Fortune seemed to smile on his enterprise.  Though he failed to take Vitry from the allied garrison, yet near St. Dizier he fell on a Prussian convoy, captured 800 men and 400 wagons filled with stores.  Everywhere he ordered the tocsin to proclaim a levee en masse, and sent messengers to warn his Lorraine garrisons to cut their way to his side.  His light troops spread up the valley of the Marne towards Chaumont, capturing stores and couriers; and he seized this opportunity, when he pictured the Austrians as thoroughly demoralized, to send Caulaincourt from Doulevant with offers to renew the negotiations for peace (March 25th).[440] But while Napoleon awaits the result of these proposals, his rear is attacked:  he retraces his steps, falls on the assailants, and finds that they belong to Bluecher.  But how can Prussians be there in force?  Is not Bluecher resting on the banks of the Aisne?  And where is Schwarzenberg?  The Emperor pushes a force on to Vitry to solve this riddle, and there the horrible truth unfolds itself little by little that he stands on the brink of ruin.

It is a story instinct with an irony like that of the infatuation of King Oedipus in the drama of Sophocles.  Every step that the warrior has taken to snatch at victory increases the completeness of the disaster.  The Emperor Francis, scared by the approach of the French horsemen, and not wishing to fall into the hands of his son-in-law, has withdrawn with Metternich to Dijon.

Napoleon’s letter to him is lost.[441] Metternich, well guarded by Castlereagh, is powerless to meet Caulaincourt’s offer, and their flight leaves Schwarzenberg under the influence of the Czar.[442] Moreover, Bluecher has not been idle.  While Napoleon is hurrying eastwards to Vitry, the Prussian leader drives back Marmont’s weak corps, his vanguard crosses the Marne near Epernay on the 23rd, his Cossacks capture a courier bearing a letter written on that day by Napoleon to Marie Louise.  It ends thus:  “I have decided to march towards the Marne, in order to push the enemy’s army further from Paris, and to draw near to my fortresses.  I shall be this evening at St. Dizier.  Adieu, my friend!  Embrace my son.”  Warned by this letter of Napoleon’s plan, Bluecher pushes on; his outposts on the morrow join hands with those of Schwarzenberg, and send a thrill of vigour into the larger force.

That leader, held at bay by Macdonald’s rearguard, was groping after Napoleon, when the capture of a French despatch, and the news forwarded by Bluecher, informed him of the French Emperor’s eastward march.  A council of war was therefore held at Pougy on the afternoon of the 23rd, when the Czar and the bolder spirits led Schwarzenberg to give up his communications with Switzerland, and stake everything on joining Bluecher, and following Napoleon’s 40,000 with an array of 180,000 men.  But the capture of another French despatch a few hours later altered the course of events once more.  This time