Napoleon beat the Russians at Saint-Dizier[97], the Prussians and Russians at Brienne[98], as though to do honour to the fields in which he had been brought up. He routed the Army of Silesia at Montmirail[99] and Champaubert[100] and a portion of the main army at Montereau[101]. He made head everywhere; went and returned on his steps; repelled the columns by which he was surrounded. The Allies proposed an armistice; Bonaparte tore up the proffered preliminaries and exclaimed: "I am nearer to Vienna than the Emperor of Austria is to Paris!" Russia, Austria, Prussia and England, for their mutual consolation, concluded a new treaty of alliance at Chaumont[102]; but in reality they were alarmed at Bonaparte's resistance and were thinking of retreat. At Lyons an army[103] was forming on the Austrian flank; Marshal Soult was checking the English; the Congress of Châtillon[104], which was not dissolved until the 18th of March, was still negociating. Bonaparte drove Blücher[105] from the heights of Craonne[106]. The main allied army had triumphed on the 26th of February, at Bar-sur-Aube, thanks only to superiority in numbers. Bonaparte, multiplying himself, had recovered Troyes[107], which the Allies reoccupied[108]. From Craonne he had moved upon Rheims[109]. "To-night," he said, "I shall go to take my father-in-law at Troyes." On the 20th of March, an affair took place near Arcis-sur-Aube[110]. Amid a rolling fire of artillery, a shell having fallen in front of a square of the guards, the square appeared to make a slight movement: Bonaparte dashed towards the projectile, the fuse of which was smoking, and made his horse sniff at it; the shell burst, and the Emperor came safe and sound from the midst of the shattered bolt. The battle was to recommence the following day, but Bonaparte, yielding to the inspiration of genius, an inspiration which was none the less fatal, retired in order to bear upon the rear of the confederate troops, separate them from their stores, and swell his own army with the garrisons of the frontier places. The foreigners were preparing to fall back upon the Rhine, when Alexander, by one of these Heaven-inspired impulses which change a whole world, took the resolve to march upon Paris, the road to which was becoming free[111]. Napoleon thought he would draw the mass of the enemy after him, and he was followed, by only ten thousand men of the cavalry, whom he believed to be the advance-guard of the main troops, whereas they masked the real movement of the Prussians and Muscovites. He dispersed those ten thousand horse at Saint-Dizier and Vitry, and then perceived that the great allied army was not behind them: that army, which was flinging itself upon the capital, had before it only Marshals Marmont[112] and Mortier[113], with about twelve thousand conscripts. [Sidenote: He retires to Fontainebleau.]