Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [332]
Soissons was liberated soon after, but Pougens and his family chose to flee to Louise’s home in the nearby village of Vauxbuin. This, however, proved an unfortunate choice. On 2 March, 6,000 Cossacks descended on the village. Pougens managed at first to keep the group safe by persuading the commander that he had been a correspondent of the wife of Paul I, but no sooner had the Cossacks departed than a large group of stragglers appeared and sacked Louise’s house. Utterly terrified, left almost without food and constantly threatened by further bands of marauders, Pougens and his family then made their way on foot to Nanteuil, where they managed to board a stagecoach bound for Paris. But in the capital things were little better. Working on the staff of one of the city’s main hospitals was the young surgeon, Poumiès de la Siboutie:
Fighting was going on at the gates of Paris. The wounded were brought in in hundreds. We were soon overcrowded. Every available inch of space was filled: the ordinary sick had to be sent to their homes; the pensioners . . . and the incurables were turned out of their wards and herded together in dark corners and attics. Before long even that was not enough, and two patients were assigned to every bed. Each day fresh means had to be devised to house the steadily increasing tide of sick and wounded. The unfortunate fellows dragged themselves to Paris, animated by a feverish desire to obtain shelter and succour. Some fell exhausted on the very steps of the hospital and expired as they reached the haven of a bed. Many had sores and wounds which had not been dressed for days, if ever. Every morning the hospital hearses bore thirty or forty corpses to their long rest. It was the same in all the other asylums and hospitals.104
Meanwhile, as even some of Napoleon’s most loyal subordinates admitted, the propaganda of the regime had little effect, and was, indeed, counter-productive:
The Moniteur was filled with all the complaints, with all the lamentations, of the wretched inhabitants of Montmirail, of Montereau and of Nangis . . . All the towns which had been afflicted with the scourge of war sent deputies to Paris to describe their misery and demand vengeance . . . The great examples of antiquity were invoked; France was reminded of her achievements in 1792 . . . But, it must be confessed, these measures produced at Paris and in all the great towns an effect quite contrary to that which was expected from them. The inhabitants were too civilized to adopt the decisive conduct of the Russians and the Spaniards. The imagination of the citizens was shocked at the violence of the measures suggested to them . . . and peace was loudly demanded as the period of so many horrors.105
With matters in such a state, the end came quickly. Though Napoleon continued to fight and manoeuvre relentlessly, he could achieve little. On 9 March Bentinck had landed at Livorno from where, having issued a call for a national revolt against the French that met with no response whatsoever, he marched on Genoa. On 12 March Bordeaux had proclaimed Louis XVIII, its authorities having first made sure that they would be immediately relieved by the Anglo-Portuguese army. As in 1870 and 1940, refugees were streaming west, adding to the confusion. Among those who fled Paris as the enemy closed in was the wife of Marshal Oudinot:
The Versailles road was free . . . We let the empress, her suite and her escort set out, and at about four o’clock in the afternoon we ourselves departed . . . It was almost dark when we arrived. We took possession of two adjacent rooms