[Footnote 7: Fournier: Der Congress von Châtillon.]
Maret's name was long held up to detestation as the instigator of Napoleon's procrastinating policy at Dresden, the line of conduct which seemed to have made it possible for Austria to join the coalition. Among the papers of that minister is an account of his relations with Napoleon during the congress at Châtillon, which displays the evident motive of an attempt to prove how pacific his nature really was. He declares that after the defeat at La Rothière, Caulaincourt wrote a panic-stricken letter demanding full authority to treat. Maret handed it to the Emperor, beseeching him to yield. Napoleon seemed scarcely to heed, but indicated a passage in Montesquieu's "Grandeur and Fall of the Romans," which he happened to be reading: "I know nothing more magnanimous than the resolution taken by a monarch who ruled in our time, to bury himself under the ruins of the throne rather than to accept proposals which a king may not entertain. He had a soul too lofty to descend lower than his misfortunes had hurled him." "But I, sire," rejoined the secretary--"I know something more magnanimous--to cast aside your glory in order to close the abyss into which France would fall along with you." "Well, then, gentlemen, make your peace," came the reply. "Let Caulaincourt make it; let him sign everything necessary to obtain it. I can support the disgrace, but do not expect me to dictate my own humiliation." Maret informed Caulaincourt, but the latter recoiled before the responsibility, and asked for particular instructions. The Emperor persistently refused, but wrote giving the minister "carte blanche" to take any measure which would save the capital. Again Caulaincourt begged for details, and again Napoleon refused, persisting until Bertrand joined his supplications to those of Maret, whereupon he consented to abandon Belgium, and even the left bank of the Rhine.
The formal despatch containing these concessions was to be signed next morning, on February eighth, but in the interval came news of Blücher's movements. Maret found the Emperor buried in the study of his map. "I have an entirely different matter in hand," was the greeting; "I am at present occupied in dealing Blücher a blow in the eye." The signature was indefinitely postponed. On the tenth Alexander suspended the congress on the plea of Caulaincourt's refusal to state his own or accept the offered terms. Then followed the three victories, and Napoleon, on the night of the twelfth, wrote to Châtillon demanding the Frankfort proposals. Caulaincourt urgently besought the allies for an armistice, and begged Napoleon to be less exacting. Prussia and Austria were eager for the armistice, but Alexander obstinately refused to reopen the congress until the eighteenth, when everything seemed changed, and all the allies really desired peace. Caulaincourt, warned by Napoleon's letter of the twelfth, refused to treat without full instructions, and as he had none he began to procrastinate. In the end he bore the blame for not having used the carte blanche when he had it in order to save his country, for subsequently he had no opportunity.