At Historicon 94, George Nafziger presented a well attended seminar on the "Six Days Campaign of 1814" which is the subject of our series continuing in this issue with MontmirailMarchais. I attended that lecture and had the pleasure of helping George answer some of the numerous questions raised by the audience (as we coauthored part of the series).
One of the questions I responded to concerned the support of the French population during the 1814 campaign. Here is a more elaborate version of my answer at the convention. First, let me point out that in 1814 the patriotism of the French pop ula tion was far from uniform. For instance, in the Vosges, Lorraine and Alsace, patriotism and support for the French army was strong and resulted in civilian attacks on several Allied supply columns. On the other hand,
a great part of the south was royalist in sentiment and if not pro-Allied, certainly
anti-Napoleon. Houssaye objectively covers the subject at length in his book, 1814. [1]
As a general rule, the peasants
were more supportive of the French Army
than the more bourgeois-like population
of the towns or cities. However, few were
inclined to fight the invaders. In Paris, the
population was for the Emperor, but
everywhere French royalists tried to
undermine the Empire, with mixed results.
Schwarzenberg, the Allied
commander-in-chief, issued a
proclamation in which he assured the
civilian population that it had nothing to
fear from the Allied troops. The
Cossacks are only bad in the
newspapers, proclaimed a poster.
This helped to produce an initial apathy
or even hostility of the population toward
the French Army.
This is well illustrated by the situation encountered in the city of Troyes' after Napoleon's defeat at La Rothiere (January 30, 1814). His entrance there was disastrous. Not a single vive l'Empereur; only gloomy silence. No one was in the street, everyone stayed inside their homes. The army was without food among a population that did not give
any help, keeping everything to satisfy the future requisitions of the enemy. In
addition, the inhabitants tried to motivate the French conscripts to desert. It was
reported that some 6,000 were so induced.
But soldiers are soldiers and Cossacks are Cossacks. The Allied troops did not follow Schwartzenberg's proclamation and committed numerous excesses and atrocities. [2] Consequently, the attitude of the French population changed drastically and became hostile to the invading Allied troops.
A few days later, after Napoleon's successes at Champaubert, Montmirail, etc., and his return to the offensive on the river Seine, the prudent Schwartzenberg decided to retreat behind Troyes and Napoleon reentered that city on February 24. Enthusiasm burst open as he entered
that city in sharp contrast with the frigid and hostile attitude of the population
some twenty days earlier. Never, even after the triumphal returns from Austerlitz
and Jena, had the cheering been more numerous and more sincere. That change was due to the excesses committed by the Allies.
With the Emperor's victories came the same change of attitude in many other towns and cities. Now the population supported the French Army and supplied it with much needed food. It's only because of the cooperation of the people living in the villages along the St. Gond
marshes bringing their horses to help pull his artillery that Napoleon was able to
have his guns for the battle of Champaubert (see EE&L #8). In addition, there were numerous instances of the French population capturing Allied stragglers and even supply convoys.
So, after a somewhat slow start, we can say that the help of the French population was significant during the 1814 campaign.
[1] Houssaye, 1814, p. 65, Paris, 1888. Houssaye's 1814 has been translated into English.
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This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.Footnotes
[2] Which is not to say that the French armies did not commit atrocities of their own on occasion.
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