Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (51 page)

The dancing congress ended without a great celebration to mark the occasion of the signing. The remaining participants simply drifted away. Metternich had a last dinner Monday night with Gentz, and then left Vienna at one o’clock the next morning, June 13, for Allied headquarters.

Talleyrand, too, was not to remain in Vienna for long after signing the Final Act. Having bid his farewells and exchanged snuffboxes, Talleyrand made a last tour of Kaunitz Palace, the site of so many parties, dinners, and intrigues the last nine months. As for that “great mass of papers” produced by the embassy, Talleyrand was not about to leave them for the maids, many of whom would surely be employed by the Austrian police. “I have, therefore, burnt the greater portion of these papers, and left the remainder in Vienna in safe hands.” He was now ready to return to the king.

Chapter 31

T
O
C
ONQUER OR
D
IE

My dear, with what refinement men go about destroying all the good things which Providence has showered on them.

—P
RINCE
M
ETTERNICH

M
urat had achieved a number of stunning successes in rapid succession. He had conquered Rome, Florence, and Bologna in two weeks, but he could not consolidate his victories. On May 3, the Austrian army caught up with him at Tolentino in the Apennines and defeated him soundly. Murat’s forces disintegrated. The Austrians recaptured the territory and, on the twenty-third, even seized his capital, Naples. Murat fled to France in the disguise of a sailor, hoping to join Napoleon. After only one month, Murat’s rash adventure had come to an abrupt end.

Napoleon was furious at Murat for his lack of foresight, and he feared that this defeat would have unpleasant consequences for his own campaign. The French emperor had lost a potential ally that could have tied up some one hundred thousand Austrian troops in the Italian peninsula for an undetermined period of time, but now, instead, the Austrians were firmly in control of the region and free to concentrate on him. Worse still, Napoleon had started to fear that fortune was abandoning him, something hard to swallow, with his superstitious reverence for a force that he believed governed his destiny.

Indeed, troubles were popping up for Napoleon everywhere with a great deal more frequency. The emperor still suffered serious financial problems, arising from years of revolution, war, and, most recently, mismanagement. When King Louis XVIII and his royal court left Paris, they had run off with as much treasure as they could quickly carry away. The state’s annual income at the time of Napoleon’s return to Paris was barely one-third of the total he had enjoyed back in 1812. He would be forced to take desperate measures to raise money, everything from levying new emergency taxes to selling all state-owned forestlands.

In addition, the army Napoleon inherited was not the one he had left at his abdication one year before. The king’s supposed 200,000 soldiers were at best about 120,000, and poorly equipped. Most of Napoleon’s talented officers had been removed, and replaced by royalist cronies, many of whom had little or no experience on the battlefield. Veterans had also been dismissed from service or reduced to half pay. Ammunition was in short supply. Muskets, gun carriages, bayonets, and other weapons had been sold as “army surplus,” and the money had disappeared.

But during the previous three months, Napoleon had scrambled to turn this unwieldy mass of men into an efficient army. All soldiers officially on leave, some 32,800, had been ordered to report to duty immediately, and the 82,000 known deserters also recalled. Press gangs roamed the capital and the countryside, rounding up even more “recruits.” The National Guard was called, gaining an additional 234,000 men between the ages of twenty and sixty. Students at the École Polytechnique and the military academy at Saint-Cyr-l’École were pulled out of classrooms to man fortifications, and sailors lifted from the navy. Napoleon figured he wouldn’t need a fleet in the upcoming struggle.

As for equipping the troops, who would have to cover some six hundred miles of exposed frontier in the east alone, Napoleon launched another monumental effort. He placed orders for some 235,000 muskets and some 15,000 pistols for his cavalry. He ordered new cartridges, uniforms, boots, and everything else he needed for his campaign, though it was by no means clear where the money would come from to pay for all these supplies.

Overwhelmed with these demands, ordered at breakneck speed with challenging timetables, many provincial authorities resisted Napoleon’s decrees. The new sacrifices and hardships only reminded many Frenchmen of what they had disliked last time about his reign, and the grumbling was getting worse. Even many who had welcomed Napoleon a few months ago were now growing disillusioned.

Supporters of the exiled King Louis XVIII, meanwhile, had been stirring in the west, particularly in the old Bourbon strongholds of Brittany and Vendée, and soon some thirty thousand royalists had rallied under the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin. From the other political extreme, some Jacobins and former revolutionaries were already plotting Napoleon’s downfall. Clearly, most radicals had only accepted Napoleon as a temporary ally who could help sweep out the detested Bourbons. Now that this was accomplished, many felt, it was time to remove Napoleon and restore real freedom to France.

As the Allied forces prepared their armies for war, some of Napoleon’s advisers suggested that he consolidate his strength and adopt a defensive campaign. His minister of the interior, Carnot, was one who argued for this approach. Britain and Prussia would probably not be in a position to attack for some time, and, moreover, they would likely await the arrival of the other allies. This would mean that the first battle would probably not take place until July at the earliest. Napoleon could use the next few weeks to strengthen his situation at home, both politically and militarily. Let the Allies enter the country as invaders, and discontent with Napoleon would quickly disappear as Frenchmen rallied to his side.

This was certainly an interesting suggestion, but anyone who had studied Napoleon’s behavior in critical situations would know that he was inclined to attack. After all, the Allies were only getting stronger. They would soon have as many as seven or eight hundred thousand soldiers marching into France. As for the domestic unrest, Napoleon would address that the best way he knew how: He would fight, and he would win. He knew the stakes. One major defeat could end his reign and his dynasty. A big victory, on the other hand, could cause the fledgling alliance forged at Vienna to collapse from its own internal weakness.

In the early morning of June 12, Napoleon quietly left Paris to launch his invasion of Belgium. Two days later, on the anniversary of his victories at Marengo and Friedland, Napoleon issued a stirring proclamation from Beaumont in northeastern France: Soldiers, he said, “the time has come to conquer or die.”

N
APOLEON’S GOAL WAS
to make a quick devastating strike and knock out either the Duke of Wellington or Field Marshal Blücher before they could combine their forces. After this first victory, he would then wheel over and defeat the other army. Napoleon had used this general strategy, again and again, in vanquishing larger enemy armies. This time, too, Napoleon actually had a slight advantage in the strength of his troops and firepower over either Wellington or Blücher, but if they combined their forces, he would be significantly outnumbered.

While the armies were positioning themselves for the upcoming battle, one of the most famous parties in history, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, took place on the rue de Blanchisserie in Brussels. Lord Byron celebrated it memorably in
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
and William Makepeace Thackeray used it for a scene in
Vanity Fair.
Actually, the historical ball was slightly different from the one of literature with its “high halls” of marble: It took place in a carriage house, or rather a coachman’s workshop.

Some 224 people appeared on the guest list: Wellington, the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Brunswick, and many other British and Allied officers, including twenty-two colonels. The duke was later criticized for attending such a frivolous event during the time of crisis, though this view fails to appreciate Wellington’s intentions that evening. He had come to the ball as a way to dispel fears, and, as he put it, “reassure our friends.” He would attend, calm as usual, and show that despite Napoleon’s invasion of Belgium, everything was perfectly under control.

During the ball, however, a messenger arrived with the news that Napoleon was again on the march and apparently headed straight for the capital, Brussels. He was also taking an unexpected route (through Charleroi and not, as Wellington had suspected, through Mons). Wellington casually stayed on another twenty minutes, as if nothing were amiss, and then departed, pretending to be leaving for a good night’s sleep. As he thanked the Duke of Richmond for the evening, he asked if his host happened to have “a good map in the house.” The two men retired to a side room. Peering over a map on the table, Wellington confessed that he had misjudged the situation. “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God,” Wellington said. “He has gained twenty-four hours’ march of me.”

The Allies would have to move quickly to protect the capital, the exiled royal court, and, of course, the coastal towns that formed their supply lines back to Great Britain. Wellington would engage the French at Quatre Bras, a strategic crossroads on the main road north, though he well knew that the Allied troops would probably not have enough time to arrive in strong enough forces to win decisively. At this point, Wellington allegedly ran his finger over the map and said, “I must fight him here.” He pointed to a small village called Waterloo.

A few hours later, on the sixteenth of June, the soldiers were marching, some officers still in silk stockings from the ball. Two battles in fact would take place almost simultaneously that day. In one of them, at Quatre Bras, the Duke of Wellington and the Anglo-Allied troops drove back a French detachment under Marshal Ney. The other battle, about seven miles to the east, at Ligny, was a different matter. Napoleon, in command, won an impressive victory. The Prussians lost some 16,000 troops and a further 8,000 soldiers deserted. The French, by contrast, suffered 11,500 losses. Field Marshal Blücher had nearly been killed. His horse had been shot, and its fall had pinned down the seventy-two-year-old, who was then trampled by two French cavalrymen.

As the Prussians fled the scene in disarray, the French emperor, confident in his success, did not order an energetic pursuit of the defeated. He was already planning the next stage of his campaign. It was some twelve hours later—about eleven the next morning—when Napoleon finally sent away two corps and a force of some thirty-three thousand men under his most recent marshal, Emmanuel de Grouchy, to catch the Prussian army and finish them off. By then, the Prussians had managed to escape the worst danger.

The Prussian military staff, still stunned from the heavy defeat, was upset, and some blamed Wellington. The chief of staff, General August von Gneisenau, in particular, felt betrayed. He had had the distinct impression that Wellington would send several regiments over to aid them at Ligny. Wellington had, in fact, promised to help the Prussians in a meeting on the morning of the sixteenth, though he had added an important qualification that he would only be in a position to send troops if he were not attacked himself. The ferocity of the French attack at Quatre Bras prevented him from sending any assistance.

Wellington, meanwhile, learned of the disaster that struck his Prussian allies and realized that he, too, was now in a very exposed position. He could not remain at Quatre Bras, as a sitting duck, for the armies of Napoleon and Ney to fall upon him, but would have to march quickly. Wellington sent a messenger over to his Prussian allies, informing them that he would retreat north to a place called Mont-Saint-Jean just south of the village of Waterloo, where he would set up his headquarters. He hoped to engage the French there, and requested that the Prussians send over a corps if they could spare one.

Napoleon’s campaign was certainly off to a good start. Having hammered the Prussians, he would now bring the bulk of his troops together, defeat the Duke of Wellington, and watch the alliance unravel.