The Emperor remained only a few days at Paris, after our return from Italy, before setting out again for the camp of Boulogne. The fetes of Milan had not prevented him from maturing his political plans, and it was suspected that not without good reason had he broken down his horses between Turin and Paris. These reasons were plainly evident, when it was learned that Austria had entered secretly into the coalition of Russia and England against the Emperor. The army collected in the camp of Boulogne received orders to march on the Rhine, and his Majesty departed to rejoin his troops about the end of September. As was his custom, he informed us only an hour in advance of his departure; and it was curious to observe the contrast of the confusion which preceded this moment with the silence that followed it. Hardly was the order given, than each one busied himself hastily with his own wants and those of his Majesty; and nothing could be heard in the corridors but the sound of domestics coming and going, the noise of cases being nailed down, and boxes being carried out. In the courts appeared a great number of carriages and wagons, with men harnessing them, the scene lighted by torches, and everywhere oaths and cries of impatience; while the women, each in her own room, were sadly occupied with the departure of husband, son, or brother. During all these preparations the Emperor was making his adieux to her Majesty the Empress, or taking a few moments of repose; but at the appointed hour he rose, was dressed, and entered his carriage. Soon after everything was silent in the chateau, and only a few isolated persons could be seen flitting about like shadows; silence had succeeded to noise, solitude to the bustle of a brilliant and numerous court. Next morning this deep silence was broken only by a few scattered women who sought each other with pale faces and eyes full of tears, to communicate their grief and share their apprehensions. Many courtiers, who were not of the party, arrived to make their court, and were stupefied on learning of his Majesty's absence, feeling as if the sun could not have risen that day.
The Emperor went without halting as far as Strasburg; and the day after his arrival in this town, the army began to file out over the bridge of Kehl.
On the evening before this march, the Emperor had ordered the general officers to be on the banks of the Rhine on the following day, at exactly six in the morning. An hour before that set for the rendezvous, his Majesty, notwithstanding the rain which fell in torrents, went alone to the head of the bridge, to assure himself of the execution of the orders he had given, and stood exposed to this rain without moving, till the first divisions commenced to file out over the bridge. He was so drenched that the drops which fell from his clothing ran down under his horse, and there formed a little waterfall; and his cocked hat was so wet that the back of it drooped over his shoulders, like the large felt hats of the coal-burners of Paris. The generals whom he was awaiting gathered around him; and when he saw them assembled, he said, "All goes well, messieurs; this is a new step taken in the direction of our enemies; but where is Vandamme? Why is he not here? Can he be dead?" No one said a word. "Answer me, what has become of Vandamme?" General Chardon, general of the vanguard, much loved by the Emperor, replied, "I think, Sire, that General Vandamme is still asleep; we drank together last evening a dozen bottles of Rhine wine, and doubtless"--"He does very well to drink, sir; but he is wrong to sleep when I am waiting for him." General Chardon prepared to send an aide-de-camp to his companion in arms; but the Emperor prevented him, saying, "Let Vandamme sleep; I will speak to him later." At this moment General Vandamme appeared. "Well, here you are, sir; you seem to have forgotten the order that I gave yesterday."--"Sire, this is the first time this has happened, and"--"And to avoid a repetition of it, you will go and fight under the banner of the King of Wurtemburg; I hope you will give them lessons in sobriety."
General Vandamme withdrew, not without great chagrin, and repaired to the army of Wurtemburg, where he performed prodigies of valor. After the campaign he returned to the Emperor, his breast covered with decorations, bearing a letter from the King of Wurtemburg to his Majesty, who, after reading it, said to Vandamme: "General, never forget that, if I admire the brave, I do not admire those who sleep while I await them." He pressed the general's hand, and invited him to breakfast, in company with General Chardon, who was as much gratified by this return to favor as was his friend.
On the journey to Augsburg, the Emperor, who had set out in advance, made such speed that his household could not keep up with him; and consequently he passed the night, without attendants or baggage, in the best house of a very poor village. When we reached his Majesty next day, he received us laughing, and threatened to have us taken up as stragglers by the provost guard.
From Augsburg the Emperor went to the camp before Ulm, and made preparations to besiege that place.
A short distance from the town a fierce and obstinate engagement took place between the French and Austrians, and had lasted two hours, when cries of 'Vive l'Empereur!' were suddenly heard. This name, which invariably carried terror into the enemy's ranks, and always imparted fresh courage to our soldiers, now electrified them to such an extent that they put the Austrians to flight, while the Emperor showed himself in the front ranks, crying "Forward," and making signs to the soldiers to advance, his Majesty's horse disappearing from time to time in the smoke of the cannon. During this furious charge, the Emperor found himself near a grenadier who was terribly wounded; and yet this brave fellow still shouted with the others, "Forward! forward!"
The Emperor drew near him, and threw his military cloak over him, saying, "Try to bring it back to me, and I will give you in exchange the cross that you have just won." The grenadier, who knew that he was mortally wounded, replied that the shroud he had just received was worth as much as the decoration, and expired, wrapped in the imperial mantle.
At the close of the battle, the Emperor had this grenadier, who was also a veteran of the army of Egypt, borne from the field, and ordered that he should be interred in the cloak.
Another soldier, not less courageous than the one of whom I have just spoken, also received from his Majesty marks of distinction. The day after the combat before Ulm, the Emperor, in visiting the ambulances, had his attention attracted by a, cannoneer of light artillery, who had lost one leg, but in spite of this was still shouting with all his might, 'Vive l'Empereur!' He approached the soldier and said to him, "Is this, then, all that you have to say to me?"--"No, Sire, I can also tell you that I, I alone, have dismounted four pieces of the Austrian cannon; and it is the pleasure of seeing them silenced which makes me forget that I must soon close my eyes forever." The Emperor, moved by such fortitude, gave his cross to the cannoneer, noted the names of his parents, and said to him, "If you recover, the Hotel des Invalides is at your service." "Thanks, Sire, but the loss of blood has been too great; my pension will not cost you very dear; I know well that I must soon be off duty, but long live the Emperor all the same!" Unfortunately this brave man realized his real condition only too well, for he did not survive the amputation of his leg.
We followed the Emperor into Ulm after the occupation of that place, and saw a hostile army of more than thirty thousand men lay down their arms at the feet of his Majesty, as they defiled before him; and I have never beheld a more imposing sight. The Emperor was seated on his horse, a few steps in front of his staff, his countenance wearing a calm and grave expression, in spite of which the joy which filled his heart was apparent in his glance.
He raised his hat every moment to return the salutes of the superior officers of the Austrian troops. When the Imperial Guard entered Augsburg, eighty grenadiers marched at the head of the columns, each bearing a banner of the enemy.
The Emperor, on his arrival at Munich, was welcomed with the greatest respect by his ally, the Elector of Bavaria. His Majesty went several times to the theater and the hunt, and gave a concert to the ladies of the court. It was, as has been since ascertained, during this stay of the Emperor at Munich that the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia pledged themselves at Potsdam, on the tomb of Frederick the Great, to unite their efforts against his Majesty.
A year later Napoleon also made a visit to the tomb of the great Frederick.
The taking of Ulm had finished the conquest of the Austrians, and opened to the Emperor the gates of Vienna: but meanwhile the Russians were advancing by forced marches to the help of their allies; his Majesty hastened to meet them, and the 1st of December the two hostile armies found themselves face to face. By one of those happy coincidences made only for the Emperor, the day of the battle of Austerlitz was also the anniversary of the coronation.
I do not remember why there was no tent for the Emperor at Austerlitz; but the soldiers made a kind of barrack of limbs of trees, with an opening in the top for the passage of the smoke. His Majesty, though he had only straw for his bed, was so exhausted after having passed the day on horseback on the heights of Santon, that on the eve of the battle he was sleeping soundly, when General Savary, one of his aides-de-camp, entered, to give an account of the mission with which he had been charged; and the general was obliged to touch his shoulder, and shake him, in order to rouse him. He then rose, and mounted his horse to visit his advance posts. The night was dark; but the whole camp was lighted up as if by enchantment, for each soldier put a bundle of straw on the end of his bayonet, and all these firebrands were kindled in less time than it takes to describe it. The Emperor rode along the whole line, speaking to those soldiers whom he recognized. "Be to-morrow what you have always been, my brave fellows," said he, "and the Russians are ours; we have them!" The air resounded with cries of 'Vive l'Empereur', and there was neither officer nor soldier who did not count on a victory next day.
His Majesty, on visiting the line of battle, where there had been no provisions for forty-eight hours (for that day there had been distributed only one loaf of ammunition bread for every eight men), saw, while passing from bivouac to bivouac, soldiers roasting potatoes in the ashes. Finding himself before the Fourth Regiment of the line, of which his brother was colonel, the Emperor said to a grenadier of the second battalion, as he took from the fire and ate one of the potatoes of the squad, "Are you satisfied with these pigeons?"--"Humph! They are at least better than nothing; though they are very much like Lenten food."--"Well, old fellow," replied his Majesty to the soldier, pointing to the fires of the enemy, "help me to dislodge those rascals over there, and we will have a Mardi Gras at Vienna."
The Emperor returned to his quarters, went to bed again, and slept until three o'clock in the morning, while his suite collected around a bivouac fire near his Majesty's barracks, and slept on the ground, wrapped in their cloaks, for the night was extremely cold. For four days I had not closed my eyes, and I was just falling asleep, when about three o'clock the Emperor asked me for punch. I would have given the whole empire of Austria to have rested another hour; but notwithstanding this, I carried his Majesty the punch, which I made by the bivouac fire, and the Emperor insisted that Marshal Berthier should also partake of it; the remainder I divided with the attendants. Between four and five o'clock the Emperor ordered the first movements of his army, and all were on foot in a few moments, and each at his post; aides-de-camp and orderly officers were seen galloping in all directions, and the battle was begun.
I will not enter into the details of this glorious day, which, according to the expression of the Emperor himself, terminated the campaign by a thunderbolt. Not one of the plans of the Emperor failed in execution, and in a few hours the French were masters of the field of battle and of the whole of Germany.
The brave General Rapp was wounded at Austerlitz, as he was in every battle in which he took part, and was carried to the chateau of Austerlitz, where the Emperor visited him in the evening, and returned to pass the night in the chateau.
Two days after, the Emperor Francis sought an audience of his Majesty, to demand peace; and before the end of December a treaty was concluded, by which, the Elector of Bavaria and the Duke of Wurtemburg, faithful allies of the Emperor Napoleon, were made kings. In return for this elevation, of which he alone was the author, his Majesty demanded and obtained for Prince Eugene, viceroy of Italy, the hand of the Princess Augusta Amelia of Bavaria.
During his sojourn at Vienna, the Emperor had established his headquarters at Schoenbrunn, the name of which has become celebrated by the numerous sojourns of his Majesty there, and is to-day, by a singular coincidence, the residence of his son. [The Duke de Reichstadt, born King of Rome, died July, 1832, soon after Constant wrote.]
I am not certain whether it was during this first sojourn at Schoenbrunn that his Majesty had the extraordinary encounter that I shall now relate. His Majesty, in the uniform of colonel of the chasseurs of the guard, rode every day on horseback, and one morning, while on the road to Vienna, saw approaching a clergyman, accompanied by a woman weeping bitterly, who did not recognize him. Napoleon approached the carriage, and inquired the cause of her grief, and the object and end of her journey. "Monsieur," replied she, "I live at a village two leagues from here, in a house which has been pillaged by soldiers, and my gardener has been killed. I am now on my way to demand a safeguard from your Emperor, who knew my family well, and is under great obligations to them."--"What is your name, Madame?"--"De Bunny. I am the daughter of Monsieur de Marbeuf, former governor of Corsica."--"I am charmed, Madame," replied Napoleon, "to find an opportunity of serving you. I am the Emperor." Madame de Bunny remained speechless with astonishment; but Napoleon reassured her, and continuing his route, requested her to go on and await him at his headquarters. On his return he received her, and treated her with remarkable kindness, gave her an escort of the chasseurs of the guard, and dismissed her happy and satisfied.
As soon as the day of Austerlitz was gained, the Emperor hastened to send the courier Moustache to France to announce the news to the Empress, who was then at the chateau of Saint-Cloud. It was nine o'clock in the evening when loud cries of joy were suddenly heard, and the galloping of a horse at full speed, accompanied by the sound of bells, and repeated blows of the whip which announced a courier. The Empress, who was awaiting with the greatest impatience news from the army, rushed to the window, opened it hurriedly, and the words victory and Austerlitz fell on her ears. Eager to know the details, she ran down the steps, followed by her ladies; and Moustache in the most excited manner related the marvelous news, and handed her Majesty the Emperor's letter, which Josephine read, and then drawing a handsome diamond ring from her finger, gave it to the courier. Poor Moustache had galloped more than fifty leagues that day, and was so exhausted that he had to be lifted from his horse and placed in bed, which it required four persons to accomplish. His last horse, which he had doubtless spared less than the others, fell dead in the court of the chateau.