Had Napoleon promptly accepted the Frankfort Proposal as they were made, would he have secured peace? Manifestly not, for Metternich had put two conditions to his offer which do not look pacific. First, the war was not to be suspended during negotiations. Second, the Frankfort Proposals were only to be taken as bases upon which diplomats could work. Does this look like a bona fide offer of peace? Napoleon thought not, and impartial history must hesitate long before saying he erred. When in December, 1813, he sent his envoy to the Allies, agreeing to all they demanded, he was once more told that he should have consented sooner. The Allies had gained their point in having made the offer, and their active interest in the matter was at an end. The French envoy was kept in hand, seeking audiences and positive replies, while the allied armies marched into France.

France in 1814 was a nation of about thirty million souls. During the years 1812 and 1813 she had furnished nearly six hundred thousand soldiers to Napoleon’s armies. Of these about half were prisoners in Russia and Germany, or were shut up in distant garrisons; about two hundred thousands were dead or missing; about one hundred thousand remained subject to the Emperor’s call. It was his hope that further conscription would yield him three hundred thousand recruits; but it failed to do so.

So much war material had been lost in the campaigns in Russia and Saxony that he could not furnish muskets to volunteers; some went to war armed with shot-guns. Neither could he mount any large force of cavalry; horses could not be had. Nor were there uniforms for all; some went to the front in sabots and blouse. Money was lacking, and the Emperor took more than $10,000,000 from his own private funds (saved from his Civil List), and threw them into the equipment of the troops, calling also upon the rich for voluntary contributions, on a sliding scale which he was thoughtful enough to furnish. A few of the taxes were increased, the communal lands taken for the public service, and paper money issued against the value of this particular property.

Competent judges have expressed the opinion that had Napoleon at this time liberated the Pope and Ferdinand of Spain, and done so unconditionally, he might have won in the campaign which was about to open. The release of the Pope might have brought back to allegiance many of the disaffected; the release of Ferdinand might have made it necessary for the English to quit Spain, and in this manner Napoleon would have drawn to his own support the veterans he still kept there. The Duke of Wellington is quoted as saying that had Ferdinand appeared in Spain in December, 1813, the English would have had to evacuate it. He, of all men, should have known.

But Napoleon would not consent to make unconditional surrender to the Pope or to Ferdinand. He patched up a peace with the latter, which, being a halfway measure, yielded no benefit; and as to the Pope, the Holy Father refused to treat on any terms with his “son in Christ Jesus.” Restore him to Rome first; then he would treat.

From the time Napoleon returned from Saxony till he left Paris to take charge of his last campaign, less than three months passed.

There was never a time when he labored with greater patience or exhibited greater fortitude, courage, and determination. But the evidence seems to indicate that he had lost hope, that he was conscious of the fact that nothing less than a miracle could save him.

Ever since the Russian campaign, he had not had the same confidence in his star. As he set out from St. Cloud for his campaign in Saxony he said to Caulaincourt: “I envy the lot of the meanest peasant of my empire. At my age he has discharged his debts to the country and remains at home, enjoying the society of his wife and children; while I—I must fly to the camp and throw myself into the struggles of war.”

MÉneval states that in private he found the Emperor “careworn, though he did his best to hide his anxiety.”

“But in public his face was calm and reassured. In our conversations he used to complain of feeling tired of war and of no longer being able to endure horse exercise. He reproached me in jest with having fine times, whilst he painfully dragged his plough.”

Is there anything which is more pathetic and which shows how grandly Napoleon towered above the small men who were tugging to pull him down than his rebuke to the intriguers of the legislative body?

At the head of a disloyal faction there, M. LainÉ—an old Girondin, now a royalist, who was soon to set up the Bourbon standard at Bordeaux—started a movement which was meant to give aid to the Allies by showing that divisions existed in France, and by forming a nucleus of Bourbon opposition. A committee, which LainÉ controlled, made a report in which Napoleon’s government was impliedly censured, and reforms demanded. Following this lead, others in the legislative body clamored for the acceptance of the Frankfort Proposals.

This movement of opposition in the legislative body, at a time when half a million men were on the march to invade France, was nothing short of treason. At such a crisis, the dullest of Frenchmen must have understood that obstruction to Napoleon was comfort to the enemy.

Even the cold Pasquier admits that the Emperor’s words to these men were “somewhat touching.”

Having reproved the committee for allowing LainÉ, the royalist, to lead them astray, Napoleon said: “I stood in need of something to console me, and you have sought to dishonor me. I was expecting that you would unite in mind and deed to drive out the foreigner. You have bidden him come! Indeed, had I lost two battles, it would not have done France greater harm.”

Somewhat touching, Chancellor Pasquier? Ah, if ever the great man was heard to sob in public, it was here! A nobler grief, and a nobler expression of it, history has seldom recorded.

In the course of the same talk, the indignant Emperor reminded the legislators that whatever differences existed between him and them should have been discussed in private. “Dirty linen should not be washed in public.” Then hurried away by angry impatience at those who were forever prating about the sacrifices he exacted of France, he exclaimed, “France has more need of me than I of France.” This was true, but the statement was imprudent; and his enemies at once misconstrued his meaning, and used the remark to his damage. He dismissed the legislative body fearing, doubtless, that while he was at the head of the army the royalists of the chamber might become a danger in his rear.

Blow after blow fell upon the defeated Emperor during the closing weeks of 1813. St. Cyr gave up Dresden, and Rapp surrendered Dantzic, upon condition that their troops should be allowed to return to France. The Allies set aside the conditions, and held the garrisons as prisoners of war.

Constant relates two incidents which reveal Napoleon’s melancholy more fully than his words to MÉneval or to the legislative body.

The Emperor went about Paris more informally than he had ever done. Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, he went to inspect his public works, schools, and hospitals. Apparently he was curious to feel the public pulse. Constant says that the people cheered him, and that sometimes great multitudes followed him back to the Tuileries. The time had been when the Emperor had not paid any special heed to the shouts of a street mob. Now the cry of enthusiasm was music to his ears. After one of these episodes the Emperor would return to the palace in high spirits, would have much to say to his valet that night, and would be “very gay.”

In his visits to Saint-Denis (Girl’s School of the Legion of Honor) the Emperor was usually accompanied by two pages. “Now it happened in the evening,” writes Constant, “that the Emperor, after returning from Saint-Denis, said to me with a laugh on entering his chamber, where I was waiting to undress him, ‘Well, well, here are my pages trying to resemble the ancient pages. The little rogues! Do you know what they do? When I go to Saint-Denis they wrangle with each other as to who shall go with me.’ As he spoke, the Emperor was laughing and rubbing his hands, and repeated in the same tone a number of times, ‘The little rogues.’”

Would Chancellor Pasquier admit that this was also “somewhat touching”?

The greatest man of all history had said with proud mournfulness, “I stood in need of something to console me,” and we do not realize how infinitely sad he was till we read in Constant’s artless narrative that the shouts of the mob made him “very gay,” and that the dispute of the boys in the palace as to which two should go out into the town with him made him rub his hands with pleasure, and repeat time and again, “Ah, the little rogues.”

At the beginning of 1814 positive information came that Murat had made a treaty with Austria, and had promised an army of thirty thousand men to coÖperate with the Allies against France. Much as this defection must have wounded the Emperor, the worst part of it was that he knew his sister Caroline to be more to blame than Murat. She did not believe that the Allies meant to dethrone Napoleon; she believed he could make peace on the basis of the Frankfort Proposals; and to save her own crown she believed that a treaty with the Allies was necessary. To this extent her treachery can be palliated—excuse for it there is none.

This defection was the cruelest blow of all; for Murat had been promising his support, and the Emperor had based his plan of campaign upon it. He had intended that EugÈne should unite his forces to those of Murat, and that the two should fall upon the Austrian line of communications, threatening Vienna. From this plan he had expected the happiest results.

Murat had been negotiating with England and Austria, but had not definitely made terms. It is said that he was driven to a decision by a wound which Napoleon inflicted upon his vanity. Murat, having written the Emperor that he could bring thirty thousand men to the field to aid France, was told to send the troops to Pavia, where they would receive “the Emperor’s orders.” The King of Naples received this letter on a day when, with the Queen and others, he was making a visit to Pompeii. He was so much hurt by Napoleon’s tone that he tore the despatch in pieces, trampled on the fragments, and returned to Naples to close with the Austrian offers.

One must pity this brave, vain, fickle Murat, urged on to his shame and ruin by his innate levity of character, the sting of wounded vanity, the selfish promptings of an ambitious wife, and the temptings of professional diplomats.

England dug the grave for Murat as she did for Napoleon, her agent at Naples being Lord Bentinck. Murat having sent the Englishman a sword of honor, the latter wrote to his government:—

“It is a severe violence to my feelings to incur any degree of obligation to an individual whom I so deeply despise.”

On the same day he wrote to Murat: “The sword of a great captain is the most flattering compliment which a soldier can receive. It is with the highest gratitude that I accept, sire, the gift which you have done me the honor to send.”

Lord Bentinck belonged, we must presume, to what Lord Wolseley calls “the highest type of English gentleman”; hence his duplicity must not be spoken of in the terms we use in denouncing the vulgar.

Another piece of bad luck had happened to the Emperor since the Saxon campaign—his two brothers, Joseph and Jerome, were in France. Wellington had not left the former much to resign in Spain; but whatever there was, Joseph had surrendered it, and he had come away. He was now in Paris, confident as ever of his own great merits, and most unfortunately exercising his former evil influence. Napoleon made this imbecile Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and having made the Empress regent, Joseph became President of the Council of Regency. The disastrous consequences of putting such power into Joseph’s hands will be seen presently.

At length everything which human effort and human genius could achieve for the national defence, in so short a time, was done; and it became imperative that the Emperor should join his army.

On Sunday of January 23, 1814, it being known that he would leave Paris in a few hours, the officers of the twelve legions of the National Guard assembled in the hall of the marshals, at the Tuileries, to be presented as the Emperor should return from Mass. Presently he came; and while the Empress stood at his side, he took his little son in his arms, and presented him to the brilliant throng. In a voice which revealed his deep feeling, he told them that he was about to leave Paris to put himself at the head of the army to drive the invaders from France, and he reckoned on the zeal of all good citizens. He appealed to them to be united, and to repel all insinuations which would tend to divisions. “Efforts will not be lacking to shake your fidelity to your duties; I rely on you to reject these perfidious attempts. Gentlemen, officers of the National Guard, I put under your protection what, next to France, is dearest to me in all the world,—my wife and my son!”

Even Pasquier records that these words were uttered in tones which went to the heart, and with an expression of face that was noble and touching. “I saw tears course down many a cheek. All swore by acclamation to be worthy of the confidence with which they were being honored, and every one of them took this oath in all sincerity.” Warming up a little, in spite of himself, the Chancellor adds, “This powerful sovereign in the toils of adversity, this glorious soldier bearing up against the buffets of fortune, could but deeply stir souls when, appealing to the most cherished affections of the human heart, he placed himself under their protection.” The learned Chancellor frostily adds that “the capital did not remain indifferent to this scene, and was more deeply moved by it than one might expect.”

Let us get out of this draught of wind from the frozen summits of eminent respectability, and turn to a man whose heart-beat had not been chilled in any social or judicial ice-box.

Constant writes:—

“... The Emperor’s glance rested on the Empress and on the King of Rome. He added in a voice that betrayed emotion, indicating by look and gesture his son, ‘I confide him to you, gentlemen!’ At these words, a thousand cries, a thousand arms arose, swearing to guard this precious trust. The Empress, bathed in tears, would have fallen if the Emperor had not caught her in his arms. At this sight the enthusiasm reached its climax; tears fell from every eye, and there was not one of the spectators who did not seem ready to shed his blood for the imperial family.”

At the beginning of 1814 France was threatened by four armies, aggregating half a million men. Wellington was at the Pyrenees in the south, Bernadotte was in the Netherlands, while BlÜcher and Schwarzenberg, crossing the Rhine higher up, but at different points, were marching upon Paris by the Seine and the Marne.

With a confidence which events justified, the Emperor left Soult to oppose Wellington. As to Bernadotte, he was neither trusted by the Allies nor feared by Napoleon. The recreant Frenchman had merely come to terms with the Allies because they had promised to take Norway from Denmark and give it to Sweden. In addition to this, the Czar of Russia had dangled before Bernadotte’s eyes, as a tempting bait, the crown of France—a fact which of itself proves the hollowness of the overtures made to Napoleon from Frankfort. So well was the crafty Prince-Royal of Sweden understood by those who had bought him, that he was kept under strict personal surveillance by each of the four great allied powers,—Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain. From an army led by such a man, Napoleon had little to fear; and he gave his whole personal energies to BlÜcher and Schwarzenberg, especially to BlÜcher. This old hussar who had served under Frederick the Great, and who was now more than seventy years of age, was the most energetic of all the officers arrayed against France; and he gave Napoleon more trouble than all the others put together. He could easily be outgeneralled, he could be beaten any number of times by such a captain as Napoleon; but there was no such thing as conquering him. Routed one day, he was ready to fight again the next. Outmanoeuvred at one point, he turned up ready for battle at another. His marches were swift, his resources inexhaustible, his pluck and determination an inspiration, not only to the Prussians, but to all the allied armies. He was not much of a general, was a good deal of a brute; but he was about as well fitted for the task of wearing down Napoleon’s strength as any officer Europe could have put into the field.

Moving slowly from the Rhine toward Paris, meeting no resistance which could hinder their march, the Allies, who were making war upon Napoleon alone, and who had no grudge against France, and whose wish it was, as they proclaimed, to see France “great, prosperous, and happy,” gave rein to such license, committed such havoc upon property, and such riotous outrage upon man, woman, and child, that the details cannot be printed. In Spain, Napoleon had shot his own soldiers to put an end to pillage; in Russia he had done the same. At Leipsic he had refused to burn the suburbs to save his army. In his invasions of Prussia and Austria he had held his men so well in hand that non-combatants were almost as safe, personally, as they had been under their own king. At Berlin the French Emperor publicly disgraced a prominent French officer for having written an insulting letter to a German lady.

In France the sovereigns whose every proclamation and treaty ran under the sanctimonious heading, “In the name of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity,” let loose upon the country savage hordes of Cossacks, Croats, and Prussian fanatics who wreaked their vengeance upon the non-combatant peasantry and villagers until the invasion of the “Saviors of Society” became a saturnalia of lust and blood and arson, which no language fit for books can describe.

The Prussians had almost reached Brienne when the Emperor took the field with a small force, and drove them from St. Dizier. He then came upon BlÜcher at Brienne, suddenly, while the Prussian general was feasting at the chÂteau, and captured one of the higher officers at the foot of the stairs. The Emperor believed he had nabbed BlÜcher himself, and he shouted, “We will hold on to that old fighter; the campaign will not last long!”

But BlÜcher had fled through the back door, and had escaped. The battle raged over the school grounds and the park where Napoleon had read and meditated in his boyhood. During the fight he found himself storming the school buildings, where the Prussians were posted; and he pointed out to his companions the tree in the park under which he had read Jerusalem Delivered.

One of the guides in the movement about Brienne was a curÉ who had been a regent of the college while Napoleon was there. They recognized each other, the Emperor exclaiming: “What! is this you, my dear master? Then you have never quitted this region? So much the better; you will be more able to serve the country’s cause.”

The curÉ saddled his mare and took his place cheerfully in the imperial staff, saying, “Sire, I could find my way over the neighborhood with my eyes shut.”

The Emperor drove the Prussians from Brienne with heavy loss; but when BlÜcher joined Schwarzenberg, and Napoleon with his slender force attacked this huge mass at La RothiÈre, he was beaten off, after a desperate combat.

Riding back to the chÂteau of Brienne to spend the night, the Emperor was suddenly assailed by a swarm of Cossacks, and for a moment he was in great personal danger; so much so that he drew his sword to defend himself. A Cossack lunged at him with a lance, and was shot down by General Gourgaud.

This incident gave Gourgaud a claim upon Napoleon which was heard of frequently afterward,—rather too frequently, as the Emperor thought. At St. Helena Gourgaud, a fretful man and a jealous, tortured himself and his master by too many complaints of neglect; and reminded the Emperor once too often of the pistol-shot which had slain the Cossack.

“I saw nothing of it,” said Napoleon, thus putting a quietus to that particularly frequent conversational nuisance.

It was now the 1st of February, 1814; the Emperor fell back to Nogent, the Austrians following. BlÜcher separated from Schwarzenberg, divided his army into small detachments, and made straight for Paris. In a flash Napoleon saw his advantage, and acted. At Champ-Aubert he fell upon one of these scattered divisions and destroyed it. At Montmirail he crushed another; and hurling his victorious little army upon BlÜcher himself, drove that astonished old warrior back upon ChÂlons. Putting his guard into carts and carriages, and posting at the highest speed night and day, Napoleon united with Marshals Oudinot, Victor, and Macdonald at Guignes. On February 18 he fell upon the huge army of Schwarzenberg at Montereau and actually drove it back toward Troyes,—the Austrians as they retired calling upon old BlÜcher to come and give them help!

When Caulaincourt, early in December, 1813, had appeared at Frankfort ready to accept those famous proposals unconditionally, Metternich had shuffled, evaded, and procrastinated. Finally, a Peace Congress was assembled at ChÂtillon (February 6, 1814); and while the soldiers marched and fought, the diplomats ate, drank and made themselves merry in the farce of trying to arrange a treaty. Caulaincourt, gallant and hospitable, supplied his brother diplomats at ChÂtillon with all the good things which Paris could furnish,—good eatables, good drinkables, and gay women. Hence, the Peace Congress was a very enjoyable affair, indeed. It was not expected to do anything, and it fully came up to expectations. As the tide of success veered, so shifted the diplomats. When the Allies won a victory, their demands advanced; when Napoleon won, the demands moderated. There was no such thing as a coming together.