Moreover, all that he could do whenever the Russians presented themselves in force was to retreat; and every day of March brought news which constantly grew more disquieting. Hence, toward the end of the month, the Emperor decided to depart for the army very soon.
Long preoccupied with the attempt Mallet had made during his last absence, the Emperor had already expressed himself on the danger of leaving his government without a head, and the journals had been filled with inquiries concerning the ceremonies in use when in former times the regency of the kingdom had been intrusted to the queens. As this was generally known to be the means frequently adopted by His Majesty in order to foster opinion in advance concerning what he intended to do, no one was surprised to find him conferring the regency on the Empress Marie-Louise before his departure, circumstances not yet permitting him to have her crowned as he had long desired. The Empress took the solemn oath at the Elysée palace, in presence of the princes, great dignitaries, and ministers. The Duc de Cadore was appointed secretary of the regency, to advise Her Majesty in concert with the archchancellor; the command of the guard was intrusted to General Cafarelli.
The Emperor started from Saint-Cloud April 15, at four o'clock in the morning. He entered Mayence at midnight the next day. On arriving, His Majesty learned that Erfurt and all Westphalia were a prey to the most vivid alarms, nothing could express the rapidity which this tidings imparted to his march, in eight hours he was at Erfurt. His Majesty did not stop long in that city; the information he received there tranquilized him completely concerning the results of the campaign. On leaving Erfurt, the Emperor wished to pass through Weimar to salute the Grand Duchess; he paid his visit the same day and hour that the Emperor Alexander went from Dresden to Töplitz to see the other Duchess of Weimar (the hereditary princess, his sister).
The Grand Duchess received the Emperor with a grace that enchanted him. Their interview lasted for nearly half an hour. On quitting her, His Majesty said to Prince de Neufchâtel: "That woman is always astonishing; really she has the head of a great man." The Duke accompanied the Emperor to the market town of Eckartsberga, where His Majesty kept him to dinner with him. 1
The Emperor was quartered on the Place of Eckartsberga; he had only two rooms; his suite camped on the landing and the staircase. Nothing could be more extraordinary than the aspect of this little town thus transformed for some hours into headquarters. Across a square surrounded by camps, bivouacs, and parks of artillery amidst more than a thousand vehicles which crossed, got mixed up with, and entangled in each other in every way, you saw regiments slowly defiling, convoys, trains of artillery, baggage wagons, etc. Behind these came herds of cattle, preceded or cut into by the little carts of sutlers and canteen-women, equipages so light and frail that the least shock damaged them; and then marauders with their plunder; peasants forced into driving the vehicles, and cursing and swearing to the accompaniment of the laughter of our soldiers; and couriers, orderlies, aides-de-camp darting at a gallop through this curiously diversified and motley multitude of men and beasts. And if to this you add the whinnying of the horses, the lowing of the cattle, the noise of wheels upon the pavement, the cries of soldiers, the trumpets, the drums, the bands, the complaints of the inhabitants, four hundred persons all asking the same thing at the same time, talking German to Italians, French to Germans, how will you ever comprehend that it was possible for His Majesty to be as tranquil, as entirely at his ease in the midst of this infernal racket as if he were in his cabinet at the Tuileries or Saint-Cloud? Yet so it was; the Emperor, seated before a wretched table covered with a sort of cloth, a map under his eyes, compass and pen in hand, wrapt in his meditations, showed not the least impatience; one might have thought that not a sound of the exterior din had reached his ears . . .; but let a cry of pain arise from any quarter, and on the instant the Emperor would raise his head and order some one to go and find out what had happened. The power of isolating one's self so completely from all that is going on around us is very difficult to acquire; no one in the world has possessed it like His Majesty.
May l, the Emperor was at Lutzen. The battle was not fought until the next day. On that day, about six o'clock in the evening, the brave Marshal Bessières, Duc d'Istrie, was carried off by a cannonball at the moment when mounted on a height, wrapped in a long cloak which he had put on to escape notice, he had just ordered the burial of the brigadier of his escort, whom a first ball had killed but a few paces away from him.
The Duc d'Istrie had seldom quitted the Emperor since the first Italian campaigns; he had followed him everywhere, been present at all his battles, and always distinguished himself by a courage equal to every trial, and an uprightness and candor too rare among the great personages by whom His Majesty was surrounded. He had passed through nearly every grade of the command of the imperial guard; and his wide experience, his excellent qualities, his good heart, and his unalterable attachment had greatly endeared him to His Majesty.
The Emperor was deeply affected on learning the Marshal's death. For several moments he remained silent, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the ground. "At last," said he, "he has died the death of Turenne; his fate is to be envied; "then he passed his hand across his eyes and precipitately left the place.
The body of the Marshal was embalmed and taken to Paris; the Emperor wrote the following letter to Madame the Duchesse d'Istrie:
"My cousin, your husband is dead on the field of honor! The loss that you and your children have sustained is doubtless great; but mine is yet more so. The Duc d'Istrie died the most beautiful of deaths and without suffering. He leaves a reputation without a spot; it is the finest heritage he could have bequeathed to his children. My protection is assured to them. They will inherit, also, the affection that I bore their father. Find in all these considerations some consoling motives to alleviate your sorrows, and never doubt my sentiments toward you.
"This letter having no other purpose, I pray God, my cousin, that He may have you in His safe and holy keeping.
The victory, long disputed in this battle of Lutzen, was all the more glorious for the Emperor on that account. It was principally the young conscripts who gained it. They fought like lions. Marshal Ney expected this, moreover; for before the battle he said to His Majesty: "Sire, give me plenty of those little young fellows yonder.... I will lead them wherever I please. The old moustaches know as much as we do; they reflect; they have too much sang-froid; but those intrepid children do not know the difficulties; they always look straight ahead, never to right or left."
In the middle of the fight the Prussians, commanded by the King in person, did, in fact, make so furious an assault on the Marshal's corps that it recoiled; but the conscripts did not take to flight; they awaited the blows, rallied by platoons, and thus turned round the enemy while shouting Long live the Emperor! with all their might. The Emperor made his appearance; then, recovering from the terrible shock they had sustained, and electrified by the presence of the hero, they attacked in their turn with incomparable violence. His Majesty was surprised by it. "I have been commanding French armies for twenty years," said he, "and I never before saw such bravery and devotion."
You should have seen those young soldiers, wounded, one deprived of an arm, another of a leg, and with but a breath of life remaining, trying to rise up from the ground as the Emperor approached, and shouting Long live the Emperor! with all the voice they had left. Tears come to my eyes when I think of those lads so brilliant, so strong, and so courageous.
There was the same bravery, the same enthusiasm on the part of our enemies; the chasseurs of the Prussian guard were nearly all young men who were under fire for the first time; they sprang to meet death and fell by hundreds before they gave way a foot.
In no battle, I think, did the Emperor seem more visibly protected by his destiny. Balls whistled past his ears; as they went by they carried off scraps from the harness of his horse; balls and grenades rolled to his feet; nothing touched him. The men saw all this, and their enthusiasm was redoubled.
At the commencement of the battle, the Emperor saw a battalion advancing whose chief had been suspended from his functions two or three days before for a rather trifling fault of discipline. The poor officer was marching in the second rank of his soldiers, by whom he was adored. Perceiving him, the Emperor halted the battalion, took the officer by the hand, and put him back at the head of his troop. The effect produced by this scene cannot be described.
May 8, at seven o'clock in the evening, the Emperor made his entry into Dresden and took possession of the palace which the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia had quitted that very morning.
At some distance from the barriers, the Emperor was saluted by a deputation from the municipality of this city. "You deserve," said he to these ambassadors, "that I should treat you as a conquered country. I know all that you have been doing while the allies occupied your city; I have the list of the volunteers whom you have clothed, equipped, and armed against me with a liberality that astonished even the enemy; I know what insults you have heaped on France, and how many infamous libels you have had to hide or burn to-day. I am not ignorant of your noisy transports of joy when the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia entered within your walls. Your houses are still decked with garlands, and we yet see on your pavements the flowers which your young girls scattered along their path. Yet I will pardon all. Thank your king, for it is he who has saved you, and I pardon only through love of him. Let a deputation from among you go and beg him to restore you his presence. My aide-de-camp, General Durosnel, will be your governor. Your good king himself would not choose a better."
At the moment of entering the city, the Emperor learned that a part of the Russian rear-guard was trying to keep a foothold in the new city, separated by the Elbe from the old one, which had fallen into our hands. His Majesty at once ordered that everything should be done to drive out these remaining troops, and during an entire day there was constant cannonading and firing in the city from one bank to the other. Balls and grenades fell like hail on the ground occupied by the Emperor. Close beside him a grenade broke the partition wall of a powder magazine and hurled the fragments at his head. Happily the fire did not reach the powder. A few minutes afterwards, another grenade fell between His Majesty and several Italians; they stooped down to avoid the effects of the explosion. The Emperor saw this movement and, beginning to laugh, he said to them: "Nonsense, that doesn't do any harm."
May 11, in the morning, the Russians were flying and pursued, and the French army entered into all parts of the city. The Emperor stayed all day long on the bridge, watching the troops file by. At ten o'clock next day, the imperial guard took arms and put itself in battle array on the road from Pirna to Grow Garten; the Emperor reviewed them and sent General Flahaut forward; the King of Saxony arrived about noon. On meeting, the two sovereigns dismounted from their horses and embraced each other; they afterwards entered Dresden amidst universal acclamations.
General Flahaut, who had gone to meet the King of Saxony with a portion of the imperial guard, received the most flattering tokens of satisfaction and gratitude from this good king. No one could display more good nature, more gentleness than the King of Saxony. The Emperor said of him and his family that it was a patriarchal family, and that all the members of it united to great virtues an expansive goodness that should make them adored by their subjects. His Majesty always paid the most affectionate attentions to this royal personage. So long as the war lasted, he sent couriers daily to acquaint the King with the slightest circumstances; he came himself as often as he could; in fine, with him he was always full of that amiability he knew so well how to assume and to render irresistible when he chose.
Several days after his arrival in Dresden, His Majesty had a long conversation with the King of Saxony, which turned chiefly upon the Emperor Alexander. The qualities and defects of that prince were amply analyzed, and the result arrived at was, that the Emperor Alexander had been sincere at Erfurt, and that very complicated intrigues had been required to bring about this rupture of all bonds of amity. "Sovereigns are so unfortunate!" said His Majesty; "always circumvented, always surrounded by flatterers or faithless counsellors, whose first necessity is to prevent the truth from reaching the ears of their master, whom it so greatly concerns to know it."
Afterwards, the two sovereigns began to talk about the Emperor of Austria. His Majesty seemed profoundly afflicted that his union with the Archduchess Marie-Louise, whom he had done everything in the world to render happy, should not have had the result he hoped for, that of gaining him the confidence and friendship of his father-in-law. "But I was not born a sovereign," said the Emperor; "perhaps that accounts for it. And yet, I should have thought this circumstance would have been an additional title to the friendship of Francis. Never, I am sure, could I have persuaded myself that such ties would not be strong enough to retain the Emperor of Austria in my alliance. For, after all, I am his son-in-law; my son is his grandson; he loves his daughter; she is happy. . . . How then can he be my enemy?"
On hearing of the victory of Lutzen and the entry into Dresden, the Emperor of Austria made haste to despatch M. de Bubna to his son-in-law. He arrived the evening of the 16th, and the interview he at once obtained from His Majesty lasted until two hours after midnight. That giving us hopes that peace would soon be made, we formed a thousand conjectures, one more reassuring than the other; but two or three days elapsed, during which we saw nothing but preparations for war, which cruelly undeceived us. It was then that I heard these words issue from the mouth of the unfortunate Marshal Duroc: "This is lasting too long! We shall all die at it." He had the presentiment of his death.
Throughout the entire campaign the Emperor had not an instant of repose. The days slipped by in combats or excursions, always on horseback; the night in cabinet work. I have never comprehended how his body could resist such fatigues, and yet he enjoyed almost uninterrupted good health. The eve of the battle of Bautzen he went to bed very late, after having visited all the military posts. As the orders were given, he slept profoundly. May 20, the day of the battle, the evolutions began at daybreak, and, at headquarters, we awaited the result with keen impatience. But the battle was not to end that day. After a succession of combats, all to our advantage, though bitterly disputed, the Emperor returned to headquarters at nine o'clock in the evening, took a slight repast, and remained with Prince Berthier until midnight. The rest of the night was spent in work, and at five o'clock in the morning the Emperor was up and ready for the fray.
Two or three hours after his arrival on the battlefield, the Emperor could not resist the slumber that overcame him. Foreseeing the issue of the day, he fell asleep on the slope of a ravine, amidst the batteries of the Duc de Raguse. They awoke him to say that the battle was won.
This fact, which he related to me in the evening, did not amaze me; for I had already remarked that when he was obliged to yield to slumber, that imperious necessity of nature, the Emperor took the repose essential to him how and where he could, like a true soldier.
Although the battle was decided, yet the fighting went on until five o'clock in the evening; at six o'clock the Emperor had his tent set up near an isolated tavern which had served as the headquarters of the Emperor Alexander the two preceding days. I received orders to go thither and I hastened to do so; but His Majesty passed that night also in receiving and congratulating the principal chiefs, as well as in working with his secretaries.
All the wounded who were able to walk were already marching on the road to Dresden, where ample assistance awaited them; but on the field of battle lay more than ten thousand men, French, Russians, Prussians, etc., scarcely breathing, mutilated, and in a piteous condition. The efforts of the good and indefatigable Baron Larrey, and a multitude of surgeons, encouraged by his heroic example, did not suffice even for the first dressings.
And what means of transportation for these poor wretches could be found on this desolate plain, all of whose villages had been sacked and burned, where there no longer remained either carriages or horses? Must all these men be left to perish in the most atrocious anguish for lack of means to carry them to Dresden?
Then it was that this population of Saxon villagers, who must have been embittered by the disasters of the war, who beheld their dwellings burned, their fields ravaged, willingly afforded to the whole army the spectacle of what pity can inspire, of what is most sublime in the heart of man. They perceived the cruel anxieties of M. Larrey and his companions concerning the fate of so many unfortunate wounded. In an instant, men, women, children, old people, ran up with wheelbarrows; the wounded were raised, placed upon these frail vehicles; two or three persons took hold of each wheelbarrow and conducted them to Dresden in this way, stopping whenever by cry or sign the wounded soldier asked to rest, stopping to replace the bandages disarranged by the movement, stopping near a spring to give him a drink and allay thus the fever that devoured him. I have never seen anything so touching.
Baron Larrey had a very lively dispute with the Emperor. Among the wounded a great number of young soldiers had been found with two fingers of the right hand shattered. His Majesty believed that these poor young fellows had done it expressly to dispense themselves from service. He said so to M. Larrey, who hotly denied it, saying that it was impossible, and that such cowardliness was not in the character of these brave conscripts. As the Emperor insisted, M. Larrey went so far as to tax him with injustice. Things had arrived at this point when certain proof was supplied that these uniform wounds were all caused by the precipitation with which the young soldiers charged and discharged their guns, to the handling of which they were not accustomed. Then His Majesty saw that M. Larrey had been in the right, and was grateful to him for his firmness in maintaining what he knew to be true. "You are a thoroughly good man, M. Larrey," said the Emperor; "I wish I were surrounded with none but men like you, but men like you are very rare."