When Bonaparte arrived, preceded by his bulletin, there was general consternation. ‘The Empire,’ says Monsieur Ségur, ‘could only count on men aged by time or war, and children! Almost all the mature men, where were they? Women’s tears, mothers’ cries, spoke clearly enough! Bowed laboriously over the land, which without them would have remained untilled, they cursed the war he personified.’

Returning from the Berezina, there was no less of a requirement to dance: that is what one learns from the Souvenirs pour servir à l’histoire, of Queen Hortense. One was forced to go to the ball, death in one’s heart, weeping inwardly for relatives or friends. Such was the dishonour to which despotism had condemned France: one saw in the salons what one met with in the streets, creatures distracting themselves from their own lives by singing out their misery to divert the passers-by.

For three years I had been in retirement at Aulnay: from my pine-clad hill, in 1811, I had followed with my eyes the comet which during the night fled towards the wooded horizon; she was beautiful and melancholy, and, like a queen, drew her long train behind her. Whom did she seek, that lost stranger to our world? Towards whom did she make her way through the wastes of the sky?

On the 23rd of October 1812, sheltering for a moment in Paris, on the Rue des Saints-Pères, at the Hôtel Lavalette, Madame Lavalette, my hostess, being deaf and furnished with her long ear-trumpet, roused me: ‘Monsieur! Monsieur! Bonaparte is dead! General Malet has killed Hulin. All the powers that be are changed. The Revolution is over.’

Bonaparte was so beloved that for a while Paris was in a state of joy, except for the authorities who were left in an absurd limbo. A rumour had almost toppled the Empire. Escaping from prison at midnight a soldier was master of the world at daybreak; a fantasy was close to carrying off a formidable reality. The most moderate said: ‘If Napoleon is not dead, he will return chastened by his mistakes and reverses; he will make peace with Europe, and our remaining children will be saved.’ Two hours after his wife had spoken to me, Monsieur Lavelette entered to inform me of Malet’s arrest: it was no secret (that was his habitual phrase) that all was over. Day and night occurred simultaneously. I have related how Bonaparte received the news in a snowy field near Smolensk. The Senatus Consulte (of 12th of January 1813) put at the disposal of the returning Napoleon two hundred and fifty thousand men; inexhaustible France saw flow, from its blood through its wounds, fresh soldiers. Then a long-forgotten voice was heard; a few aged French ears thought they recognised the sound: it was the voice of Louis XVIII; it rose from the depths of exile. Louis XVI’s brother proclaimed the principles to be established one day by constitutional charter; the first aspiration towards liberty that emanated from our former kings.

Alexander, having entered Warsaw, addressed a proclamation to Europe: ……………………………………………………………………...

‘If the North will imitate the sublime example set by the Castilians, the world’s period of mourning is over. Europe, on the verge of falling prey to a monster, will recover its freedom and tranquillity. Let this blood-stained colossus who has menaced the continent with his endless criminality remain in the end merely a distant memory of horror and pity!’

That monster, that blood-stained colossus who menaced the continent with his endless criminality, had learnt so little from misfortune that barely escaped from the Cossacks he flung himself upon an old man whom he still held prisoner.

Book XXII: Chapter 2: The Pope at Fontainebleau

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We saw the Pope’s abduction from Rome, his stay at Savona, then his detention at Fontainebleau. Discord held sway in the Sacred College: some Cardinals wished the Holy Father to resist for spiritual reasons, and they were ordered to only wear black garments; some were sent into exile in the provinces; some of the leading French clergy were imprisoned at Vincennes: other Cardinals assented to the Pope’s total submission; they retained their red garments; it was a second visitation of the Candlemas candles.

While at Fontainebleau the Pope obtained some respite from the obsession with Red Cardinals, he walked alone in the galleries of Francis I; he recognised some remnants of arts which recalled the Holy City, and from his windows he could see the pine trees that Louis XVI had planted facing the gloomy apartments where Monaldeschi was assassinated. From this deserted place, like Jesus, he could take pity on the kingdoms of the earth. The septuagenarian, half-dead, Bonaparte himself visiting to torment him, mechanically signed that Concordat of 1813, which he protested against as soon as Cardinals Pacca and Consalvi arrived.

When Pacca rejoined the captive with whom he had left Rome, he thought to find a large crowd around the royal jail; he only found a few servants in the courtyards and a sentry on duty at the top of the Horseshoe Staircase. The windows and doors to the palace were closed: in the first antechamber to the apartments he found Cardinal Doria, in the other rooms stood several French bishops. Pacca was announced to His Holiness: he was standing motionless, pale, hunched, thin, his eyes sunken in his head.

The Cardinal told him that he had hurried his journey to throw himself at his feet. Then the Pope said: ‘These Cardinals dragged us to the table and made us sign.’ Pacca withdrew to the apartment prepared for him, overcome by the solitariness of the residence, the expressionless eyes, the despondent faces, and the profound sorrow imprinted on the Pope’s visage. Returning to His Holiness, he ‘found him’ (he himself speaks) ‘in a state worthy of compassion and in fear of his life. He was overwhelmed by an inconsolable sadness when speaking of what had taken place; that tormenting thought stopped him sleeping and prevented him taking the nourishment which sufficed to keep him from death: - “As to that”, he said, “I shall die mad like Clement XIV.”’

In the silence of those empty galleries, where the voices of Saint Louis, Francis I, Henry IV, and Louis XIV were no longer heard, the Holy Father, spent several days composing and copying the letter which was to be sent to the Emperor. Cardinal Pacca carried the document about hidden in his robes, at some risk since the Pope had added a few lines to it in his own handwriting. The work done, the Pope gave it, on the 24th of May 1813, to Colonel Lagorce and asked him to take it to the Emperor. At the same time he read a short speech to the various Cardinals who were present: he considered the brief he had issued at Savona and the Concordat of 25th January as null and void. ‘May the Lord be blessed,’ the speech read, ‘who has not removed his mercy from us! He has simply wished to humble us through salutary confession. Let us then be humbled for the good of our soul; to Him, through all the centuries, exaltation, honour and glory!

From the Palace of Fontainebleau, the 24th of March 1813.’

No finer decree has ever issued from that Palace. The Pope’s conscience was eased, the martyr’s expression became serene; his smile and his lips regained their charm, and his eyes closed in sleep.

At first Napoleon threatened to make the heads of some of those priests at Fontainebleau leap from their shoulders; he considered declaring himself head of State religion; then, regaining his temper, he pretended to know nothing of the Pope’s letter, But his fortunes were in decline. The Pope, from an order of poor monks, dragged by misfortune among the crowd, seemed to have taken on the great mantle of Tribune of the People once more, and given the signal for the deposition of the oppressor of public freedom.

Book XXII: Chapter 3: Defections – The deaths of Lagrange and Delille

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Ill fortune brings betrayal with it but does not justify it; in March of 1813, Prussia allies itself with Russia at Kalisz. On the 3rd of March, Sweden signs a treaty with the Court of St James; she is obliged to provide thirty thousand men, Hamburg is evacuated by the French, Berlin entered by Cossacks, Dresden occupied by the Russians and Prussians.

The defection of the Confederation of the Rhine is imminent. Austria adheres to its alliance with Russia and Prussia. The war in Italy re-commences and Prince Eugène is sent there.

In Spain, the English army defeats Joseph at Vittoria; the paintings stripped from the churches and palaces fall into the Ebro; I have seen them in Madrid and at the Escorial; I had seen them when they were restored in Paris: the waves and Napoleon had passed over these Murillos and Raphaels, velut umbra (like a shadow). Wellington, ever advancing, defeats Soult at Roncesvalles: our noblest memories formed the background to the scene of our later fate.

On the 14th of February, at the opening of the Legislature, Bonaparte had declared that he had always wanted peace and that it was essential for the world. This lie no longer emanated from him. Moreover there was little sympathy for the grief of France from the lips of one who called us his subjects: Bonaparte exacted suffering from us, as a tribute due to him.

On the 3rd of April, the Senate (Conservateur) added a hundred and eighty thousand combatants to those it had already allocated: an extraordinary levy of men in the midst of the regular levies. On the 10th of April, Lagrange was taken; the Abbé Delille died some days later. If nobility of feeling outweighs depth of thought in Heaven, the singer of La Pitié is nearer the throne of God than the author of the Theory of Analytic Functions. Bonaparte left Paris on the 15th of April.

Book XXII: Chapter 4: The Battles of Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden – Reverses in Spain

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The levies of 1812, following one another, have halted in Saxony. Napoleon arrives. The honours of the former lost host are handed to two hundred thousand conscripts who fight like the grenadiers of Marengo. On the 2nd of May, the battle of Lützen is won: Bonaparte, in these fresh battles, scarcely used artillery any longer. Entering Dresden, he tells the inhabitants: ‘I am not unaware of the joy in which you indulged when the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia entered your walls. We can still see on the cobblestones the remains of the flowers that your young girls scattered in the path of those monarchs.’ Did Napoleon remember the young girls of Verdun? It was in the days of his youth.

At Bautzen, another triumph, but one after which the Commander of the Engineers, Kirgener, and Duroc, the Grand Marshal of the Palace, were buried. ‘There is a future life,’ the Emperor told Duroc, ‘we will meet again.’ Did Duroc care much about that meeting?

On the 26th and 27th of August, they reached the Elbe, on fields already famous. Returned from America, having seen Bernadotte in Stockholm, and Alexander in Prague, Moreau had both legs carried away by a cannonball, at Dresden, at the side of the Russian Emperor: a familiar outcome of Napoleonic destiny. They learned, in the French camp, of the death of the victor of Hohenlinden, by means of a stray dog, on whose collar was inscribed the name of the new Turenne; the animal, living on without its master, ran here and there among the dead: Te, janitor Orci (You, oh guardian of the Underworld)!

The Prince of Sweden, who had become the Generalissimo of the Army of North Germany, had addressed a proclamation to his soldiers on the 15th of August:

‘Soldiers, the same feelings that guided the French in 1792, and which led them to unite, and combat the armies entering their territory, must now direct your valour against one who, having invaded the soil which bore you, still enslaves your brothers, your wives and your children.’

Bonaparte, incurring universal disapproval, set himself against liberty which attacked him on all sides, in all its forms. A Senatus-Consulte of the 28th of August annulled the judgement of a jury at Anvers: a very minor infraction, doubtless, of the rights of citizens, after the arbitrary enormities employed by the Emperor; but at the heart of the law is a sacred freedom whose cry must be heard: that oppression practised against a jury made more noise than the many other oppressions to which France fell victim.

Finally, in the south, the enemy trod our soil; the English, Bonaparte’s obsession and the source of almost all his mistakes, crossed the Bidasoa on the 7th of October: Wellington, the man of destiny, was the first to set his foot on the soil of France.

Insisting on remaining in Saxony, despite Vandamme’s capture in Bohemia and Ney’s defeat near Berlin by Bernadotte, Napoleon returned to Dresden. Then the Landsturm was levied; a patriotic war, similar to that which had freed Spain, was being organised.

Book XXII: Chapter 5: The Campaign in Saxony, or the Campaign of The Poets

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The battles of 1813 have been referred to as the Campaign in Saxony: they would be better named the Campaign of Young Germany or the Campaign of the Poets. To what despair had Bonaparte not reduced us by his oppression, that while watching our own blood flow, we could yet deny a gesture of support for generous youth taking up the sword in the name of freedom? Each of those battles was a protest on behalf of national rights.

In one of his proclamations, dated from Kalisz on the 25th of March 1813, Alexander called the people of Germany to arms, promising them, in the name of his royal ‘brothers’, free institutions. This was the signal for open activity by the Burschenschaft, which had already been formed in secret. The German universities re-opened; they set aside sorrow in order to think only of reparation for their injuries: ‘Let mourning and tears be brief, grief and distress long-lasting.’ said the ancient Germans, ‘it is right for women to weep, for men to remember: ‘Lamenta ac lacrymas cito, dolorem et tristitiam tarde ponunt. Feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse.’ Then the young Germans hastened to free their country; then they were in a hurry, those Germans, allies of the Empire, whom ancient Rome aided, in supplying them with armour and spears, velut tela atque arma.

In Berlin, in 1813, Professor Fichte gave a lecture on duty; he spoke of the disasters which afflicted Germany, and finished his lecture with these words: ‘This course will be suspended until the end of the Campaign. We will continue it when our country is free, or we will die regaining our freedom.’ His young audience rise to their feet in acclamation: Fichte descends from his seat, passes through the crowd, and goes to enrol in a corps leaving for the army.

All Bonaparte has scorned and insulted becomes a danger to him: intellect enters the lists against brute force; Moscow is the flame by whose light Germany dons its harness: ‘To arms!’ the Muse cries. ‘The Phoenix of Russia has soared from its pyre!’ That Queen of Prussia, so defenceless and so beautiful, whom Napoleon showered his clever insults upon, is transformed into an implored and imploring shade: ‘How softly she sleeps!’ sing the bards, ‘Ah, may you sleep until that day when your people wash away the rust of their swords with blood! Wake, then! Wake! Be our angel of liberty and vengeance!’

Körner had only one fear, that of dying in prose: ‘Poesy! Poesy!’ he exclaimed, ‘bring me death at the break of day!’

He composed, in camp, the hymn of The Lyre and the Sword.

THE KNIGHT.

‘Tell me fine sword, sword at my side, why the light of your glance is so ardent today? You glance at me with the gaze of love, fine sword, sword that is my joy. Huzza!’

THE SWORD.

‘It’s because a brave knight bears me along: that is what inflames my glance; for I am the strength of a free man. Huzza!’

THE KNIGHT.

‘Yes, my blade, yes, I am a free man, and I love you from the depths of my heart: I love you as if you were my betrothed; I love you like a dear mistress.’

THE SWORD.

‘And I, I give myself to you! To you my life, to you my soul of steel! Oh! If we are betrothed, when will you say: Come to me, come my dear mistress?’

Might one not believe one is listening to one of those Northern warriors, one of those men of battle and solitude, of whom Saxo Grammaticus wrote: ‘He fell, smiling: and died.’

It is not the cool enthusiasm of a Skald certainly: Körner had his sword by his side; handsome, fair, young, an Apollo on horseback, he sang of the darkness like an Arab in the saddle; his maoual (chant), while charging the enemy, was accompanied by the sound of his galloping mount. Wounded at Lützen, he dragged himself into the woods, where some peasants found him; he emerged to die on the plains of Mecklenburg, at the age of twenty-one: he fled the arms of a woman he loved, and forsook all the delights of life. ‘Women take pleasure,’ said Tyrtaeus, ‘in contemplating the radiant and upright man: he is no less handsome if he falls in the front ranks.’

The new followers of Arminius, raised in the school of Greece, had a common national anthem: when these students abandoned the peaceful avenues of science for the field of battle, the silent joys of study for the noisy perils of war, Homer and the Niebelungenlied for the sword, with what did they counter our hymn of blood, our Revolutionary canticle? These stanzas full of religious feeling, and human sincerity:

‘Where is Germany? Name that great land to me! Wherever the German language sounds, and our German song is heard praising God: there is Germany.

Germany is the land where a shake of the hand suffices as a pledge, where simple honesty shines in every glance, where affection glows in every heart.

O God, in Heaven, cast your eyes on us: grant us that purity of spirit, truly German, so that we may be loyal and true. There, is a German’s country, all that land is his land.’

These college friends, now companions in arms, do not join clubs where Septembrists vow to murder with the knife: loyal to their poetic imaginings, to historical tradition, to the cult of the past, they make an old castle, an ancient forest, a defensive sanctuary of the Burschenschaft. The Queen of Prussia becomes their patroness, instead of the Queen of Night.

At the summit of a hill, among the ruins, the soldier-scholars, with their officer-professors, see revealed the pinnacle of their beloved university halls: moved by memories of their learned past, and by this sight of the sanctuary of their studies and the games of their youth, they swear to free their country, as Melchthal, Fürst and Stauffacher had pronounced their triple oath in sight of the Alps, immortalised by them, and depicted by them. The German spirit has something mystical about it; Schiller’s Thekla for example is a Teutonic daughter gifted with second-sight and imbued with a divine element. The Germans today worship liberty with an indefinable mysticism, just as they once designated the secret depths of the forests as God: Deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud…The man whose life was a dithyramb of action only fell when the poets of Young Germany had sung, and taken up the sword, against their rival Napoleon, the armed poet.

Alexander was worthy of being the herald sent to the young Germans: he shared their elevated feelings, and he was in a position of power which made their plans achievable; but he let himself be made fearful by the fears of the monarchs who surrounded him. Those monarchs had never kept their promises; they gave their people nothing in the way of benevolent political institutions. The children of the Muse (the flame by whom the inert mass of soldiers had been animated) were thrust into dungeons in recompense for their devotion and their noble beliefs. Alas, the generation that brought the Teutons freedom had vanished; there were only old worn out political incumbents in Germany. They praised Napoleon as a great man at every opportunity, so that their present admiration might excuse their past abasement. In that foolish enthusiasm for the man which made governments continue to grovel when they been whipped, they barely remembered Körner: ‘Arminius, Germany’s liberator,’ says Tacitus, ‘was unknown to the Greeks who only admired themselves, and little celebrated among the Romans whom he had vanquished; but the barbarous nations still sing of him, caniturque barbaras apud gentes.’

Book XXII: Chapter 6: The Battle of Leipzig – Bonaparte’s return to Paris – the Treaty of Valençay

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On the 18th and 19th of October 1813 the battle took place on the fields of Leipzig that the Germans call the Battle of the Nations. Towards the end of the second day, the Saxons and the Wurtenbergers, deserting Napoleon’s camp beneath the banner of Bernadotte, decided the outcome of the action: victory was tarnished by betrayal. The Prince of Sweden, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia entered Leipzig through three different gates. Napoleon, having experienced a crushing defeat, retreated. Since he knew nothing of sergeant’s retreats, as he once said, he blew the bridges behind him. Prince Poniatowski, twice wounded, was drowned in the Weisse Elster: Poland fell with its last defender.

Napoleon did not halt till Erfurt: from there his bulletin announced that his army, ever victorious, had met with a great battle: Erfurt, not long before, had seen Napoleon at the height of his prosperity.

Finally, the Bavarians, following the other deserters from ill fortune, tried to annihilate the rest of our soldiers at Hanau. Wrède was defeated by the Guards of Honour alone: a few conscripts, already veterans, treated him ruthlessly; they saved Bonaparte and took up position behind the Rhine. Arriving in Mainz as a fugitive, Napoleon, returned to Saint-Cloud on the 9th of November; the indefatigable De Lacépède arrived to tell him: ‘Your Majesty has overcome all.’ Monsieur de Lacépède spoke appropriately concerning oviparous creatures; but could not keep on his feet.

Holland regained its freedom, and recalled the Prince of Orange. On the 1st of December the Allied Powers declared: ‘that they were not making war against France, only against the Emperor, or rather against that domination he had exercised for too long, beyond the borders of his Empire, to the detriment of Europe and France.’

As the moment approached when we would be shut in our former territory once more we asked what purpose the upheaval in Europe, and the massacre of so many millions of men, had served? Time swallows us and continues tranquilly on its course.

By the Treaty of Valençay of the 11th of December, the wretched Ferdinand VII was returned to Madrid: thus ended, obscurely and in haste, that criminal enterprise in Spain, the primary cause of Napoleon’s fall. One can always go to the bad, one can always kill people, including a king; but the way back is difficult: Jacques Clément repaired his sandals for the journey to Saint-Cloud, his colleagues, smiling, questioned how long his handiwork would last: ‘Long enough for the road I travel, ‘ he replied, ‘I am obliged to go, not to return.’

Book XXII: Chapter 7: The Legislature convened – Then adjourned – The Allies cross the Rhine – Bonaparte’s anger – New Year’s Day 1814

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The Legislature assembled on the 19th of December 1813. Astounding on the field of battle, remarkable in his councils of State, Bonaparte was less effective in politics: the language of liberty he knew nothing of; if he wished to express congenial feelings, or paternal sentiments, he was moved in an inappropriate way, and masked a lack of feeling with tender words. ‘My heart,’ he told the Legislature, ‘needs the presence and affection of my subjects. I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity will find me immune to its sufferings. I have conceived and executed great schemes for the prosperity and good of the world. Monarch and father, I feel that peace enhances the security of thrones and that of families.’

An official Moniteur article said, in July 1804, that under the Empire, France would never extend beyond the Rhine, and its armies would no longer cross it.

The allies crossed that river on the 21st of December 1813, from Basle to Schaffhausen, with more than a hundred thousand men; on the 31st of the same month, the Army of Silesia commanded by Blücher, crossed in turn, from Mannheim to Coblentz.

By order of the Emperor, the Senate and the Legislature appointed two commissions charged with examining documents related to negotiation with the Coalition powers; foresight on the part of a power which, denying consequences which had become inevitable, wished to transfer the responsibility to another authority.

The Legislative commission, presided over by Monsieur Lainé, dared to state ‘that steps towards peace would be assured of their effect if the French were convinced that their blood would only be shed in order to defend the country and laws which protect them; that His Majesty must be implored to maintain the whole and constant execution of the laws which guarantee to the French the rights of liberty, security, and property, and to the nation the free exercise of its political rights.’

The Minister of Police, the Duke of Rovigo, has all traces of their report removed; a decree of the 31st December adjourns the Legislature; the doors of the room are locked. Bonaparte considered the members of the Legislative commission as agents in the pay of England: ‘The said Lainé, ‘he remarked, ‘is a traitor who corresp