Having thanked him, Roger enquired about the prospects of the present campaign.
The General shrugged. 'As you must be aware, much depends on whether Austria comes in against us. But, even should she do so, I think our chances of defeating this new Coalition far from bad. According to my latest intelligence, the Russian field army is some one hundred and eighty thousand strong, the Prussians about one hundred and sixty thousand, the Swedes and Mecklenburgers about thirty-nine thousand. That totals approximately three hundred and eighty thousand men, and between them they have some one thousand one hundred guns. Should Austria join our enemies that would bring the Allied strength up to roughly six hundred thousand men and one thousand four hundred guns. Against that, we and our allies have over eight hundred and sixty thousand men under arms. They are not, of course, all with the Emperor but, including reinforcements now on the way to him, he should have well over six hundred thousand in the German lands.'
When Roger left the Ministry, he was considerably perturbed by the figures that had been given him. A large percentage of Napoleon's troops must, he knew, be raw recruits, and also he was short of cavalry. But, although Austria was coming in, he would still have superiority in numbers; and, while it was certain that the councils of the Allies would be divided, the Emperor alone would control the dispositions of his great army. Moreover, he was unquestionably a greater strategist than any of die Generals opposed to him.
Among those of the twenty-four people known to Roger who sat down to dinner at Talleyrand's that afternoon were Goudin, Duc de Gaete, once a junior official at the Treasury, whom Napoleon, on becoming First Consul, had made Minister of Finance and who had by his brilliant measures rescued France from bankruptcy, and Cardinal Fesch. The latter was the half-brother of Napoleon's mother. As an Abbe, at the time of the Revolution, he had fled with the Bonapartes from Corsica to the South of France, but there renounced the Church to become a supplier of army stores, and in that capacity accompanied Napoleon on his first victorious campaign in Italy, returning to Paris with an ill-gotten fortune. Later, feeling that it could prove useful to have a prelate in the family, Napoleon had made him Bishop of Lyons then, on the rapprochement with the Papacy, a Cardinal and Grand Almoner. 'Uncle' Fesch, as he was known, was a sly fellow and insatiably avaricious. Like all the other Bonapartes, he showed little gratitude for his elevation and, as Ambassador to Rome, had proved an expensive failure; but he had great influence with his half sister Madame Mere, and was not a man of whom to make ah enemy.
Later that evening Roger told Talleyrand that La Belle Etoile had changed hands, and he did not at all care for the new landlord, so the Prince renewed his invitation which Roger now gladly accepted, and the following morning he moved into the mansion.
That day he attended the levee of the plump, stupid young Austrian Arch-Duchess Marie Louise, who was now Empress of the French, and made his bow to her son, the King of Rome, a charming little boy who was old enough to stand beside her, dressed in a miniature uniform.
From the Tuileries, Roger went on to pay his respects to Madame Mere, the only other Bonaparte then in Paris. The gaunt old lady had a forbidding presence and could be very tart at times; but she liked Roger because he had never shown any fear of her, and talked to him in her atrocious French for over half an hour about Napoleon and her other children, whose well-being was the one concern of her life.
Having made his duty calls, Roger rode out on the Sunday to Malmaison, to see the ex-Empress Josephine. They had been friends for many years. She received him with delight, took him round the hothouses, in which she grew a remarkable collection of tropical plants, and insisted that he stayed on to dine with a number of other friends she had coming out to visit her.
In her youth and the early years of her marriage to Napoleon, while he was absent on his campaigns she had given free play to her amorous inclinations; but, belatedly, she had fallen in love with her husband and became furiously jealous about his affairs with other women. At the time of the divorce, losing him had been a more severe blow to her than losing her position as Empress. But Roger was glad to find that she had become resigned to living in retirement at Malmaison which, with her boundless extravagance—paid for willingly by the Emperor—she had made one of the most beautiful homes in France and where, owing to her intelligence and charm, she never lacked for company.
During the days that followed Roger found plenty to occupy him. When it became generally known that Austria had declared war on the 14th, distinguished visitors to Talleyrand's mansion, who wished to discuss the new situation, became more numerous than ever. Old acquaintances of Roger's invited him to their houses, and on two further occasions he rode out to Malmaison and spent several hours with Josephine. Having heard nothing from Clarke by the Friday, he called again at the Ministry of War, but the General told him that there were still a whole series of files to be gone through. Impatiently he waited until the following Monday. That evening a note was brought to him, which read:
'My dear de Breuc,
'I much regret to have to tell you that we have drawn a blank. My people tell me that after the Brunswickers were shipped by the English from Spain they were landed in north-west Germany and employed there against the forces of the Marshal Prince d'Eckmuhl in Hanover; so your relative is probably in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Prince's command; and of the occupants of these we have no records.
'With my most distinguished sentiments, etc.’
Giving a sigh, Roger laid the letter down. Obviously the mission on which he had set out was not yet anywhere near accomplishment.
15
The War Reopens
As Roger had had good reason to expect that Charles had been sent south to a camp somewhere in France or, at the worst, in the Rhine Provinces, General Clarke's letter was a grievous disappointment. Not only did it mean another journey of at least six hundred and fifty miles, but the Prince d'Eckmuhl was Marshal Davout, a dour man who had no liking for Roger, so it would be useless to go direct to him. The only course was to go first to the Emperor and obtain from him an order to the Marshal to release Charles.
All that was known in Paris of the situation in the north was that the French were holding the line of the Elbe and that the Emperor's headquarters were somewhere in the neighbourhood of Dresden. So, on the morning of August 24th, Roger took leave of his charming host and set off in that direction.
Again averaging fifty miles a day, he travelled by way of Chalons, Nancy, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Nurnberg, Plauen and Chemnitz.
At officers' Messes in garrison towns through which he passed he picked up news of the conflict that had reopened when Austria entered the war. On the 18th Marshal Macdonald's army in Silesia had been defeated by Blucher and forced back over the river Katzbach; but on the 21st the Emperor had arrived on the scene and restored the situation. Two days later he hurried back to Dresden. Macdonald was said to have believed that the allies were retiring, but they were not, so the two armies, this time unexpectedly, again came into collision. Blucher's Prussians were severely handled, but the Russian cavalry broke through the French flank and drove the centre of Macdonald's army in great confusion down into the flooded river Neisse. After further severe fighting, by September 1st the allies had driven die French out of Silesia, so could claim their first substantial victory.
In the meantime, on August 22nd, Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, who had been nominated Generalissimo of the Allied forces, had invaded Saxony with his Austrians, and advanced on Dresden. As the Emperor had by then gone to the assistance of Macdonald in Silesia, the city was covered only by St. Cyr's corps. Schwarzenberg, presumably unaware of this, and at all times a hesitant General with an obsessive fear of Napoleon, decided to await further reinforcements; so he did not open the attack until the morning of the 26th, and then only halfheartedly.