18

The March on Paris

Napoleon had lost a battle, but he did not accept that he had lost the war or the support of his people. In a letter to Joseph on 19 June, he set out his defensive plans:

I suppose that, when I reassemble my forces, I shall have 150,000 men. The fédérés and National Guards (such of them as are fit to fight) will provide 100,000 men, and the regimental depots a further 50,000. Thus I shall have 300,000 soldiers ready immediately to bring against the enemy. I shall use carriage horses to drag the guns; raise 100,000 men by conscription; arm them with muskets taken from Royalists and from National Guards unfit for service; organise a mass levy in Dauphiné, the district of Lyons, Burgundy, Lorraine, Champagne; and overwhelm the enemy … I have heard nothing of Grouchy. If he has not been captured, as I rather fear, that will give me 50,000 men within three days – plenty to keep the enemy occupied, as to allow time for Paris and France to do their duty. The Austrians are slow marchers; the Prussians fear the peasantry and dare not advance too far. There is still time to retrieve the situation.¹

It was evident that Napoleon was determined to fight on and, as can be seen, if given time to recover, might well raise a very considerable force. Wellington, therefore, had no choice but to join the Prussians in invading France and defeating Napoleon before he could put his plans into place. The following proclamation was issued from Wellington’s headquarters at Malplaquet on 21 June 1815:

I announce to the French, that I enter their territory at the head of an army already victorious, not as an enemy (except of the usurper, the enemy of the human race, with whom there can be neither peace nor truce), but to aid them to shake off the iron yoke by which they are oppressed. I therefore give to my army the subjoined orders, and I desire that every one who violates them may be made known to me.

The French know, however, that I have a right to require, that they conduct themselves in such a manner that I may be able to protect them against those who seek to do them evil.

They must, then, furnish the requisitions that will be made them by persons authorised to make them, taking receipts in due form and order; that they remain quietly at their homes, and have no correspondence or communication with the Usurper, or with his adherents.

All those who shall absent themselves from their homes, after the entrance of the army into France, and all those who shall be absent in the service of the Usurper, shall be considered as enemies and his adherents, and their property shall be appropriated to the subsistence of the army.

Alongside the above announcement was an Order of the Day which was issued by Wellington’s Acting Adjutant-General, J. Waters, on 20 June, extracts from which are as follows:

As the army is going to enter the French territory, the troops of different nations now under the command of Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington are desired to remember, that their respective Sovereigns are the allies of his Majesty the King of France, and that France must therefore be considered as a friendly country.

It is ordered, that nothing be taken either by the officers or soldiers without payment.

The Commissaries of the army will provide for the wants of the troops in the usual manner, and it is not permitted to the officers and soldiers of the army to make requisitions.

The Commissaries will be authorised by the Field Marshal, or by the Generals who command the troops of the respective nations (that is to say, in case their provisions are not regulated by an English Commissary) to make the necessary requisitions, for which they shall give regular receipts, and they must perfectly understand that they will be responsible for all that they receive by requisitions, from the inhabitants of France, in the same manner as if they made purchases for the account of their Government in their own country.

The fortress of Sedan was bombarded into surrender by Generalleutenant von Engelhardt with the North German Federal Army Corps on 27 June, whilst the fortress of Mézières was besieged the following day. Charleville was stormed on 29 June by Engelhardt’s men. Reims and Mohon were occupied, leaving only two small fortresses on the border, those at Montmédy, still to be taken.

The follwing information was printed in the Hague Currant of 28 June. It is interesting to read at the end of this item, that two of Napoleon’s former marshals were now turning against him:

The advanced posts of the Allies are near Compeigne. General Ziethen, commanding the 1st corps of Prince Blucher’s army, received in writing an invitation from the French General Morand, to put an end to hostilities, ’because Napoleon, the only pretext for them, sacrificing himself a second time for the happiness of France, had abdicated the throne’.

This letter, far from stopping the progress, did not even receive an answer.

Bonaparte’s abdication in favour of his son, or his stepson, or the Duke of Orleans, having been rejected by the Peers, the Provisional Government, Cambaceres, Fouche, and Carnot, was formed; from this Bonaparte seemed to find protection against the popular spirit at Paris, as well as [illegible] the declaration of one of the Chambers, that he was [illegible] of the law.

The substance of these accounts is confirmed by Colonel O[u]dinot, who arrived on the 26th at Bergen, in Hainault, in order to offer to his Majesty the King of France, the services of his father the Duke of Reggio, and those of the Duke of Taranto (Macdonald).²

Though the army under Wellington had received strict orders concerning their conduct whilst in France, the Prussians, it would appear, had no such inhibitions, as Gronow, of the 1st Guards, observed:

We perceived, on entering France, that our allies the Prussians had committed fearful atrocities on the defenceless inhabitants of the villages and farms which lay in their line of march … Whenever we arrived at towns or villages through which the Prussians had passed, we found that every article of furniture in the houses had been destroyed in the most wanton manner: looking glasses, mahogany bedsteads, pictures, beds and mattresses, had been hacked, cut, half-burned, and scattered about in every direction; and, on the slightest remonstrance of the wretched inhabitants, they were beaten in a most shameful manner, and sometimes shot.³

There was a reason for this difference in discipline between the Prussians and the British which was explained to Wellington by Müffling:

On the march to Paris, the Prussian army made longer marches than the English; and when in the morning [of the 20th] I made my daily communications to the Duke, I took the liberty of respectfully calling his attention to this, and suggesting that it would be better if he kept the same pace as his ally. He was silent at first, but on my urging him again to move more rapidly, he said to me: ‘Do not press me on this point, for I tell you, it won’t do. If you were better acquainted with the English army, its composition and habits, you would say the same. I cannot separate from my tents and supplies. My troops must be well kept and well supplied in camp, if order and discipline are to be maintained. It is better that I should arrive two days later in Paris than discipline should be relaxed.’⁴

There were, though, acts of ill-discipline amongst the British troops, sometimes with fatal consequences. Private Wheeler wrote the following concerning an incident at Cambrai:

A Ser[geant] Corporal and four men fell in with a barrel of gunpowder. They being drunk took it for brandy and [the] Corporal … fired into it, as he said to make a bung hole, while the others were waiting with their tin canteens to catch the supposed liquor, but it blew up and all the [would be] brandy merchants were dreadfully mutilated … so dreadfully scorched as it is feared that four cannot recover, and the other two will not be fit for service again.⁵

Blücher had reached Compiègne by 27 June 1815. From there he found a moment to write a letter to his wife:

Here I sit in a room where Marie-Louise [Napoleon’s second wife] celebrated her wedding night. Nothing could be more beautiful, more agreeable than Compiègne. The only pity is that I have to leave again early tomorrow, as I must reach Paris in three days. It is possible and highly likely that Bonaparte will be handed over to me and to Lord Wellington. I shall probably not be able to do better than to have him shot, which would be a service to mankind. In Paris everyone has deserted him and he is hated and scorned.⁶

Like many publications throughout the land, the Hampshire Chronicle of Monday, 3 July 1815 summarised Wellington’s latest despatch:

Dispatches from the Duke of Wellington, brought by Mr. Cline, the Messenger, were received last evening. They are dated, the 27th, from Joucourt, at which place his Grace’s head-quarters remained since the 25th. This pause is not attributed to any obstruction which he had met with, but to a desire to await the co-operation of the Austrians and Russians. It appears from the German Papers, that they are crossing the Rhine in great force. The French fortresses, on the Flemish frontier, had been summoned, in the name of the King of France, and the speedy surrender of several of them was expected.

In the Brussels Papers is inserted a Proclamation to the people of France by Prince Schwartzenburgh – The expectation of the entrance of the Duke of Wellington into Paris to-day was general in the Netherlands. The inhabitants of Lisle are said to have risen in favour of Louis XVIII; and throughout the department of the North the white cockade is general.

All the Newspapers in Paris are stopped printing for the present; those of Tuesday were the last printed; and the Exchange has risen 5 per cent. in favour of England since the last accounts.

A Royalist Officer employed in conducting the correspondence between Jersey and Brittany, has brought official intelligence of Rennes being in the possession of the Royalists and that several small towns of that province have hoisted the white flag. By the same Officer a confirmation had been received of the taking of General Travot, and the rout of his army in La Vendée.

The same newspaper was able to make the following announcement, on the progress of the allied advance, a week later, on 7 July:

The Allied British and Prussian army continues its uninterrupted advance to Paris. On the 29th, the Duke of Wellington was at Orville, a village about 50 miles from Paris; and thence his Grace dates the dispatch, and accompanies it with the list of those brave men who have bled in the cause of European liberty and civilization. The British army that morning was between St. Just, on the Clermont road, and La Taube, on the road of Senlis.

It was to advance in the course of the day, and the head-quarters were expected to be fixed in the evening at Le Plessis Longeau, a country seat belonging to Madame Villette, the niece of Voltaire, situated near Pont St. Maxence, on the Oise. Marshal Blucher with the Prussians, was in advance of the English on the Senlis road; and it was calculated, that in the course of the day his light troops would reach St. Dennis, only 6 miles from Paris! At this point the Prussian army were to halt to await the coming of the Duke of Wellington, who was proceeding by forced marches from Compiegne. The junction was expected to be formed on the 30th, in which case the triumphal entry into Paris would take place on Saturday last, the 1st of July.

The London Gazette was, and remains, the official government publication and Wellington’s despatches were first revealed to the public in that paper. The following extract from Wellington’s despatch, describing the advance upon Paris, was published in its pages on Friday, 7 July 1815:

The enemy have fortified the heights of Montmartre and the town of St. Denis strongly; and by means of the little rivers Rouillon and la Vielle Mar, they have inundated the ground on the north side of that town, and water having been introduced into the canal de l’Ourcq, and the bank formed into a parapet and batteries, they have a strong position on this side of Paris.

The heights of Belleville are likewise strongly fortified, but I am not aware that any defensive works have been thrown up on the left of the Seine.

Having collected in Paris all the troops remaining after the battle of the 18th, and all the depôtsof the whole army, it is supposed the enemy have there about 40 or 50,000 troops of the line and guards, besides the national guards, a new levy called Les Tirailleurs de la Garde, and the Federés.

It certainly appeared that Marshal Davout, the Minister of War and Governor of Paris, was going to fight to defend the French capital. With the troops that Grouchy had managed to extricate from Belgium, Davout had at least 90,000 men to oppose the combined weight of the Prussian and Anglo-Netherlands force which was approximately 120,000 strong.

John Cam Hobhouse, later Lord Broughton, was in Paris and he described the nervousness of the Parisians fearing a terrible battle in their streets:

It was commonly reported early in the afternoon that a general action was on the point of being fought. The throng and the silence, and the eager looks of the multitudes in the gardens and boulevards, the groups collected round, and trailing after two or three straggling dragoons leading their wounded horses, or carrying orders to the headquarters … the dead, unsocial solemnity of the heavy patrols parading the streets without music; the doors of the houses and courts all shut; the upper windows opened every now and then, and occupied by female faces, as the clattering horse of a gendarme announced the expectation of intelligence – every appearance of anxiety and apprehension, unusual even since the commencement of the siege, was to be recognised at the first glance for an hour or two after it was known that the two armies were in presence. More than once crowds rushed towards the elevated spots of the gardens and squares at the exclamation of individuals who announced the opening cannonade.⁷

Davout was persuaded not to bring death and destruction to the beautiful boulevards of the capital and a convention was signed at St Cloud on 3 July by which the French army was to evacuate Paris within three days, prior to it being disbanded. The Chester Courant of 11 July 1815, stated:

After waiting during the whole week in anxious expectation of the arrival of Dispatches, we are this day most fortunately enabled to announce the receipt of official information of this most important event which may be considered as putting the seal to our late triumphs, and as bringing this afflicting war to a happy and unexpectedly speedy conclusion. We cannot but congratulate the country that this final triumph has been accomplished without any further loss on our part. The British troops have not been engaged since the 18th. A full proportion of their valuable blood was then contributed to the general cause. – The gallant Prussians too have bled freely; but we trust no more sacrifice of life will be necessary.

All the preparations made for the defence of Paris were found to be of no avail, from the plan of attack formed by the Allied Commanders. There was a considerable force in the place; but no works having been thrown up on the south side to stop the progress of the assailants, any attempt at resistance could have only tended to a wanton destruction of life and property, the odium of which must have fallen upon the Provisional Government, and the military faction which supports them. The policy, on the other hand, of allowing them to withdraw beyond the Loire, is obvious. As the Allies have uniformly disclaimed all intention of dictating a government to France, it was right that the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blucher should not carry their pretensions beyond the attainment of an important military advantage, yielded up without any sacrifice on their part; leaving the claims of the Provisional Government, or of Napoleon II, to be decided between the French Plenipotentiaries and the Ministers of the Allied Sovereigns.

In the mean time, the possession of Paris will lead to an event rendering this question very easy of solution. Louis XVIII, will return to his capital amidst the acclamations of thousands of his subjects. He will re-assemble his Chamber of Peers and Deputies, and proceed to exercise all the functions of Government. He was universally recognized by the Powers of Europe; when absent from his territory, they did not retract that recognition. Will they, when they find him again seated on his Throne, refuse to acknowledge him, and espouse the claims of Napoleon II, or leave the question of the sovereignty of France for a time, in abeyance? It would be absurd to suppose that they will. We are persuaded that the ruling parties in France view the consequences of the surrender of Paris in the same light; and though they may put on ‘a swashing and a martial outside’ their genuine object is to make the best terms they can for their personal safety.