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CHAPTER XXXIX

LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS

A less determined optimist than Napoleon might well have hoped for success over the forces of the new coalition.  True, they seemed overwhelmingly great.  But many a coalition had crumbled away under the alchemy of his statecraft; and the jealousies that had raged at the Congress of Vienna inspired the hope that Austria, and perhaps England, might speedily be detached from their present allies.  Strange as it seems to us, the French people opined that Napoleon’s escape from Elba was due to the connivance of the British Government; and Captain Mercer states that, even at Waterloo, many of the French clung to the belief that the British resistance would be a matter of form.  Napoleon cherished no such illusion:  but he certainly hoped to surprise the British and Prussian forces in Belgium, and to sever at one blow an alliance which he judged to be ill cemented.  Thereafter he would separate Austria from Russia, a task that was certainly possible if victory crowned the French eagles.[472]

His military position was far stronger than it had been since the Moscow campaign.  The loss of Germany and Spain had really added to his power.  No longer were his veterans shut up in the fortresses of Europe from Danzig to Antwerp, from Hamburg to Ragusa; and the Peninsular War no longer engulfed great armies of his choicest troops.  In the eyes of Frenchmen he was not beaten in 1814; he was only tripped up by a traitor when on the point of crushing his foes.  And, now that peace had brought back garrisons and prisoners of war, as many as 180,000 well-trained troops were ranged under the imperial eagles.  He hoped by the end of June to have half a million of devoted soldiers ready for the field.

The difficulties that beset him were enough to daunt any mind but his.  Some of the most experienced Marshals were no longer at his side.  St. Cyr, Macdonald, Oudinot, Victor, Marmont, and Augereau remained true to Louis XVIII.  Berthier, on hearing of Napoleon’s return from Elba, forthwith retired into Germany, and, in a fit of frenzy, threw himself from the window of a house in Bamberg while a Russian corps was passing through that town.  Junot had lost his reason.  Massena and Moncey were too old for campaigning; Mortier fell ill before the first shots were fired.  Worst of all, the unending task of army organization detained Davoust at Paris.  Certainly he worked wonders there; but, as in 1813 and 1814, Napoleon had cause to regret the absence of a lieutenant equally remarkable for his acuteness of perception and doggedness of purpose, for a good fortune that rarely failed, and a devotion that never faltered.  Doubtless it was this last priceless quality, as well as his organizing gifts, that marked him out as the ideal Minister of War and Governor of Paris.  Besides him he left a Council charged with the government during his absence, composed of Princes Joseph and Lucien and the Ministers.