Meantime Rheims, intrusted to a feeble garrison, had been taken by Langeron's rear-guard under St. Priest, another French emigrant in the service of the allies. By this disaster communication between Schwarzenberg and Blücher had been reëstablished. In the short day Napoleon could spend at Soissons, he took up twenty-five hundred new cavalrymen, a new line regiment of infantry, a veteran regiment of the same, and some artillery detachments. It is not easy to conceive of recuperative power more remarkable than that which was thus exhibited both by France and her Emperor. These men had been sent forward from Paris in spite of the profound gloom now prevalent there. The truth was at last known in the capital; Joseph was hopeless; the Empress and her court were preparing for extremities. News had come that in the south Soult had been thrown back on Toulouse; that in the southwest royalist plots were thickening; that in the southeast Augereau had been forced back to Lyons; Macdonald was ready to abandon Provins at the first sign of advance by Schwarzenberg; and the sorry tale of Laon was early unfolded. Yet the administrative machinery was still running, and soldiers were being manufactured from the available materials. Those who had been sent to Soissons had been hastily gathered, equipped, and drilled almost without hope, but they were precious since they enabled Napoleon to refit his shattered battalions.
Marmont had unwisely abandoned Berry-au-Bac, and that in disregard of orders. But otherwise he had done his best to make good a temporary lapse, and had got together about eight thousand men at Fismes. His narratives give a graphic picture of the situation--of disorder, confusion, chaos among his troops, of artillery served by inexperienced sailors, of undrilled companies whose members had neither hats, clothes, nor shoes. There were plenty of captured uniforms and head-coverings, but they were so infested with vermin that the French, sorry as was their plight, refused to wear them, and clung to their old tatters. Marmont's men were heroes, he himself was not yet a traitor. Though overborne by a sense of Napoleon's recklessness, and therefore unfit for the desperate self-sacrifice which would have made him a fit coadjutor for his chief, he was prepared to atone for his disgrace at Athies. Early in the morning of the thirteenth the main French army moved from Soissons; at four in the afternoon Marmont opened the attack on Rheims. Napoleon himself had arrived, but his troops were slow in coming up, and there was no heavy artillery wherewith to batter in the gates. The struggle went on with desperate courage and gallantry on both sides. St. Priest was killed by the same gunner whose aim had been fatal to Moreau. "We may well say, O Providence! O Providence!" wrote Napoleon to his brother. At ten the beleaguered garrison began to sally and flee. Napoleon rose from the bearskin on which he had been resting before a bivouac fire, and storming with rage lest his prey should escape, hurried in the guns, which were finally within reach. Amid awful tumult and carnage the place fell; three thousand of the enemy were slain, and about the same number were captured. The burghers were frenzied with delight as the Emperor marched in, and the whole city burst into an illumination.