Napoleonic Literature
Memoirs of Constant - Vol. IV
Chapter VII
Desire of peace— The honor of our arms restored— Difficulties raised by the Emperor Alexander— Mediation of Austria— Time lost— Departure from Dresden— Beauty of the French army— England the soul of the coalition— The conditions of Lunéville— National war in Prussia— Return toward the past— Circumstances of the stay in Dresden— The Duc d'Otrante near the Emperor— False interpretations— Souvenirs of the Mallet conspiracy— Fouché governor of Illyria— The Emperor's high opinion of the Duc d'Otrante's talents— Devotion of the Duc de Rovigo— Arrival of the King of Naples— Apparent coolness of the Emperor— Dresden fortified and immensity of the works— The maps and rehearsals of battles— Our journey to Mayence— Death of the Duc d'Abrantes— Regrets of the Emperor— Short interview with the Empress— The Emperor three days in his cabinet— Expiration of the armistice— The feast of Saint Napoleon advanced five days— The Comédie Française and a free performance— The day of dinners— Fête at the house of General Durosnel— Baptiste junior and Milord Bristol— The French infantry divided into fourteen corps— Six grand divisions of cavalry— The guards of honor— Composition and strength of the allied armies— Two foreigners to one Frenchman— Misplaced security of the Emperor with regard to Austria— Declaration of war— Count de Narbonne.

THE entire duration of the armistice was employed in negotiations for arriving at the conclusion of peace. At that time the Emperor ardently desired it, especially since he had seen the honor of his arms repaired by the battles of Lutzen and of Bautzen. Unhappily, he desired it on conditions to which the enemies could not be persuaded to accede, and we were soon to see the opening of the second series of our disasters, which rendered peace increasingly impossible. Besides, from the beginning of the negotiations relative to the armistice now approaching its end, the Emperor Alexander, in spite of the three battles gained by the Emperor Napoleon, had declined to listen to direct propositions on the part of France and insisted on the intermediation of Austria. This distrust was ill calculated to promote a definitive reconciliation; being the victor, the Emperor must naturally have been irritated by it; nevertheless, in these grave circumstances, he had succeeded in mastering his legitimate susceptibility with regard to this adverse proceeding of the Russian Emperor. Time was lost at Dresden in consequence, as it had been when our stay in Moscow was prolonged, and on both occasions the time lost by us turned solely to the advantage of the enemy.

All hope of a peaceful adjustment of difficulties having vanished, the Emperor set off from Dresden in a carriage, August 15, and the war began anew. The French army was still magnificent and imposing: it comprised two hundred thousand foot soldiers, but only forty thousand cavalrymen, so impossible had it been to repair completely the great loss we had sustained in horses. As ill luck would have it, England was at this time the soul of the coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against France; its subsidies had given it rights; they would do nothing without consulting it, and I have since known that while they were playing at negotiation, the British government declared to the Emperor of Russia that even the stipulations of Lunéville were too favorable to France. All these difficulties could be condensed into a single phrase: "We want war!" We had war, therefore, or, rather, this scourge continued to devastate Germany, and presently menaced and invaded France. I ought, moreover, to point out that what contributed to render our position extremely critical in case of a reverse, was that Prussia was now carrying on not merely a war of soldiers, but a war that had become national by the rising of the landwehr and the landsturm, and hence a war a thousand times more dangerous than the tactics of the best disciplined of armies. To all these perplexities was added the fear, soon justified, of seeing Austria develop from the lax and nonchalant mediatrix that she was, into a declared enemy.

Before going further, it seems proper that I should turn back to two or three circumstances which I have involuntarily omitted, and which relate to our sojourn in Dresden before what may be called the second campaign of 1813. The first of these circumstances was the appearance at Dresden of the Duc d'Otrante, whom His Majesty had sent for. He had been seen but seldom at the Tuileries since the Duc de Rovigo had superseded him as minister of police, and I remember that his presence at headquarters surprised many persons, for he was supposed to be in complete disgrace. Those who are always seeking to explain the causes of the least events thought that it was His Majesty's intention to oppose the astute measures of M. Fouché's police to the then all-powerful police of Baron de Stein, the avowed chief of the secret societies which were forming on all sides, and who was regarded, not without reason, as the director of popular opinion in Prussia and Germany, and especially in the numerous schools, where the students were only awaiting the moment to take arms. These conjectures concerning the presence of M. Fouché in Dresden had no foundation. In summoning him, the Emperor had a real motive which he nevertheless disguised under an apparent pretext. The thought of Mallet's enterprise being incessantly present to his mind, His Majesty had considered it imprudent to leave at Paris, in his own absence, a malcontent so influential as the Duc d'Otrante, and I have many times heard him express himself on this subject in a manner which left me no room for doubt. However, to give a color to this real motive, the Emperor appointed M. Fouché governor of the Illyrian provinces, to replace Count Bertrand, then called to the command of an army corps and shortly afterwards to succeed the adorable General Duroc in the functions of grand marshal of the palace. However it might be with M. Fouché, it is a very certain thing that few persons were so convinced of the superiority of his talents for the police as His Majesty himself; several times, when anything extraordinary had occurred at Paris, and notably when he heard of the Mallet conspiracy, the Emperor, when reviewing in the evening what had most affected him during the day, ended by saying: "It would not have happened if Fouché had been minister of police." This may have been a prepossession; for the Emperor certainly never had a more loyal and devoted adherent than the Duc de Rovigo, although there was a good deal of jesting in Paris over his captivity of several hours.

Prince Eugène having returned to Italy at the beginning of the campaign to organize a new army there, we did not see him at Dresden; the King of Naples, who arrived in the night of August 13-14, presented himself almost alone, having nothing in the grand army but the small number of Neapolitan troops whom he had left behind him at the time of his departure for Naples.

I was in the chamber of the Emperor when the King of Naples entered it and saw him for the first time. I do not know to what to attribute it, but I thought I noticed that the Emperor gave his brother-in-law a less cordial reception than of old. Prince Murat said he had been unable to remain longer in Naples when he knew that the French army, to which he had never ceased to belong, was fighting, and that he asked nothing but to combat in its ranks. The Emperor took him with him to the parade and gave him the command of the imperial guard; it would not have been easy to confide it to a more intrepid leader. Later on, he had the general command of the cavalry.

Throughout the whole duration of the armistice, occupied rather than filled by the tardy and useless conferences of the Congress of Prague, it would be impossible to give a notion of all the various tasks to which the Emperor applied himself from morning to evening, and frequently during the night. You would see him incessantly lying over his maps, rehearsing in advance, as it were, the battles that he meditated. However, growing frequently impatient with the slowness of the negotiations, as to the result of which he seemed to be no longer under any illusion, he told me, a little before the end of July, to see if everything had been prepared for him which was necessary for an excursion we were about to make as far as Mayence. He had appointed a meeting with the Empress there, and she was to arrive on the 25th, that the Emperor might arrange his departure so as to arrive shortly after she did. I report this journey, however, merely as a fact; for it was not signalized by any remarkable circumstance, unless that it was during our excursion to Mayence that the Emperor learned the death of the Duc d'Abrantes, who had just succumbed at Dijon to the violent attacks of the terrible malady from which he suffered. Although the Emperor, knowing already that he was in a deplorable state of mental alienation, must have expected this loss, he was none the less deeply affected by it, and sincerely regretted his former aide-de-camp.

The Emperor remained only a few days with the Empress, whom he had met again with lively satisfaction. But the great interests of his policy recalled him to Dresden; on the way thither he visited several places along the road, and we were back in the Saxon capital August 4. Travellers who had seen this beautiful city only in times of peace would have found difficulty in recognizing it. Immense works had metamorphosed it into a war city; numerous batteries had been erected in the suburbs so as to command the opposite bank of the Elbe. Everything assumed a warlike attitude; and the occupations of the Emperor became multiplied and pressing, to such a point that he remained nearly three days in his cabinet without leaving it.

Meanwhile, amidst the preparations for war, all was being arranged for the celebration of the Emperor's birthday, which had been advanced to August 10, because, as I think I have already mentioned, the armistice would expire precisely on the anniversary of Saint Napoleon, and it could be affirmed that, with his bellicose disposition, the resumption of hostilities was not a birthday gift which the Emperor would be tempted to disdain.

As at Paris, there was a free performance at Dresden on the eve of the Emperor's fête. The actors of the Théâtre Français played two comedies on the 9th, at five o'clock in the evening; and this representation was the last, the company having received immediately afterwards the order to return to Paris. The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, the King of Saxony, accompanied by all the princes of his family, came to the Marcolini palace to congratulate the Emperor; afterwards there was a grand levee as at the Tuileries; and a review in which the Emperor inspected a part of his guard, several regiments, and a number of Saxon troops, who had been invited to dinner by the French troops. On that day the city of Dresden might have been compared without too much exaggeration to a vast dining-room. In effect, while His Majesty was dining in state at the palace of the King of Saxony, where the whole family of this prince was assembled, the entire diplomatic corps were seated at the table of the Duc de Bassano; Baron Bignon, envoy of France at Warsaw, was entertaining all the Poles of distinction who were in Dresden; Count Daru was giving a grand dinner to the French authorities; General Friant to the French and Saxon generals; and Baron de Serra, minister of France at Dresden, to the heads of the Saxon colleges. Finally this day of dinners was crowned by a supper of nearly two hundred covers which General Henri Durosnel, governor of Dresden, gave that very evening at the close of a magnificent ball in the hotel of M. de Serra.

On our return from Mayence to Dresden, I had learned that the house of General Durosnel was the meeting-place of the best society, whether Saxon or French. During the absence of His Majesty, the General, taking advantage of his leisure, gave some entertainments, among others one to the actors and actresses of the Comédie Française. Concerning this I even recall a comic anecdote which was told me at the time. Without failing either in decorum or politeness, Baptiste junior, so they said, contributed greatly to the pleasantness of the evening. He presented himself under the title of Lord Bristol, an English diplomat on his way to the Congress of Prague. His disguise was so accurate, his accent so natural, his phlegm so imperturbable, that several persons belonging to the Saxon court were completely deceived by it. That did not surprise me; I saw by it that the talent of Baptiste junior for mystifications had suffered no diminution since the days when he so greatly diverted me at the breakfasts of Colonel de Beauharnais. What things had already happened since that epoch!

Meanwhile the Emperor, seeing that nothing could longer retard the resumption of hostilities, had at once divided his two hundred thousand infantrymen into fourteen army corps, the command of which was given to Marshals Victor, Ney, Marmont, Augereau, Macdonald, Oudinot, Davoust, and Gouvion Saint-Cyr, 1 Prince Poniatowski, and Generals Reynier, Rapp, Lauriston, Vandamme, and Bertrand. The forty thousand cavalrymen formed six grand divisions under the orders of Generals Nansouty, Latour-Maubourg, Sébastiani, Arrighi, Milhaud, and Kellermann; and, as I have already said, the King of Naples had command of the imperial guard. In addition, in this first campaign we saw guards of honor appear for the first time on our battle-fields, choice troops recruited from the richest and most notable families, and amounting to more than ten thousand men, separated into two divisions under the simple title of regiments, one of which was commanded by General Count de Pully, and the other, if I do not mistake, by General Ségur. These young men, once idle, addicted to repose and pleasures, became, in a short time, an excellent body of cavalry, and distinguished themselves on several occasions, notably at the battle of Dresden, of which I shall presently have to speak.

The reader has already seen what was the strength of the French army. The combined army of the allies amounted to four hundred thousand infantry soldiers, and its cavalry was scarcely less than a hundred thousand horses, without counting a reserve army corps of eighty thousand Russians ready to start from Poland under the orders of General Beningsen. Thus the foreign soldiers were more than two to one against us.

At this period of entering on campaign, Austria had just declared against us. This blow, although expected, struck the Emperor very hard; he often spoke plainly on the subject in presence of all those who had the honor to approach him. I have heard say that M. Metternich almost warned him of it in his last interviews with His Majesty at Dresden; but the Emperor had been long reluctant to believe that the Emperor of Austria would make common cause with the coalitionists of the North against his daughter and his grandson. At last all doubts were removed by the arrival of Count Louis de Narbonne, who returned from Prague to Dresden, bearing the Austrian declaration of war. Every one foresaw from this time that France would soon count among her enemies every country no longer occupied by her troops. The event justified the prevision but too well. Still all was not lost, and we had not yet been obliged to put ourselves on the defensive.


1.  Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr was at this time the youngest in date of the marshals of the Empire, having received the marshal's baton on the field of battle during the campaign of Moscow, after the combat of August 18.  Return to paragraph text.

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