blucher 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 Blucher 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 Blucher 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 at Duben, between Dresden and Leipzig, restlessly expecting to hear of Blucher'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 Blucher, 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.

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 Mockern, to meet the expected onslaught of Blucher; 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 Blucher's actual appearance in the north; and in the rash hope that Blucher'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 Blucher's first fire. He determined to remain and defend the village of Mockern, though left without support. York, commanding the vanguard of Blucher'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.

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 Blucher, 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.

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; the princes of the Rhenish Confederacy came one after another to make their peace with the Allies; Bulow, 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 Blucher 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.

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 detour 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, 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. Blucher 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.

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.

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.

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 Blucher, 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 Blucher 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. Blucher, however, had already passed St. Dizier when Napoleon reached it. Napoleon pursued, and overtook the Prussians at Brienne. After an indecisive battle, Blucher fell back towards Schwarzenberg. The allied armies effected their junction, and Blucher, 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 Rothiere 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.

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 Chatillon, 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 Rothiere, 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 Chatillon, and the sittings of the Congress were broken off.

Schwarzenberg was now slowly and unwillingly moving forwards along the Seine towards Troyes. Blucher was permitted to return to the Marne, and to advance upon Paris by an independent line of march. He crossed the country between the Aube and the Marne, and joined some divisions which he had left behind him on the latter river. But his dispositions were outrageously careless: his troops were scattered over a space of sixty miles from Châlons westward, as if he had no enemy to guard against except the weak divisions commanded by Mortier and Marmont, which had uniformly fallen back before his advance. Suddenly Napoleon himself appeared at the centre of the long Prussian line at Champaubert. He had hastened northwards in pursuit of Blucher with 30,000 men, as soon as Schwarzenberg entered Troyes; and on February 10th a weak Russian corps that lay in the centre of Blucher’s column was overwhelmed before it was known the Emperor had left the Seine. Then, turning leftwards, Napoleon overthrew the Prussian vanguard at Montmirail, and two days later attacked and defeated Blucher himself, who was bringing up the remainder of his troops in total ignorance of the enemy with whom he had to deal. In four days Blucher's army, which numbered 70,000 men, had thrice been defeated in detail by a force of 30,000. Blucher was compelled to fall back upon Chalons; Napoleon instantly returned to the support of Oudinot's division, which he had left in front of Schwarzenberg. In order to relieve Blucher, the Austrians had pushed forward on the Seine beyond Montereau. Within three days after the battle with Blucher, Napoleon was back upon the Seine, and attacking the heads of the Austrian column. On the 18th of February he gained so decisive a victory at Montereau that Schwarzenberg abandoned the advance, and fell back upon Troyes, sending word to Blucher to come southwards again and help him to fight a great battle. Blucher moved off with admirable energy, and came into the neighbourhood of Troyes within a week after his defeats upon the Marne. But the design of fighting a great battle was given up. The disinclination of the Austrians to vigorous action was too strong to be overcome; and it was finally determined that Schwarzenberg should fall back almost to the plateau of Langres, leaving Blucher to unite with the troops of Bulow which had conquered Holland, and to operate on the enemy's flank and rear.

The effect of Napoleon's sudden victories on the Marne was instantly seen in the councils of the allied sovereigns. Alexander, who had withdrawn his envoy from Chatillon, could no longer hold out against negotiations with Napoleon. He restored the powers of his envoy, and the Congress re-assembled. But Napoleon already saw himself in imagination driving the invaders beyond the Rhine, and sent orders to Caulaincourt to insist upon the terms proposed at Frankfort, which left to France both the Rhenish Provinces and Belgium. At the same time he attempted to open a private negotiation with his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, and to detach him from the cause of the Allies. The attempt failed; the demands now made by Caulaincourt overcame even the peaceful inclinations of the Austrian Minister; and on the 1st of March the Allies signed a new treaty at Chaumont, pledging themselves to conclude no peace with Napoleon that did not restore the frontier of 1791, and to maintain a defensive alliance against France for a period of twenty years. Caulaincourt continued for another fortnight at Chatillon, instructed by Napoleon to prolong the negotiations, but forbidden to accept the only conditions which the Allies were willing to grant.

Blucher was now on his way northwards to join the so-called army of Bernadotte upon the Aisne. Since the Battle of Leipzig, Bernadotte himself had taken no part in the movements of the army nominally under his command. The Netherlands had been conquered by Bulow and the Russian general Winzingerode, and these officers were now pushing southwards in order to take part with Blucher in a movement against Paris. Napoleon calculated that the fortress of Soissons would bar the way to the northern army, and enable him to attack and crush Blucher before he could effect a junction with his colleagues. He set out in pursuit of the Prussians, still hoping for a second series of victories like those he had won upon the Marne. But the cowardice of the commander of Soissons ruined his chances of success. The fortress surrendered to the Russians at the first summons. Blucher met the advanced guard of the northern army upon the Aisne on the 4th of March, and continued his march towards Laon for the purpose of uniting with its divisions which lay in the rear. The French followed, but the only advantage gained by Napoleon was a victory over a detached Russian corps at Craonne. Marmont was defeated with heavy loss by a sally of Blucher from his strong position on the hill of Laon (March 10); and the Emperor himself, unable to restore the fortune of the battle, fell back upon Soissons, and thence marched southward to throw himself again upon the line of the southern army.

Schwarzenberg had once more begun to move forward on the news of Blucher's victory at Laon. His troops were so widely dispersed that Napoleon might even now have cut the line in halves had he known Schwarzenberg's real position. But he made a detour in order to meet Oudinot’s corps, and gave the Austrians time to concentrate at Arcis-sur-Aube. Here, on the 20th of March, Napoleon found himself in face of an army of 100,000 men. His own army was less than a third of that number; yet with unalterable contempt for the enemy he risked another battle. No decided issue was reached in the first day's fighting, and Napoleon remained in position, expecting that Schwarzenberg would retreat during the night. But on the morrow the Austrians were still fronting him. Schwarzenberg had at length learnt his own real superiority, and resolved to assist the enemy no longer by a wretched system of retreat. A single act of firmness on the part of the Austrian commander showed Napoleon that the war of battles was at an end. He abandoned all hope of resisting the invaders in front: it only remained for him to throw himself on to their rear, and, in company with the frontier-garrisons and the army of Lyons, to attack their communications with Germany. The plan was no unreasonable one, if Paris could either have sustained a siege or have fallen into the enemy's hands without terminating the war. But the Allies rightly judged that Napoleon's power would be extinct from the moment that Paris submitted. They received the intelligence of the Emperor's march to the east, and declined to follow him. The armies of Schwarzenberg and Blucher approached one another, and moved together on Paris. It was at Vitry, on March 27th, that Napoleon first discovered that the troops which had appeared to be following his eastward movement were but a detachment of cavalry, and that the allied armies were in full march upon the capital. He instantly called up every division within reach, and pushed forward by forced marches for the Seine, hoping to fall upon Schwarzenberg's rear before the allied vanguard could reach Paris. But at each hour of the march it became more evident that the enemy was far in advance. For two days Napoleon urged his men forward; at length, unable to bear the intolerable suspense, he quitted the army on the morning of the 30th, and drove forward at the utmost speed along the road through Fontainebleau to the capital. As day sank, he met reports of a battle already begun. When he reached the village of Fromenteau, fifteen miles from Paris, at ten o'clock at night, he heard that Paris had actually surrendered.

The Allies had pressed forward without taking any notice of Napoleon’s movements, and at early morning on the 30th they had opened the attack on the north-eastern heights of Paris. Marmont, with the fragments of a beaten army and some weak divisions of the National Guard, had but 35,000 men to oppose to three times that number of the enemy. The Government had taken no steps to arm the people, or to prolong resistance after the outside line of defence was lost, although the erection of barricades would have held the Allies in check until Napoleon arrived with his army. While Marmont fought in the outer suburbs, masses of the people were drawn up on Montmartre, expecting the Emperor's appearance, and the spectacle of a great and decisive battle. But the firing in the outskirts stopped soon after noon: it was announced that Marmont had capitulated. The report struck the people with stupor and fury. They had vainly been demanding arms since early morning; and even after the capitulation unsigned papers were handed about by men of the working classes, advocating further resistance. But the people no longer knew how to follow leaders of its own. Napoleon had trained France to look only to himself: his absence left the masses, who were still eager to fight for France, helpless in the presence of the conqueror: there were enemies enough of the Government among the richer classes to make the entry of the foreigner into Paris a scene of actual joy and exultation. To such an extent had the spirit of caste and the malignant delight in Napoleon’s ruin overpowered the love of France among the party of the old noblesse, that upon the entry of the allied forces into Paris on the 31st of March hundreds of aristocratic women kissed the hands, or the very boots and horses, of the leaders of the train, and cheered the Cossacks who escorted a band of French prisoners, bleeding and exhausted, through the streets.

Napoleon's reign was indeed at an end. Since the rupture of the Congress of Chatillon on the 18th of March, the Allies had determined to make his dethronement a condition of peace. As the end approached, it was seen that no successor was possible but the chief of the House of Bourbon, although Austria would perhaps have consented to the establishment of a Regency under the Empress Marie Louise, and the Czar had for a time entertained the project of placing Bernadotte at the head of the French State. Immediately after the entry into Paris it was determined to raise the exile Louis XVIII. to the throne. The politicians of the Empire who followed Talleyrand were not unwilling to unite with the conquerors, and with the small party of Royalist noblesse, in recalling the Bourbon dynasty. Alexander, who was the real master of the situation, rightly judged Talleyrand to be the man most capable of enlisting the public opinion of France on the side of the new order. He took up his abode at Talleyrand's house, and employed this dexterous statesman as the advocate both of the policy of the Allies, and of the principles of constitutional liberty, which at this time Alexander himself sincerely befriended. A Provisional Government was appointed under Talleyrand's leadership. On the 2nd of April the Senate proclaimed the dethronement of Napoleon. On the 6th it published a Constitution, and recalled the House of Bourbon.

Louis XVIII was still in England: his brother, the Count of Artois, had joined the invaders in France and assumed the title of Lieutenant of the Kingdom; but the influence of Alexander was necessary to force this obstinate and unteachable man into anything like a constitutional position. The Provisional Government invited the Count to take up the administration until the King's arrival, in virtue of a decree of the Senate. D'Artois declined to recognise the Senate’s competency, and claimed the Lieutenancy of the Kingdom as his brother's representative. The Senate refusing to admit the Count’s divine right, some unmeaning words were exchanged when d'Artois entered Paris; and the Provisional Government, disregarding the claims of the Royal Lieutenant, continued in the full exercise of its powers. At length the Czar insisted that d'Artois should give way. The decree of the Senate was accordingly accepted by him at the Tuileries on the 14th of April; the Provisional Government retired, and a Council of State was formed, in which Talleyrand still continued to exercise the real powers of government. In the address made by d'Artois on this occasion, he stated that although the King had not empowered him to accept the Constitution made by the Senate on the 6th of April, he entertained no doubt that the King would accept the principles embodied in that Constitution, which were those of Representative Government, of the freedom of the press, and of the responsibility of ministers. A week after d'Artois’ declaration, Louis XVIII arrived in France.

Louis XVIII, though capable of adapting himself in practice to a constitutional system, had never permitted himself to question the divine right of the House of Bourbon to sovereign power. The exiles who surrounded him were slow to understand the needs of the time. They recommended the King to reject the Constitution. Louis made an ambiguous answer when the Legislative Body met him at Compiegne and invited an expression of the royal policy. It was again necessary for the Czar to interfere, and to explain to the King that France could no longer be an absolute monarchy. Louis, however, was a better arguer than the Count of Artois. He reasoned as a man whom the sovereigns of Europe had felt it their duty to restore without any request from himself. If the Senate of Napoleon, he urged, had the right to give France a Constitution, he himself ought never to have been brought from his peaceful English home. He was willing to grant a free Constitution to his people in exercise of his own royal rights, but he could not recognise one created by the servants of an usurper. Alexander was but half satisfied with the liberal professions of Louis: he did not, however, insist on his acceptance of the Constitution drawn up by the Senate, but he informed him that until the promises made by d'Artois were confirmed by a royal proclamation, there would be no entry into Paris. The King at length signed a proclamation written by Talleyrand, and made his festal entry into the capital on the 3rd of May.

The promises of Louis himself, the unbroken courtesy and friendliness shown by the Allies to Paris since their victory a month before, had almost extinguished the popular feeling of hostility towards a dynasty which owed its recall to the overthrow of French armies. The foreign leaders themselves had begun to excite a certain admiration and interest. Alexander was considered, and with good reason, as a generous enemy; the simplicity of the King of Prussia, his misfortunes, his well-remembered gallantry at the Battle of Jena, gained him general sympathy. It needed but little on the part of the returning Bourbons to convert the interest and curiosity of Paris into affection. The cortege which entered the capital with Louis XVIII brought back, in a singular motley of obsolete and of foreign costumes, the bearers of many unforgotten names. The look of the King himself, as he drove through Paris, pleased the people. The childless father of the murdered Duke of Enghien gained the pitying attention of those few who knew the face of a man twenty-five years an exile. But there was one among the members of the returning families whom every heart in Paris went out to meet. The daughter of Louis XVI, who had shared the captivity of her parents and of her brother, the sole survivor of her deeply-wronged house, now returned as Duchess of Angouleme. The uniquely mournful history of her girlhood, and her subsequent marriage with her cousin, the son of the Count of Artois, made her the natural object of a warmer sympathy than could attach to either of the brothers of Louis XVI. But adversity had imprinted its lines too deeply upon the features and the disposition of this joyless woman for a moment's light to return. Her voice and her aspect repelled the affection which thousands were eager to offer to her. Before the close of the first days of the restored monarchy, it was felt that the Bourbons had brought back no single person among them who was capable of winning the French nation's love.

The recall of the ancient line had been allowed to appear to the world as the work of France itself; Napoleon's fate could only be fixed by his conquerors. After the fall of Paris, Napoleon remained at Fontainebleau awaiting events. The soldiers and the younger officers of his army were still ready to fight for him; the marshals, however, were utterly weary, and determined that France should no longer suffer for the sake of a single man. They informed Napoleon that he must abdicate. Yielding to their pressure, Napoleon, on the 3rd of April, drew up an act of abdication in favour of his infant son, and sent it by Caulaincourt to the allied sovereigns at Paris. The document was rejected by the Allies; Caulaincourt returned with the intelligence that Napoleon must renounce the throne for himself and all his family. For a moment the Emperor thought of renewing the war; but the marshals refused their aid more resolutely than before, and, on the 6th of April, Napoleon signed an unconditional surrender of the throne for himself and his heirs. He was permitted by the Allies to retain the unmeaning title of Emperor, and to carry with him a body-guard and a considerable revenue to the island of Elba, henceforward to be his principality and his prison. The choice of this island, within easy reach of France and Italy, and too extensive to be guarded without a large fleet, was due to Alexander's ill-judged generosity towards Napoleon, and to a promise made to Marmont that the liberty of the Emperor should be respected. Alexander was not left without warning of the probable effects of his leniency. Sir Charles Stewart, military representative of Great Britain at the allied head-quarters, urged both his own and the allied Governments to substitute some more distant island for Elba, if they desired to save Europe from a renewed Napoleonic war, and France from the misery of a second invasion. The Allies, though not without misgivings, adhered to their original plan, and left it to time to justify the predictions of their adviser.

It was well known what would be the terms of peace, now that Napoleon was removed from the throne. The Allies had no intention of depriving France of any of the territory that it had held before 1792: the conclusion of a definitive Treaty was only postponed until the Constitution, which Alexander required King Louis XVIII to grant, had been drawn up by a royal commission and approved by the King. On the 27th of May the draft of this Constitution, known as the Charta, was laid before the King, and sanctioned by him; on the 30th, the Treaty of Paris was signed by the representatives of France and of all the great Powers. France, surrendering all its conquests, accepted the frontier of the 1st of January, 1792, with a slight addition of territory on the side of Savoy and at points on its northern and eastern border. It paid no indemnity. It was permitted to retain all the works of art accumulated by twenty years of rapine, except the trophies carried from the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin and the spoils of the Library of Vienna. It received back nearly all the colonies which had been taken from it by Great Britain. By the clauses of the Treaty disposing of the territory that had formed the Empire and the dependencies of Napoleon, Holland was restored to the House of Orange, with the provision that its territory should be largely increased; Switzerland was declared independent; it was stipulated that Italy, with the exception of the Austrian Provinces, should consist of independent States, and that Germany should remain distributed among a multitude of sovereigns, independent, but united by a Federal tie. The navigation of the Rhine was thrown open. By a special agreement with Great Britain the French Government undertook to unite its efforts to those of England in procuring the suppression of the Slave-trade by all the Powers, and pledged itself to abolish the Slave-trade among French subjects within five years at the latest. For the settlement of all European questions not included in the Treaty of Paris it was agreed that a Congress of the Powers should, within two months, assemble at Vienna. These were the public articles of the Treaty of Paris. Secret clauses provided that the Allies-that is, the Allies independently of France-should control the distributions of territory to be made at the Congress; that Austria should receive Venetia and all Northern Italy as far as the Ticino; that Genoa should be given to the King of Sardinia; and that the Southern Netherlands should be united into a single kingdom with Holland, and thus form a solid bulwark against France on the north. No mention was made of Naples, whose sovereign, Murat, had abandoned Napoleon and allied himself with Austria, but without fulfilling in good faith the engagements into which he had entered against his former master. A nominal friend of the Allies, he knew that he had played a double game, and that his sovereignty, though not yet threatened, was insecure.

Much yet remained to be settled by the Congress at Vienna, but in the Treaty of Paris two at least of the great Powers saw the objects attained for which they had straggled so persistently through all the earlier years of the war, and which at a later time had appeared to pass almost out of the range of possibility. England saw the Netherlands once more converted into a barrier against France, and Antwerp held by friendly hands. Austria reaped the full reward of its cool and well-balanced diplomacy during the crisis of 1813, in the annexation of an Italian territory that made it the real mistress of the Peninsula. Castlereagh and every other English politician felt that Europe had done itself small honour in handing Venice back to the Hapsburg; but this had been the condition exacted by Metternich at Prague before he consented to throw the sword of Austria into the trembling scale; and the Republican traditions both of Venice and of Genoa counted for little among the statesmen of 1814, in comparison with the divine right of a Duke of Modena or a Prince of Hesse Cassel. France itself, though stripped of the dominion won by twenty years of warfare, was permitted to retain, for the benefit of a restored line of kings, the whole of its ancient territory, and the spoil of all the galleries and museums of Western Europe. It would have been no unnatural wrong if the conquerors of 1814 had dealt with the soil of France as France had dealt with other lands; it would have been an act of bare justice to restore to its rightful owners the pillage that had been brought to Paris, and to recover from the French treasury a part of the enormous sums which Napoleon had extorted from conquered States. But the Courts were too well satisfied with their victory to enter into a strict account upon secondary matters; and a prudent regard on the part of the Allies to the prospects of the House of Bourbon saved France from experiencing what it had inflicted upon others.

The policy which now restored to France the frontier of 1792 was viewed with a very different feeling in France and in all other countries. Europe looked with a kind of wonder upon its own generosity; France forgot the unparalleled provocations which it had offered to mankind, and only remembered that Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces had formed part of the Republic and the Empire for nearly twenty years. These early conquests of the Republic, which no one had attempted to wrest from France since 1795, had undoubtedly been the equivalent for which, in the days of the Directory, Austria had been permitted to extend itself in Italy, and Prussia in Germany. In the opinion of men who sincerely condemned Napoleon's distant conquests, the territory between France and the Rhine was no more than France might legitimately demand, as a counterpoise to the vast accessions falling to one or other of the Continental Powers out of the territory of Poland, Venice, and the body of suppressed States in Germany. Poland, excluding the districts taken from it before 1792, contained a population twice as great as that of Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces together: Venice carried with it, in addition to a commanding province on the Italian mainland, the Eastern Adriatic Coast as far as Ragusa. If it were true that the proportionate increase of power formed the only solid principle of European policy, France sustained a grievous injury in receiving back the limits of 1791, when every other State on the Continent was permitted to retain the territory, or an equivalent for the territory, which it had gained in the great changes that took place between 1791 and 1814. But in fact there had never been a time during the last hundred and fifty years when France, under an energetic Government, had not possessed a force threatening to all its neighbours. France, reduced to its ancient limits, was still the equal, and far more than the equal, of any of the Continental Powers, with all that they had gained during the Revolutionary War. It remained the first of European nations, though no longer, as in the eighteenth century, the one great nation of the western continent. Its efforts after universal empire had aroused other nations into life. Had the course of French conquest ceased before Napoleon grasped power, France would have retained its frontier of the Rhine, and long have exercised an unbounded influence over both Germany and Italy, through the incomparably juster and brighter social life which the Revolution, combined with all that France had inherited from the past, enabled it to display to those countries. Napoleon, in the attempt to impose his rule upon all Europe, created a power in Germany whose military future was to be not less solid than that of France itself, and left to Europe, in the accord of his enemies, a firmer security against French attack than any that the efforts of statesmen had ever framed.

The league of the older monarchies had proved stronger in the end than the genius and the ambition of a single man. But if, in the service of Napoleon, France had exhausted its wealth, sunk its fleets, and sacrificed a million lives, only that it might lose all its earlier conquests, and resume limits which it had outgrown before Napoleon held his first command, it was not thus with the work which, for or against itself, France had effected in Europe during the movements of the last twenty years. In the course of the epoch now ending the whole of the Continent up to the frontiers of Austria and Russia had gained the two fruitful ideas of nationality and political freedom. There were now two nations in Europe where before there had been but aggregates of artificial States. Germany and Italy were no longer mere geographical expressions: in both countries, though in a very unequal degree, the newly- aroused sense of nationality had brought with it the claim for unity and independence. In Germany, Prussia had set a great example, and was hereafter to reap its reward; in Italy there had been no State and no statesman to take the lead either in throwing off Napoleon's rule, or in forcing him, as the price of support, to give to his Italian kingdom a really national government. Failing to act for itself, the population of all Italy, except Naples, was parcelled out between Austria and the ancient dynasties; but the old days of passive submission to the foreigner were gone for ever, and time was to show whether those were the dreamers who thought of a united Italy, or those who thought that Metternich’s statesmanship had for ever settled the fate of Venice and of Milan.

The second legacy of the Revolutionary epoch, the idea of constitutional freedom, which in 1789 had been as much wanting in Spain, where national spirit was the strongest, as in those German States where it was the weakest, had been excited in Italy by the events of 1796 and 1798, in Spain by the disappearance of the Bourbon king and the self-directed struggle of the nation against the invader; in Prussia it had been introduced by the Government itself when Stein was at the head of the State. “It is impossible,” wrote Lord Castlereagh in the spring of 1814, “not to perceive a great moral change coming on in Europe, and that the principles of freedom are in full operation.” There was in fact scarcely a Court in Europe which was not now declaring its intention to frame a Constitution. The professions might be lightly made; the desire and the capacity for self-government might still be limited to a narrower class than the friends of liberty imagined; but the seed was sown, and a movement had begun which was to gather strength during the next thirty years of European history, while one revolution after another proved that Governments could no longer with safety disregard the rights of their subjects.

Lastly, in all the territory that had formed Napoleon's Empire and dependencies, and also in Prussia, legal changes had been made in the rights and relations of the different classes of society, so important as almost to create a new type of social life. Within the Empire itself the Code Napoleon, conferring upon the subjects of France the benefits which the French had already won for themselves, had superseded a society resting on class-privilege, on feudal service, and on the despotism of custom, by a society resting on equality before the law, on freedom of contract, and on the unshackled ownership and enjoyment of land, whether the holder possessed an acre or a league. The principles of the French Code, if not the Code itself, had been introduced into Napoleon's kingdom of Italy, into Naples, and into almost all the German dependencies of France. In Prussia the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg had been directed, though less boldly, towards the same end; and when, after 1814, the Rhenish Provinces were annexed to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna, the Government was wise enough and liberal enough to leave these districts in the enjoyment of the laws which France had given them, and not to risk a comparison between even the best Prussian legislation and the Code Napoleon. In other territory now severed from France and restored to German or Italian princes, attempts were not wanting to obliterate the new order and to re-introduce the burdens and confusions of the old regime. But these reactions, even where unopposed for a time, were too much in conflict with the spirit of the age to gain more than a temporary and precarious success. The people had begun to know good and evil: examples of a free social order were too close at hand to render it possible for any part of the western continent to relapse for any very long period into the condition of the eighteenth century.

It was indeed within a distinct limit that the Revolutionary epoch effected its work of political and social change. Neither England nor Austria received the slightest impulse to progress. England, on the contrary, suspended almost all internal improvement during the course of the war; the domestic policy of the Austrian Court, so energetic in the reign immediately preceding the Revolution, became for the next twenty years, except where it was a policy of repression, a policy of pure vacancy and inaction. But in all other States of Western Europe the period which reached its close with Napoleon's fall left deep and lasting traces behind it. Like other great epochs of change, it bore its own peculiar character. It was not, like the Renaissance and the Reformation, a time when new worlds of faith and knowledge transformed the whole scope and conception of human life; it was not, like our own age, a time when scientific discovery and increased means of communication silently altered the physical conditions of existence; it was a time of changes directly political in their nature, and directly effected by the political agencies of legislation and of war. In the perspective of history the Napoleonic age will take its true place among other, and perhaps greater, epochs. Its elements of mere violence and disturbance will fill less space in the eyes of mankind; its permanent creations, more. As an epoch of purely political energy, concentrating the work of generations within the compass of twenty five years, it will perhaps scarcely find a parallel.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RESTORATION