Leipzig was not only a military disaster, it also caused a crisis of morale within France itself. The steady stream of prefects’ reports describing public discontent and the desire for peace became a flood. The news of the defeat, wrote the prefect of the Rhone to Montalivet on 4 November, ‘has discouraged people to the greatest possible degree’. His words were echoed next day by the prefect of the Indre: ‘I cannot hide from you, Monseigneur, that the information in the last official bulletins has made the worst possible impression, and that peace is generally and desperately desired.’ In the normally docile department of the Doubs, the prefect noted that ‘the wish, the need for peace is becoming more intense each day and is expressed with an impatience and even a despair that I have never seen up tiU now.’1
It was clear that continuing the war would bring higher taxes and a fresh round of conscription, and this duly came about. The droits reunis, a series of indirect taxes, were increased, and the salt and property tax were doubled. Napoleon calculated that these measures would raise 500 million francs, but this turned out to be a substantial overestimate. Then, on 15 November, a senatus-consultum called 300,000 new conscripts to the army. It was small consolation for them that 150,000 of these would be held in reserve and only sent to the front if France was invaded, since this was obviously imminent. The recruitment bureaux went to work in an atmosphere of fear and distress. In many towns, this was compounded by the arrival from the front of columns of wounded or sick soldiers, who fiUed the local hospitals and religious establishments. This only increased the alarm of families about the possible fate of their loved ones sent to the army, and added to the inevitable pain of separation.2
Despite all this suffering, the numbers recruited were meagre. The lists of those previously rejected as unfit for service were ransacked, but to little
Avail. ‘The register for 1813 of those turned down for not being taU enough or having weak constitutions has yielded very little’, reported the prefect of the Cote d’Or. ‘It is painful in the extreme to have to recruit in this way. One wastes one’s time for no result. I hope however that we will get together 1400 or 1500 good soldiers, though many of them will be very small.’3 Conscription was not only a huge upheaval for those called up, but had a major impact on those left behind. In rural areas in particular, the departure of so many able-bodied young men created a crippling labour shortage. The prefect of the Doubs described this graphically in a report of 10 November:
Agriculture is suffering from lack of workers, large families are exhausted, the current round of conscription is removing the last few unmarried men able to bear arms. I can vouch for this having seen with my own eyes on a journey of seventy leagues I have just made to revise the recruitment lists; the dearth of men is so great that women are doing all the work in the fields.
In many departments, the response to the privations caused by conscription and extra taxation was simply resignation, but in others there were the beginnings of resistance. In several towns, seditious writings started to appear. In Bordeaux, they began with anti-government graffiti scrawled on walls with red crayon; shortly afterwards the mayor received anonymous death threats. On the night of 6 November, copies of a placard were distributed around the city centre attacking Napoleon for imposing, and the Senate for accepting, the recent tax rises. It ended: ‘Down, a thousand times down with these monsters, and especially [the Emperor] who has shat down on us the droits reunis!’5 Similar material circulated around Dijon in December, and the prefect received a three-page anonymous letter eloquently denouncing him for implementing the new conscription law:
It is in vain that you try to execute such an odious measure... Are you so blind as to think that heads of families will meekly abandon their wives, their children, their aged fathers... have you been unmoved by the tears and cries of mothers about to be separated from their husbands? Do you think these women will not remind their men, with their natural eloquence, their persuasive tears, of the terrible experiences of the past... of the millions of Frenchmen butchered to serve the ambition of one man? ... Funeral crepe is now our only adornment, and we would rather die a thousand times than serve the plans of the cannibal who does not hesitate to order you to burn our towns, ravage our countryside, in a word reduce us to despair, to frustrate an enemy who cannot be crueller than himself.6
By the end of November, in some areas, words were giving way to deeds. In the Doubs, previously solidly loyal, disturbances broke out in mid-November at Pontarlier. ‘Before there was any question of [the new conscription law]’, wrote the town’s sub-prefect, ‘feeling was already running high, but as soon as this measure was announced here the alarm became general, and murmurings against our august Emperor were publicly expressed.’ As in Dijon and Bordeaux, the main target was the local authorities, but this time in person as well as in writing. ‘In the countryside and in town’, continued the sub-prefect, ‘members of the municipal council have been menaced. . . placards full of invective and threats have been posted on their doors and in the public squares; some have even been insulted in the street.’ Significantly, the agitation was non-political, and caused simply by war-weariness; the sub-prefect could detect no ‘party-spirit’, though he was constantly on the watch in case any developed. He urged his superiors to despatch the local brigades of gendarmes to the area, but it was some weeks before order was fuUy restored.7
Events took a more dramatic turn in Hazebrouck, in the department of the Nord. At 9 a. m. on 22 November, the local sub-prefect, Cesar de Ghesquiere, arrived at his offices to organize the departure of a column of conscripts. He had just begun his work when the two gendarmes guarding the sub-prefecture’s main door were pushed aside by several of the new recruits, aU armed with clubs. Ghesquiere went to reason with them, and saw a crowd of young men beyond that he estimated at two thousand. He reminded them that they were being called up to defend their country, but this was greeted by shouts of:‘And who wiU feed our mothers and sisters?’ He was then forced to retreat by a shower of stones. With some courage he went upstairs to put on his uniform and fetch his sword, then returned and once again tried to restore order. The crowd now invaded the building, ransacked the offices and his living quarters, and chased him from room to room until he finally managed to take refuge in the attic.8
Over the next few days the rebellious conscripts were joined by others from neighbouring towns and villages. They split up into different groups, often with a local leader, but no clear strategy. By this time the departmental gendarmerie, unable to cope with the scale of the upheaval, had been reinforced by 300 troops of the line. There was a pitched battle at the village of Estaires on 26 December; three rebels were kiUed and twenty wounded. There were no casualties on the government side, but two unfortunate bystanders died in the crossfire. After this check the insurgent bands split up,
Dodging the forces of repression sent after them. A new prefect, comte Beugnot, was sent to the scene from Paris. By early January 1814, through a combination of severity and judicious amnesty, he had restored a degree of calm.9
However primitive and disorganized, the Hazebrouck revolt was no minor riot. For over a month, bands of rebels numbering several thousand ranged across two departments of northern France, large parts of which were beyond the authorities’ control. As at Pontarlier, the movement was spontaneous, and had no political overtones. It was simply a further sign that the burdens of conscription and taxation were testing the French people to breaking point. Beugnot made the point as strongly as he dared in his final report:
It would be wrong to seek any outside influence, or conspiracy, in the disorders around Hazebrouck. The outward cause is the real one. The levies of conscripts have been too frequent and too numerous in [the department of the Nord], which in filling its quota of the target of 300,000 men, wiU this year have contributed 22,000 recruits, a heavy but inevitable burden.10
If the peasants and artisans of the Nord who took up their clubs to protest had been asked what message they wished to send the government, it would surely have been one word: peace. Few of them cared whether they were ruled by Napoleon, Louis XVIII or even Bernadotte. What they objected to was being marched off to fight in a war in which they no longer believed, leaving their fields and workshops untended and their families threatened with poverty. Napoleon was convinced that the French would reject any peace without victory. Ironically, the exact opposite was true; the only domestic threat to his regime came from the increasing numbers of French people desperate for an end to war and exasperated by his refusal to accept this. Had Napoleon made a settlement on almost any terms in late 1813, his throne would have remained secure. The prefect of the Ccrte d’Or made the point eloquently to the interior minister Montalivet that December:
Peace, Monseigneur, peace! That is the cry of the towns and the countryside. Everyone desires it. Peace alone can heal all our wounds, and win back from the people that confidence which was so complete fifteen months ago, and which has been shaken by misfortune, but only seeks the occasion to return. All the officials of every class, I might even say of all parties... all reasonable people, all those who have just reflected for a moment, are devoted to His Majesty. All would lay down their lives for him and for his dynasty, the majority through attachment and conviction, the rest because they feel that the greatness and even the survival of France depend upon him and on his
Dynasty, but in the lower classes of society a pronounced indifference is evident; people think only of living from day to day, and only peace and the happiness it brings will revive their enthusiasm.
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