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Updated: July 11, 2025
Caulaincourt tells us that his plan of dashing at Berlin roused general consternation at headquarters, and that the staff came in a body to beg him to give it up, and march back to protect Leipzig. Reluctantly he abandons it, and then only to change it for one equally venturesome.
The conversation they had together remained a secret, for neither Alexander nor the Duke of Vicenza mentioned it; but there was reason to infer, from some words which fell from the Emperor Alexander, that he had received Caulaincourt rather as a private individual than as the ambassador of Napoleon, whose power, indeed, he could not recognise after his declaration.
'When Marmont received this news he was breakfasting at Ney's with Macdonald and Caulaincourt: they were waiting for the answer which the Emperor Alexander had promised to send them. The march of his corps on Versailles threw Marmont into despair.
But all the officers of his household opposed his plan, each in the way that marked his peculiar character; Berthier, by a melancholy countenance, by lamentations, and even tears; Lobau and Caulaincourt, by a frankness, which in the first was stamped by a cold and haughty roughness, excusable in so brave a warrior; and which in the second was persevering even to obstinacy, and impetuous even to violence.
Napoleon, irritated at this, sharply replied, "that he liked simple plans, less circuitous routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not retrace it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to General Caulaincourt, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe conduct to St. Petersburg.
But that idea was in him only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish his conquest and to fall back. It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the enemy, and to bring about and to promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt was to open.
But in truth whether Talleyrand, or Savary, or Caulaincourt, had the chief hand in the death of the Duke d'Enghien, is a controversy about which posterity will feel little interest. It is obvious to all men, that not one of them durst have stirred a finger to bring about a catastrophe of such fearful importance, without the express orders of Napoleon. At other times the exile of St.
Whether she was guilty or only imprudent, she was strongly accused by the Bonaparte family, who were desirous that Napoleon should obtain a divorce, The elder M. de Caulaincourt stated to us his apprehensions on this point; but whenever the subject was introduced my mother changed the conversation, because, knowing as she did the sentiments of the Bonaparte family, she could not reply without either committing them or having recourse to falsehood.
Almost a month before the formal divorce Caulaincourt had received instructions to address the Czar on the question of marriage between his sister Anne, now sixteen years of age, and the Emperor of the French. The ambassador was to make no formal demand, but was to ask for some expression of general intentions and feelings.
"Is there, then, no means to enlighten Napoleon as to his true situation, or to save him if he persists in destroying himself? Has he irrevocably staked his own and his son's fate on the last cannon?" Let Napoleon, then, accept the allied proposal by sending a counter-project, differing only very slightly from theirs, and peace would be made. Caulaincourt needed no spur.
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