Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott
interposed is itself liable to be turned, if the hostile divisions betwixt which it is interposed take combined measures for attacking it. The catching, therefore, too prompt an alarm, or considering the consequences of such a movement as irretrievable, belongs to the pedantry of war, and not to its science.
At midnight a council was held for the purpose of determining the future motions of the allies. The generalissimo recommended a retreat behind the line of the Aube. The Emperor Alexander opposed this with great steadiness. He observed, with justice, that the protracted war was driving the country people to despair, and that the peasantry were already taking up arms, while the allies only wanted resolution, certainly neither opportunity nor numbers, to decide the affair by a single blow.
So many were the objections stated, and so difficult was it to bring the various views and interests of so many powers to coincide in the same general plan, that the Emperor informed one of his attendants, he thought the anxiety of the night must have turned half his hair grey. Lord Castlereagh was against the opinion of Schwartzenberg, the rather that he concluded that a retreat behind the Aube would be a preface to one behind the Rhine. Taking it upon him, as became the Minister of Britain at such a crisis, he announced to the allied powers, that, so soon as they should commence the proposed retreat, the subsidies of England would cease to be paid to them.9
It was, therefore, finally agreed to resume offensive operations, for which purpose they proposed to diminish the distance betwixt the allied grand army and that of Silesia, and resume such a communication with Blucher as might prevent the repetition of such disasters as those of Montmirail and Montereau. With this view it was determined to descend the Aube, unite their army at Arcis, offer Napoleon battle, should he desire to accept it, or move boldly on Paris if he should refuse the proffered action. What determined them more resolutely, from this moment, to approach the capital as soon as possible, was the intelligence which arrived at the headquarters by Messieurs de Polignac.10 These gentlemen brought an encouraging account of the progress of the Royalists in the metropolis, and of the general arrangements which were actively pursued for uniting with the interests of the Bourbons that of all others, who, from dislike to Buonaparte's person and government, or fear that the country, and they themselves, must share in his approaching ruin, were desirous to get rid of the Imperial government. Talleyrand was at the head of the confederacy, and all were resolved to embrace the first opportunity of showing themselves, which the progress of the allies should permit. This important intelligence, coming from such unquestionable authority, strengthened the allies in their resolution to march upon Paris.
In the meantime, Napoleon being at Rheims, as stated, on the 15th and 16th March, was alarmed by the news of the loss of the battle of Bar, the retreat of the three maréchals beyond the Seine, and the demonstrations of the grand army to cross that river once more. He broke up, as we have seen, from Rheims on the 17th, and sending Ney to take possession of Chalons, marched himself to Epernay, with the purpose of placing himself on the right flank, and in the rear of Schwartzenberg, in case he should advance on the road to Paris. At Epernay, he learned that the allies, alarmed by his movements, had retired to Troyes, and that they were about to retreat upon the Aube, and probably to Langres. He also learned that the maréchals, Macdonald and Oudinot, had resumed their advance so soon as their adversaries began to retreat. He hastened to form a junction with these persevering leaders, and proceeded to ascend the Aube as high as Bar, where he expected to throw himself into Schwartzenberg's rear, having no doubt that his army was retiring from the banks of the Aube.
In these calculations, accurate as far as the information permitted, Buonaparte was greatly misled. He conceived himself to be acting upon the retreat of the allies, and expected only to find a rear-guard at Arcis; he was even talking jocularly of making his father-in-law prisoner during his retreat. If, contrary to his expectation, he should find the enemy, or any considerable part of them, still upon the Aube, it was, from all he had heard, to be supposed his appearance would precipitate their retreat towards the frontier. It has also been asserted, that he expected Maréchal Macdonald to make a corresponding advance from the banks of the Seine to those of the Aube; but the orders had been received too late to admit of the necessary space being traversed so as to arrive on the morning of the day of battle.
Napoleon easily drove before him such bodies of light cavalry, and sharp-shooters, as had been left by the allies, rather for the purpose of reconnoitring than of making serious opposition. He crossed the Aube at Plancey, and moved upwards along the left bank of the river, with Ney's corps, and his whole cavalry, while the infantry of his guard advanced upon the right; his army being thus, according to the French military phrase, à cheval upon the Aube. The town of Arcis had been evacuated by the allies upon his approach, and was occupied by the French on the morning of the 20th March. That town forms the outlet of a sort of defile, where a succession of narrow bridges cross a number of drains, brooks, and streamlets, the feeders of the river Aube, and a bridge in the town crosses the river itself. On the other side of Arcis is a plain, in which some few squadrons of cavalry, resembling a reconnoitring party, were observed manœuvring.
Behind these horse, at a place called Clermont, the Prince Royal of Wirtemberg, whose name has been so often honourably mentioned, was posted with his division, while the elite of the allied army was drawn up on a chain of heights still farther in the rear, called Mesnil la Comtesse. But these forces were not apparent to the vanguard of Napoleon's army. The French cavalry had orders to attack the light troops of the allies; but these were instantly supported by whole regiments, and by cannon, so that the attack was unsuccessful; and the squadrons of the French were repulsed and driven back on Arcis at a moment, when, from the impediments in the town and its environs, the infantry could with difficulty debouche from the town to support them. Napoleon showed, as he always did in extremity, the same heroic courage which he had exhibited at Lodi and Brienne. He drew his sword, threw himself among the broken cavalry, called on them to remember their former victories, and checked the enemy by an impetuous charge, in which he and his staff-officers fought hand to hand with their opponents, so that he was in personal danger from the lance of a Cossack, the thrust of which was averted by his aide-de-camp, Girardin. His Mameluke Rustan fought stoutly by his side, and received a gratuity for his bravery. These desperate exertions afforded time for the infantry to debouche from the town. The Imperial Guards came up, and the combat waxed very warm. The superior numbers of the allies rendered them the assailants on all points. A strongly situated village in front, and somewhat to the left of Arcis, called Grand Torcy, had been occupied by the French. This place was repeatedly and desperately attacked by the allies, but the French made good their position. Arcis itself was set on fire by the shells of the assailants, and night alone separated the combatants, by inducing the allies to desist from the attack.
In the course of the night, Buonaparte was joined by Macdonald, Oudinot, and Gerard, with the forces with which they had lately held the defensive upon the Seine; and the anxious question remained, whether, thus reinforced, he should venture an action with the grand army, to which he was still much inferior in numbers. Schwartzenberg, agreeably to the last resolution of the allies, drew up on the heights of Mesnil la Comtesse, prepared to receive battle. On consideration of the superior strength of the enemy, and of the absence of some troops not yet come up, Napoleon finally determined not to accept a battle under such disadvantageous circumstances. He therefore commenced a retreat, the direction of which was doomed to prove the crisis of his fate. He retired as he had advanced, along both sides of the Aube; and though pursued and annoyed in this movement (which was necessarily executed through Arcis and all its defiles,) his rear-guard was so well conducted, that he sustained little loss. A late author,11 who has composed an excellent and scientific work on this campaign, has remarked – "In concluding the account of the two days thus spent by the contending armies in presence of each other, it is equally worthy of remark, that Buonaparte, with a force not exceeding 25,000 or 30,000 men, should have risked himself in such a position in front of 80,000 of the allies, as that the latter should have allowed him to escape them with impunity." The permitting him to retreat with so little annoyance has been censured in general by all who have written on this campaign.12
CHAPTER LXXVI
Plans
Lord Burghersh, in his memoranda previously quoted, states that Lord Castlereagh was not at Troyes upon this occasion, that he made no such declaration as Sir Walter Scott ascribes to him: and that any such declaration would have been uncalled for, as Prince Schwartzenberg was bent on concentrating his forces at Arcis – which he did. Compare "
For
Memoir of the Operations of the Allied Armies in 1813 and 1814. By Lord Burghersh.
Jomini, tom. iv., 564.