deputy. Gneisenau was overawed by the responsibility of facing the
Corsican ogre, so failed to move in to finish the French off, as a good
commander could have done. After a day of skirmishing, Napoleon
concluded that success against such superior numbers was impossible, so
withdrew across the Aisne to Soissons. In the fighting around Laon and
Craonne he had lost 6,ooo men to the Allies' 2,ooo.
Events were turning away from Napoleon in every theatre. Caulain
court got an extension of the offer of the 1792 frontiers until 17 March,
but Napoleon still refused to consider this a basis fo r peace. For a month
he had been vainly urging Augereau to appear in the field with the new
Army he was supposedly gathering at Lyons: at one point he exhorted
Augereau 'to forget his 56 years and remember the great days of
Castiglione'. Now word came in that Augereau had given up and there
would be no second Army. Next he heard from Marie-Louise that Joseph
was trying to organize an address to the Emperor from the Council of
State and National Guard in favour of peace. Angrily he exploded, and
made his dark suspicions of his brother overt: 'Everyone has betrayed me.
Will it be my fate to be betrayed also by the King? ... Mistrust the King;
he has an evil reputation with women, and an ambition which grew upon
him while he was in Spain.'
The Emperor was still full of fight. When the Allied General St Priest
incautiously ventured ahead of the main army to take Rheims, Napoleon
fell on him and inflicted 6,ooo Russian casualties for 700 French losses.
But he was still no nearer shaking off the tentacles of the two armies
under Blucher and Schwarzenberg. He made a final attempt to break the
impasse by marching on Troyes, keeping Schwarzenberg pinned there
while he cut Blucher's communications with Strasbourg and made
contact with the strong French garrisons at Metz and Verdun. At first
Schwarzenberg seemed to be retreating, but suddenly changed tack and
concentrated his vanguard at Arcis-sur-Aube. There the two armies
collided on 20 March. The French took the town, only to come under
very heavy enemy counterattack.
The engagement with Schwarzenberg at Arcis-sur-Aube miscarried
when the Emperor was unable to deploy the numbers he needed as
Blucher had meanwhile defeated Marmont. Napoleon, victorious against
the Bavarians on the Allied right, was nearly killed when a shell exploded
directly under his horse. Some describe the incident as a suicide attempt
or manifestation of death wish for, seeing a howitzer shell just about to
explode, the Emperor deliberately rode his horse over it. The animal was
killed instantly, but Napoleon got up without a scratch. Many times later
he would regret that he had not died on the field of Arcis.
marcin
(Marcin)
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