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By Root 2432 0

their orders, to connive at draft evasion and the non-payment of taxes, and even to abscond altogether, while the bond issue of 200 million francs the regime had authorized to finance the war effort at the beginning of the year proved a disaster. Typical enough was the attitude of the former governor of the Grand Duchy of Berg, Count Beugnot, who in the winter of 1813 was appointed to the prefecture of the department of the Nord: ‘I gave up trying to levy conscripts. More than that, I sent home the young men from the leading families of the department who had been swept into the Gardes d’Honneur, and put an end to the persecution that had been directed against their parents . . . And, finally, loudly proclaiming that, in the situation that the department might find itself at any moment, all its people together would not be enough to defend it, I promised that no one who was called up would be expected to serve outside its limits.’91

The new armies, then, were not forthcoming. Asked to provide 5,000 men, for example, Seine Inférieure managed only 1,457, and the country as a whole raised only 63,000 . Even had more men appeared, there were few arms. Many of the National Guard, for example, were armed with no more than pikes and fowling pieces. Faced with disaster, the emperor displayed immense energy - ‘He goes to bed at eleven o’clock,’ his secretary, Baron Fain, told a concerned Lavallette, ‘but he gets up at three in the morning and until evening there is not a moment when he is not working.’92 But no quantity of orders could change matters, and Fain admitted that his master was ‘utterly tired out’.93 Yet there was still no mention of peace. ‘Peace! Peace! It’s easy enough to say the word,’ Napoleon shouted at Beugnot, ‘Am I to give up all that I possess in Germany? I have 100,000 men in the fortresses along the Elbe, in Hamburg and in Danzig. If the enemy are foolish enough to cross the Rhine, I will march to meet them . . . and have my garrisons fall on their rear, and then you will see the meaning of the word débâcle.’94 However, in reality, Napoleon’s power was on its last legs. In northern Italy, it is true, Eugène de Beauharnais was still holding the line of the Adige, but, having first led his army northwards on the pretext of reinforcing the defenders, Murat suddenly declared against the emperor in a desperate bid to save his throne. In the meantime Bentinck was preparing to set sail for the north from Sicily with an Anglo-Sicilian expeditionary force. Of the Polish strongholds, all had fallen, and in Germany only Hamburg, Wittenberg and Torgau still held out. Still worse, the erstwhile members of the Confederation of the Rhine were all mobilizing large numbers of conscripts, some of them enrolled in popular militias of the same sort as those seen in Prussia. In Denmark and Norway, Danish resistance was being crushed by Swedish troops. Yet another British expeditionary force was being readied for service in Holland. And in France there were only 85,000 men to defend the eastern frontier against an initial total of at least 350,000 Allies, while another 40,000 Frenchmen were facing 90,000 British, Portuguese and Spaniards in the south-west. With reinforcements almost non-existent, it was hardly surprising that many of the emperor’s closest confidants were begging him to make peace on whatever terms he could get: ‘With a blunt frankness only pardonable for its sincerity, I told him that France was worn out, that the country could not bear much longer the intolerable burden under which it was crushed, and that the people would throw off the yoke in order to surrender themselves, in accordance with their unfortunate habit, to some novelty . . . Particularly I spoke a good deal to him concerning the Bourbons, who would end by inheriting the spoils of his monarchy if ill-luck should overthrow him.’95

For the emperor, however, cheer was still to be found in the continued devotion shown by some soldiers. In Paris, one last parade saw Napoleon entrust Marie-Louise and the King of Rome to the garrison prior to his departure