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Authors: Evelyn Anthony

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“I must not make an enemy of Austria,” he was thinking. “Even if I fall, Austria will protect my son: …”

In the same months Austria's envoy to London was received by Lord Castlereagh, and informed coldly that there could never be peace with France as long as Napoleon occupied Spain and refused to make greater concessions to his enemies' demands. England had no intention of embarrassing Russia and Prussia at such a moment.

At Vienna, Metternich considered. He had two alternatives, the latest was an offer by Napoleon to dismember Prussia and give the rich province of Silesia to Austria in return for 100,000 men in the coming campaign. It was an outrageous and very tempting bribe. But the combined might of Russia, Prussia and England were gathering against the tempter. Metternich thought for a long time and then decided. The odds were too much, even for Napoleon.

Austria had better abandon him and join his enemies.

Alexander's first meeting with Metternich took place at Opotschna. Each approached the other with deep suspicion and disguised it with fulsome words of friendship. Alexander received the Austrian informally; it was a ruse he employed to put his opponents at their ease and off their guard at the same time. When Count Metternich was announced he came forward and held out his hand. The Count kissed it and bowed, and the two men looked at each other. Metternich was tall, very slim and graceful and extremely handsome; he smiled at the Czar, thinking him older and more forbidding than he had expected.

This, then, was the victor of 1812, the man who had tricked Napoleon in the sphere of diplomacy and destroyed him on the field of battle. This grave, good-looking man with the gentle expression. Most dangerous, Metternich decided; we can't exchange Napoleon for you.…

They sat down and spent some minutes discussing the campaign which had been fought in Saxony.

“It is amazing, Sire, what Napoleon has been able to do with an army of recruits,” Metternich remarked.

It was amazing; Alexander, whose troops had been defeated at Bautzen, flushed, and said suddenly, “Austrian support would have been welcomed by the King of Prussia and myself. We expected it long ago.”

“You have our support,” Metternich protested.

“We have your neutrality, Count, and that is not enough.”

“My position is difficult, Sire,” he said smoothly. “The Empress Marie-Louise is a Hapsburg. We must have an excuse to declare war.”

“Prussia found one,” Alexander answered.

“I believe we have too,” the Count said. “No one can provoke a quarrel like a mediator.” He glanced up at the Czar and smiled. “If he refuses a truce, then the war begins again and we enter it as your allies. And I am sure that if the terms are presented to him in the right way, he will reject the most generous offer!”

At Reichenbach Austria signed a secret treaty. If Napoleon had not reached a settlement by the expiration of the truce, she would join Russia, Prussia and England in making war on him.

Metternich went to see Napoleon, who was then quartered in the Marcolini Palace at Dresden, and there offered him terms. As he had said to Alexander, no one could provoke a quarrel as quickly as the mediator; Bonaparte lost his temper, swore and shouted at him, promising the most awful vengeance for the perfidy of Austria when he most needed her.

Metternich waited calmly until the outburst ceased, then he looked at the pale, sweating little man who had held them all in subjection for so many years. His hard eyes held the furious glare of the Emperor for some moments, then he said coldly, “You are lost, Sire. I had the presentiment of it when I came. Now, in going, I have the certainty.”

In the ante-room an anxious crowd surrounded him, hoping for news of peace. They all wanted peace, even the Marshals whose fortunes were built on war wanted peace; only Napoleon refused to give way, obstinate and savage in the face of danger, sure that if he yielded an inch, his enemies would end by destroying him. Especially the main enemy, the man who had followed him out of Russia and had engaged him in Saxony. Alexander wouldn't be content with any treaty. He would attack again, there could never be peace while he remained undefeated. Marshal Berthier escorted Metternich to his carriage, and asked him whether he were satisfied with the interview. He must have confidence in the Emperor now, Berthier urged. Metternich turned on the coach step and looked at him as he had looked at Napoleon a little while before.

“Yes, he has explained everything to me,” he said. “It is all over with the man.”

Then he entered the carriage and drove away. Berthier turned back and walked slowly into the Palace.

In the worst days of the Retreat from Moscow he had never had such a presentiment of disaster as he did then with Metternich's judgment sounding in his ears. “It is all over with the man.”

On June 22nd Wellington inflicted a crushing defeat on the French troops in Vittoria, and Joseph Bonaparte abandoned the Spanish throne and fled into France.

It was the signal for which Europe had been waiting.

On July 12th the treacherous Bernadotte of Sweden signed a treaty with the Allied Powers to fight France at the end of the armistice, and at midnight on the 10th August Alexander received the news that bonfires were blazing along the heights of the Riesengebirge. The truce had expired; the beacons proclaimed war against Napoleon.

In the first days of February, 1814, Alexander sat in his headquarters at Bar-sur-Seine writing a long letter to his sister Catherine.

“I miss you,” he wrote truthfully. “I know how much every triumph would have meant to you, how you would have rejoiced with me when you saw the first Russian troops cross into France. The last six months seem like as many years; he has fought like a man possessed of the devil, and everywhere he commanded he won. But elsewhere his Marshals lost. It is the hand of God, Catherine. Without Napoleon the rest made one blunder after another; Mac-Donald at Katzbach, Vandamme at Kulm, and Ney himself at Dennewitz. The Prussian Generals are magnificent; especially Blücher; he's old but he has the energy of twenty men.

“We defeated Napoleon himself at Leipzig; the retreat was nearly as horrible as the Beresina. You remember they found twelve thousand corpses there when the floods abated. There was another panic at Leipzig, and his Polish Marshal Poniatowsky was drowned. He has lost many friends, they betray him one by one as he retreats. Murat left him in November; we've promised to let him stay in Naples, and he's ready to turn on Napoleon. Ney remains with him, still fighting. Blücher is advancing on Paris now, but I do not intend to let him get there.

“I must reach Paris first, my dear sister, for I find we have other enemies besides Bonaparte. The Austrians want a Regency for the Empress Marie-Louise and Napoleon's son. As I fight the French I am also forced to fight Metternich. He betrayed Napoleon and he is quite capable of betraying us if it suits him. I will not have either a Bonaparte or a Hapsburg on the French throne. Neither will England. More and more I miss you, and my one comfort is your letters. But I promise you this, as soon as the war is over, I shall send for you. It seems impossible that peace is near, that he is really going to be beaten. God guide you, Catherine. The next time I write I shall be in The Tuilleries.”

Alexander entered Paris on the 1st of April. He rode in with the King of Prussia on his right and the Austrian Commander on his left, leading a procession of Russian and Prussian Guards.

The streets were lined with silent crowds, the windows overlooking the route crowded with people who wanted to see the almost legendary Czar of Russia. It was the women who first began cheering him; he was dressed in a dazzling uniform of white, covered in gold braid and decorations. The idol of Napoleon had fallen from his pedestal; only the good sense of his timorous brother Joseph had saved Paris from the madness of a siege when the Allies approached. The Parisians, quaking for their lives and property surrendered with indecent haste while their Emperor fought overwhelming odds, struggling even then to turn back the invaders and almost succeeding. But Paris surrendered, and led by a few hysterical women, the people began cheering and pressing round their conqueror. The Liberator, they shrieked, the Republican Czar who had promised a free vote for the country, whose savage Cossacks had been ordered to remain in their quarters and spare the city the horrors of plunder and rapine inflicted on less lucky parts of France.… They had nothing to fear from that handsome, gallant enemy; they'd had enough of war, enough of Napoleon Bonaparte, Long live the Czar!

Alexander smiled and saluted. One year and seven months before, the Emperor of the French had ridden into Moscow; now his opponent entered his Capital in triumph, acclaimed by the crowds as a liberator and a protector. He thought how his sister Catherine would laugh when she heard of it; how her laughter would change to anger at the order to Russian troops not to molest or loot. He thought of Moscow, burning, and shaken by explosions as Napoleon's men dynamited, determined to destroy what the fire had spared. He could have taken the same vengeance, he thought; the Prussians were mounting cannon on the heights of Montmartre, ready to bombard the city at the first sign of insurrection; their troops and his were restless and longing to revenge the devastation their own countries had suffered.

Only his will stood between Paris and the full terrors of occupation by a vindictive and, in his case, half-civilized army. But his clemency to Paris was the debt he owed God for his victory; he paid it with rigid observance and forced his allies to do the same. That day the French Senate agreed to form a Provisional Government. It was the end of Napoleon's reign, and that night Alexander dined with the man who had addressed the Senate, the limping Prince of Benevento. It was the climax of Talleyrand's career; the cold aristocrat had finally triumphed over the parvenu. Seated at the table with Alexander that night, he drank a toast to the liberation of France from the tyranny he had helped to institute fifteen years ago, when he sided with the young General Bonaparte. He also drank a private toast at the same time. The insults and dangers of his service with Napoleon were finally avenged.

Alexander stayed in his great mansion facing the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been guillotined. Now Talleyrand, who had helped Danton prepare the Terror, was proposing the return of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of France. He was reverting to type, Alexander thought, realizing suddenly how much he disliked the man. But the Bourbons suited Prussia too, and England. Under their rule, France would never recover her power.

He lay awake until dawn in Talleyrand's luxurious bedroom, his hands clasped behind his head, thoughts rioting through his brain.

He had won; a Provisional Government ruled France, led by Talleyrand; Napoleon was at Fontainebleau Palace, less than ten miles away, with all that was left of his army. The Empress Marie-Louise was at Blois with the little King of Rome, preparing to desert her husband and go to her father, the Austrian Emperor; the whole Bonaparte family had fled Paris and were streaking for safety; everyone had abandoned the Emperor in his hour of defeat. It was a bitter lesson, Alexander reflected, and for the first time his hatred of Napoleon became tinged with pity. It would have broken a lesser man.

He lay back on the pillows frowning, thinking that he hated Talleyrand and could never trust him, or Metternich, or Castlereagh of England.

The pygmies had dragged down the giant; now they were turning against
him,
jealous of his power, his popularity with the French people.… Strange, that they should cheer him like that.

It had moved him till tears came into his eyes. He had beaten their idol, but been merciful to them, and they trusted him like children. It must be that they too recognized a man as great as the ruler they had lost, a man above the petty instincts of the other allies. A man whose cause was just, a man favoured by God.… He fell asleep at last.

He was dining alone with Talleyrand on the evening of the 4th of April. The Prince of Benevento was an excellent host; he had made every effort to amuse the Czar, relating one incident after another to Napoleon's detriment in the hope of pleasing him or provoking a smile. Usually silent and aloof, the Prince was unable to restrain his own good humour, in spite of the gravity and coldness of his guest. He watched Alexander carefully and then remarked: “I hope you have observed the number of white cockades being worn in the city streets, Sire. The people can hardly wait to welcome His Majesty King Louis XVIII.”

Alexander stared at him; Talleyrand, a master of the art of disconcerting other people, became the victim of a much superior technique.

“I have seen some demonstrations, Monsieur le Prince, but not enough to convince me that the people of France wish for the Bourbons to return. It may be that they will want a Republic.”

“A Republic?” Talleyrand's eyebrows lifted. “Surely, Sire, as an absolute monarch, you couldn't support that?”

“I have promised to honour the wishes of the French people,” Alexander answered coldly. “My own country's constitution has nothing to do with it. And in your support for a Monarchy, are you not carrying your patriotism too far?

A flush rose in Talleyrand's face and then died away.

“Your Majesty's meaning escapes me.”

“I believe you had some part in the upheaval which removed the House of Bourbon from the throne of France, my dear Prince. Aren't you afraid that the new King might prove vindictive?”

Talleyrand regarded him with a smile of pure hatred.

“It is more likely he'll prove grateful, Sire. And my personal safety is small consideration beside the danger of a Republic which Bonaparte would probably be able to upset, or worse still a Regency for his son which he would undoubtedly usurp in a few months. The only safeguard against him is to give France a legitimate King. It is also the only way to restrain the influence of Austria,” he added smoothly.

BOOK: Far Flies the Eagle
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