on the rear of the allies signally
belied his expectations. Instead of compelling the enemy to beat a
retreat on the Rhine, it left the road open to his capital.[443]

At dawn on the 25th, then, the allied Grand Army turned to the
right-about, while Bluecher's men marched joyfully on the parallel road
from Chalons. Near La Fere-Champenoise, on that day, a cloud of
Russian and Austrian horse harassed Marmont's and Mortier's corps, and
took 2,500 prisoners and fifty cannon. Further to the north, Bluecher's
Cossacks swooped on a division of 4,500 men, mostly National Guards,
that guarded a large convoy. Stoutly the French formed in squares, and
beat them off again and again. Thereupon Colonel Hudson Lowe rode away
southwards, to beg reinforcements from Wrede's Bavarians.

They, too, failed to break that indomitable infantry. The 180 wagons
had to be left behind; but the recruits plodded on, and seemed likely
to break through to Marmont, when the Czar came on the scene. At once
he ordered up artillery, riddled their ranks with grapeshot, and when
their commander, Pacthod, still refused to surrender, threatened to
overwhelm their battered squares by the cavalry of his Guard. Pacthod
thereupon ordered his square to surrender. Another band also grounded
arms; but the men in the last square fought on, reckless of life, and
were beaten down by a whirlwind of sabring, stabbing horsemen, whose
fury the generous Czar vainly strove to curb. "I blushed for my very
nature as a man," wrote Colonel Lowe, "at witnessing this scene of
carnage." The day was glorious for France, but it cost her, in all,
more than 5,000 killed and wounded, 4,000 prisoners, and 80 cannon,
besides the provisions and stores designed for Napoleon's army.[444]
Nothing but the wreck of Marmont's and Mortier's corps, about 12,000
men in all, now barred the road to Paris. Meeting with no serious
resistance, the allies crossed the Marne at Meaux, and on the 29th
reached Bondy, within striking distance of the French capital.

In that city the people were a prey, first to sheer incredulity, then
to the wildest dismay. To them history was but a melodrama and war a
romance. Never since the time of Jeanne d'Arc had a foreign enemy come
within sight of their spires. For ramparts they had octroi walls, and
in place of the death-dealing defiance of 1792 they now showed only
the spasmodic vehemence or ironical resignation of an over-cultivated
stock. As M. Charles de Remusa