In truth, the Emperor’s words and letters breathed nothing but warlike resolve.  Famine and misery accompany him on his march to Nogent, and there, on the 7th, he hears tidings that strike despair to every heart but his.  An Anglo-German force is besieging the staunch old Carnot in Antwerp; Buelow has entered Brussels; Belgium is lost:  Macdonald’s weak corps is falling back on Epernay, hard pressed by Yorck, while Bluecher is heading for Paris.  Last of all comes on the morrow Caulaincourt’s despatch announcing that the allies now insist on France returning to the limits of 1791.

Never, surely, since the time of Job did calamity shower her blows so thickly on the head of mortal man:  and never were they met with less resignation and more undaunted defiance.  After receiving the black budget of news the Emperor straightway shut himself up.  For some time his Marshals left him alone:  but, as Caulaincourt’s courier was waiting for the reply, Berthier and Maret ventured to intrude on his grief.  He tossed them the letter containing the allied terms.  A long silence ensued, while they awaited his decision.  As he spoke not a word, they begged him to give way and grant peace to France.  Then his pent-up feelings burst forth:  “What, you would have me sign a treaty like that, and trample under foot my coronation oath!  Unheard-of disasters may have snatched from me the promise to renounce my conquests:  but, give up those made before me—­never!  God keep me from such a disgrace.  Reply to Caulaincourt since you wish it, but tell him that I reject this treaty.  I prefer to run the uttermost risks of war.”  He threw himself on his camp bed.  Maret waited by his side, and gained from him in calmer moments permission to write to Caulaincourt in terms that allowed the negotiation to proceed.  At dawn on the 9th Maret came back hoping to gain assent to despatches that he had been drawing up during the night.  To his surprise he found the Emperor stretched out over large charts, compass in hand.  “Ah, there you are,” was his greeting; “now it’s a question of very different matters.  I am going to beat Bluecher:  if I succeed, the state of affairs will entirely change, and then we will see.”

The tension of his feelings at this time, when rage and desperation finally gave way to a fixed resolve to stake all on a blow at Bluecher’s flank, finds expression in a phrase which has been omitted from the official correspondence.[412] In one of the five letters which he wrote to Joseph on the 9th, he remarked:  “Pray the Madonna of armies to be for us:  Louis, who is a saint, may engage to give her a lighted candle.”  A curiously sarcastic touch, probably due to his annoyance at the Misereres and “prayers forty hours long” at Paris which he bade his Ministers curtail.  Or was it a passing flash of that religious sentiment which he professed in his declining years?