What is Paris saying?

He does not know. For the first time since he was in Egypt, his calculations concerning Paris have no solid foundation in fact. Not to know what is going on in his capital: a dreadful position this, like that of a traveller who fancies that during his absence his wife may be betraying him! Writing to Maret in Vilna, he says: “For more than a fortnight I have had no courier, so that I am in the dark as to all that is going on ... in France and Spain.... The army is terribly disorganised. It would take at least a fortnight to set things straight, but we cannot possibly spare the time. Shall we be able to maintain our position in Vilna? Only if we are not attacked during the first week. Food! Food!... Make sure that there shall be no foreign envoys in Vilna, for the army is not in a fit condition to be seen. Send them all away.”

Here is the courier at last. Why does the Emperor turn pale? What terrible news can have come from Paris? Can anything have happened there worse than what he has just been living through? The fact is that, through English newspapers, through letters, and through rumour, France has long since learned the whole truth, which had been glossed over in the Emperor’s bulletins. Many of the Parisians are fickle, and many of them are easily reduced to despair. A good part of Paris has already given up the Emperor for lost. Alarmist reports and spiteful quips are rife on the boulevards. But what is this item?

A coup d’état had been planned, and had been frustrated. But what a background of discontent is revealed! Malet, who had been a general in the days of the republic, had years before been concerned in a conspiracy, imprisoned, and then committed to a lunatic asylum. Having received distorted news about the Emperor’s disasters and the burning of Moscow, he had escaped. With a number of accomplices, he had published a forged dispatch announcing Napoleon’s death. The conspirators had seized the Minister of Police; had declared a provisional government; had bamboozled the National Guard, the militia, the prefects, and even veteran generals. At length, however, two undismayed officers had seen through the cheat, had seized the conspirators, and from the balcony of the governor’s residence had shouted, “Vive l’Empereur.” Therewith the spectre had been laid.

In his tent, on which the snow is falling, the Emperor contemplates this document with dismay. More serious news even than that which recently arrived from Salamanca! The offenders had been shot; the whole affair had fizzled out. But for a time the conspirators had been masters of the Paris police, and one who controls the Paris police is master of France! No carriages would venture into the streets! When an elderly nobleman had asked what was afoot, a workman had laughed, saying: “Citizen, the Emperor is dead. At noon the republic will be proclaimed!” Greatly shaken by the tidings, the Emperor drops the newspaper containing these details, and says to his intimates:

“What about the dynasty? Did no one think of my wife, my son, all the institutions of the Empire? I must get back to Paris instantly!”

The dangerous possibilities revealed by this interlude, flash like lightning through his mind. “The workman who laughs—he is the people! I toil day and night for years at my great building; I break with the woman I love, and take an emperor’s daughter to wife, that our heir, the pledge of earthly immortality, may grow up in our palace. Then some foolhardy officer, a man no one has ever heard of, has merely to call out that the Emperor is dead, and instantly a clamour about ‘citizens’ and ‘republic’ rises once more from the people! The regent, the heir, the Council of State—all these count for nothing? The bottomless cask of the Danaids! But I will make a bottom for it. Like the Capets, I will have my son crowned in my own lifetime, and muster my faithful supporters in Paris!”

Fortified by the approach of danger, the Emperor grips the reins firmly once more. “He is pale, but his face is calm; nothing in his features gives any sign of trouble.” His health is better, too. Now the army nears the Beresina. Having received false intelligence to the effect that the auxiliary armies are close at hand, he draws his own forces more compactly together, and has the rest of the baggage train burned, that the horses may be freed to draw the remaining guns. If only the bridge is still standing! He writes: “Should the enemy have seized the bridge-head and burned the bridge in order to prevent our crossing, it would be very serious.”

Next day they come to the river. No bridge, no boats; two armies outnumbering the French are waiting on the other shore; between runs the broad river with marshy banks. Is there any way out of the difficulty?

He makes a shrewd plan, like those of his early days as general. He will decoy the Russians away. Out of eighteen hundred horseless cavalrymen of the guard, of whom only eleven hundred still have their weapons, he forms two battalions. Then he has all the regimental eagles burned, for even in this dread hour Napoleon thinks of honour and glory, and he will not risk the loss of colours to the enemy. After midnight, he at length lies down in his tent, where he overhears Duroc and Daru, who believed him to be asleep, discussing in an undertone the possibility of a catastrophe. The phrase “State prisoner” has caught his ear. He fingers the black bag he is wearing round his neck, and sits up in bed:

“You think they would dare?”

“I would not trust the enemy’s magnanimity,” says Daru, composedly.

“But France! What would France do?”

Daru’s answer is evasive; but when pressed, he says: “I think, Sire, the sooner you are in Paris, the better. When you are there, you will have a better chance of saving us all.”

“Then you feel I am a burden on you here?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“And you don’t want to be State prisoners?”

There is a long silence. Then the Emperor resumes:

“Have my ministers’ reports been destroyed?”

“Hitherto you have always refrained from giving us the order.”

“It must be done. Destroy the lot of them. We are in a very difficult position.”

This is the only admission of the kind made by the Emperor during all the weeks of the Russian campaign. It is the voice of a man who regards himself as a moriturus. But nature is more sensible than fate, and in a few moments he is fast asleep.

Next morning, while the enemy has been lured down stream and is being kept at a distance by artillery fire, the sappers, neck-deep in the freezing water and amid the drifting ice, hastily build two bridges. The crossing of the river takes two days more. With the cavalry, which swims the stream, the army still numbers about twenty-five thousand men. The Emperor, though the risk of his being taken prisoner is imminent, remains until all have crossed; and then, on the third day, surrounded by the old guard, he too makes his way over the river. But there are still stragglers to come, and these perish during the next few days betwixt ice and fire.

In the ensuing week the Emperor’s life is twice in danger. The first peril is from a Cossack attack. On the next occasion the trouble is an assassination plot in which one of his own Frenchmen is engaged. It is early on the morning of December 5th when Major Lapie meets the officers of the Prussian guard of honour in front of the Emperor’s tent. “Now then, gentlemen, the hour has come!” The senior captain is to cut down the Mameluke, and then to make an end of Napoleon. Presumably the conspirators have seen Schiller’s _Wallenstein_ on the German stage! The Prussian wants the Frenchman to do the deed, but Lapie says he is not sure of his men. Then Caulaincourt, to whom the conspirators’ behaviour seems suspicious, comes forward, claps his hands, and says: “Now, gentlemen, it is time to start!”

That evening the Emperor, who has not heard a word of the affair, summons his marshals. “I shall be stronger when I can speak from my throne in the Tuileries than I am at the head of an army which has been destroyed by the cold.... Had I been a Bourbon, born to rule, it would have been easy for me to avoid making mistakes.” He takes the marshals aside by turns, asking each for his advice; he flatters, praises, and encourages; he smiles and charms. Obviously his design is to counteract the possibility of revolt.

Next, he tells Eugene to read them his latest bulletin, the first in which he admits disaster. “Men who had not been sufficiently steeled by nature to rise superior to all vicissitudes of fate and fortune, lost courage and equanimity, and could dream of nothing but misfortune and defeat. But those who were equal to the occasion were able to keep up their spirits, and regarded every fresh difficulty as a fresh opportunity for glory.”

The only reason why the army had wasted away was the rigour of the climate. “His Majesty has never been in better health.”

The unfeeling, metallic tone! Again we are listening to General Bonaparte who, having recovered confidence in his destiny, and having regained health, is able to use the old language. The incisive sentence at the close is, of course, added for the special benefit of Paris, which for several weeks has had no news as to his state of health. But, on the whole, the mood in which he ends the Russian campaign, exactly six months after it had begun, is one of heroic cynicism. The command of the army is handed over to Murat, who is to lead the survivors home. There are still nine thousand men under arms.

Now there is something new. The Emperor embraces every one of the generals present. Is this the last coup of a trickster who wants to strengthen their waning loyalty? Is he really overcome by his feelings? Every one of these soldiers, that evening, could feel the beating of the Emperor’s heart.

He gets into the sleigh with Daru and Caulaincourt, and the three drive away. To be on the safe side, he travels under an assumed name, that of his secretary, Rayneval. This is his fifth name. The fourth had been Napoleon.

When they are driving through the snows across the Polish plain, he suddenly has the sleigh stopped at a cross road. This must be near Countess Walewska’s mansion; he wants to go there. Napoleon is on the flight from Russia, his head full of world-shaking plans; he is forsaking his army because Paris needs him and he needs Paris—and now comes this lyrical thought, the painful recollection of a frustrated idyl. But the urgent warnings of his companions, who remind him that they are alone in a couple of sledges and that Cossacks are scouring the countryside, induce him to abandon his plan. He wraps his furs around him once more and goes to sleep.

Five days afterwards he leaves the sleighs waiting on the bridge near Warsaw, and at noon goes on foot with Caulaincourt into the town. Should any one recognise him, they will face it out, and declare that the interlocutor is seeing ghosts, or must be mad. Napoleon sends Caulaincourt to the embassy; but, in order to keep his own identity secret, he himself goes to an inn, which, of all names in the world, still calls itself the Hôtel de l’Angleterre. The low-ceilinged white-washed room is cold; there is only green wood, and the maidservant cannot get the stove to light; he must keep on his furs, his cap, and his big boots, while he tramps up and down the room, thrashing his arms like a coachman to keep himself warm. It is thus he is found by two Polish noblemen for whom he has sent through the embassy. They can hardly believe their eyes, but the ghost laughs at their astonishment.

“How long have I been in Warsaw? A week? No, only a couple of hours. It is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. How are you, Monsieur Stanislas?... Dangers? Not a bit of it. I thrive on excitement. The more I am tossed to and fro, the better I feel. The shadow kings grow fat in their palaces, but I put on flesh when riding my nag in the field.... So you’ve been anxious here? The army is in splendid condition. I have still one hundred and twenty thousand men! Gave the Russians a good hiding everywhere. They never ventured to stand up against me. The army will winter in Vilna. I am returning to Paris, and there I shall raise three hundred thousand soldiers! In six months I shall be back on the Memel.

“I have been through other fights! At Marengo I was beaten until six in the evening, but next day I was lord of Italy. At Aspern-Essling I made myself master of Austria, though the archduke believed he had held me in check there. It was not my fault that the Danube rose sixteen feet in one night. But for that, I should have finished off with the Habsburgs once for all. However, it was written in the stars that I was to marry an archduchess....

“The same thing in Russia. I can’t prevent its freezing there. Morning after morning, the report was that ten thousand horses had perished during the night. Bon voyage! Our Normandy horses cannot endure the cold like the Russians; the same with our soldiers.... Perhaps people will say that I stayed too long in Moscow; but the weather was beautiful, and I was waiting for peace. A great political drama! Nothing venture, nothing have. One step from the sublime to the ridiculous!... Who could have foreseen the burning of Moscow?... I never felt better in my life!”...

Such is the spate of words that for two hours flows from the mouth of a man who, after unspeakable losses, wishes to give the impression of desperate courage.

Napoleon becomes an adventurer. To impress these Poles, who will pass on what he says, he invents an army which has vanished long since; cold which really did nothing more than complete the destruction that other forces had begun; battles he never fought. He intersperses these figments with historical parallels of worldwide significance; treats what has just been happening as if it were ancient history; appeals to providence; and repeats no less than four times the cynically imposing aphorism about the sublime and the ridiculous, which blunts the edge of criticism. Great realist though he is, the world and what he is doing with it are becoming drama to him; and thus Napoleon, when his own fortunes are declining, is slowly mounting the ascent towards supreme irony.

The two Poles see nothing of all this. Their thoughts are concentrated upon their country’s debts, and they would fain get money from this man who is still numbered among the great ones of the earth. They seize their opportunity when at length there is a pause in the torrent of speech. He gives them an order on the treasury for six millions, which he thinks will buy support for him in Poland. Then his visitors wish him a happy journey, and, with secret scorn, watch the incognito drive away hastily in his sleigh.

Tuileries. Germain Bapst Collection.

(Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.)]

Day and night, night and day, they glide swiftly westward; for Germany, too, is under snow. Day and night, night and day, questions, commands, and plans are churning in his brain. “Is England really invincible? Now, the English can trade freely in the Baltic; English goods can enter Cadiz, and can make their way into the Levant.” He must put off his scheme for the conquest of India, but will abate no jot of his other designs! Will the Confederation of the Rhine still answer to his nod? How will it be possible to explain this crash in Russia? The disaster cannot be hushed up indefinitely. Is there any chance of raising another hundred and twenty thousand men in France? Next year’s levies must be called up in advance. Make peace with the pope at once, and with Spain likewise, for he must feel safe at his back. A National Guard, that was the best thought of the revolution; in that way he will be able to raise a million armed citizens within three months.

Night. Change of horses. He thrusts out his head. “Where are we?”

“In Weimar, Sire.”

“Weimar? How is the duchess? And how is Herr Goethe?”