After his defeat at La RothiÈre, the Emperor authorized Bassano to make peace, giving to Caulaincourt unlimited powers. But before the necessary papers could be signed, BlÜcher had made his false movement, and Napoleon’s hopes had risen. Bassano, entering his room on the morning of February 9, found the Emperor lying on his map and planting his wax-headed pins.

“Ah, it is you, is it?” cried he to Bassano, who held the papers in his hands ready for signing. “There is no more question of that. See here, I want to thrash BlÜcher. He has taken the Montmirail road. I shall fight him to-morrow and next day. The face of affairs is about to change. We will wait.”

In the movements which followed the Bonaparte of the Italian campaign was seen again, and for the last time. He was everywhere, he was tireless, he was inspiring, he was faultless, he was a terror to his foes. We see him heading charges with reckless dash, see him aiming cannon in the batteries, see him showing his recruits how to build bridges, see him check a panic by spurring his own horse up to a live shell and holding him there till the bomb exploded, see him rallying fugitives, on foot and sword in hand. We hear him appeal to his tardy marshals to “Pull on the boots and the resolution of 1793”; we hear him address the people and the troops with the military eloquence of his best days; we see him writing all night after marching or fighting all day—his care and his efforts embracing everything, and achieving all that was possible to man.

That was a pretty picture at the crossing of the river Aube, where Napoleon was making a hasty bridge out of ladders spliced together, floored with blinds taken from the houses near by. Balls were tearing up the ground where the Emperor stood; but yet when he was about to quench his extreme thirst by dipping up in his hands the water of the river, a little girl of the village, seeing his need, ran to him with a glass of wine. Empire was slipping away from him, and his mind must have been weighed down by a thousand cares; but he was so touched by the gallantry of the little maid that he smiled down upon her, as he gratefully drank, and he said:—

“Mademoiselle, you would make a brave soldier!”

Then he added playfully, “Will you take the epaulets? Will you be my aide-de-camp?” He gave her his hand, which she kissed, and as she turned to go he added, “Come to Paris when the war is over, and remind me of what you did to-day; you will feel my gratitude.”

He was no gentleman; he had not a spark of generosity in his nature; he was mean and cruel; he was a superlatively bad man. So his enemies say, beginning at Lewis Goldsmith and ending at Viscount Wolseley. It may be so; but it is a little hard on the average citizen who would like to love the good men and hate the bad ones that a “superlatively evil man” like Napoleon Bonaparte should be endowed by Providence with qualities which make such men as Wellington, Metternich, Talleyrand, Czar Alexander, Emperor Francis, or Bourbon Louis seem small, seem paltry, seem prosaic and sordid beside him.

Another glimpse of the Emperor fixes attention in these last struggles. He was at the village of MÉry where he rapidly reconnoitred over the marshy ground bordering the Aube. Getting out of the saddle, he sat down upon a bundle of reeds, resting his back against the hut of a night-watchman, and unrolled his map. Studying this a few moments, he sprang upon his horse, set off at a gallop, crying to his staff, “This time we have got them!”

It did indeed seem that BlÜcher was entrapped and would be annihilated; but after very heavy losses he managed to get across the marsh and the river. It is said that a sudden frost, hardening the mud, was all that saved him.

Having been reËnforced by the corps of BÜlow and Woronzoff, which England had compelled Bernadotte to send, BlÜcher advanced against Marmont on the Marne. The French fell back upon the position of Marshal Mortier; and the two French generals, with about twelve thousand, checked one hundred thousand Prussians.

Napoleon, with twenty-five thousand, hurried to the support of his marshals, and was in BlÜcher’s rear by March 1. Once more the Prussian seemed doomed. His only line of retreat lay through Soissons and across the Aisne. With Napoleon hot upon his track, and in his rear a French fortress, how was he to escape destruction? A French weakling, or traitor, had opened the way by surrendering Soissons. Had he but held the town for a day longer, the war might have ended by a brilliant triumph of the French. Moreau was the name of the commandant at Soissons—a name of ill-omen to Napoleon, whose fury was extreme.

“Have that wretch arrested,” he wrote, “and also the members of the council of defence; have them arraigned before a military commission composed of general officers, and, in God’s name, see that they are shot in twenty-four hours.”

Here was lost the most splendid opportunity which came to the French during the campaign. BlÜcher safely crossed the Aisne (March 3) in the night, and was attacked by Marmont on March 9. During the day the French were successful; but BlÜcher launched at the unwary Marmont a night attack which was completely successful. The French lost forty-five guns and twenty-five hundred prisoners. In a sort of desperation, Napoleon gave battle at Laon, but was so heavily outnumbered that he was forced to retreat.

Almost immediately, however, he fell upon the Russians at Rheims, March 13, killed their general, St. Priest, and destroyed their force. It was at this time that Langeron, one of BlÜcher’s high officers, wrote: “We expect to see this terrible man everywhere. He has beaten us all, one after another; we dread the audacity of his enterprises, the swiftness of his movements, and the ability of his combinations. One has scarcely conceived any scheme of operations before he has destroyed it.”

This tribute from an enemy is very significant of what “this terrible man” might have accomplished had he been seconded. Suppose Murat and EugÈne had been operating on the allied line of communications! Or suppose Augereau had done his duty in Switzerland, in the rear of the Allies! Spite of the odds, it seems certain that Napoleon would have beaten the entire array had he not been shamefully betrayed—abandoned by creatures of his own making.

As if the stars in their courses were fighting against this struggling Titan, he learned that the relations between his wife and his brother Joseph were becoming suspicious. Chancellor Pasquier states that he himself saw the letters written by Napoleon on leaving Rheims in which Savary, minister of police, was censured for not having made known the facts to the Emperor, and in which Savary was ordered to watch closely the suspected parties. Pasquier adds that at first he thought the Emperor must be deranged; but that information which came to him afterward caused him to believe that Napoleon’s suspicions “were only too well founded.”

Did ever a tragedy show darker lines than this? All Europe marching against one man, his people divided, his lieutenants mutinous and inclining to treason, his senators ready to depose him, a sister and a brother-in-law stabbing him to the vitals, members of his Council of Regency in communication with the enemy, nobles whom he had restored and enriched plotting his destruction, and his favorite brother, his Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, using the opportunity which the trust afforded to debauch his wife!

Is it any wonder that even this indomitable spirit sometimes bent under the strain?

Referring to the battle of Craonne, Constant writes:—

“The Emperor who had fought bravely in this battle as in all others, and incurred the dangers of a common soldier, transferred his headquarters to Bray. Hardly had he entered the room when he called me, took his boots off while leaning on my shoulder, but without saying a word, threw his sword and hat on the table, and stretched himself on the bed with a sound which left one in doubt whether it was the profound sigh of fatigue or the groan of utter despair. His Majesty’s countenance was sorrowful and anxious. He slept for several hours the sleep of exhaustion.”

After the Emperor’s repulse at Laon, Schwarzenberg took heart and advanced toward Paris; but Napoleon, leaving Rheims, marched to Épernay, and the Austrians fell back, pursued by the French. The allied armies, however, concentrated at Arcis on the Aube, and, with one hundred thousand men, beat off the Emperor when he attacked them with thirty thousand.

Napoleon now made his fatal mistake—fatal because he could count on no one but himself. He moved his army to the rear of the Allies to cut their line of communications. This was a move ruinous to them, if the French armies in front should do their duty. The despatches in which Napoleon explained his march to the Empress Regent at Paris fell into the hands of the enemy, owing to Marmont’s disobedience of orders in abandoning the line of communications. They hesitated painfully, they had even turned and made a day’s march following Napoleon, when the capture of a bundle of letters from Paris, and the receipt of invitations from traitors and royalists in Paris, revealed the true situation there, and convinced them that by a swift advance they could capture the city and end the war. Accordingly they turned about, detaching a trifling force to harass and deceive the Emperor.

These movements, Napoleon to the rear and the Allies toward Paris, decided the campaign. The small force of eight or ten thousand, which the Allies had sent to follow the Emperor, was cut to pieces by him at St. Dizier, and from the prisoners taken in the action he learned of rumors that the Allies were in full march upon Paris. He soon learned, also, that through Marmont’s disobedience of orders a severe defeat had been inflicted upon the two marshals, and that BlÜcher and Schwarzenberg had united.

What should Napoleon now do? Should he continue his march, gather up the garrisons of his fortresses, enroll recruits, and, having cut the enemy’s communications, return to give him battle? He wished to do so, urged it upon the council of war, and at St. Helena repeated his belief that this course would have saved him. It might have done so. The army of the Allies, when it reached Paris, only numbered about one hundred and twenty thousand. Half that number of troops were almost within the Emperor’s reach, and there were indications that the peasantry, infuriated by the brutality of the invaders, were about to rise in mass. At this time they could have been armed, for Napoleon had captured muskets by the thousand from the enemy. If Marmont and Mortier would but exhaust the policy of obstruction and resistance; if Joseph and War-minister Clarke, at Paris, would but do their duty, the Allies would be caught between two fires, for the Emperor would not be long in marshalling his strength and coming back.

But the older and higher officers were opposed to the plan. They told Napoleon that he must march at once to the relief of Paris. After a night of meditation and misery at St. Dizier, he set out on the return (March 28, 1814). At Doulevent he received cipher despatches from Lavalette, postmaster-general in Paris, warning him that if he would save the capital he had not a moment to lose. This message aroused him for the first time to the extremity of the peril. He had expected a stubborner resistance from Marmont, had relied upon greater effectiveness in Joseph and Clarke. But even now he did not realize the awful truth, the absolute necessity for his immediate presence to save Paris—else he would have mounted horse and spurred across France as he had once done, to smaller purpose, across Spain: as he had done the year before when Dresden was beleaguered. In this connection let us remember what he had told MÉneval,—that he was no longer able to endure horse exercise. For a cause which may have been physical, he did not mount a horse himself, for the long life-and-death ride, but he sent General Dejean. Through this messenger he told Joseph that he was coming at full speed, and would reach Paris in two days. Let the Allies be resisted for only two days—he would answer for the balance. Away sped Dejean, and he reached the goal in time.

The Empress and the King of Rome had been sent from the capital by Joseph, and Joseph had taken horse to follow; but Dejean spurred after him, and caught him up in the Bois de Boulogne. Brother’s message was delivered to brother, Napoleon’s appeal made to Joseph; and the answer, coldly given and stubbornly repeated, was, “Too late.”

The Allies had marched, dreading every hour to hear the returning Emperor come thundering on their rear; Marmont had made one of the worst managed of retreats, and had allowed the enemy to advance far more rapidly than they had dared to hope; Parisians had vainly clamored for arms, that they might defend their city; and while thousands of citizens stood on the heights of Montmartre, looking expectantly for the Emperor, who was known to be coming, and while the cry, “It is he! It is he!” occasionally broke out as some figure on a white horse was seen in the distance, the imbecile Joseph wrote to the traitorous Marmont the permission to capitulate. This note had not been delivered, the fight was still going on, and Dejean prayed Joseph to recall the note. “The Emperor will be here to-morrow! For God’s sake, give him one day!”

With a sullen refusal to wait, Joseph put spurs to his horse, and set out to rejoin Maria Louisa.

In the dark corridors of human passion and prejudice, who can read the truth? The rebukes of the outraged husband to a recreant brother may have swayed Joseph, just as the reproofs of an indignant chief to a disobedient subordinate may have controlled Marmont.

The note from Joseph did its work. The defence ceased, the French army marched out, and the chief city of France fell, almost undefended.

Talleyrand and his clique had invited the Allies to march upon the capital, and the same party of traitors had paralyzed the spirit of the defence as far as they were able. They had found unconscious but powerful accomplices in Napoleon’s brothers.

That night the French troops marching away from Paris, according to the terms of the capitulation, were met, only a few miles from the city, by Napoleon. After having sent Dejean, he had hurried his troops on to Doulaincourt, where more bad news was picked up; and, by double marches, he reached Troyes (March 29), where he rested. At daybreak he left his army to continue its march, while he, with a small escort, flew on to Villeneuve. There he threw himself into a coach and, followed by a handful of officers, dashed forward—to Sens, where he learned that the Allies were before Paris,—to Fontainebleau, where he was told of the flight of the Empress,—to Essonnes, where they said that the fight of Paris was raging,—and to La Cour de France, only ten miles from his capital, where at midnight (March 30), as he waited for a fresh team to be put to his carriage, he heard the tramp of horses and the clank of arms. It was a squadron of cavalry on the highroad from Paris. He shouted to them from the dark, and to his challenge came the terrible response, “Paris has fallen.”

The scene which followed is one of those which haunt the memory. The chilly gloom of the night, the little wayside inn, the halted cavalry, the horseless carriage, the rage of the maddened Emperor, his hoarse call for fresh horses, his furious denunciation of those who had betrayed him, his desperate efforts to hurry the post-boys at the stables, the passion which carried him forward on foot a mile along the road to Paris, and the remonstrances of his few friends who urged him to go back—make a weird and tragic picture one does not forget.

It was not until he met a body of French infantry, also leaving Paris, that the frenzied Emperor would stop, and even then he would not retrace his steps. He sent Caulaincourt to make a last appeal to Alexander of Russia, he who had risen in the theatre at Erfurth to take Napoleon’s hand when the actor recited, “The friendship of a great man is a gift of the gods.”

A messenger was sent also to Marmont, and the Emperor waited in the road to receive his answer; nine miles, and not much more than an hour, being the tantalizing margin upon which, again, fate had traced the words, “Too late.” Only the river separated him from the outposts of the enemy; their campfires could be seen by reflection in the distance, and yonder to the west was the dull glare hanging over Paris—Paris where a hundred thousand men were ready to fight, if only a leader would show them how!

Leaden must have been the feet of those hours, infinite the woe of that most impatient of men, that haughtiest of men, that self-consciously ablest of men, as he tramped restlessly back and forth on the bleak hill in the dark, awaiting the answers from his messengers.

At last he was almost forced into his carriage and driven back to Fontainebleau. Making his way to one of the humblest rooms, he fell upon the bed, exhausted, heart-broken.

You go to France to-day, and you see around you everywhere, Napoleon. You hear, on all sides, Napoleon. Ask a Frenchman about other historic names, and he will reply with extravagant politeness. Leave him to speak for himself, and his raptures run to Napoleon. He is the Man; he is the ideal soldier, statesman, financier, developer, the creator of institutions, organizer of society, the inspiration of patriotism.

What Frenchman speaks of the little men who pulled Napoleon down? Who remembers them but to curse their infamous names? Who does not know that the very soul of French memory and veneration for the past centres at the Invalides, where the dead warrior lies in state? We see this now. Time works its reversals of judgment. The pamphlet gives way to the book; the caricature to the portrait; the discordant cry of passion to the calm voice of reason. Angels roll away sepulchral stones; and posterity sees the resurrected Cromwells, the Dantons, the Napoleons, just as they were. Great is the power of lies—lies boldly told and stubbornly maintained, but great, also, is the reaction of truth. The cause, and the man of the cause, may have been slain by the falsehood, and Truth may serve merely to show posterity where the grave is; but sometimes—not always—she does more; sometimes the cause, and the man of the cause, are called back into the battle-field of the living; sometimes the great issues are joined again; sometimes the martyr remains triumphant, the victim holds the victory.