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I was sick and desponding; now, since you have come, I am again well and in good spirits. I feel no longer any pain, and my eyes will be all right again, now that they know that they are to see the city of Paris. I thought that it would come to this that my brave brother Schwartzenberg would at length agree with me. We shall soon now put an end to the war.
Blucher was indeed ready to co-operate with Schwartzenberg; and though the Crown Prince had not yet reached his ground, the numerical superiority of the enemy was very great. Buonaparte had with him, to defend the line of villages to the south and north of Leipsig, 136,000 men; while, even in the absence of Bernadotte, who might be hourly looked for, the Allies mustered not less than 230,000.
The Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia, accompanied by Prince Schwartzenberg, took their station at the entrance of the Rue Royale; the King of Prussia being on the right of the Emperor Alexander, and Prince Schwartzenberg on his left.
These instructions "anticipated a warm attack from Wittgenstein or Tchitchakof; they recommended Victor to keep within reach of Polotsk and of Minsk; to have a prudent, discreet, and intelligent officer about Schwartzenberg; to keep up a regular correspondence with Minsk, and to send other agents in different directions."
Massena, at Metz, and Suchet, on the Swiss frontier, commanded divisions which the Emperor judged sufficient to restrain Schwartzenberg for some time on the Upper Rhine: should he drive them in, the fortresses behind could hardly fail to detain him much longer.
The Austrians under Prince Schwartzenberg on the right in Volhynie, and the Prussians, to whom he appointed as commander the French Marshal Macdonald, on the left, near the mouth of the Nieman. The centre was composed of French troops and those members of the German federation whose loyalty had been proved at Jena and Wagram.
They regarded the new "Austrian" with gloomy forebodings; and when, on the occasion of the ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in honor of the imperial marriage, a short time afterward, the fearful fire occurred that cost so many human lives and destroyed so much family happiness, the people remembered with terror that other misfortune that had occurred on the day of the entry of Marie Antoinette into Paris, and called this fire an earnest of the misfortunes which the "Austrian" would bring upon France and the emperor.
I have been informed that on a map sent to the Austrian staff to acquaint Prince Schwartzenberg with the limits definitively agreed on, Fontainebleau, the Emperor's headquarters, was by some artful means included within the line. The Austrians acted so implicitly on this direction that Marshal Macdonald was obliged to complain on the subject to Alexander, who removed all obstacles.
Soon after this the King ordered the Comtes d'Uzes and d'Albert to go to the Conciergerie for having fought a duel against the Comtes de Rontzau, a Dane, and Schwartzenberg, an Austrian. Uzes gave himself up, but the Comte d'Albert did not do so for a long Time, and was broken for his disobedience.
Emperors and kings, nations, cities, and principalities, statesmen like Stein, philosophers like Fichte, poets like Arndt and Körner, warriors like Kutusov, Blücher, and Schwartzenberg, the peoples of Europe and the governments of Europe, the oppressed and the oppressors, the embittered enmities and the wrongs of a thousand years forgotten, had leagued together in this vast enterprise, whose end was the destruction of one nation and one sole man the world-deliverer of but fifteen years ago!
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