When news of Napoleon's advance reached Schwarzenberg's headquarters in Troyes, there had at first been nothing short of panic; the commander himself was on a sick-bed, having entirely succumbed to the hardships of winter warfare. No sooner had he ordered the first backward step than his army had displayed a feverish anxiety for farther retreat. As things were going, it appeared as if the different corps would, for lack of judicious leadership, be permitted to withdraw still farther in such a way as to separate the various divisions ever more widely, and expose them successively to annihilating blows from Napoleon, like those which had overwhelmed the scattered segments of the Silesian army. The Czar and many others immediately perceived the danger. With faculties unnerved by fear, the officers foreboded a repetition with the Bohemian army of Montmirail, Champaubert, and Vauchamps. Rumors filled the air: the peasantry of the Vosges were rising, the Swiss were ready to follow their example; the army must withdraw before it was utterly surrounded and cut off. There was even a report--and so firmly was it believed that it long passed for history--of Alexander's having expressed a desire to reopen the congress. Schwarzenberg's strange hesitancy in the initial stages of the invasion has been explained. Beyond his natural timidity, it was almost certainly due to Metternich's politics, which displayed a desire to ruin Napoleon's imperial power, but to save France either for the Bourbons or possibly for his Emperor's son-in-law. If the Austrian minister could accomplish this, he could thereby checkmate Prussian ambitions for leadership in Germany. But during the movements of February and March the actions of the Austrian general appear to have been due almost exclusively to cowardice. The papers of Castlereagh, of Metternich, and of Schwarzenberg himself aim to give the impression that during all the events which had occurred since the congress of Prague, everything had been straightforward, and that Austria had no thought of sparing Napoleon or acting otherwise than she did in the end. Yet the indications of the time are quite the other way: the Russians in Schwarzenberg's army were furious, and, as one of them wrote, suspicious "of what we are doing and what we are not doing." Alexander, in this crisis, was deeply concerned, not for peace, but for an orderly, concentrated retreat. With stubborn fatalism, he never doubted the final outcome; and during his stay in Chatillon he had spent his leisure hours in excogitating a careful plan for the grand entry into Paris, whereby the honors were to be his own.