As the danger grew more pressing, the energy of the Emperor and his indefatigable activity continually increased. He hastened the organization of the new levies, and to provide for the most urgent expenses he drew thirty millions from the secret treasure that he kept in the vaults of the Marsan pavilion. But the levies of conscripts were made with difficulty. During the single year of 1813, one million forty thousand soldiers had been summoned beneath the flags. France was no longer capable of such enormous sacrifices. Yet veterans were enlisting on all sides. General Carnot offered his services to the Emperor, who was deeply affected by this proceeding and intrusted him with the defence of Antwerp. Every one knows with what courage the General acquitted himself of this important mission. Mobilized columns and partisan corps were arming in the eastern departments, some rich proprietors were raising and organizing volunteer companies, and bodies of picked cavalry were forming in which the riders equipped themselves at their own cost.
Amidst these preparations, the Emperor received a piece of news which afflicted him profoundly; the King of Naples had just joined the enemies of France. I had already heard the Emperor break into indignant reproaches when the Prince-royal of Sweden, after having been marshal and prince of the Empire, entered into the coalition against his former country; and yet the King of Sweden had more than one reason to adduce in his own justification. He was alone in the North, hemmed in by hostile powers, and utterly unable to cope with them, even had the interests of his new country been inseparable from those of France. By refusing to enter the coalition, he would have drawn down upon Sweden the wrath of his redoubtable enemies, and with the throne he would fruitlessly have lost and sacrificed the nation which had adopted him. It was not to the Emperor that he owed his throne. King Joachim, on the contrary, was nothing except through the Emperor. It was the Emperor who had given him one of his sisters to wife, who had given him a throne, and had treated him as well and better than a brother. Hence it was the duty of the King of Naples not to separate his cause from that of the Emperor. Moreover, it was his interest as well: if the Emperor fell, how could kings of his family and his fashion hope to remain erect? Kings Joseph and Jérôme and the brave and loyal Prince Eugène had comprehended this. The latter was courageously defending in Italy the cause of his adoptive father. If the King of Naples had joined him, they might have marched on Vienna together; and this audacious and yet very practicable manœuvre would infallibly have saved France.

Such are some of the reflections I heard the Emperor make when speaking of the defection of the King of Naples. But he did not reason so calmly at the first moment; his anger was extreme, and yet there was blended with it sorrow, and even touches of compassion. "Murat," he exclaimed, "Murat betray me! Murat sell himself to the English! The unhappy wretch! He fancies that if they succeed in overthrowing me, they will leave him the throne on which I placed him. Poor fool! The worst that can happen to him is that his treason should succeed; for he will have less pity to expect from his new allies than from me."

On the eve of his departure for the army, the Emperor received the officers of the Parisian National Guard. The reception was held in the great hall of the Tuileries. The ceremony was imposing and sad. The Emperor made his appearance before the assembly with the Empress, and holding by the hand the King of Rome, who then lacked two months of being three years old. Although the speech he made on this occasion is already known, yet I will repeat it here, being unwilling that these beautiful and solemn words of my former master should be lacking to my Memoirs:

"Gentlemen officers of the National Guard, I have pleasure in seeing you assembled round me. I depart to-night to place myself at the head of the army, In quitting the capital, I leave with confidence under
your protection my wife and my son, on whom are placed so many hopes. I owe you this mark of confidence in return for all those you have never ceased to give me in the principal epochs of my life. I shall go with a mind free from anxiety when they are under your faithful guard. I leave to you what, next to France, is dearest to me in all the world, and I intrust it to your care.

"It may happen that, through the manœuvres I am going to make, the enemy may find an opportunity to approach your walls. If that occurs, remember that it can only be a matter of a few days, and that I will soon come to your assistance. I recommend you to be united amongst yourselves and to repel all insinuations which would tend to divide you. Efforts will not be lacking to shake your fidelity to your duties; but I rely on your rejecting these perfidious instigations."

At the close of these remarks, the Emperor's glance rested on the Empress and the King of Rome, whom his august mother was holding in her arms; and indicating to the assembly by look and gesture this child whose expressive countenance seemed to reflect the solemnity of the occasion, he added in a voice that betrayed emotion: "I confide him to you, gentlemen; I confide him to the love of my faithful city of Paris." At these words of His Majesty, a thousand cries, a thousand arms arose, swearing to guard and defend this precious trust. The Empress, bathed in tears and pale from the different emotions by which she was agitated, would have fallen, if the Emperor had not supported her in his arms. At this sight, the enthusiasm reached its climax; tears fell from every eye; and there was not one of the spectators who did not seem, on retiring, ready to shed his blood for the imperial family. It was on that day that I saw M. de Bourrienne for the first time at the palace again; if I do not mistake, he wore the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.

January 25, after having conferred the regency on Her Majesty the Empress, the Emperor set out for the army. We slept at Châlons-suf-Marne. His arrival stopped the progress of the hostile armies and the retreat of our troops. Two days later he attacked the allies in his turn at Saint-Dizier. His Majesty's entry into this city was signalized by the most affecting tokens of enthusiasm and devotion. At the moment when the Emperor alighted, a former colonel, M. Bouland, an old man upwards of seventy, threw himself at His Majesty's knees, expressing to him the sadness he had felt in seeing the foreign bayonets and his confidence that the Emperor would wipe them from the soil of France. His Majesty raised the worthy veteran, and told him cheerfully that he would spare no pains to fulfil so favorable a prediction. The allies had behaved inhumanly at Saint-Dizier; women and old men were dead or ill from the bad treatment they had received; hence the presence of His Majesty was a subject of great joy to the country.

The enemy having been repulsed at Saint-Dizier, the Emperor learned that the army of Silesia was concentrating on Brienne. He set off at once across the forest of Déo. The soldiers who followed him seemed as indefatigable as himself. A halt was made at the town of Eclaron, where His Majesty gave the inhabitants money for the restoration of their church, which had been devastated by the enemies. The surgeon of this town having come forward to thank the Emperor, His Majesty examined him attentively and said: "Have you served, sir?" "Yes, Sire, I was with the army of Egypt." "Why have you not the cross?" "Sire, because I have never asked for it." - "Sir, you are all the more worthy of it. I hope that you will wear the one I will send you." And in a few minutes his certificate was signed by the Emperor and handed to the new chevalier, whom the Emperor recommended to take the greatest care of the sick and wounded of our army who should be within reach of his assistance. 1

On entering Mézières, His Majesty was received by the municipal authorities, the clergy, and the National Guard. "Gentlemen," said the Emperor to the National Guards who were pressing around him, "to-day we are fighting for our hearthstones; we must be able to defend them and prevent the Cossacks from warming themselves there; they are bad guests who would leave no room for you. Let us show them that every Frenchman is born a soldier and a good soldier." On receiving the homage of the curé, His Majesty perceived that this ecclesiastic was looking at him with interest and attention. This caused the Emperor to pay more attention in return, and he recognized him as one of his former regents of the college of Brienne. "What! is this you, my dear master?" exclaimed His Majesty. "Then you never quitted this region? So much the better; you will be all the more able to serve the country's cause. I do not need to ask you if you know the neighborhood." "Sire," said the curé, "I could find my way about it with my eyes shut." - "Come along with us then; you will act as our guide, and we will talk." The worthy curé had his peaceable mare saddled at once, and took his place in the centre of the imperial staff.

That same day we arrived before Brienne. The Emperor's march had been so secret and so prompt that the Prussians knew nothing about it until he fell upon them. A number of general officers were made prisoners, and Blücher himself, who was tranquilly coming down from the château, had only time enough to turn heel and fly as fast as he could, pursued by the balls of our advance guard. For an instant the Emperor thought the Prussian general had been taken, and he shouted: "We will hold on to that old fighter; the campaign will not last long." The Russians established in the town set fire to it. Fighting went on in the middle of the fire. Night fell without separating the combatants. In the space of twelve hours, the town was taken and retaken several times. The Emperor was furious that Blücher had escaped him.

On his way back to headquarters, which had been established at Mézières, His Majesty narrowly escaped being pierced by the lance of a Cossack; but before the Emperor had had time to see the movement of this wretch, the brave Colonel Gourgaud, who was marching behind His Majesty, laid the Cossack low with a pistol-shot.

The Emperor bad only fifteen thousand men with him, and they had fought with equal success against eighty thousand foreigners. At the close of this combat, the Prussians retreated on Bar-sur-Aube, and His Majesty established himself at the château of Brienne, where he passed two nights. I remembered, during the sojourn, the one I had made there with the Emperor ten years before, when he was going to Milan to add the title of King of Italy to that of the Emperor of the French. "To-day," I said to myself, "not merely is Italy lost to him; but also it is at the centre of the French Empire, it is within a few leagues of his capital that the Emperor is defending himself against innumerable enemies!" The first time that I saw Brienne, the Emperor had been received as a sovereign by a noble family which fifteen years before had welcomed him as a protégé. He had renewed there the sweetest memories of his childhood and youth; and in comparing what he was in 1805 with what he had been at the Military School, he had spoken with pride of having made his way. At the close of January, 1814, people were beginning to foresee where his path would end. Not that I wish to announce myself as having foreseen the Emperor's downfall. No; I did not go so far as that. Accustomed to see him rely upon his star, those who surrounded him relied on it no less than he. But yet we could not disguise from ourselves that there had been a change. To keep up an illusion on that subject it would have been necessary to close our eyes, so as neither to see nor hear these masses of foreigners whom until now we had never seen except in their own homes, and who were now in ours.

At every step, in fact, we met horrible proof of the passage of the enemies. After taking possession of cities or villages, they had arrested the inhabitants, maltreated them with sabre thrusts or the butt-end of their muskets, despoiled them of their clothes, and impressed into their service those they deemed competent to guide them. If they were not conducted as they desired to be, they sabred or shot their unfortunate guides. Everywhere they took possession of food, drink, forage, and, in a word, of all that could be useful to their army, made enormous requisitions, and when they had exhausted the resources of their victims, they generally finished their work of destruction by pillage and fire. The Prussians, and above all the Cossacks, distinguished themselves by their brutal ferocity. Sometimes these hideous savages would enter houses by main force, divide up all that fell under their hands, load their horses with booty, and break what they could not carry away; sometimes, not finding the wherewith to satisfy their avidity, they would take down the doors, demolish the ceilings so as to get the beams and windows, and with all these wrecks and the furniture which was too heavy to be taken along, they would make a fire which, communicating itself to the roof of every house, would consume in an instant the shelter of the unhappy inhabitants and force them to take refuge in the woods.

Elsewhere the better-off inhabitants would give them what they asked for, especially brandy, of which they were very greedy, hoping by this docility to escape their ferocity. But these barbarians, heated by drink, would then proceed to the last excesses; they would seize the daughters, wives, and servants, beat them frightfully in order to constrain them to drink some of the brandy, and when they were completely overcome by it, take infamous advantage of their helplessness. Many women and young girls had courage and strength enough to defend themselves against these brigands, but then three or four of them would come against one; and often, to revenge themselves for the resistance offered by these unfortunates, after having dishonored they would mutilate them, kill them with their weapons, or throw them into the middle of their bivouac fires. Farm-houses were burnt, and families but now opulent and comfortable reduced in an instant to beggary and despair. Husbands and old men were sabred when trying to defend the honor of their wives and daughters; and when some poor mothers would approach the fire, seeking to warm the infant hanging at their breast, they were scorched or killed by the explosion of packets of cartridges designedly thrown into it by the Cossacks, and their screams of anguish or of grief were silenced by the laughter of these monsters.

I should never finish were it necessary to recount all the atrocities committed by the foreign hordes. At the time of the Restoration it was the fashion to say that the complaints and reports of those who had been exposed to these excesses were exaggerated by fear or hatred. I have even heard well-intentioned persons jest very agreeably over the pretty tricks of the Cossacks. But these witty people had always kept at a distance from the scene of war, and had had the luck to inhabit departments which had not suffered from either the first or the second invasion. I would not have advised them to address their pleasantries to the unfortunate inhabitants of Champagne, and the eastern departments generally. It has also been claimed that the sovereign allies and the general officers, both Russian and Prussian, had severely interdicted all violence on the part of their regular troops, and that the harm was done only by undisciplined and ungovernable bands of Cossacks. A hundred times I have had occasion, more especially at Troyes, to acquire proof to the contrary. That city has doubtless not forgotten how it was that the Princes of Würtemberg and Hohenlohe, and the Emperor Alexander himself, did justice on the incendiarism, the pillage, rape, and assassinations without number which were committed under their eyes, not simply by the Cossacks, but also by enrolled and disciplined soldiers. Not one step was taken by the sovereigns or their generals to put an end to so many atrocities; and yet, when they departed from the city, it would have needed but an order on their part to disperse at once the cloud of Cossacks who were devastating the region.

The field of La Rothière, as I have said elsewhere, had been the rendezvous of the pupils of the Military School of Brienne. There, in childhood, the Emperor had preluded, by schoolboy conflicts, his gigantic battles. That of La Rothière was desperate, and it cost the enemy a great deal of blood to obtain the advantage which he owed solely to his immense numerical superiority. In the night which followed this unequal combat, the Emperor ordered the retreat on Troyes.
In returning to the château after the battle, His Majesty again incurred an imminent danger: he was suddenly surrounded by a troop of uhlans, and drew his sword to defend himself. M. Jardin junior, his equerry, who was close behind the Emperor, received a ball in the arm. Several chasseurs of the escort were wounded; but they finally succeeded in extricating His Majesty. I can attest that the Emperor displayed the greatest coolness in all encounters of this kind. On that day, as I was unbuckling his sword-belt, he half drew the weapon from its scabbard, saying: "Do you know, Constant, that those rascals made me draw my sword? The rogues are daring. They need a good lesson to teach them to keep at a respectful distance."

It is not my intention to tell in detail the story of this French campaign, in which the Emperor displayed an energy and activity which excited the highest admiration in all who surrounded him. Unhappily, the successive advantages which he gained exhausted his troops and inflicted on the enemy none but losses which were easy to repair. It was, as has been so well said by M. de Bourrienne, the combat of an Alpine eagle with a cloud of crows. "The eagle kills hundreds of them; each blow of his beak is the death of an enemy; but the crows come back in ever-increasing numbers, and press upon the eagle until they end by stifling him." At Champ-Aubert, at Montmirail, at Nangis, at Montereau, at Arcis, and in twenty other mêlées, the Emperor had the advantage of genius and our army that of courage; but this was in vain. Scarcely had the masses of the enemy been dispersed than they formed anew in perfectly fresh ones before our soldiers, harassed by continual battles and forced marches. Especially the army commanded by Blücher seemed to be incessantly reborn; everywhere beaten, it reappeared with forces equal, if not superior, to those which had been destroyed or scattered. How resist forever so great a superiority of numbers?