The Invasion of France in 1814 Read online

  Produced by Al Haines

  [Frontispiece: AS THEY CLIMBED UP THEY WERE CLUBBED WITH MUSKETS]

  HISTORICAL ROMANCES OF FRANCE

  THE INVASION OF

  FRANCE IN 1814

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF

  ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN

  ILLUSTRATED

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::::::1911

  COPYRIGHT, 1889, 1898

  BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  _As they climbed up they were clubbed with muskets . . . Frontispiece_

  _There was a general shout of_ "_Long live France!_"

  _Big Dubreuil; the friend of the allies_

  _Yegof saluted each phantom with sparkling eyes_

  "_Let us overwhelm them, as at Blutfeld!_"

  INTRODUCTORY NOTE

  The invasion of France by the allied armies after the battle of Leipsichad proved the German campaign even more disastrous than that of Russiathe year before, was not only essentially the death-blow to the powerof Napoleon, but was the first real taste France had had for many yearsof an experience she had so often previously meted out to herneighbors. In spite of all she had suffered from the conscription andfrom exhaustion of men and treasure in offensive war--or at least warwaged outside her own territory--the great Invasion meant for hersomething far more terrible than any reverses she had yet undergone.Napoleon was not only not invincible, it appeared, he was not even ableto defend the frontiers he had found firmly established on hisaccession to power. The allies had announced that they were warringnot against France but against the French Emperor--"against thepreponderance that Napoleon had too long exercised beyond the limits ofhis empire." Everywhere in France except in the official world ofParis, the once enchanted name of Napoleon had become recognized as asynonym of national disaster.

  Nevertheless nothing--except, perhaps, the similar circumstances of thePrussian invasion in 1870--has ever so well attested the fundamentaland absorbing patriotism of the French people as their heroicresistance to this invasion and their instinctive and universal refusalto separate in this crisis the cause of their Emperor from their own.The presence of a foreign foe on whatever pretext within theirboundaries sufficed to arouse them _en masse_. No such enthusiasm hadbeen known since the days of the Republic's and the Consulate'svictories as was awakened, in the thick of national disaster and amidthe ruin of all ambitious hopes, by the thought of an enemy within theborders of _la patrie_. And in "The Invasion" of MM. Erckmann-Chatrianthis enthusiasm and devotion find a chronicle which is mostrealistically impressive. So soon as the peasants of the outlyingvillages of the eastern frontier learn of the impending descent of theCossacks and Germans, without thought of their own comfort andsafety--which it is, however, impartially pointed out they know wouldhardly be better secured by submission--they organize for resistance.They blockade the highways and defend the mountain passes. Women andchildren aid in the work. While the siege of Phalsbourg goes on theheights are occupied by sturdy peasants who oppose for a while aneffective obstacle to the passage of the invaders. The worsthardships, the most perilous adventures, are accepted by them with theheroic courage of regulars. Outlaws and smugglers work and fight handto hand with the respected worthies of the neighborhood. They watchtheir farms burn from their outlook on the hill-tops, they suffer thepangs of starvation when their supplies are intercepted by the enemy,they fight to desperation when their position is finally turned by thetreachery of a crazy German they have long harbored--and whose vagariesgive, by the way, a most romantic color to the narrative--and they arefinally slain or captured just as Paris capitulates and peace is made.None of the National Novels is more graphic or more significanthistorically than "The Invasion."

  THE INVASION OF FRANCE IN 1814