CHAPTER VIII.

NAPOLEON (_continued_).

I must pass over the attempt to resettle the boundaries, at Vienna, of a changed Continent; nor can I dwell on the pretensions of the Czar to sit in the seat of Napoleon without his genius, on the rapacity of Prussia and the craft of Talleyrand, and on the league between Austria, England, and France, to restrain the ambition of the Northern Powers. Nor can I notice Napoleon’s brief rule in Elba, though the administrative powers of the fallen Lord of the Continent were exhibited in this narrow sphere, and have left honourable traditions not yet forgotten. I must also avoid even a short account of the failure of the Restoration in France; how Louis XVIII., well-meaning but feeble, spite of the memories of the old _régime_, fell into the hands of Royalist zealots, and marred the grace of the freedom he claimed to concede; how impossible it became to reconcile the pretensions of returned _émigrés_ and a ruined _noblesse_ with the interests grown out of the Revolution; how the army, transformed and made the appanage of a Court, chafed in silence, and regretted its unrivalled chief; how the nation after a brief hour of repose, felt humiliated that it had been reduced to the position of a lesser Power of Europe. The discords of the Coalition, and the unsettled state of France, were not lost on the extraordinary man who watched events from his speck in the sea, and who had not forgotten his vanished Empire. Napoleon quitted Elba in February 1815, on the most wonderful enterprise of his whole career. A flotilla bore the few hundred men imprudently left him by the Allies; Fortune smiled treacherously on her audacious favourite, and he had soon landed on the shores of Provence, in order, in the face of embattled Europe, to subvert a Government founded on an European triumph. The very thought seemed akin to folly, and yet it became an accomplished fact in a fortnight. With that insight which was one of his greatest gifts, Napoleon avoided the cities of the coast and the great military stations of his old marshals; he flung himself into the valleys of Dauphiné, a district hostile to the restored Monarchy, and his march seemed like the spread of some mighty influence, which power and authority were unable to withstand. Grasse, Sisteron, and Gap were rapidly passed; a regiment near Grenoble welcomed the sight of its old commander, and fell at his knees; the garrison of the town greeted him with exulting shouts, and wherever a part of the army beheld Napoleon, it followed him, swayed as by an enchanter’s spell. Macdonald, with his staff, was expelled from Lyons; Ney, meaning to be loyal, was carried away in the universal military revolt; other chiefs found it impossible to resist; and the discrowned exile was soon on his way to the capital at the head of a great and hourly increasing force.

Napoleon was at the Tuileries once more on the 20th of March; “his eagles,” in his expressive language, “had flown from steeple to steeple to the towers of Nôtre Dame,” and France, dazzled, surprised, and disliking the Bourbons, accepted a revolution which seemed a kind of portent. The King fled into Belgium with his Court, his nobles, and a few officers of the Empire, who would not break their oaths; the army easily put down two or three risings of Royalists in the Southern Provinces; and Napoleon boasted, with truth, that he regained his throne at the cost of scarcely a drop of blood. After this astonishing return to Empire, Napoleon offered peace, and to remain satisfied with the France of the Treaties of 1814; and probably he was sincere in these overtures. Yet it is not surprising that he was not believed; he had broken faith with Europe in leaving Elba, and, partly through terror and partly from hate, the Allies proscribed him as an enemy of mankind. He addressed himself to the defence of France, but the movement which had set him on the throne was essentially a military revolt; the fierce animosities of French factions embarrassed his Government and weakened the State; the restored Empire was viewed with distrust by Royalists, Liberals, and the old Republicans; the nation treated with indifferent contempt free institutions offered by Imperial hands; and the Chambers, which Napoleon convened to give popular support to his imperilled power, were full of secret or avowed conspirators. Nevertheless, let detractors say what they please, his exertions were mighty and worthy of him; his genius as an administrator shone with fresh brightness, though his health was evidently on the decline, and in a few weeks he had made preparations to resist the Coalition which must be deemed wonderful. One circumstance gave him precious resources; more than 100,000 prisoners of war, trained and excellent soldiers, had been restored to France; and by making use of these and additional veterans, and by employing conscripts and National Guards, he raised the army, which had been reduced to impotence, to a state of formidable strength and efficiency. Meanwhile, he gave its old organization and structure to the instrument of war he had so long wielded; the Guard reappeared, and the loved eagles; corps, divisions, and reserves were again formed; great exertions were made to provide arms, horses, and _impedimenta_ of all kinds; and Paris, which had fallen at once in 1814, was to a considerable extent, fortified. By June 1815, half-a-million of men were on foot to take part in the impending conflict; about 250,000 of these were ready; and paper money supplied the Treasury with the means of seconding a great effort which, in existing circumstances, was, I repeat, astonishing.

Two plans of operations presented themselves. Had France been united and loyal as a whole, Napoleon would have, no doubt, followed the grand precedent of the year before, under conditions much more favourable to success; he would have encountered the Coalition in Champagne with forces far more powerful than in 1814, and with Paris a strong entrenched camp in his rear, and recollecting what he achieved on the Marne and the Seine, his triumph would have been not at all improbable. The second plan was much more hazardous; but it was in harmony with Napoleon’s genius, and it followed methods which had often secured him victory. The Coalition had a million of men in arms; but these masses were spread from the Scheldt to the Po, and easterly, from the Rhine to the Oder; and the extreme right of the immense line of invasion, the two armies of Blücher and Wellington was isolated and thrown forward in Belgium. It might be practicable then, as it had been at Ulm, to cut off and destroy this detached force; and many circumstances concurred to give a well-directed attack a real chance of success. The armies of Blücher and Wellington were widely apart; they rested upon divergent bases; they were commanded by chiefs of opposite natures; their centre was weak and greatly exposed; their line of communication was a single road, at a short distance only from the French frontier, and behind this line lay a difficult country which would make their subsequent concentration no easy matter.

Seizing the situation with the eye of a master, Napoleon saw in this position of affairs an admirable opportunity to strike with effect; and he resolved to assail and break through the allied centre, and to try to defeat Blücher and Wellington in detail, as he had defeated Beaulieu and Colli in the campaign of Italy. The means he adopted to carry out his project rank among the finest operations of his life, and form a conspicuous instance of his gift of stratagem. Concealing the movement with consummate skill, he drew together four corps from the vast space between Lille and Metz to the edge of the frontier; the Guard, another corps, and the cavalry marched from the interior; and the collected masses, perfectly arranged, converged gradually along this immense front, under the eye of the enemy, yet without his knowledge! No more splendid effort has been made in war; and had the Emperor had the complete force--150,000 men--which he reckoned on to begin the campaign, in all probability he would have triumphed. A rising in La Vendée deprived him, however, at the last moment, of 20,000 soldiers; but the die was cast, and he did not hesitate; and he set off from Paris on the 12th of June to challenge Fortune in a supreme trial. His admirable directions had been admirably fulfilled. On the evening of the 14th June 1815, 128,000 Frenchmen, comprising 22,000 horse and 350 guns, were assembled from near Maubeuge to near Philippeville, where the French frontier then entered Belgium; and screened by the Sambre, they were a few miles from Charleroi, where the great road to Brussels gave an easy approach to the comparatively feeble centre of the Allies.

The army was in motion at daybreak on the 15th, the Emperor’s object being to cross the Sambre, to occupy Charleroi, and by a forced march to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, on the great cross road between Nivelles and Namur, the only line on which his foes could unite without obstacles of no small difficulty. The operation was not quite successful; delays and different accidents occurred. Ziethen, too, one of Blücher’s lieutenants, had checked the advance, not without skill, but Napoleon’s project was nearly realised; the great mass of the French was beyond Charleroi, and within easy reach of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe before night closed on the 15th; and the allied centre was threatened if not severed, and could only close up in effective force, under, so to speak, the guns of the enemy. The conduct, meanwhile, of the hostile chiefs had perfectly fulfilled Napoleon’s previsions, and had given him already an immense advantage. Blücher had, characteristically, placed three of his corps in positions around, or not far from, Sombreffe, even now almost in Napoleon’s grasp; but his fourth corps was many leagues distant, and could not reach Sombreffe for a battle next day. On the other hand, Wellington, circumspect and cautious, and without experience of Napoleon’s strategy, had hesitated and delayed at Brussels; he had not taken a step to join his colleague until late in the night of the 15th; and even then, fearing for his communications and his right, he had not advanced in force towards Quatre Bras, where his junction with Blücher would be accomplished. The allied line of communication, therefore, on the lateral road of Nivelles-Namur was not held by the Allies in force; it was all but in the hands of the enemy. The allied centre was completely exposed, and Napoleon might reasonably expect either to beat in detail the allied chiefs, should they venture to offer battle, or to seize the points of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, and to interpose between Blücher and Wellington.

[Illustration:

Theatre of the CAMPAIGN of 1815.]

This was the situation on the morning of the 16th, and it was full of great, nay, of splendid, promise. Napoleon was now at Charleroi, about to start for Fleurus, and to take the command of his corps near Sombreffe. He has been charged with delay, I think unjustly, and he was not fully aware of the enemy’s movements; but his general position was so good, and his general directions were so well planned, that accidents only robbed him of a decisive victory. He ordered Ney on his left to seize Quatre Bras, driving back any forces of the Duke at hand. The Marshal was then to descend on the rear of Blücher, who was to be attacked near Sombreffer, in front, by the Emperor; and had this grand manœuvre been properly carried out, Blücher must have been routed and forced away to the Meuse, and Wellington would have been in the extreme of peril, for both generals were now trying to join hands at Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, and were laying themselves open to the whole force of Napoleon. Ney could have easily fulfilled his mission; but he had lost the confidence of better days; he waited many hours before he even tried to move; and he failed to accomplish his main task, falling from Quatre Bras on the rear of Blücher.

Napoleon, meanwhile, marching from Fleurus, had attacked Blücher between Sombreffe and Ligny. The battle raged furiously for a considerable time, to the disadvantage of the Prussians on the whole, but no decisive success had been won; and the Emperor, perceiving that no force was closing on Blücher from the direction of Ney, tried to attain his object by another method. One of Ney’s corps had advanced slowly; the Emperor directed this towards Blücher’s flank, while Blücher was to be assailed, as before, in front; and had this stroke been pressed home, the result would have been the same as that of the first projected attack. D’Erlon, however, the unlucky chief of this corps, was, when on the path of victory, called up by Ney, hard pressed by Wellington at this moment; and Napoleon, I think, must have concurred in this, for the defeat of Ney would have been disastrous, though this extreme caution was, perhaps, an error. Blücher escaped destruction through these mishaps; but Napoleon’s attack in front had partial success, and the Prussian army was driven, in defeat, from the field. On the other side of the scenes of manœuvre, Ney, we have seen, had not reached Blücher, and had missed his mark; he had most unfortunately recalled D’Erlon, and he had suffered a repulse from the hands of Wellington, who had kept Quatre Bras though with much difficulty. Ney, however, had gained a strategic advantage; he had prevented Wellington from joining Blücher, and as Blücher had been forced away from Sombreffe, the Duke would be compelled to retreat; the line of communication of the allied armies was practically already in Napoleon’s hands; and his operations had been largely successful, if they had not led to a second Jena, as he had reason to expect a few hours before. Such had been the result of his fine strategy, although that result had not been complete; and it should be borne in mind that the allied armies were not far from double his own in numbers.

The allied generals, obliged, through the defeat of Ligny, to abandon their proper line of junction--the great road between Nivelles and Namur--were now thrown back into the country behind it, the thick-wooded and marshy valley of the Dyle, very difficult for the passage of armies. The real student of war will not doubt as to what their movements ought to have been; they should either have united their forces at once, a few miles behind Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, or they should have retreated two marches away to Brussels, where, having an overwhelming superiority of strength, they might have derided Napoleon’s efforts. They took, however, an intermediate course--a half measure often disastrous in war; Blücher fell back some twenty miles to Wavre, the Duke fell back from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, and holding these positions they meant to join hands and accept, if offered, a great battle.

The idolaters of success, supposed to cover everything, have praised this as scientific strategy, but it was bad strategy, and dangerous in the extreme. Wavre is considerably farther from Waterloo than Sombreffe is from Quatre Bras; what is more important, a most intricate country divides Wavre from Waterloo, and in this operation Blücher and Wellington were playing into the hands of their renowned adversary. Napoleon was given three alternatives, each big with the promise of immense success. He might call on his victorious army to make a forced march, might fall either on Blücher or Wellington, and defeat either within a few hours, before Wavre or Waterloo were reached; or collecting together all his forces, he might attack Blücher at Wavre, or the Duke at Waterloo, before either could join the other; or, in truer accordance with the principles of the art, he might restrain Blücher, with a retarding force, sent quickly from Ligny to hold him in check, and might attack Wellington with the mass of his army--the favourite manœuvre, in which he has had no rival--and in any of these cases he must have triumphed, over-matched as he was by his foes in numbers. The double retreat on Wavre and Waterloo was therefore a thoroughly false movement; and the General of Rivoli would have made it fatal. But the General of Rivoli, full of genius as ever, had lost the iron strength of twenty years before. Napoleon returned after Ligny, to Fleurus, ill; he went to sleep and could not see his staff, and this illness, at a crisis in the campaign, saved the Allies, and had momentous results.

During the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, the French army remained motionless. Soult and Ney literally did nothing, no preparations for marching were made; the Emperor sent no orders from Fleurus; and, worst of all, Grouchy given the command of the right on the 16th, made no real effort to reconnoitre the Prussians, and to find out where they had gone. Disease, in fact, had weakened the energy of the chief; his lieutenants, fashioned to servitude, let things drift, and the opportunity of the 16th, given on the 17th once more, was lost never again to return. Napoleon was back at Ligny in the forenoon of the 17th; a letter of Soult, the Chief of the Staff, proves that his first intention was to halt for the day, for he believed that the Prussians, completely routed, were falling back on their base, towards the Meuse, and there would be time, he thought, to turn against and defeat Wellington. On lear