Soult at Orthez on 27 February, as a result of which Bordeaux rose
against Bonaparte and opened its gates to the English on 12 March. On
the 24th the hopelessly outnumbered Soult abandoned field operations
and took his army inside the walls of Toulouse. Three days later
Wellington began besieging it, forcing Soult to withdraw after a
sanguinary encounter on 10 April. The venal marshal actually achieved
his finest hour in the last days of the 1814 war by trying to link up with
Suchet, who had at last been forced out of Catalonia. Soult was still in the
field when Toulouse declared for the Bourbons and on 12 April
Wellington entered the city in triumph, to learn of the amazing
denouement in Paris, six days earlier.
On learning that the Allies had stolen a march, Napoleon set out for
Paris with a small force, hoping to marshal the city's defences. He got as
far as Fontainebleau before he heard of Marmont's surrender. His
response was stupefaction. Could it really be true that Joseph had done
nothing to fortify the city and had then bolted in a blue fu nk? Sadly, this
turned out to be the case. Joseph had not raised the numbers of defenders
Napoleon expressly asked him to, had no gunners to service the artillery
park at Vincennes, and spent most of his time conferring with Talleyrand
on the best terms he could obtain from the Allies for himself. Napoleon
raged impotently: 'It is the first time I have heard that a population of
300,000 men cannot survive for three months,' he said of the inexplicable
failure of Paris to survive even one hour of siege. It is said that the city
did not fight because all quartiers save the working-class suburbs hated
Napoleon, that Parisians feared it would be sacked and gutted if they
resisted, and because Joseph had left them without fortifications, but
none of these alleged reasons convinces.
For once the age-old French cry of nous sommes trahis expressed the
plain truth. The most culpable of those who failed Napoleon was his
brother Joseph, whose incompetence was so spectacular that one is
justified in suspecting deliberate sabotage. Marmont has been identified
as the prime villain by the influential historian Henry Houssaye, on the
grounds that supply lines and logistics would have forced the retreat of
the Allies if Paris had held out for just another twenty-four hours. But
the worst of all villains was the venal and treacherous Talleyrand who,
with Fouche and other inveterate plotters, remained in the capital to
welcome the Allied 'deliverers' while Joseph and Jerome rode hell-for
leather for the Loire. Joseph persuaded Marie-Louise that the Council of
Regency and the Court must leave the capital but ignored Napoleon's
explicit instruction that nobody must be left in Paris who could legitimate
a transfer of power to an Allied nominee. Talleyrand managed to stay on
marcin
(Marcin)
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