CHAP. to the bridge, whilst thousands upon the Russian side saw that they were left to their fate. The barbarity of the Russians indeed passed belief. In the midst of a cold of thirty degrees, they stripped such of the prisoners as they did not kill, and drove them along by thousands. As most dropped upon the road, their numbers were filled up by the gathering of other fugitives, and columns of wretches were thus driven to death by the spears of the Cossacks. Those who escaped such fatal driving suffered no less from the bands of peasants, who as mercilessly massacred every captive. The Russian women vied with the men in such barbarity. Great as had been the provocation, one cannot but be disgusted at the total absence of anything like a Christian feeling in the population. We do not hear of any general or authority in any town who made the least effort to stop the barbarity of the peasants. The Emperor Alexander issued a proclamation giving a reward for the captives brought in alive. But the love of slaughter was greater than that of money, and the Cossacks' lance was never stayed by pity.* * All prisoners were immediately and invariably stripped stark naked and marched in columns in that state, or turned adrift to be the sport and the victims of the peasantry, who would not always let them, as they sought to, point and hold the muzzles of the guns against their own heads or hearts, to terminate their sufferings in the most certain and expeditious manner; for the peasantry thought that this mitigation of torture "would be an offence against the avenging God of Russia," and deprive them of His further protection. A remarkable instance of this cruel spirit of retaliation was exhibited on the pursuit to Wiazma. Milaradowitch, Beningsen, Korf, and the English General, with various others, were proceeding on the high road, about a mile from the town, where they found a crowd of peasant women, with sticks in their hands, hopping round a felled pine tree, on each side of which lay about sixty naked prisoners, prostrate, but with their heads on the tree, which those furies were striking in accompaniment to a national air or song which they were yelling in concert; while several hundred armed peasants were quietly looking on as guardians of the direful orgies. When the cavalcade approached, the sufferers uttered piercing shrieks, and kept incessantly crying, 'La mort! La mort !' -Wilson's Narrative. In the first days of December there were not more than 10,000 French under arms, seeking to make their way to Wilna. Napoleon, strong as was his duty to share their sufferings, and do the best for their defence, felt that both were beyond his power, and that to save the empire itself his presence in France was necessary. On the 5th therefore, at Smorgoni, he summoned Murat, Eugène, Berthier, Ney, Davoust, Lefebvre, Mortier, and Bessières, and informed them of his intention to hasten back at once without making himself known upon his journey. His fears were, that the Germans, already in effervescence and almost in insurrection, would stop him. Those he left behind blamed his defection, especially Berthier. And even Murat, to whom he entrusted the command, was more chagrined than flattered by the offer. The Emperor, with Duroc, Caulaincourt, and Lobau entered a sledge, and fortunately reached Wilna without being intercepted by the Russians. From Wilna he proceeded to Warsaw, summoned there his few followers, and let fall to his envoy De Pradt the remarkable observation, that there was but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Dresden was his next resting-place, and he reached Paris on the 19th of December two months after his leaving Moscow. As for Murat and Ney they could enter Wilna, but to retreat forthwith from it. The fresh troops, that the Duke de Bassano had collected there, and sent towards them, were stricken down by a cold of thirty degrees even more speedily and suddenly than the legions of Murat. Scarcely more than a third of the French crossed the Niemen. Murat attained Konigsberg, Eugène Warsaw, but with merely their staffs. The 600,000 soldiers of the Grand Expedition had perished. The most striking event which had occurred in France, during the absence of the Emperor in Russia, was the perpetration of an attempt, for it could not be called a conspiracy, hatched in the brain of one man. A general CHAP. XLIII. CHAP. of the name of Malet, always restless, ever in trouble, was at the time under arrest. He conceived the design of affirming the death of the Emperor, and establishing a republican government in consequence. Escaping from his arrest, habiting himself as a general officer, he first imposed on the troops of a certain barrack, made use of these to break open a prison, liberated from thence two general officers, who could not discredit the story he told them of the Emperor's death, accompanied as it was by the display of his momentary power. They became his accomplices, and under his orders, the police minister, Savary, and his prefect, were arrested, and sent to prison. Malet tried to do the same by the commander of Paris, Hullin, but he demurred and Malet shot him. This led to resistance, rather than acquiescence of the rest of the staff, and at last Malet was recognised and arrested. The attempt made in the morning, and which resulted for an hour or two in Malet and his accomplices being almost masters of Paris, was defeated before mid-day, about the very time when Napoleon was marching on Kalouga. The frightened and restored authorities sent all the parties concerned, the deceived as well as the deceivers, to a court-martial and commanded them all, to the number of twelve, to be shot. "How can all this have been?" exclaimed Napoleon. "Was not my son thought of, the heir to my throne, and the Empress invested with the powers of Regent?" At Smolensko and Wilna Napoleon perceived that there was no active government in France whilst he was absent. On returning to Paris, he equally learned that without his presence the armies, still considerable on the Vistula, melted to nothing. It is the misfortune of despotism, that it can delegate neither talent nor power, no more than it can bequeath them. "Even if you succeed in beating the Russians," observed Prince Metternich at this time to a French envoy, "and if the Emperor Napoleon can regain and make himself master of the three-fourths of Europe, which he subdued, how could such an empire be preserved by his son, composed of such discordant materials, disaffected population, and princes wounded in their interests and in their pride?" Napoleon would not hearken to such plain truths. He would not admit that his military resources were weakened, or that the spirit and means of his enemies had risen to a par with his own. Yet his very efforts betrayed the exhaustion. The 100,000 conscripts due in 1813 being already spent, he was obliged to draw on the population for soldiers both in advance and in arrear. Those who had escaped from conscription or purchased exemption at fabulous prices, were called up again and made to serve. The noble and gentle classes had always escaped, and these, however hostile to the dynasty, Napoleon now pressed and enrolled in what he called the gardes d'honneur, for they were in a great measure obliged to support themselves. There ensued a long and a wide murmuring throughout France, a murmur of families bereaved, and sad execration of mothers rendered childless. The Emperor himself was insulted in the streets of Paris. What his agents endured, and with what severity they retaliated, in order to execute the Imperial decrees, need not be told. Counting the hundred thousands of this food for powder, which like coin he was prepared to spend in exchange for glory, Napoleon continued to hold towards Europe the same haughty and insulting language which had been his wont since Jena and Wagram. When he called his councillors together at Paris after his return, their first recommendation was, and could be no other than, peace. To whom should he make the offer? To Russia? It would be humiliating and vain, till he had appeared once more victorious in the field. But Austria, the ally of the Emperor by marriage, might mediate. It would be necessary then to satisfy Austria, and offer to it conditions calculated to counterbalance the CHAP. XLIII. CHAP. complete restoration of its empire, which the allied powers already held forth. XLIII. There was another power manifesting itself in Germany, quite as important as any of the old courts and princes. This was public opinion, which Napoleon could not bring himself to take into account, which first carried away Prussia in the tide of national antagonism to France, and threatened to leave Austria high and dry, above all influence over Germany, if it resisted or kept out of the current. It was not in the name of religion, but of virtue, meaning the great public virtue of patriotism, that eminent Germans appealed to those masses of their fellow-countrymen in oppression. The secret societies for this purpose, entitled the Tugendbund, dated from 1809, and took their birth in the general disgust at a Bonaparte prince being raised to the throne of Westphalia. Schill, who with 1,000 horse traversed North Germany, and the Duke of Brunswick Oels, who followed him, were but the first sparks of the latent conflagration. The most tyrannical of the French generals had been Davoust. He had unscrupulously mulcted the wealth of Hamburg, and made of Magdeburg a fortified dépôt for the storing of wines and spirits. When he fell back to Dresden, after the Russian retreat, and blew up the fine bridge over the Elbe to prevent the enemy following him, the hearts of the Germans were at once embittered and encouraged. The Tugendbund and its adepts were nowhere more numerous or more enthusiastic than in the auxiliary corps, which General York commanded, and which made part of the corps of Macdonald. The Russian generals had communicated with York early in December, and Alexander himself declared that he would never lay down his arms till Prussia had recovered its station of 1806. York sent Seydlitz to Berlin, and received in return full authority and power to act as he judged best, it being the intention of the Prussian court to break with |