neutral Belgium. Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, travelled to
Basle in some alarm. There he was able to make common cause with
Metternich, who realized that he needed British support to counter the
Czar and that the only way forward for Austria was to continue the war.
The Allies therefore replied early in 1814 that the 'natural frontiers'
terms were no longer on offer, that France would have to accept the pre-
1792 boundaries. This enabled Napoleon to present the Allies in
propaganda terms as ravening wolves, intent on destroying France. The
hollowness of their claim to be waging war only on the Emperor of
France, not its people, was now evident.
With Wellington advancing in the extreme south of France, Napoleon
made an eleventh-hour effort to remove the Spanish piece from the board
and get the Peninsular veterans to the eastern frontier by offering
Ferdinand the throne of Spain. By the treaty of Valen�ay in November
r813 Ferdinand accepted these terms, though with Wellington advancing
into France they were a pointless concession anyway. It did not suit
Napoleon's enemies, internal as well as external, that Spain should be
wrapped up so neatly. Ferdinand found himself unable to leave Valen�ay
for the Pyrenees until March r8r4.
Baulked politically at every turn, Napoleon determined to go down
fighting. On paper his position was hopeless. He had 8o,ooo exhausted
survivors of the grim campaigns of 1813 to set against an Allied fo rce of
3oo,ooo, with tens of thousands being added to its muster rolls every
week. In Italy Eugene was already hard pressed by the Austrians and in
the Pyrenees Soult was retreating before Wellington. The Confederation
of the Rhine was lost and both Holland and Belgium were on the point of
rebellion. But Napoleon did not yet despair, fortified by the elan of his
most loyal marshals, such as Mortier and the gallant Davout, who
defended besieged Hamburg brilliantly against impossible odds during
the winter of r8r3-14. Napoleon drafted the National Guard, called up
aged reservists plus policemen, forest rangers and customs officials and
pressed into service a year early the 1815 class of conscripts. But there
was still an acute manpower shortage, as the number of deserters and
draft dodgers who had slipped through the net since 18o8 now topped
one million. Of the JOO,ooo men Napoleon was able to raise on paper,
barely 12o,ooo actually served in the r8r4 campaign.
Apart from shortage of numbers, two other factors told against the
Emperor in January 1814. One was money, and in the light of this it was
something of a miracle that a campaign was fought at all. The new
taxation was systematically evaded and produced nothing worthwhile;
army contractors had to be content with promissory notes. Since the
marcin
(Marcin)
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