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By Root 2619 0

had long since been exhausted, not so much of money . . . but of men. This last scarcity . . . threw whole families into despair and want. They really were bled to the uttermost. The poor man had to give his last son and in him lost his support, and in the fields it was often the women and girls who led the plough . . . And the same disasters occurred in the towns. Numbers of families condemned themselves perpetually to cripple their fortunes in order to save the young man whom other measures ended by reaching . . . The crepe with which the Russian and Leipzig campaigns had covered France had not yet disappeared; bitter tears were still being shed.86

Despair, then, was widespread, and to this was added political disaffection. In few parts of the country was royalism much of a force. According to Rochechouart, ‘With the exception of the nobility, the clergy and a few wealthy members of the old bourgeoisie, the majority of the populace did not even know the name of Louis XVIII.’87 But anger at the increased demands of the state inflamed old political antagonisms. Following the Leipzig campaign, for example, Marbot had ended up at Mons in the former Austrian Netherlands. As he wrote, ‘I found the spirit of the population changed. There was a regret for the old paternal government of Austria, and a keen desire for separation from France, and the perpetual wars which were ruining commerce and industry. In short, Belgium was only awaiting the opportunity to revolt . . . From my hotel I could see every day 3,000 or 4,000 peasants and artisans assembling in the square and listening to the talk of certain retired Austrian officers . . . All French officials left the department to take refuge at Valenciennes and Cambrai.’88 At Mons serious trouble was averted by vigorous action on the part of the garrison, but at nearby Hazebrouck there was serious rioting. And even where there was no overt resistance, draft evasion once again became a serious problem, and with it a renewal of brigandage. Almost everywhere there was a mood of barely suppressed fury. ‘Observant minds saw plainly that the emperor had already lost his head, and that he would soon lose his crown. Consequently public opinion was violently opposed to him. His military and financial operations were loudly blamed. No longer dreaded, he became the butt of diatribes, satirical songs, lampoons, and all the other offensive weapons employed by French public opinion.’89 Even attempts to play on fears of invasion had no effect: ‘I was at the Vaudeville,’ wrote the Duc de Broglie. ‘The police had given orders for the performance there of an appropriate play, in which Cossacks plundered a village, pursued young girls, and set fire to the barns: the piece was outrageously hissed from the very beginning, interrupted by the noise from the pit, and could not be terminated.’90

Needless to say, the consequent social instability undermined the loyalty even of the regime’s own personnel, who as notables inevitably had much to lose, as well as no desire to return to the days of Jacobinism and the levée en masse which a desperate emperor now seemed to be trying to revive. Not only was the rhetoric of the regime increasingly echoing that of 1793 , but Napoleon sent out extraordinary commissioners in the style of the old députés en mission, introduced a number of measures intended to redistribute land to the peasantry, and decreed the formation of a volunteer militia drawn from unemployed workers in Paris and other towns of northern France. With a royalist restoration no longer a serious threat in social and economic terms - on 1 February 1813 Louis XVIII had issued a well-publicized declaration in which he promised generally to respect the status quo - the political establishment saw no reason to support a fight to the finish. Already in December 1813 the corps législatif had effectively demanded that Napoleon make peace immediately. Further signs of disaffection now appeared in the administration and the propertied classes. The prefects and their deputies began to refuse to carry out