have retreated still further, even the shadow
of Napoleon's past greatness so scared these
invading kings.

At Epernay, Napoleon resolved to throw
himself on the right flank and rear of
Schwartzenberg, if he advanced a step
further to Paris, and believing that the
Allies were retreating from the Aube, he
prepared to join his marshals, Macdonald
and Oudinot, and to resume the aggressive.
Driving before him the enemy's light
troops, he crossed the Aube at Plancey,
and moved along the left bank of the river
with Ney's corps and all his cavalry, while
on the right bank marched the infantry
of the Guard. The French occupied Arcis
on the 20th of March. The circle was
contracting around the emperor. Every
step he took here was a mistake. He acted
as if he was attacking a frightened rear-
guard, while in reality he was in a
dangerous position, with say some sixty
thousand men to face eighty thousand, drawn
up on a chain of heights. Arcis-sur-Aube,
to use the words of a modern historian,
" forms the outlet of a sort of defile, where
a succession of narrow bridges cross a
number of drains, brooks, and streamlets,
the feeders of the river Aube, and a bridge
in the town crosses the river itself."
Beyond Arcis, the French, seeing some light
horse reconnoitering, attacked them, but
found them supported by the Prince of
Wurtemburg's division, while beyond, on
the heights of Mesnil, the whole army
of the Allies was drawn up in defiant
massiveness. The French squadrons
retiring, were driven back fighting upon
the town, so that the infantry could
scarcely depend on their support. If a
rout had began, the whole French army
might have been driven headlong into the
Aube. Napoleon himself drew his sword,
rallied the cavalry, and led them again to
the charge. His mameluke, Rustam, who
soon afterwards deserted him, and his
aide-de-camp, Girardin, saved him from the
thrust of a Cossack lance. This gave his
Imperial Guards time to come up. But the
Allies outnumbered and overpowered the
French everywhere, though Napoleon
contrived to obstinately hold a village to the
left front of Arcis. Arcis was set on fire by
the Austrian shells, and the suburbs repeatedly
taken by desperate rushes of the allied
troops. Night, the great peacemaker, came
and stopped the further contest, and that
same evening Macdonald, Oudinot, and
Gerard joined Napoleon, but he resolved
not to attempt to force the heights again
with so small a force.

The emperor could now no more resume
the offensive, and unwilling to be shut in
between Blucher and Schwartzenberg,
retreated without loss through Arcis and its
defiles, resolving to march eastward and
operate on the rear of the Allies, and to cut
their lines of communication. He determined,
therefore, while Paris still held out,
to wait at Lyons for Suchet's army from
Catalonia, and the peasant recruits from the
enraged provinces of Alsace and Franche-
Comté. He hoped also to draw Schwartzenberg
after him in unguarded pursuit,
and at a fitting time to turn on him and
strike him down. Unable to make Vitry
and its garrison of five thousand men
surrender, Napoleon passed the Marne on the
22nd of March over a bridge of rafts, and
pushed on for the eastern frontier, leaving
Paris to hold out as it might till he could
return and scare the enemy from its gates.
In the mean time, Auguereau had been
defeated by Bianchi at Macon, and the forts
at Lyons surrendered to the Austrians.
These misfortunes rendered Napoleon's
march hopeless, and the game was lost.

Schwartzenberg arrived at Vitry on the
24th, two days after Napoleon, and Blucher
pushed on to Chalons. General Ducca
was left on the Aube with a division of
Austrians to guard the depôts, and keep
open the communications, while Winzengerode
and Czernicheff were despatched with
ten thousand cavalry and fifty guns to
represent the vanguard of Schwartzenberg,
and to intercept couriers. Blucher, freed
from his old enemy, now drove the corps of
Mortier and Marmont over the Marne,
passed the Aisne, stormed Rheims, and
moved on through Chalons and Vitry to
Paris. Marmont and Mortier finding, to
their surprise, the great army at Fère
Champenoise, retreated to Sezanne, harassed by
the enemy's cavalry. All was disaster
now for the French; at Fère Champenoise,
a column of five thousand Conscript and
National Guards, with a convoy of
provisions and ammunition, was charged, and
cut and pounded to pieces. At Ferté-
Gaudère Mortier and Marmont lost a rear-
guard of fifteen hundred men, and
altogether, before they got to Lagny, eight
thousand men, eighty guns, besides
baggage and ammunition. The Allies now
marched fast and furiously on to Paris,
making seventy miles in three days.

A brave attempt of ten thousand National
Guards to stop a column of the army of
Silesia utterly failed. The fish not only
burst out of the net, but General Storm
broke into the very centre of the French