Volume 3 — BOOK V[1] (continued 2)

"To-night," he said, "I shall go to take my father-in-law at Troyes."

On the 20th of March, an affair took place near Arcis-sur-Aube[110]. Amid a rolling fire of artillery, a shell having fallen in front of a square of the guards, the square appeared to make a slight movement: Bonaparte dashed towards the projectile, the fuse of which was smoking, and made his horse sniff at it; the shell burst, and the Emperor came safe and sound from the midst of the shattered bolt.

The battle was to recommence the following day, but Bonaparte, yielding to the inspiration of genius, an inspiration which was none the less fatal, retired in order to bear upon the rear of the confederate troops, separate them from their stores, and swell his own army with the garrisons of the frontier places. The foreigners were preparing to fall back upon the Rhine, when Alexander, by one of these Heaven-inspired impulses which change a whole world, took the resolve to march upon Paris, the road to which was becoming free[111]. Napoleon thought he would draw the mass of the enemy after him, and he was followed, by only ten thousand men of the cavalry, whom he believed to be the advance-guard of the main troops, whereas they masked the real movement of the Prussians and Muscovites. He dispersed those ten thousand horse at Saint-Dizier and Vitry, and then perceived that the great allied army was not behind them: that army, which was flinging itself upon the capital, had before it only Marshals Marmont[112] and Mortier[113], with about twelve thousand conscripts.

He retires to Fontainebleau.

Napoleon hurriedly made for Fontainebleau[114]: there a sainted victim[115], retiring, had left the requiter and the avenger. Two things in history always go side by side: let a man enter upon a path of injustice, and he at the same time opens for himself a path of perdition in which, at a given distance, the first road will converge into the second.

*

Men's minds were greatly agitated: the hope of at all costs seeing brought to a close a cruel war which, since twenty years, had been weighing down upon France sated with misfortune and glory, this hope carried the day, among the masses, over the feeling of nationality. Each one thought of the part he would have to take in the approaching catastrophe. Every evening my friends came to talk at Madame de Chateaubriand's, to tell and comment upon the events of the day. Messieurs de Fontanes, de Clausel, Joubert gathered with the crowd of those transient friends whom events bring and events withdraw. Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, beautiful, peaceable and devoted, whom we shall meet again at Ghent, kept Madame de Chateaubriand faithful company. Madame la Duchesse de Duras was also in Paris, and I often went to see Madame la Marquise de Montcalm[116], sister to the Duc de Richelieu[117].

I continued to be persuaded, despite the near approach of the battle-fields, that the Allies would not enter Paris and that a national insurrection would put an end to our fears. The obsession of this idea prevented me from feeling the presence of the foreign armies as keenly as I might have done: but I could not keep myself from reflecting upon the calamities to which we had subjected Europe, when I saw Europe bring them back to us.

I never ceased working at my pamphlet; I was preparing it as a remedy when the moment of anarchy should come to burst forth. It is not thus that we write nowadays, when we live at our ease, with only a war of broadsheets to fear: at night, I turned the key in my lock; I placed my papers under my pillow, with two loaded revolvers on my table: I slept between these two muses. My text was in duplicate: I had written it in the form of a pamphlet, which it retained, and in the shape of a speech, differing in some respects from the pamphlet; I thought that, when France rose, they might assemble at the Hôtel de Ville, and I had prepared myself on two topics.

Madame de Chateaubriand wrote a few notes at various periods of our common life; among those notes I find the following paragraph:

"M. de Chateaubriand was writing his pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons. If that pamphlet had been seized, the result was not doubtful: the sentence was the scaffold. Nevertheless the author displayed incredible negligence in concealing it. Often he would go out and leave it on the table; his prudence never went beyond placing it under his pillow, which he used to do before his valet, a very honest fellow, but liable to temptation. As for me, I was in a mortal fright: and, so soon as M. de Chateaubriand had gone out, I used to take the manuscript and place it about my person. One day, while crossing the Tuileries, I noticed that I no longer had it, and, being sure that I had felt it on leaving the house, I had no doubt that I had lost it on the way. Already I saw the fatal work in the hands of the police and M. de Chateaubriand arrested: I fell unconscious in the middle of the garden; some kind people assisted me, and afterwards took me home, which was not far off. What torture when, on climbing the stairs, I hovered between a fear which was almost a certainty and a slight hope that I had forgotten to take the pamphlet! As I approached my husband's bedroom, I felt myself fainting once more; I went in at last; nothing on the table; I went up to the bed; I first felt the pillow, I perceived nothing; I lifted it up, and saw the roll of papers! My heart beats whenever I think of it. I have never experienced such a moment of joy in my life. Certainly, I can truthfully say that it would not have been so great had I seen myself released at the foot of the scaffold; for, after all, it was some one dearer to me than myself whom I saw released from it."

How unhappy should I be if I could have caused a moment of trouble to Madame de Chateaubriand!

I had nevertheless been obliged to entrust a printer[118] with my secret: he had consented to risk the business; according to the news of the hour, he used to return the half-composed proofs to me, or come to fetch them back, as the sound of the cannon approached or drew farther from Paris: I played pitch-and-toss with my life, in this way, for nearly a fortnight.

*

War at the gates of Paris.

The circle was drawing closer around the capital: at every moment we heard of some progress on the part of the enemy. Russian prisoners and French wounded entered promiscuously through the barriers, drawn in carts: some, half-dead, fell beneath the wheels, which they stained with their blood. Conscripts called up from the interior crossed the capital in a long file on their way to the armies. At night, one heard trains of artillery pass along the outer boulevards, and one did not know whether the distant detonations announced the decisive victory or the final defeat.

The war at last came and fixed itself outside the barriers of Paris. From the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, one could see the head of the Russian columns appear, like the first undulations of the tide of the sea upon a beach. I felt what a Roman must have experienced when, from the ridge of the Capitol, he beheld the soldiers of Alaric[119] and the old city of the Latins at his feet, as I beheld the Russian soldiers and, at my feet, the old city of the Gauls. Farewell, then, paternal gods, hearths which preserved the traditions of the country, roofs beneath which had breathed both Virginia[120], sacrificed by her father to modesty and liberty, and Héloïse, consecrated by love to letters and religion.

Paris had not since centuries seen the smoke of an enemy's camp, and it was Bonaparte who, from triumph to triumph, brought the Thebans within sight of the women of Sparta. Paris was the bourn from which he had started to conquer the earth: he returned to it leaving behind him the huge conflagration of his useless conquests.

The people rushed to the Jardin des Plantes, which, in olden times, the fortified Abbey of St. Victor might have been able to protect: the small world of swans and plantain-trees, to which our power had promised an eternal peace, was perturbed. From the summit of the labyrinth, looking over the great cedar, over the public granaries which Bonaparte had not had time to complete, beyond the site of the Bastille and the keep of Vincennes (spots which told the tale of our successive history), the crowd watched the infantry-fire in the combat of Belleville. Montmartre was carried: the cannon-balls fell as far as the Boulevard du Temple. A few companies of the National Guard made a sortie and lost three hundred men in the fields around the tomb of the "martyrs." Never did military France, in the midst of her reverses, shine with a brighter glory; the last heroes were the one hundred and fifty lads of the Polytechnic School, transformed into gunners in the redoubts on the Vincennes Road. Surrounded by the enemy, they refused to surrender; they had to be tom from their pieces: the Russian grenadier seized them, blackened with gun-powder and covered with wounds; while they struggled in his arms, he lifted those young French palm-branches in the air with cries of victory and admiration and restored them all bleeding to their mothers.

During that time Cambacérès was fleeing with Marie-Louise, the King of Rome and the Regency. The following proclamation was read on the walls:

"King Joseph[121], Lieutenant-General of the Emperor, Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard.

"Citizens of Paris,

"The Council of Regency has provided for the safety of the Empress and the King of Rome: I remain with you. Let us arm ourselves to defend this town, its monuments, its riches, our wives, our children, all that is dear to us. Let this vast city become a camp for a short while, and let the enemy meet with his disgrace under its walls, which he hopes to surmount in triumph."

*

Rostopschin[122] did not pretend to defend Moscow; he burnt it down. Joseph announced that he would never leave the Parisians, and privately decamped, leaving his courage placarded at the street-corners.

M. de Talleyrand.

M. de Talleyrand made one of the Regency appointed by Napoleon. Since the day on which the Bishop of Autun, under the Empire, ceased to be Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had dreamt of but one thing, the disappearance of Bonaparte followed by the regency of Marie-Louise, a regency of which he, the Prince de Bénévent, would have been the head. Bonaparte, in appointing him a member of a provisional regency in 1814, seemed to have favoured his secret wishes. The Napoleonic death had not occurred; there remained for M. de Talleyrand but to hobble at the feet of the colossus whom he was unable to overthrow, and to turn the moment to account on his own behalf: the genius of that man of bargains and compromises lay in contriving. The position presented difficulties: to remain in the capital was the obvious course; but, if Bonaparte returned, the prince, separated from the fugitive Regency, the prince, lagging behind, ran the risk of being shot: on the other hand, how to abandon Paris at the moment when the Allies might be entering it? Would it not be to forego the profits of success, to betray that morrow of events for which M. de Talleyrand was made? So far from leaning towards the Bourbons, he feared them by reason of his various apostacies. However, since there was some sort of chance for them, M. de Vitrolles[123], with the assent of the married prelate, had stealthily repaired to the Congress of Châtillon, as the unavowed whisperer of the Legitimacy. Having taken this precaution, the prince, in order to get clear of his difficulties in Paris, had recourse to one of those tricks of which he was a past master.

M. de Laborie, who, soon after, became confidential secretary to the Provisional Government under M. Dupont de Nemours[124], went to M. de Laborde, who was attached to the National Guard, and revealed the fact of M. de Talleyrand's departure:

"He is preparing," said he, "to follow the Regency; it will perhaps appear necessary to you to arrest him, in order to be in a position to negociate with the Allies if need be."

The comedy was played to perfection. The prince's carriages were ostentatiously got ready; he started at broad noon-day, on the 30th of March: on reaching the Barrière d'Enfer, he was inexorably sent back home, in spite of his protestations. In case of a miraculous return, the proofs were there showing that the ex-minister had tried to join Marie-Louise and that the armed force had prevented his passage.

*

Meantime, on the advent of the Allies, the Comte Alexandre de Laborde and M. Tourton, superior officers of the National Guard, had been sent to the Generalissimo, Prince von Schwarzenberg[125], who had been one of Bonaparte's generals during the Russian campaign. The Generalissimo's proclamation was made known in Paris on the evening of the 30th of March. It said:

"For twenty years Europe has been inundated with blood and tears: the attempts made to put an end to all these sufferings have been useless, because the very principle of the government by which you are oppressed contains an insurmountable obstacle to peace. Parisians, you know the situation in which your country is placed: the preservation and the tranquillity of your city will be the object of the cares of the Allies. It is with these sentiments that Europe, in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!"

What a magnificent acknowledgment of France's greatness:

"Europe, in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!"

Capitulation of Paris.

We, who had respected nothing, were respected by those whose towns we had ravaged and who, in their turn, had become the stronger. We appeared as a sacred nation in their eyes; our lands were to them as a field of Elis upon which, by order of the gods, no battalion dared trample. If, notwithstanding, Paris had thought fit to offer a resistance, very easily made, of four-and-twenty hours, the results would have been changed; but nobody, except the soldiers intoxicated with fire and glory, wanted any more of Bonaparte, and, dreading lest they should keep him, the people hastened to open the gates.

Paris capitulated on the 31st of March: the military capitulation is signed, in the names of Marshals Mortier; and Marmont, by Colonels Denys[126] and Fabvier[127]; the civil capitulation was made in the names of the mayors of Paris. The Municipal and Departmental Council sent a deputation to the Russian head-quarters to arrange the several clauses: my companion in exile, Christian de Lamoignon, was one of the delegates. Alexander said to them:

"Your Emperor, who was my ally, came into the very heart of my States to bring with him evils of which the traces will long remain: a just defense has brought me here. I am far from wishing to return to France the wrongs which she has done me. I am just, and I know that the French: are not to blame. The French are my friends, and I wish to prove to them that I have come to return good for evil. Napoleon is my only enemy. I promise my special protection to the city of Paris; I shall protect and preserve all public institutions; I shall let only picked troops remain there; I shall preserve your National Guard, which is composed of the pick of your citizens. It is for yourselves to ensure your happiness in the future; you must give yourselves a government which will procure your repose and that of Europe. It is for you to express your wish: you will always find me ready to second your efforts."

These words were punctually fulfilled: the joy of victory surmounted every other interest in the eyes of the Allies. What must have been Alexander's feelings when he caught sight of the domes of the buildings of that town where no foreigner had ever entered except to admire us, to revel in the marvels of our civilization and our intelligence; of that inviolable city, defended by its great men during twelve Centuries; of that glorious capital which Louis XIV. seemed still to protect with his shade and Bonaparte with his return!