Like many Christian holidays, the French celebration of la Chandeleur, or Candlemas, has its roots in pagan traditions: in this case, the Roman fertility rites that were held as the depths of winter began to recede and farmers started preparing their fields for planting. The pagan rites were abolished in the fifth century and replaced with candlelight ceremonies in Christian churches, in celebration of some important religious event that most French people today would probably not be able to explain to you. Despite France’s longstanding Catholic identity, only 10 percent of its population still regularly attends church.
But Candlemas, celebrated on the second of February, remains a popular holiday, no doubt in part because it doubles as an annual celebration of a French food favorite: the crêpe. For hundreds of years, people have celebrated Candlemas with these thin and delicious pancakes, and have attached various superstitions to the practice of flipping them in the air during cooking. For example, farmers long believed that a crêpe that was flipped without breaking or falling on the floor on Candlemas was a sure sign that the next harvest would be successful. Today, everyone knows that if you flip your crêpes properly with one hand while holding a coin in the other, you will be lucky and successful for the next year. Otherwise, well, don’t expect life to treat you very nicely until the next Candlemas.
Napoleon was thought to be, like most Corsicans, overly superstitious. He believed his first wife, Josephine, brought him good luck, and he tried to avoid any adventures or battles on Fridays and on the thirteenth of each month. June 14 and December 2, on the other hand, were lucky dates, when he had won the Battles of Marengo and Austerlitz, respectively. He believed he was guided and protected by a lucky star, which appeared at all the great moments of his life.
By 1812, there was every reason for Napoleon to feel pompous. His astounding military successes, alongside the skillful deployment of family members onto European thrones, had given the First French Empire control of most of western and central Europe. He’d enjoyed triumphal marches through the streets of Vienna and Berlin, after breathtaking victories against the Austrians and Prussians. The Hapsburgs had dissolved the Holy Roman Empire rather than let him seize that crown, bringing to an end the thousand-year-old line. Russia, the great imperial land power on the other side of Europe, had been contained within a cagey alliance with France since being defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Friedland in 1807.
There were challenges, to be sure. Britain, with its mighty navy and colonial realm, protected by the English Channel, was a constant and exasperating enemy. Austria and Prussia, humiliated in postwar settlements, were keen to regain lost territory and status. European armies were adapting to Napoleon’s unique style of warfare. Rebellions emerged in various parts of the empire, notably in Spain, where irregular forces proved such a challenge that they lent their name to what we still call guerrilla warfare (from the Spanish guerrilla, or “little war”). In 1812, a British army drove French forces out of Spain entirely. Napoleon’s relatives and advisers were increasingly disobedient or treacherous; even Talleyrand was dismissed, after seemingly collaborating with the Austrian ambassador in Paris, a brilliant young diplomat named Klemens von Metternich. Napoleon’s rule in France turned increasingly despotic, with censorship, arbitrary detention, and rule by personal decree all corrupting the republican ideals that France supposedly fought for.
It was at this point that Napoleon committed the single greatest blunder of his life: he decided to go to war with Russia. The Franco-Russian alliance soured in 1811, when Tsar Alexander I reneged on his agreement to participate in the continental blockade of Britain, which had proven ruinous to the Russian economy. Napoleon sent the Grande Armée into Poland and built it into one of the largest armies ever assembled, with more than 600,000 men drawn from throughout the French empire. His initial plan was not necessarily foolhardy: he believed his numbers were so great that he had simply to engage the Russians in a single decisive battle, and victory would be his. Then the Franco-Russian alliance could be restored and attention returned to the enduring confrontation with Britain.
But given his superstitious tendencies, Napoleon may have been a bit unsettled by what occurred on Candlemas, while he was preparing his campaign. According to legend, Napoleon celebrated Candlemas by flipping his own crêpes. He flipped one crêpe and said, “If I turn this one, I will win my first battle!” And the crêpe was successfully turned.
Then came the second crêpe and again: “If I turn this one, I will win my second battle!” And again, the crêpe survived intact.
Then came the third . . . and the fourth . . . and all was fine.
Then came the fifth crêpe . . . and this one fell into the ashes.
Despite this ominous portent, Napoleon proceeded with his campagne de Russie in June 1812, marching in the enervating summer heat across the plains of eastern Europe. But the Russians did not play along: in the face of such an immense army, they dared not directly engage in battle and instead retreated farther and farther east, setting the countryside aflame as they went. This was the worst possible scenario for the French. The farther they pursued the Russians, the lower their supplies ran, and the vast army could not sustain itself on the scorched earth. As the weeks of blistering heat continued, more and more men fell to sickness and desertion. Before a single battle was fought, Napoleon had lost more than 150,000 men.
The Russians finally stood their ground in early September, as the French approached Moscow. At the famous Battle of Borodino, on September 7, more than 25,000 men died in fifteen hours of utter carnage. Napoleon later wrote, “Of the fifty battles I have fought, the most terrible was that before Moscow.” Neither side won decisively, but at the close of battle, the Russians withdrew. Moscow had apparently fallen to Napoleon.
But again, Napoleon’s hopes were dashed. Upon his triumphal entrance into Moscow, he discovered the population evacuated, along with their food stores. No Russians remained to negotiate a peace, and his army had nothing to eat. Even worse, after midnight, flames began to rise within the city, soon turning into a giant conflagration that lasted three days and destroyed two-thirds of the city. (While the causes of the fire will never be known with absolute certainty, many historians agree that the Russians themselves set fire to Moscow, the desperate culmination of their scorched-earth tactics.1) When Napoleon saw the city on fire and realized that his army was isolated, in winter, without proper supplies or shelter, in the heart of Russia, he purportedly cried out to his aides: “It’s the fifth crêpe!”
Tsar Alexander refused to capitulate, and the Grande Armée was forced to abandon Moscow on October 18 and retreat westward. A few weeks later, the Russian snows began. The depths of misery suffered by the retreating French troops were almost unimaginable: starving, freezing, mercilessly attacked by Cossacks, as they trudged hundreds of miles on foot. The French still call a crushing defeat a “Berezina,” in reference to the crossing and the battle of the Berezina River during the retreat. Of the mighty force that had departed for Russia, only around forty thousand soldiers returned to France.
Whether doomed by an unlucky crêpe or not, the Russian campaign was the beginning of the end for Napoleon. All the European powers were united against him now, and his aura of invincibility was no more. “My star was fading,” Napoleon later recalled. “I felt the reins slipping out of my grasp, and could do nothing to stop it.” Throughout 1813, he fought fiercely against the united armies of Europe, still winning some key battles but losing ever more territory. In early 1814, France itself was invaded. Napoleon fought desperately, but his army was badly outnumbered, and in March it was the turn of his enemies to march triumphantly through the streets of Paris. Napoleon abdicated the throne and accepted exile in Elba, an idyllic island in the crystal blue Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Tuscany.
Yet Napoleon’s adventures were not quite concluded. As we will see, he decided to defy the Candlemas curse one last time, and once again it would be left to Talleyrand to salvage the fate of the French nation.