Napoleon could not resist this. He held
out his hand. " Let us be friends," he
said to the old marshal. " I will place you
at the head of two divisions of the Guard.
Go and assume your command, and let
there be no more of this between us."

The fact was, Napoleon's army was too
small to admit of deductions. The Allies
were already abandoning their plan of
separation, and were concentrating at Troyes.
Blucher, who, after his defeat, had fallen
back to Chalons, now reinforced by
Langeron's division, moved southward to Mery,
a town on the Seine, north-east of Troyes.
Napoleon tried, by a furious attack on the
bridge and town, to cut Blucher off from
Schwartzenberg. The wooden bridge was
set fire to in the fight, and the riflemen
fought amid the flames. But there was no
drawing the old badger out of Mery.

Again, however, the Allies wavered
before their antagonist. Blucher was for
fighting—fighting at once and all together
—but the Austrians wanted to retreat to
Nancy and Langres, where they had
before paused. They said Auguereau, who had
defended Lyons, was about to be joined by
Suchet's men from Catalonia, and was
going to attack the invaders at Dijon, raising
the peasantry of the Doubs, Saône, and
the Vosges. General Bianchi's division, sent
to face Auguereau, had weakened the main
body, and it was therefore resolved to wait
for the reserve at Langres, while Blucher
on the Marne halted for the northern
army from Flanders. The Austrian
soldiers, disgusted at this retreat, began to
relax in discipline. Feigned offers of peace
were made by both sides, but on the 23rd
of February the French bombarded Troyes,
and the Allies abandoning .it, Napoleon
entered it the next day, seized their sick
and wounded, and shot a rash Bourbonist
gentleman, the Chevalier de Gouault, who
had been sanguine enough to mount the
white cockade.

The northern army of the Allies began
now to close in on this wolf at bay. On
the 26th of February Bulow formed a junction
with Winzengerode, and marched
through the forest of Ardennes. Soissons,
upon the Aisne, and the old capital of the
Merovingian kings, made show of great
resistance, but was taken by a Russian
coup de main, the governor, brave General
Rusca, being killed by a cannon-shot on
the walls. In their haste to join Blucher,
however, the Russians evacuated the place,
and Mortier instantly reoccupied it with a
strong force. In the mean time, Caulaincourt's
efforts for peace at Chatillon were
broken off, and Napoleon refused to
surrender Belgium and the Rhine.

In the mean time, he had too small a
force to discomfit the Allies. If he moved
on Blucher, the Austrians went to Paris; if
he attacked the Austrians, Blucher would
dart at the capital. The resolves of this
Cæsar were prompt. He tried to repeat
the old stratagem on Blucher. Leaving
forty thousand men, under Oudinot,
Macdonald, and Gerard, at Bar-sur-Aube, with
directions to keep the Austrians amused, he
tried a lateral march to strike Blucher a
mortal blow. But when he was at Ferté
la Gaudère, Sacken and D'York crossed
the Marne at Ferté la Jouarre, joined
Blucher, and fell back on Bulow and
Winzengerode, who were advancing from
Belgium. Blucher was in danger; for
Bonaparte, leaving Marrnont and Mortier to
harass the Prussian rear, pushed on by a
short cut to occupy Fismes, a place halfway
between Rheims and Soissons. If
Blucher now could only be barred from
Soissons, he would have Mortier and
Marmont at his front, Napoleon on his flank,
in his rear a hostile fortified town and a
dangerous river. The town was held by
five hundred Poles. On the 2nd of March,
however, the commandant, who had been
ordered to defend Soissons to his last man,
cowed by the advance of Bulow's thirty
thousand men, and a threat of instant
storm and no quarter, threw open the gates.
This saved Blucher, who, reunited to his
rear-guard, could now give or refuse battle
as he chose. Napoleon was furious at the
commandant, but it was too late. In his
first fury he ordered Soissons to be stormed,
but General Langeron and ten thousand
Russians repulsed the desperate attack,
and held the place with a firm hand.

Napoleon, now turning in wrath from
Soissons, crossed the Aisne at Bèry-au-Bac,
to attack Blucher's left wing, which was
strongly posted between the village of
Laonne and the town of Laon. Wily old
Blucher, closely observing him, tried to
teach him that two people can play at
flank attacks, by detaching ten thousand
horse under Winzengerode to fall on the
French rear, but the state of the roads
defeated the Prussian manœuvre. At eleven
in the morning of the 7th of March the
French began a dashing attack on the
Prussians at Craonne. They fell on the right
flank, which was protected by a ravine, and
Victor, eager to recover his laurels, fought
desperately in the centre. The struggle
lasted till four o'clock, when Blucher
withdrew the Prussians to the hilly town of