Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

He did not quite keep the promise. He did not get as far back again as the Niemen. But 1813 saw him battling for his supremacy in Germany, as 1812 had seen him battling for it in Russia. The Russian disaster had sent a thrill of hope through the ranks of his enemies everywhere. The colossus might be, indeed appeared to be, falling. Had not the auspicious moment arrived for annihilating him? Particularly violent was the hatred of the Prussians who had, more than other peoples, felt the ruthlessness of his tyranny for the last six years. They trembled with eagerness to be let loose and when their King made a treaty of alliance with Russia and subsequently made a more direct and personal appeal to his people than any Prussian monarch had ever made before, they responded enthusiastically. There was a significant feature about this Treaty of Kalisch with Russia. Russia was not to lay down her arms against Napoleon until Prussia had recovered an area equal to that which she had possessed before the battle of Jena. But the area was not to be the same, for Russia was to keep Prussia's Polish provinces, now included in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, whose doom was decreed. Prussia should have compensation in northern Germany.

Could Napoleon rely on the Confederation of the Rhine and on his ally Austria? This remained to be seen. A reverse would almost surely Napoleon's cost the support of the former and the neutrality of the latter. Their loyalty would be proportioned to his success. There was with them not the same popular wrath as with the Prussians. On the other hand their princes had a keen eye for the main chance. Austria surely would use Napoleon's necessities for her own advantage. The princes of the Rhenish Confederation wished to retain the advantages they had won largely through their complaisant cooperation with Napoleon during recent years. Austria wished to recover advantages she had lost, territory, prestige, badly tattered and torn by four unsuccessful campaigns.

Napoleon, working feverishly since the return from Russia, finally got an army of over 200,000 men together. But to do this he had to draw upon the youth of France, as never before, calling out recruits a year before their time for service was due. A large part of them were untrained, and had to get their training on the march into Germany. The army was weak in cavalry, a decisive instrument in following up a victory and clinching it.

Napoleon was back in central Germany before the Russians and Prussians were fully prepared. He defeated them at Lutzen and at Bautzen in May, 1813, but was unable to follow up his victories because of the lack of sufficient cavalry, and the campaign convinced him that he could accomplish nothing decisive without reinforcements, he therefore agreed, in an unlucky moment, as it later proved, to a six weeks' armistice. During that time he did get large reinforcements but his enemies got larger. And during that interval the diplomatic intriguing went against him so that when the armistice was over Austria had joined the alliance of Russia, Prussia, and England, against him. He defeated the alliance the Austrians at Dresden (August 26-27), his last great against victory. His subordinates were, however, beaten in various subsidiary engagements and he was driven back upon Leipsic. There occurred a decisive three days' battle, the 'Battle of the Nations,' as the Germans call it (October 16-18). In point of numbers involved this was the greatest battle of the Napoleonic era. Over half a million men took part, at most 200,000 under Napoleon, 300,000 under the commanders of the allies. Napoleon was disastrously defeated and was sent flying back across the Rhine with only a small remnant of his army. The whole political structure which he had built up in Germany collapsed. The members of the Confederation of the Rhine deserted the falling star, and entered the alliance against him, on the guarantee of their possessions by the allies. Jerome fled from Westphalia and his brief kingdom disappeared. Meanwhile Wellington, who for years had been aiding the Spaniards, had been successful and was crossing the Pyrenees into southern France. The coils were closing in upon the lion, who now stood at bay.

The allies moved on after the retreating French toward the Rhine. It had been no part of their original purpose to demand Napoleon's abdication. They now, in November, 1813, offered him peace on the basis of the natural frontiers of France, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. He would not accept but procrastinated, and made counter-propositions. Even in February, 1814, he could have retained his throne and the historic boundaries of the old Bourbon monarchy, had he been willing to renounce the rest. He dallied with the suggestion, secretly hoping for some turn in luck that would spring the coalition apart and enable him to recover the ground he had lost. In thus refusing to recognize defeat, refusing to accept an altered situation, he did great harm to France and completed his own downfall. His stiff, uncompromising, unyielding temper sealed his doom. He was no longer acting as the wise statesman, responsible for the welfare of a great people who, by their unstinted sacrifices, had put him under heavy obligations. His was the spirit of the gambler, thinking to win all by a happy turn of the cards. He was also will incarnate. With will and luck all might yet be retrieved.

He had said on leaving Germany, "I shall be back in May with 250,000 men." He did not expect a winter campaign and he felt confident that he could have another army. The allies, however, did not wait for May but at the close of December, 1813 streamed across the Rhine and invaded France from various directions. France, victorious for eighteen years, now experienced what she had so often administered to others. The campaign was brief, only two months, February and March, 1814. Napoleon was hopelessly out-numbered. Yet this has been called the most brilliant of his campaigns. Fighting on the defensive and on inner lines, he showed marvellous mastery of the art of war, striking here, striking there, with great precision and swiftness, undaunted, resourceful, tireless. The allies needed every bit of their overwhelming superiority in numbers to compass the end of their redoubtable antagonist, with his back against the wall and his brain working with matchless lucidity and with lightning-like rapidity. They thought they could get to his capital in a week. It took them two months. However there could be but one end to such a campaign, if the allies held together, as they did. On the 30th of March Paris capitulated and on the following day the Czar Alexander and Frederick William III, the King of Prussia, made their formal entry into the city which the Duke of Brunswick twenty-two years before had threatened with destruction if it laid sacrilegious hands upon the King or Queen. Since that day much water had flowed under the bridge, and France and Europe had had a strange, eventful history, signifying much.

The victors would not longer tolerate Napoleon. He was forced to abdicate unconditionally. He was allowed to retain his title of Emperor but henceforth he was to rule only over Elba, an island nineteen miles long and six miles wide, lying off the coast of Tuscany whence his Italian ancestors had sailed for Corsica two centuries and a half before he was born. Thither he repaired, having said farewell to the Old Guard in the courtyard of the palace of Fontainebleau, kissing the flag of France made lustrous on a hundred fields. "Nothing but sobbing was heard in all the ranks," wrote one of the soldiers who saw the scene, "and I can say that I too shed tears when I saw my Emperor depart."

On the day that Napoleon abdicated, the Senate, so-called guardian of the constitution, obsequious and servile to the Emperor in his days of fortune, turned to salute the rising sun, and in solemn . session proclaimed Louis XVIII King of France. The allies, becomes who had conquered Napoleon and banished him to a petty island in the Mediterranean, thought they were done with him for good and all. But from this complacent self-assurance they were destined to a rude awakening. Their own errors and wranglings at the Congress of Vienna, whither they repaired in September, 1814 to divide the spoils and determine the future organization of Europe, and the mistakes and indiscretions of the Bourbons whom they restored to rule in France, gave Napoleon the opportunity for the most audacious and wonderful adventure of his life.