Chapter 36

THE NATIONS IN GRAND ARRAY[49]

[Footnote 49: References: Von Odeleben, Napoleons Feldzug in Sachsen im Jahre 1813. Yorck, Napoleon als Feldherr. Weil, Campagne de 1813.]

Condition of Affairs after Bautzen -- The Armistice of Poischwitz -- Austria's New Terms -- Napoleon's Reliance on his Dynastic Influence -- Intervention of British Agents -- Napoleon's Interview with Metternich -- The Emperor's Wrath -- Metternich's Determination -- Wellington's Victories -- Napoleon at Mainz -- The Coalition Completed -- Diplomatic Fencing -- Renewal of Hostilities -- The Responsibility.

Napoleon determined, however, to deliberate on the strongest possible vantage-ground, and for this reason continued his pursuit as far as Breslau, which was occupied by the end of the month. Simultaneously Berlin was threatened by Oudinot, Victor had relieved Glogau, and Vandamme was marching to Davout's assistance, so that Hamburg was safely in hand. The allied forces stood behind Schweidnitz, and by the same marvelous strategy as of old the various corps of the French army were disposed, under Ney, Lauriston, Reynier, Macdonald, and Bertrand, so as virtually to engirdle the enemy. Napoleon was at Neumarkt with the guard; a single bold dash southward toward the Eulen Mountains with his concentering force, and he would have crushed his opponents. But another victory like Luetzen and Bautzen would reduce his army still further, and then in his weakness he would be confronted by the hundred thousand Austrians which, according to the best advices, his father-in-law had assembled in Bohemia. In that juncture Francis might risk a battle, and if successful he could dictate not merely an armistice, but the terms of peace--a contingency more terrible than any other. Time, moreover, seemed quite as valuable to the Emperor of the French as to his foe: while they were calling in reserves and strengthening their ranks, his hundred and eighty thousand conscripts of 1814 could be marched to the Elbe, and Eugene could complete his work in Italy. Ignorant of the panic at his enemy's headquarters, the uneasy conqueror decided therefore that his best course was, by exhibiting a desire for peace and assenting to an armistice, to avoid the general reprobation of Europe. Accordingly, he took another disastrous step, and accepted the proposal of the allies for a conference.

How earnestly Napoleon desired peace appears from his spontaneous concessions. He would agree to the evacuation of Breslau for the sake of harmony, and would consent to such a truce as the majesty of a ruler and the rights of a successful general might alike exact; but he would not be treated like a besieged commander. Hamburg should remain as it was at the conclusion of negotiations, and the duration of the armistice must be longer than the term proposed--six weeks at the least. On these two points he took his stand. The fatal armistice of Poischwitz was signed at that village on June fourth by three commissioners, Shuvaloff for Russia, Kleist for Prussia, and Caulaincourt for France. It was a compromise providing for a neutral zone, stretching from the mouth of the Elbe southeastward to Bohemia, which was to separate the combatants until July twentieth. Hostilities might not be renewed until August first. Breslau was to be evacuated; Hamburg was to remain as the truce found it. These terms were reached only after much bluster, the allies, weak and disorganized as they were, demanding at first the evacuation of both Breslau and Hamburg, with a cessation of arms for a month. This stand they took in reliance partly on England, partly on Austria. The compromise, as mutually accepted, was reached in spite of British influence when Francis, apparently nervous and anxious, arrived at Gitschin, near the Bohemian frontier, and opened a conference with Nesselrode.

At Vienna men had said, when the news of Bautzen came, that the conqueror was perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil--certainly not a man. The cabinet had seen with alarm his attempt to negotiate directly with the Czar. Success in winning Russia would put Austria again at Napoleon's mercy; Alexander must be kept in warlike humor at all hazards. Nesselrode demanded nothing less than Austria's adherence to the coalition; Francis was still unready to fight; and Metternich, displaying all his adroitness, finally wrung from Nesselrode a basis for mediation comprising six articles: the extinction of Warsaw, the enlargement of Prussia by her Polish provinces and Dantzic, the restoration of Illyria to Austria, the independence of the Hanseatic towns, the dissolution of the Rhenish Confederacy, and the restoration of Prussia's western boundaries to the lines of 1806. This was a "minimum" considerably smaller than that proposed before Bautzen; but the allies could well accept it if Austria would promise never to take sides with France, as Metternich is said to have verbally assured the Czar in a secret meeting would be the case. On June twenty-seventh it was formally arranged that a congress to pacify the Continent on this basis should be held preliminary to a general peace including England; and the treaty binding Russia, Prussia, and Austria to alliance in case of Napoleon's refusal was signed that day in secret at Reichenbach. Should Napoleon reject Austria's articles of mediation, she was, on July twentieth, to join the coalition, and fight not only until he was driven behind the Rhine, but until the fortresses on the Oder and the Vistula were evacuated, Italy liberated, Spain restored to the Bourbons, and Austria reenlarged to her boundaries of 1805.

"If the allies do not in good faith desire peace," said Napoleon on June fifth, as he left his headquarters for Dresden, "this armistice may prove fatal to us." Late in life he believed that if he had in his great crisis marched right on, Austria would not have declared against him. Shrewd as he was, he was a tyro in dynastic politics. Austria has been made, aggrandized, and saved by marriages; but no conception of the duty imposed on families by that relation as understood in private life has ever controlled her politics. Francis was never unwilling to use his daughter for public ends, and seems to have delighted in the construction of family feeling formed in his son-in-law's mind by homely sentiment. It is preposterous to suppose that Napoleon really entertained such a view of his marriage as that of the Parisian bourgeois; but viewing himself as an established dynastic ruler, he could well imagine that when Austria had her choice between two purely dynastic alliances, she would, for the sake of Maria Louisa, have chosen that with France. This rather simple conception he seems to have entertained for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met, the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough--"yes, the marriage; it was a match founded on political considerations, but--" and the conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head.

Napoleon's first instinct of treachery was that of the general, and it was sound. His suspicions were fully aroused as soon as he reached Dresden; for Bubna began at once to stickle for antiquated formalities in negotiation, and stung Napoleon to exasperation by his evident determination to procrastinate. Accordingly the Emperor summoned Metternich to a personal meeting. The minister could not well explain. Since Castlereagh's return to power in January, 1812, Great Britain had kept at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna able diplomats ready, with purse in hand, to pay almost any sum for a strong coalition. It had been the appearance of Sir Charles Stewart from Berlin, and of Lord Cathcart from St. Petersburg, at the allied headquarters which accounted for the arrogant firmness of Shuvaloff and Kleist, and determined the character of the armistice. On June fourteenth and fifteenth those envoys further concluded treaties with Prussia and Russia respectively which explain the performances of Bubna at Dresden, and of the congress which later met at Prague. Prussia promised, in return for a subsidy of two thirds of a million pounds sterling, to cede a certain portion of lower Saxony, with the bishopric of Hildesheim, to the electorate of Hanover, and agreed to keep on foot eighty thousand men; Russia was to maintain a hundred and sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million pounds, and for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to receive a further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were in conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England, Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate separately with France.

In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,--namely, the armistice, these two subsidy treaties, and the secret treaty of June twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,--it seems futile to discuss the question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in his famous interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh--an interview which lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until nearly nine at night, and has improperly been considered as the turning-point in Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's intervention had amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing. Of this Napoleon had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister described his interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects, of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet silence as to certain points--a trick he may have learned from Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to have charged his princely interlocutor with venality!

Probably all this is true: the professional soldier's point of view is terrible to the laity. Kossuth declared to a trustworthy witness that he had seen the letters of Maria Louisa which betrayed her husband to her father; and no one has ever denied that Napoleon was a fair judge of character, and called a spade a spade when he was angry. And angry he was. Here was the man who had plumed himself on the Bonaparte-Hapsburg alliance, who had hitherto professed the most ardent personal esteem for Napoleon himself, and who had so far found Austria's highest welfare in supporting the Napoleonic system. And what was his conduct? A complete and sudden reversal of his previous behavior, personal insolence, and public scorn. Then and there he demanded the suspension, at least temporarily, of the treaty of alliance between Austria and France--a paper solemnly negotiated by himself but little more than one short year earlier; then, too, he demanded a further prolongation of the armistice while the peace congress held its sessions, and, coldly throwing every other consideration to the winds, gave his victim to understand that Austria was no longer a mediator, but an armed arbiter, determined to regain her glory by the line of least resistance--that is, by alliance with Russia, in order to secure a continental peace, to which Great Britain should not be a party.

Is it wonderful that under such provocation Napoleon's hot Corsican blood boiled over, or that his unruly tongue uttered startling language? The time had come when he must recognize masters and laws, and it was not easy. At thirty, as he liked to boast, he had gained victories, appeased a popular storm, fused parties, and rallied a nation. Further, for years he had made sport of European dynasties, and in particular had found that of Austria both double-faced and time-serving. Having taken a leaf from her book, he had become her dupe, and it was hard to bear the consequences. The stormy side of the famous interview is therefore unimportant historically; its only significance is that it marks the last stage in the evolution of Austrian diplomacy. Being now strong enough to reassert equality with France in the councils of Europe, the Hapsburg empire was about to act. Metternich believed that Alexander's aid would be more valuable than Napoleon's, and in a letter to his master, written two days after the famous interview, he explained that through a continental peace lay the line of least resistance. The arrangement he suggested to Napoleon would leave England and France to renew the struggle and fight until exhausted, while Austria, Russia, and Prussia were recuperating. Napoleon's one weapon against England was his Continental System; on the morrow of a victorious campaign he could not so easily throw it down. If there was to be a continental peace, and not a general one, it must be made after a final decisive victory; and to assemble his troops for a grand battle with Austria, Russia, and Prussia, he needed time. The Poischwitz armistice was his first fatal blunder; before the close of the interview he consented to its prolongation until August tenth, ostensibly that the Congress of Prague might arrange terms for a continental peace; and this was his undoing.

The Congress of Prague was a puppet-show, and has no place in history except as it displayed the character of Metternich, deceiving himself to its close with the belief that he was what he professed to be--an armed mediator turning the course of European politics back into dynastic channels. In reality it was as Napoleon said--he believed himself to be directing everybody, when everything was directing him. Behind the puppets were Alexander's fatalism, Prussia's regenerated nationality, the half-awakened sensibility of Austria, and lastly, British gold with British victories. Wellington had finally focused the national power of Spain, and was actually menacing the soil of France. His famous "march to Vitoria," as it has been called because of the decisive battle fought at that place on June twenty-first, 1813, forced Napoleon finally to abandon Spain. Already the Emperor had withdrawn his choicest veterans thence, and he was well aware how futile any further struggles for Joseph's throne must be. His conduct, therefore, was perfectly consistent; with a bold front he laid down the ultimatum of _uti possidetis_ for the congress, and left for Mainz, where he remained from July twenty-fifth to August first, arranging his military plans for the defense of the Pyrenees, and despatching Soult, who went against his will, for the campaign which sealed the marshal's reputation as a great soldier. Doubtless, too, Napoleon felt that distance from the absurd congress would absolve him from the guilt of its empty pretense.

There, too, he met his empress; perhaps he fondly dreamed that she might intercede with her sire; in the long interviews they held he was probably drilling her in the functions of a regent chosen to sustain in Paris the tottering cause of her consort and her child. Fouche, too, was recalled from his suspicious retirement to untangle the thread of Austrian duplicity. But the long hours of consultation, arrangement, and execution were mainly concerned, we may suppose, with the hurrying in of new levies, the raising of cavalry, the creation of artillery, and the general preparation for the life-and-death struggle which was soon to take place. The Danish alliance was strengthened, and Murat by strenuous efforts was kept within the shadowy lines of the vanishing Napoleonic system. Beugnot, then head of the French regency of Berg, was one day called at a moment's notice to act as amanuensis, and in a flurry twice took his Emperor's chair. "So you are determined to sit in my seat," was Napoleon's simple remark; "you have chosen a bad time for it." The mayor of Mainz was St. Andre, a stanch conventional of the old school; another day he and Beugnot, with the Prince of Nassau, accompanied the visitor on a river excursion, and the Emperor, scanning with intense interest the castle of Biberich, leaned far over the boat. "What a curious attitude," whispered the veteran revolutionary to the terrified Beugnot; "the fate of the world depends on a kick or two."

The fate of the world was not in jeopardy, and the seat of Napoleon as Emperor of the West was not to be occupied by another; but the affairs of the Continent were to be readjusted, the beneficent work of the Revolution was to be transferred to other hands, and the notion of Western empire was to vanish like other baseless fabrics. The diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, Castlereagh's envoy at Vienna, had succeeded before Napoleon returned to Dresden, and the treaty of eventual triple alliance, signed at Reichenbach on June twenty-seventh, was made good on August first by Francis, who agreed, in return for an enormous subsidy from Great Britain, to join Russia and Prussia with two hundred thousand men. The rosters of Austria's army had been surreptitiously obtained by French agents in Prague. Napoleon was aghast as he read the proof of her gigantic efforts. At once he redoubled his own, and began to unfold a marvelous diplomatic shrewdness. With Poland's three despoilers thus united in England's pay, his isolation would be complete; a few days only remained until the expiration of the armistice; he had but one arrow left in his quiver, and he determined to speed it: to bribe Austria into neutrality by accepting her conditions and restoring the national equilibrium of Europe.

The proposition was made, and staggered Francis; for two days he dallied, and then made a counter-proposition with a new clause, which secured, not the emancipation of states, but dynastic independence for the sovereigns of the Rhine Confederation. This drew the veil from Metternich's policy. Afraid of a German nationality in which Prussia would inevitably secure the hegemony, he was determined to perpetuate the rivalries of petty potentates, and regain Austria's ascendancy in Germany as well as in Italy. This, too, would strip Napoleon of his German troops, and confine France to the west shore of the Rhine, even though it left Westphalia and Berg under French rulers. Such a contingency was abhorrent to one still pretending to Western empire, and Napoleon in turn procrastinated until the evening of the ninth, when, as a final compromise, he offered the dismemberment of Warsaw, the freedom of Dantzic and Illyria, including Fiume, but retaining Triest. But by this time dynastic jealousy had done its work at Prague, and when these terms were communicated to the plenipotentiaries unofficially, Cathcart's bellicose humor, which was heightened by the news from Wellington, served to complement Alexander's jealousy of Austria's rising power. The Prussian nationalists, too, saw their emancipation indefinitely postponed; and since the communication of Napoleon's ultimatum was unofficial, and an official notification had not arrived at midnight on the tenth, the commissioners of Russia and Prussia rose at the stroke of the clock, and informed Metternich that, their powers having expired, he was bound by the terms of Reichenbach.

Metternich kept up his mask, and continued to discuss with Caulaincourt the items of Napoleon's proposition, but the other diplomats gave vent to their delight. Humboldt lingered until Austria's formal declaration of war was under way to Dresden; simultaneously beacons, prearranged for the purpose on Bohemian hills, flashed the welcome news to the expectant armies of Russia and Prussia. Napoleon still stood undismayed by forms, for under the terms of the armistice a week's notice must be given before the renewal of hostilities. On the thirteenth he offered Austria everything except Hamburg and Triest; on the fifteenth he offered even these great ports. But technical right was on the side of war, and his proposals were refused.

Where the blame or merit for the renewal of hostilities rests will ever remain a matter of opinion. Amid the tangles of negotiation, it must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition with the necessary subsidies. If we view the negotiations of Poischwitz and Prague in connection with Napoleon's whole career, they appear to have run in a channel prepared by his boundless ambition; if we isolate them and scrutinize their course, we must think him the moral victor. Whatever he may have been before, he was now eager for peace, and sincere in his professions. Believing himself to have acted generously when Austria was under his feet, he was outraged when he saw that he had been duped by her subsequent course. The concessions to which he was forced appear to have been made slowly, because what he desired was not a continental peace in the interests of the Hapsburgs, but a general peace in the interest of all Europe as represented by the Empire and the dynasty which he had founded. At this distance of time, and in the light of intervening history, some credit should be given to his insight, which convinced him that strengthened nationality, as well as renewed dynastic influence, might retard the liberalizing influences of the Revolution, which he falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name no more.

END OF VOLUME III