THE THUNDERBOLT STROKE

On the tenth of February, 1814, for the first time in many days, the sun shone brightly.  Nevertheless there was little change in the temperature; the thaw still prevailed.  The sun’s heat was not great enough to dry the roads, nor was the weather sufficiently cold to freeze them.  As the Emperor wrote to his brother, with scarcely any exaggeration, there was still six feet of mud on highways and by-paths.

Napoleon, by rapid marching at the head of Maurice’s Squadrons d’Elite, mounted grenadiers, chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, had easily attained a position in front of the van of the army commanded by Marmont, which had rested a few hours at St. Prix, where the road crossed the Petit Morin on a bridge.  His requisition on the peasantry had been honored, and great numbers of fresh, vigorous draft horses had been brought in from all sides.  There was not much speed to be got out of these farm animals, to be sure, but they were of prodigious strength.  The ordinary gun teams were relieved, and numbers of these plow-horses attached to the limbers pulled the precious artillery steadily toward the enemy.

Scouts had discovered the fact that Olsuvieff’s division was preparing breakfast on the low plateau upon which was situated the village of Champaubert, which had been observed by Marteau and Bal-Arrêt.  Napoleon reconnoitered the place in person from the edge of the wood.  Nansouty’s cavalry had earlier driven some Russian skirmishers out of Baye, but Olsuvieff apparently had no conception of the fact that the whole French army was hard by, and he had contented himself with sending out a few scouts, who, unfortunately for him, scouted in the wrong direction.

While waiting for the infantry under Marmont to come up, Napoleon sent Nansouty’s cavalry around to the left to head off Olsuvieff’s advance and interpose between him and the rear guard of Sacken’s division.  Even the noise of the little battle-for the skirmish was a hot one-a mile down the road, did not apprise the Russian of his danger, and it was not until the long columns of the French came out of the wood and deployed and until the guns were hauled into the clearing and wheeled into action, that he awoke to the fact that an army was upon him and he would have to fight for his life.

With his unerring genius Napoleon had struck at the key position, the very center of Bluecher’s long drawn-out line.  With but thirty thousand men attacking eighty thousand he had so maneuvered as to be in overwhelming force at the point of contact!  In other words, he had got there first with the most men.  Bluecher’s army was separated into detachments and stretched out over forty miles of roads.

Olsuvieff’s division comprised five thousand men with twenty guns.  At first Napoleon could bring against him not many more than that number of men and guns, to which must be added Nansouty’s small cavalry division.  And Olsuvieff, with all the advantages of the position, made a magnificent defense.  As a defensive fighter the stubborn Russian took a back seat for no soldier in Europe.  But the most determined resistance, the most magnificent courage, could not avail against overwhelming numbers, especially directed and led by Napoleon in person, for with every hour the numbers of the assailants were increased by the arrival of fresh troops, while with every hour the defense grew weaker through casualties.

Olsuvieff might have surrendered with honor at midday, but he was a stubborn soldier, and he realized, moreover, that it was his duty to hold Napoleon as long as possible.  Even the most indifferent commander could not fail to see the danger to Bluecher’s isolated corps.  Couriers broke through to the east to Sacken and Yorck, who together had over thirty-five thousand men under their command, and to the west to Bluecher, with as many more men, telling all these commanders of the extreme peril of the center and of the frightfully dangerous situation in which their carelessness and the ability of their great enemy had involved them.  The noise of the firing, too, was carried far and wide over the broad open fields and cultivated farms of the rolling prairie of Champagne.

Bluecher, however, could not credit the intelligence.  He believed it impossible for Napoleon to have escaped from Schwarzenberg.  He could not conceive that Napoleon would leave the Austrians unopposed to march to Paris if they would.  He could not think that even Napoleon would venture to attack eighty thousand men with thirty, and, if he did, he reasoned that Sacken and Yorck and Olsuvieff, singly or in combination, were easily a match for him.  The messengers must surely be mistaken.  This could only be a raid, a desperate stroke of some corps or division.  Therefore, he halted and then drew back and concentrated on his rear guard waiting for further news.

Sacken and Yorck were nearer the fighting.  They could hear and see for themselves.  They at once gave over the pursuit of Macdonald and retraced their steps.  Olsuvieff made good his defense until nightfall, when the survivors gave up the battle.  Fifteen hundred men of his brave division had been killed on the plateau.  As many more were wounded and captured, most of whom subsequently died, and there were about two thousand unhurt prisoners.  Their ammunition was exhausted.  They were worn out.  They were overwhelmed by massed charges at last.  Bluecher’s line was pierced, his center crushed, and one of the finest divisions of his army was eliminated.

In the wagon train recaptured at Aumenier had been found arms and provisions and ammunition.  Another Prussian wagon train, blundering along the road, was seized by Maurice’s cavalry, which had been sent scouting to the eastward.  From the Russian camp the starving French had got food, more arms and clothing.  The dead were quickly despoiled, even the living were forced to contribute to the comfort of their conquerors.  It was night before the last French division got up from Sezanne, but there was enough food and weapons for all.

A new spirit had come over that army.  What had seemed to them a purposeless, ghastly march through the mud was now realized to be one of the most brilliant manoeuvres Napoleon had ever undertaken.  The conscripts, the raw boys, the National Guards, many of whom had been in action for the first time that day, were filled with incredible enthusiasm.  They were ready for anything.

But the army must have rest.  It must be permitted to sleep the night.  Accordingly the divisions were disposed in the fields.  Those who had fought hardest were given quarters in the village; the next were placed in the captured Russian camp; the others made themselves as comfortable as they could around huge fires.  The poor prisoners had little or nothing.  The ragged French were at least better clothed than they were in the morning.  The defenseless had arms and the whole army had been fed.  There was wine, too; the Russian commissariat was a liberal one.  There was much laughter and jovialness in the camps that night.  Of course, the guard and the other veterans expected nothing else, but to the youngsters the brilliant stroke of Napoleon was a revelation.

As the little Emperor rode from division to division, sometimes dismounting and walking through the camps on foot, he was received with such acclaim as reminded him of the old days in Italy.  And, indeed, the brief campaign which he had so brilliantly inaugurated can be favorably compared to that famous Italian adventure, or to any other short series of consecutive military exploits in the whole history of war.

They said that the Emperor had hesitated and lost his great opportunity at Borodino.  They said that he had frightfully miscalculated at Moscow, that his judgment had been grievously at fault in the whole Russian campaign.  They said that he had sat idle during a long day when the fortunes of his empire might have been settled at Bautzen.  They said that, overcome by physical weariness, he had failed to grasp his great opportunity after the victory at Dresden.  They said that Leipsic and the battles that preceded it showed that he had lost the ability to see things with a soldier’s eye.  They declared that he made pictures and presented them to himself as facts; that he thought as an Emperor, not as a Captain.  They said that in this very campaign in France, the same imperial obsession had taken such hold upon him that in striving to retain everything from Holland to the end of the Italian peninsula he stood to lose everything.  They said that, if he had concentrated all his armies, withdrawn them from outlying dependencies, he could have overwhelmed Bluecher and Schwarzenberg, the Czar Alexander, the Emperor Francis and King William, and that, having hurled them beyond the Rhine, these provinces in dispute would have fallen to his hand again.  They said that his practical omnipotence had blinded his judgment.

Those things may be true.  But, whether they be true or not, no man ever showed a finer strategic grasp of a situation, no man ever displayed more tactical ability on a given field, no man ever conducted a series of more brilliant enterprises, no man ever utilized a small, compact, well-handled force opposed to at least two and a half times its number, no man ever conducted a campaign which stood higher from a professional point of view than this one which began with the march from Nogent and the destruction at Champaubert.

There was no rest for Napoleon that night.  Undoubtedly he was not now the man he had been.  Paralyzing physical disabilities before and after interfered with his movements.  The enormous strains to which he had subjected his body and brain sometimes resulted in periods of mental blindness and physical prostration.  It was whispered that a strange malady-was it some form of epilepsy?-sometimes overcame the Emperor so that his faculties and abilities were in abeyance for hours.  No man had ever abused such wonderful mental and physical gifts as he originally had possessed by subjecting them to such absolutely impossible strains as he, and Nature was having her revenge.  But for that week in February and for a time thereafter there was a strange and marvelous return of the Emperor’s physical powers.

He had sustained more fatigue than any man in the army, because to all of the personal sufferings of the march in the long day and the sleepless night and the conduct of the battle had been added responsibility, but he was as fresh as a boy.  His pale cheek showed rare color; his eyes sparkled; his voice was clear and sharp.  The nervous twitching of his mouth ceased.  The gray look vanished.  He was once more the boyish Captain of the Army of Italy, at whom the huge grenadiers laughed and the gray-headed veterans marveled.

The Emperor’s scouts had been hard at work during the day.  They were constantly coming and going at his headquarters at Champaubert with detailed accounts of the situation of the Russians and the Prussians.  The Emperor had a momentous decision to make.  From the position he had gained it was equally as easy for him to strike east as to strike west.  He decided at last to strike west, realizing that no captain, much less fiery old Bluecher, without an absolute forfeiture of his reputation as a soldier could afford to leave his van unsupported, but that the Prussian Field Marshal must advance to its support.  If the Emperor’s plans worked out, he could destroy that van, and then turn back and mete out the same fate to the main body coming to its rescue.

Just about ten miles away to the westward, on the main road to Paris by way of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, lay the village of Montmirail.  As many miles beyond Montmirail, on the same Paris road, Sacken, with twenty thousand men, had been advancing.  From Montmirail a road led northward to Chateau Thierry and the crossing of the Marne, behind which Macdonald had been driven by Yorck, with perhaps fifteen thousand more.  The Emperor decided to seize Montmirail, throw out a corps to hold back Yorck on the northern road, while he crushed Sacken on the other with the remainder of the army, except one corps, which he would leave at Champaubert to delay Bluecher’s advance.  These army corps were in reality nothing more than weak divisions, less than seven thousand strong.

Early in the afternoon Marteau, with old Bullet-Stopper and the little squadron of Maurice’s cavalry, had rejoined the Emperor.  He had been greatly refreshed by his night’s sleep.  He had taken advantage of the early hours of the morning to bury his father and sister, saying such prayers as he could remember, in default of the parish priest, who had been murdered.  The Emperor having sent a courier with an escort back to Nogent, the Countess Laure and her English friend had elected to go with them.  They feared to be left alone in the chateau all day, in the disturbed state of the country, and it was easier, perhaps, to reach Paris from Nogent by way of the Seine than by going direct from Sezanne.  Marteau had approved of their decision.

The parting between the young people had been as formal as possible.  The Englishman, on the contrary, with true British hospitality, had said that if peace ever came he would indeed be glad to welcome him at his home in England.  Marteau had sworn to hold the chateau and its land in trust for the Countess, although she protested she would not hear of anything of the kind.  And then he had bade her farewell.  He had arrived in time to take part in the hard fighting at the close of the day, and had been busy during the early part of the night in carrying messages and resuming his duties at headquarters.

At two o’clock in the morning Napoleon threw himself down on a peasant’s bed in a hut and slept until four.  At that hour he awakened and summoned the officer on duty.  Marteau presented himself.  The Emperor, as refreshed by his two hours of sleep as if he had spent the night in a comfortable bed, addressed the young man familiarly.  None could unbend better than he.

“My good Marteau,” he began.  “But stop ­Monsieur lé Comte d’Aumenier”-he smiled-“I have not forgot.  Berthier has orders to send to Paris to have your patent of nobility made out and to see that the confiscated Aumenier lands are transferred to you.”

“I thank your Majesty,” said the young aide, deeming it wiser to say nothing of his ultimate intentions regarding the patent of nobility and the estates.

“It would be a fine thing,” said the Emperor, “if you and that girl should come together.  She is the last of her line, I understand, save her old uncle in England, who is unmarried and childless.  Is it not so?”

“That is true, Sire.”

“Well, you couldn’t do better.  She is a woman of spirit and resolution.  Her prompt action in the chateau last night showed it.  I commend her to your consideration.  Were I your age and in your station I should like nothing better.”

“Your Majesty anticipated my desire, my own proposition, in fact.”

“What?  You struck while you had the opportunity?  That was well.”

“But, unlike you, Sire, I struck unavailingly.”

“The lady refused?”

“Positively.  She is of the oldest family in France, while I -”

“Marteau,” said the Emperor sharply, “no more of that.  If you cannot be a descendant, be an ancestor.  Look at me.  My family began at Montemotte, and to-day the mother of my son is a Hapsburg!”

“But she is engaged to the son of that Englishman, Sire.”

“Bah, what of that?  Engagements can be broken, marriages even dissolved.  The Holy Father at Rome will refuse me nothing.  When I have beaten the allies I will take your affair in hand.  There are few powers in Europe that will turn a deaf ear to the suggestions of the Emperor of the French, believe me.  The lady shall be yours.”

“Your Majesty’s power,” said the young officer dubiously, “does not extend to women’s hearts.”

“Does it not?” laughed the Emperor grimly.  “You shall see.  My word shall be law again everywhere.  With my favor you will go far.  There are no patents of nobility that stand higher than mine, for mine are based on my recognition of merit alone, not on accident of birth.  You served me well, and you shall see that I am not ungrateful.  Meanwhile, to you a new duty is assigned.”

“I welcome it gladly.”

Napoleon took an order prepared the night before from a table.

“This to General Nansouty.  I want him to march at once.  Read it.  You will see,” he continued, “that Nansouty’s cavalry is to hold Sacken in check until I have seized Montmirail.  He has guns with him.  Let him deploy, attack vigorously.  Keep the enemy occupied and gradually fall back upon Montmirail.  Ride with him yourself, and rejoin me at Montmirail about ten in the morning.  We should be up then.  You understand?” said the Emperor, ready to explain his orders more fully, believing that an order could be more intelligently delivered if the purport were explained verbally to the bearer, especially in the case of a skilled and trusted young soldier like Marteau.

“I understand, Sire.”

“Away, then.  Continue to merit my favor, for upon that favor rests”-he laughed, he was in high good spirits and humor that morning-“the lady.”

Marteau saluted.  In spite of himself a certain hope began to spring up in his heart.  That Emperor was almost a demi-god to his men.  Whatever he had essayed he had generally achieved in times past, and who could tell?  Certainly they were on the eve of great events.