Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [327]
The king had hoped that peace might be brought about, and he first learned in Frankfurt that, so far from this, the passage of the Rhine had been fixed for the st of 1st January. Thrown into the worst possible humour by this news, he sent for Gneisenau and myself to express his dissatisfaction . . . and to reproach us for not having advised against so hazardous an enterprise. We instantly confessed that we had recommended the measure most urgently as Napoleon had rejected the conditions for peace by demanding the most ridiculous conditions. We explained to the king at full length . . . that, of the three great powers, Prussia herself had the greatest interest in seeing this war-loving Napoleon . . . annihilated, if possible by dethroning him, or, if this could not be effected, by driving . . . France back within her old boundaries . . . The king listened to us attentively. Nevertheless, he was not convinced by our reasoning, and persisted in his apprehension that the expedition to Paris would end badly.83
The war, then, continued. Back in France Napoleon proceeded to try to rebuild his fortunes. Already a fiction, the French kingdom of Spain was now abandoned: Joseph Bonaparte had already been brusquely sacked in the wake of Vitoria, and, deciding that the moment was ripe to cut his losses, Napoleon now sent a message to Madrid offering to release the imprisoned Ferdinand VII on the understanding that he would make peace with France and expel the Anglo-Portuguese. When these terms were firmly rejected, he decided to release Ferdinand anyway, but while chaos ensued - the result was a military coup that restored absolutism - it was much too late to make any difference. What was left of France’s Peninsular army was therefore going to have to keep fighting in the south-west. Nor was it of the slightest account that the emperor also released the Pope and directed him to make his way to Rome. Without the resources of the grande empire, the regime’s demands soared. Taxes shot up dramatically: land tax rose by 95 per cent and property tax by 100 per cent. As for manpower, in addition to the 350,000 men called up between January and April 1813, and another 30,000 men called up in August, October saw a demand for 120,000 men from the classes of 1809 to 1814 and 160,000 men from the class of 1815, this being followed a month later by a second demand for 300,000 from the classes of 1803 to 1814. And, as if this was not enough, another 180,000 men were mobilized for service as members of the National Guard. This was a levée en masse such as France had not seen since 1793. Alongside it, indeed, the 500,000 men raised under the Terror paled into insignificance.
The impact of all this was catastrophic. The war had already been unpopular in France, but the atmosphere produced by the news of Leipzig was one of growing panic. As Pasquier wrote:
There was no longer any hope in anything: every illusion had been destroyed. There were certainly long columns in Le Moniteur full of patriotic addresses and expressions of devotion on the part of every corporation, every town council, but this official language had the appearance of a practical joke. It would have been much better by far for the government to have maintained a dignified silence.84
If confirmation was needed of the state to which France was reduced, it was the sights that accompanied the arrival of the survivors of the German campaign. ‘The army returned in the most dreadful condition,’ wrote Lavallette. ‘The number of sick and wounded was immense; the hospitals and private houses were not enough to contain them, and that most deadly malady, typhus fever, attacked not only the army, but every village and town through which it passed.’85 As for fresh recruits, there were scarcely any to be had, still less any will to send them.
France