Humboldt, who was beginning to alter his view of Metternich, assuring his wife that he was intelligent and ‘never unreasonable’, was in contrastingly high spirits. He was comfortably lodged in a princely palace and filled his spare time with work on his translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. His superior Hardenberg had recently been distracted by an affair with a woman of whom Humboldt apparently disapproved, and this show of ‘depravity’ encouraged his speculations that he might be able to take over his post himself.11
As the deadline of 10 August approached, Caulaincourt made one last attempt to establish a line of negotiation with Metternich. He explained that Napoleon’s suspicions of him were largely based on the fact that the four conditions for negotiation put forward until now were not credible, and invited conjecture as to what others might lurk behind them. If Metternich were to state the allies’ full demands at the outset, Napoleon would know what he was up against and respond accordingly.
On 5 August, just five days before the armistice was to expire, Napoleon sent a note to Caulaincourt instructing him to sound out Metternich on his price for abandoning the allies and returning to the French alliance. Metternich’s response was contained in a note dated 8 August which confirmed the same four conditions, with the only difference that he now dropped the one that Illyria be returned to Austria and demanded that instead of dissolving the Rheinbund, Napoleon renounce his protectorate over it. He also added the stipulation that the conclusion of a general peace was to be accompanied by an agreement to be enforced by all sides aimed at protecting weaker powers. Caulaincourt said that if it were up to him, he would accept, but expressed doubt as to whether Napoleon would.12
‘The great moment has arrived at last, my dearest friend,’ Metternich wrote to his wife on 10 August. That evening Humboldt, Anstett and all those in favour of war gathered in Metternich’s palace. Watches were consulted with impatience, and when the chimes of midnight rang out over the sleeping city Metternich announced that the armistice was over and Austria was now a member of the alliance. He ordered a beacon to be lit which, by a chain reaction, carried the news all the way to the Silesian border and on to allied headquarters at Reichenbach. By the morning Russian and Prussian troops were on the march to join the Austrian army outside Prague. ‘Everything is decided, dearest Li,’ a delighted Humboldt wrote to his wife.13
But in his letter to his wife, Metternich had made it clear that ‘the official negotiation has finished today with no result’. ‘There remain 6 days of unofficial negotiation; will it lead to anything or not?’ he continued. Although he told her he was preparing his campaign baggage, it seems he was not excluding a last-minute negotiated outcome.14
On 12 August, just as Caulaincourt and Narbonne were preparing to leave, a courier arrived from Dresden with Napoleon’s instructions to make peace at all costs. Caulaincourt called on Metternich without delay, but was told that it was too late. That very day Austria issued her declaration of war, a document full of mournful complaint detailing how she had been wronged by France.15
‘I am the most unhappy being on earth,’ Metternich moaned in a letter to Wilhelmina, who had let him down by not coming to Prague. The probable reason – Alfred Windischgraetz’s reappearance at Ratiborzitz – only deepened his despair. ‘Adieu! There can be no more happiness for me in this world – may all that remains of it on earth be for you!’ he went on, in an interminable letter.16
It was not only on account of Wilhelmina that he felt disappointment. He had failed to broker a peace, which would not only have been the best solution for Austria but would also have placed him in the pivotal position he aspired to. Everything was now left to the vagaries of war. Having done all he could to prevent it, and incurred the mistrust and insult not only of the allies but also the war party in Austria, his credibility demanded that he pursue it with enthusiasm.
Napoleon had not given up, and he instructed Caulaincourt to delay his departure from Prague in the hope of being able to obtain an interview with Alexander when the latter arrived a couple of days later. On 18 August, by which time the armies were in the field, Maret wrote to Metternich arguing that no peace congress could possibly be expected to take as little as a month, quoting examples drawn from history and proposing that a fresh congress to include all the powers of Europe, great and small, be convoked to some neutral city. But Metternich dismissed the suggestion. ‘The 6 days, my dearest, have passed,’ he wrote to his wife on 16 August. ‘Hostilities begin tomorrow.’ And Napoleon’s hopes that an interview between Caulaincourt and Alexander might yield something were very wide of the mark. In his eagerness to pursue the war the Tsar had single-handedly scuppered the only real chance of peace.17
Cathcart had received Castlereagh’s instructions to the effect that Britain would be prepared to enter into negotiations with France shortly after Caulaincourt reached Prague. He showed them to Alexander, who determined that they must not be passed on to Metternich. He had never wavered in his determination to pursue the war against Napoleon, and as Nesselrode explained in a letter of 9 August to Russia’s ambassador in London, he had only humoured Francis’s desire to negotiate in the conviction that nothing would come of it. Having watched Austria gradually come round to the acceptance that there was nothing to be gained from negotiating, he was certainly not going to produce the British proposal to join the negotiations. It would only ‘weaken the energetic resolutions taken by the Austrian cabinet’ and encourage Napoleon to take the negotiations more seriously.18
Had Napoleon known that Britain was willing to participate, he would probably have been prepared to concede a great deal. Britain was his principal enemy. It had been to bring her to the negotiating table that he had invaded Russia. He had wanted Britain included in the Congress of Prague, and hopes had been entertained that she might send a plenipotentiary. The possibility of a general peace with the participation of Britain – involving as it would not only huge economic relief, but also the return of most of the French colonies – could have been dressed up as a victory of sorts and would have allowed Napoleon to claim that he was making peace with honour.19
The only victory Napoleon could hope for now was on the battlefield, and that was going to be difficult to achieve. The coalition ranged against him was formidable. Facing him was the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, consisting of 120,000 Austrians, 70,000 Russians under Barclay de Tolly and 60,000 Prussians under General Kleist, a total of 250,000. Behind it stood Blücher’s army of Silesia, 40,000 Russians under Langeron, 18,000 under Osten-Sacken, and 38,000 Prussians under Yorck. In the north Bernadotte commanded an army of 150,000 Swedes, Russians and Prussians, bringing the total to well over half a million men. Morale, particularly among the German contingents, was reinforced by a sense that the hour of liberation had struck, fostered by an avalanche of poetry and propaganda, and supported by a nationwide commitment in the form of a ‘gold for steel’ fund-raising programme and numerous women’s welfare committees.
On 19 August Schwarzenberg’s combined army paraded before Alexander, Francis and Frederick William. The newly formed units were presented with standards, ‘and the three allied sovereigns nailed their respective colours together to the pole, in token of the firmness of their alliance and the intimacy of their union’, recorded Jackson. It was, in the words of Jackson’s superior, Stewart, ‘a most exhilarating moment’. The following day the army took the field.20
Napoleon