Still Napoleon continued astonishing Europe, leagued as it was against him.  At Craonne, on the 7th of March, he destroyed Blucher’s corps in a severe action, but the victory was attended by great loss to the conqueror.  Marshal Victor was seriously wounded, as well as Generals Grouchy and La Ferriere.

While Napoleon was resisting the numerous enemies assembled to destroy him it might be said that he was also his own enemy, either from false calculation or from negligence with respect to his illustrious prisoners, who, on his departure from Paris, had not yet been sent to their States.  The Pope was then at Fontainebleau, and the Princes of Spain at Valencay.  The Pope, however, was the first to be allowed to depart.  Surely Bonaparte could never have thought of the service which the Pope might have rendered him at Rome, into which Murat’s troops would never have dared to march had his Holiness been present there.  With regard to the Spanish Princes Napoleon must have been greatly blinded by confidence in his fortune to have so long believed it possible to retain in France those useless trophies of defeated pretensions.  It was, besides, so easy to get rid of the exiles of Valencay by sending them back to the place from whence they had been brought!  It was so natural to recall with all speed the troops from the south when our armies in Germany began to be repulsed on the Rhine and even driven into France!  With the aid of these veteran troops Napoleon and his genius might have again turned the scale of fortune.  But Napoleon reckoned on the nation, and he was wrong, for the nation was tired of him.  His cause had ceased to be the cause of France.

The latter days of March were filled up by a series of calamities to Napoleon.  On the 23d the rear-guard of the French army suffered considerable loss.  To hear of attacks on his rear-guard must indeed have been mortifying to Napoleon, whose advanced guards had been so long accustomed to open the path of victory!  Prince Schwartzenberg soon passed the Aube and marched upon Vitry and Chalons.  Napoleon, counting on the possibility of defending Paris, threw himself, with the velocity of the eagle, on Schwartzenberg’s rear by passing by Doulevant and Bar-sur-Aube.  He pushed forward his advanced guards to Chaumont, and there saw the Austrian army make a movement which he took to be a retreat; but it was no such thing.  The movement was directed on Paris, while Blucher, who had re-occupied Chalons-sur-Maine, marched to meet Prince Schwartzenberg, and Napoleon, thinking to cut off their retreat, was himself cut off from the possibility of returning to Paris.  Everything then depended on the defence of Paris, or, to speak more correctly, it seemed possible, by sacrificing the capital, to prolong for a few days the existence of the phantom of the Empire which was rapidly vanishing.  On the 26th was fought the battle of Fere Champenoise, where, valour yielding to numbers, Marshals Marmont and Mortier were obliged to retire upon Sezanne after sustaining considerable loss.