Exclusive of the Austrian and Prussian auxiliaries, there remained of all the enormous host which Napoleon set in motion in August about 40,000 men; and of these not 10,000 were of the French nation.

[Footnote 62:  He was rescued in Poland by a party of Cossacks.]

CHAPTER XXXII

     Conspiracy of Mallet—­Napoleon’s reception in Paris—­his Military
     Preparations—­Prussia declares War—­Austria negotiates with
     Napoleon—­Bernadette appears in Germany—­The Russians advance into
     Silesia—­Napoleon heads his Army in Saxony—­Battle of
     Lutzen—­Battle of Bautzen.

Some allusion has already been made to the news of a political disturbance in Paris, which reached Napoleon during his retreat from Moscow, and quickened his final abandonment of the army.  The occurrence in question was the daring conspiracy headed by General Mallet.  This officer, one of the ancient noblesse, had been placed in confinement in 1808, in consequence of his connection with a society called the Philadelphes, which seems to have sprung up within the French army, at the time when Napoleon seized the supreme power, and which had for its immediate object his deposition—­while some of the members contemplated the restoration of a republican government, and others, of whom Mallet was one, the recall of the royal family of Bourbon.  The people of Paris had for some weeks received no official intelligence from the grand army, and rumours of some awful catastrophe were rife among all classes, when Mallet conceived the daring project of forging a senatus-consultum, announcing the fall of Napoleon in a great battle in Russia, and appointing a provisional government.  Having executed this forgery, the general escaped from his prison, and appeared in full uniform, attended by a corporal dressed as an aide-de-camp, at midnight, on the 22nd of October 1812, at the gates of the Minims barracks, then tenanted by some new and raw levies.  The audacity with which he claimed the obedience of these men to the senatorial decree overawed them.  He assumed the command, and on the instant arrested by their means Savary, minister of police, and some others of the principal functionaries in the capital.  General Hullin, the military governor, was summoned and hesitated; at that moment the officer of police, from whose keeping Mallet had escaped, recognised him, and he was immediately resisted, disarmed, and confined.  The whole affair was over in the course of a few hours, but the fact that so wild a scheme should have been so nearly successful was sufficiently alarming.  The ease and indifference with which a considerable body of armed men, in the very heart of Paris, had transferred their services to a new authority, proclaimed by a stranger, made Napoleon consider with suspicion the basis of his power.  And ignorant to what extent the conspiracy had actually gone, he heard with additional alarm, that no fewer than twenty-four persons, including the leader, had been condemned to death.  Of so many he was willing to believe that some at least had been mere dupes, and apprehended that so much bloodshed might create a violent revulsion of public feeling.  The Parisians beheld the execution of these men with as much indifference as their bold attempt; but of this Napoleon was ignorant, until he reached the Tuileries.