considered as a definitive treaty, and on the 2nd of April gave instructions that one of the refractory cardinals should be carried off secretly by night from Fontainebleau, while the pontiff was to be guarded more closely than before. On these facts becoming known, a feeling of pity for the pope became widespread; and the opinion of the Roman Catholic world gradually turned against the emperor while he was fighting to preserve his supremacy in Germany. “I am following the course of events: I have always marched with them.” Such were his words uttered shortly before his departure from Paris (15th of April). They proved that he misread events and misunderstood his own position.
The course of the ensuing campaigns was to reveal the hardening of his mental powers. Early in April he sought to gain the help of 100,000 Austrian troops by holding out to Francis of Austria the prospect of acquiring Silesia from Prussia. The offer met with no response, Austria having received from the allies vaguely alluring offers that she might arrange matters as she desired in Italy and South Germany. Napoleon began to suspect his father-in-law, and still more the Austrian chancellor, Metternich; but instead of humouring them, he resolved to stand firm. The Austrian demands, first presented to him on the 16th of May, shortly after his victory of Lützen, were (1) the dissolution of the grand duchy of Warsaw, (2) the withdrawal of France from the lands of north-west Germany annexed in 1810 and (3) the cession to Austria of the Illyrian provinces wrested from her in 1809. Other terms were held in reserve to be pressed if occasion admitted; but these were all that were put forward at the moment. On this basis Austria was ready to offer her armed mediation to the combatants. Napoleon would not hear of the terms. “I will not have your armed mediation. You are only confusing the whole question. You say you cannot act for me; you are strong, then, only against me.” This outburst of temper was a grave blunder. His threats alarmed the Austrian court. At bottom the emperor Francis, perhaps also Metternich, wanted peace, but on terms which the exhaustion of the combatants would enable them to dictate. Yet during the armistice which ensued (June 4th–July 20th; afterwards prolonged to August 10th) Napoleon did nothing to soothe the Viennese government, and that, too, despite the encouragement which the allies received from the news of Wellington’s victory at Vittoria and the entry of Bernadotte with a Swedish contingent on the scene. Austria now proposed the terms named above with the addition that the Confederation of the Rhine must be dissolved, and that Prussia should be placed in a position as good as that which she held in 1805, that is, before the campaign of Jena. On the 27th of June she promised to join the allies in case Napoleon should not accept these terms.
He was now at the crisis of his career. Events had shown that, even after losing half a million of men in Russia, he was a match for her and Prussia combined. Would he now accept the Austrian terms and gain a not disadvantageous peace, for which France was yearning? These terms, it should be noted, would have kept Napoleon’s empire intact except in Illyria; while the peace would have enabled him to reorganize his army and recover a host of French prisoners from Russia. His signing of the armistice seemed to promise as much. To give his enemies a breathing space when they were hard pressed was an insane proceeding unless he meant to make peace. But there is nothing in his words or actions at this time to show that he desired peace except on terms which were clearly antiquated. His letters breathe the deepest resentment against Austria, and show that he burned to chastise her for her “perfidy” as soon as his cavalry was reorganized. His actions at this time have been ascribed to righteous indignation against Metternich’s double-dealing; and in a long interview at the Marcolini palace at Dresden on the 26th of June he asked the chancellor point blank how much money England had given him for his present conduct. As for himself he cared little for the life of a million of men. He had married the daughter of the emperor: it was a mistake, but he would bury the world under the ruins. Talk in this Ossian-like vein showed that Napoleon’s brain no longer worked clearly: it was a victim to his egotism and passion. July and the first decade of August came and went, but brought no sign of pacification. The emperor Francis made a last effort to influence his son-in-law through Marie Louise. It was in vain. Nothing could bend that cast iron will. Nothing remained but to break it. On the expiration of the armistice at midnight of August 10th–11th Austria declared war.
After the disastrous defeat of Leipzig (17th–19th October 1813), when French domination in Germany and Italy vanished like an exhalation, the allies gave Napoleon another opportunity to come to terms. The overtures known as the Frankfort terms were ostensibly an answer to the request for information which Napoleon made at the field of Leipzig. Metternich persuaded the tsar and the king of Prussia to make a declaration that the allies would leave to Napoleon the “natural boundaries” of France—the Rhine, Alps, Pyrenees and Ocean. The main object of the Austrian chancellor probably was to let Napoleon once more show to the world his perverse obstinacy. If this was his aim, he succeeded. Napoleon on his return to St Cloud inveighed against his ministers for talking so much about peace and declared that he would never give up Holland; France must remain a great empire, and not sink to the level of a mere kingdom. He would never give up Holland; rather than do that, he would cut the dykes and give back that land to the sea. Accordingly on the 16th of November he sent a vague and unsatisfactory reply to the allies; and though Caulaincourt (who now replaced Maret as foreign minister) was on the 2nd of December charged to give a general assent to their terms, yet that assent came too late. The allies had now withdrawn their offer. Napoleon certainly believed that the offer was insincere. Perhaps he was right; but even in that case he should surely have accepted the offer so as to expose their insincerity. As it was, they were able to contrast their moderation with his wrongheadedness, and thereby seek to separate his cause from that of France. In this they only partially succeeded. Murat now joined the allies; Germany, Switzerland and Holland were lost to Napoleon; but when the allies began to invade Alsace and Lorraine, they found the French staunch in his support. He was still the peasants’ emperor. The feelings of the year 1792 began to revive. Never did Napoleon and France appear more united than in the campaign of 1814.
Nevertheless it led to his abdication. Once more the allies consented to discuss the terms of a general pacification; but the discussions at the congress of Châtillon (5th of February–19th of March) had no result except to bring to light a proof of Napoleon’s insincerity. Thereupon the allies resolved to have no more dealings with him. As his chances of success became more and more desperate, he ventured on a step whereby he hoped to work potently on the pacific desires of the emperor Francis. Leaving Paris for the time to its own resources, he struck eastwards in the hope of terrifying that potentate and of detaching him from the coalition. The move not only failed, but it had the fatal effect of uncovering Paris to the northern forces of the allies. The surrender of the capital, where he had centralized all the governing powers, was a grave disaster. Equally fatal was the blow struck at him by the senate, his own favoured creation. Convoked by Talleyrand on the 1st of April, it pronounced the word abdication on the morrow. For this Napoleon cared little, provided that he had the army behind him. But now the marshals and generals joined the civilians. The defection of Marshal Marmont and his soldiery on the 4th of April rendered further thoughts of resistance futile. To continue the strife when Wellington was firmly established on the line of the Garonne, and Lyons and Bordeaux had hoisted the Bourbon fleur de lys, was seen by all but Napoleon to be sheer madness; but it needed the pressure of his marshals in painful interviews at Fontainebleau to bring him to reason.
At last, on the 11th of April, he wrote the deed of abdication. On that night he is said to have tried to end his life by poison. The evidence is not convincing; and certainly his recovery was very speedy. On the 20th he bade farewell to his guard and set forth from Fontainebleau for Elba, which the powers
