Victor: on the 17th they drove
back the outposts of Schwarzenberg's centre, while Macdonald and
Oudinot marched towards Nogent to threaten his right. These rapid
moves alarmed the Austrian commander, whose left, swung forward on
Fontainebleau, was in some danger of being cut off. He therefore sued
for an armistice. It was refused; and the request drew from Napoleon a
letter to his brother Joseph full of contempt for the allies (February
18th). "It is difficult," he writes, "to be so cowardly as that! He
[Schwarzenberg] had constantly, and in the most insulting terms,
refused a suspension of arms of any kind, ... and yet these wretches
at the first check fall on their knees. I will grant no armistice till
my territory is clear of them." He adds that he now expected to gain
the "natural frontiers" offered by the allies at Frankfurt--the
minimum that he could accept with honour; and he closes with these
memorable words, which flash a searchlight on his pacific professions
of thirteen months later: "If I had agreed to the old boundaries, I
should have rushed to arms two years later, telling the nation that I
had signed not a peace, but a capitulation."[414]

The events of the 18th strengthened his resolve. He then attacked the
Crown Prince of Wuertemberg on the north side of the Seine, opposite
Montereau, overthrew him by the weight of the artillery of the Guard,
whereupon a brilliant charge of Pajol's horsemen wrested the bridge
from the South Germans and restored to the Emperor the much-needed
crossing over the river. Napoleon's activity on that day was
marvellous. He wrote or dictated eleven despatches, six of them long
before dawn, gave instructions to an officer who was to encourage
Eugene to hold firm in Italy, fought a battle, directed the aim of
several cannon, and wound up the day by severe rebukes to Marshal
Victor and two generals for their recent blunders. Thus, on a brief
winter's day, he fills the _role_ of Emperor, organizer, tactician,
cannoneer, and martinet; in fact, he crowns it by pardoning Victor,
when that brave man vows that he cannot live away from the army, and
will fight as a common soldier among the Guards: he then and there
assigns to him two divisions of the Guard. To the artillerymen the
_camaraderie_ of the Emperor gave a new zest: and when they ventured
to reproach him for thus risking his life, he replied with a touch of
the fatalism which enthralls a soldier's mind: "Ah! don't fear: the
ba