areas west of Paris and could use interior lines and better lateral roads which he controlled to concentrate and strike against the lumbering allied columns. If Napoleon’s throne was threatened, no doubt he would fight to the death. What evidence was there that the French nation would desert him? Ultimately, to advance on Paris was to gamble on French politics. Might this not prove as deceptive as Napoleon’s gamble in 1812 that occupying Moscow would lead to peace?46
Schwarzenberg’s views and plans were strongly influenced by political considerations. In his view, the advance to Langres had been a means to exert additional leverage on Napoleon and force him to make peace on terms acceptable to the allies. Even now, after all these years, Schwarzenberg had not really grasped Napoleon’s mentality or his way of war. Metternich’s influence on the commander-in-chief was also very important. On a number of occasions in January 1814 he advised Schwarzenberg to delay operations and allow time for peace negotiations. By appointing Caulaincourt as minister of foreign affairs and seemingly accepting the allied peace terms conveyed by Saint-Aignan, Napoleon appeared to be open to compromise. With a peace congress finally about to commence at Chatillon on 3 February, Schwarzenberg, Metternich and Francis II were less inclined than ever to push forward in the days immediately following La Rothiere or to let military operations determine policy and define the peace settlement. Because the commander-in-chief was an Austrian, Habsburg political perspectives could quietly derail allied military strategy.47
Meanwhile Alexander did his best to undermine Metternich’s diplomatic strategy at Chatillon. When the congress began its deliberations on 5 February the Russian delegate, Count Razumovsky, announced that he had not yet received his instructions. Russian delaying tactics could not be hidden, however, unlike Metternich’s advice to Schwarzenberg, and quickly annoyed their allies. By now the allies had toughened considerably the peace terms on offer. At Frankfurt they had proposed France’s natural frontiers. At Chatillon they offered the ‘historic’ frontiers of 1792. Metternich pinned Alexander down by presenting the allies with a memorandum which forced them to decide whether or not to make peace with Napoleon if he accepted these terms. It also required them to decide, if they rejected Napoleon, whether they should commit themselves to the Bourbons or decide on some way by which the French might choose an alternative ruler.48
Faced with these questions, Alexander found himself without support. He believed that if Napoleon accepted the allied terms, he would simply regard the peace as a temporary truce and would start a new war at the first suitable opportunity. His military genius and his aura added tens of thousands of invisible soldiers to any army he commanded. So long as he sat on France’s throne, many of his former allies beyond France’s borders would never believe that the peace settlement was permanent. Both the British and the Prussians wanted to sign a peace with Napoleon, however, so long as he accepted France’s 1792 borders and immediately handed over a number of fortresses as a pledge of his commitment. None of the allies shared Alexander’s view that their armies should first take Paris and then gauge French opinion on the nature of the regime with which to sign peace. To them this policy seemed too unreliable. The last thing the allies wanted was to incite popular revolt, or to find themselves involved in a French civil war. But if Napoleon did fall, then in the British, Austrian and Prussian view the only alternative was the return of the Bourbons, in the person of the family’s legitimate head, Louis XVIII.49
Alexander was unenthusiastic about the restoration of the Bourbons. In part this simply reflected his low opinion of Louis XVIII, who had lived in exile in Russia for a number of years and had not impressed the emperor. Alexander was no legitimist. If anything, he had a touch of radical chic. His grandmother, Catherine II, had sought to impress Voltaire and Diderot. Alexander enjoyed winning the plaudits of Germaine de Stael, whose own preferred candidate to rule France was Marshal Bernadotte. Alexander himself briefly toyed with Bernadotte’s candidacy. This infuriated his allies and even led to murmurings that the emperor was trying to put a Russian client on the French throne.50
In fact this was not the point and Alexander contemplated a number of possible candidates, of whom the crown prince of Sweden was but one. The basic issue was Alexander’s belief that a society as sophisticated and modern as France could only be ruled by a regime which respected civil rights and allowed representative institutions. That regime must also accept part of the Revolution’s legacy if it was to survive. The emperor doubted whether the restored Bourbons would do any of these things. As always with Alexander, he was most believable when telling people what they did not want to hear. Even as late as 17 March, he told a royalist emissary, the Baron de Vitrolles, that he had considered not just Bernadotte but also Eugene de Beauharnais and the Duke of Orleans as possible rulers who, unlike Louis XVIII, would not be prisoners of memories and supporters who demanded revenge for the past. The emperor staggered Vitrolles by saying that even a wisely ordered republic might suit France best.51
Above all, Alexander wanted a stable France which would live in peace with itself and with its neighbours. Better than anyone the emperor understood the enormous difficulties of bringing a Russian army across Europe and the unique circumstances which had made this possible. It might never be possible to repeat this effort. As he said to Lord Castlereagh amidst the arguments that raged among the allies in early February, it was precisely for this reason that Russia required a peace settlement which would endure, not a mere armistice. It was on these grounds that he opposed any peace with Napoleon. But it was the same anxiety which led him to look at alternatives to the Bourbons. In fact Alexander underestimated Louis XVIII and came in time to accept with good grace the Bourbons’ restoration. But his fears were not groundless, as the overthrow of the incompetent Charles X subsequently showed.52
After fierce arguments with his allies in the second week of February 1814 Alexander was forced to give way, however. The fact that towards the end of this week news began to arrive of Blucher’s defeat by Napoleon only confirmed the dangers of Russia’s isolation. The emperor had to agree that if a restoration was to occur, then the only possible choice was the head of the royal house, Louis XVIII. More important from Alexander’s perspective, he had to accept that the negotiations at Chatillon would continue and that the allies would ratify a peace with Napoleon if he accepted the 1792 frontiers and surrendered a number of fortresses. On the other hand, the allies did also agree that if Napoleon refused the allied conditions, then they would continue the war until victory was achieved over him. Frederick William III provided some balm to Alexander’s injured feelings by refusing to join Metternich in threatening withdrawal from the war should the Russian monarch refuse to back down. The king insisted that so long as the Russians remained in the field, the royal army would fight alongside them.53
Meanwhile near disaster had befallen Blucher. After the conference in Brienne on 2 February he marched northwards with Sacken’s and Olsufev’s 18,000 Russians. Blucher aimed to unite with the 16,500 men of Yorck’s Army Corps who were advancing just north of the river Marne towards Chateau Thierry and the nearly 15,000 Prussians and Russians under generals Kleist and Kaptsevich who were approaching Chalons from the east. A French corps under Marshal MacDonald was retreating in front of Yorck, and Blucher ordered Sacken to hurry forward to try to cut it off. Meanwhile he himself stopped with Olsufev’s detachment at Vertus, waiting for Kleist and Kaptsevich to arrive. MacDonald in fact evaded Sacken’s clutches but the attempt to catch him took Sacken’s troops all the way to La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, well to the west of Chateau Thierry on the south bank of the Marne.
Blucher’s army was now dispersed over a distance of more than 70 kilometres, which made communications difficult and mutual support often impossible.
The details of the military operations which followed were complicated but the essence was simple. Napoleon thrust northwards through Sezanne into the middle of Blucher’s army and defeated one isolated allied detachment after another. Since Blucher was the greatest Prussian hero of the Napoleonic Wars, some Prussian memoirists and historians had an understandable tendency to protect his reputation. They offered a number of partial excuses for his defeat. Correctly, they argued that if Schwarzenberg had pressed Napoleon’s rear then the Army of Silesia would have been in no danger. Instead, not merely did the main army crawl forward, its commander-in-chief also withdrew Wittgenstein’s Army Corps to the west, instead of leaving it as a link to Blucher. The field-marshal’s defenders also argued that if Lieutenant-General Olsufev had destroyed the key bridge across the Petit Morin stream the moment danger threatened from the south, Napoleon could never have achieved his march into the middle of Blucher’s army. Undoubtedly too, the allies had poor maps and incorrect information about local roads – as tended to be the case in fighting on foreign soil. Both Blucher and Sacken, for example, believed that the road along which Napoleon marched northwards from Sezanne was impassable for an army. Nevertheless the basic point remains that although in close proximity to the enemy, Blucher scattered his army to such an extent that it could not concentrate for battle and he could not exercise effective command. He made this mistake partly because he believed that Napoleon was on the verge of final defeat and Paris was his for the plucking.54
