Arrived at Bar, the Austrian commander wrote on the twenty-sixth an admirable letter of justification for the course he had taken. Defeat would have meant a retreat, not behind the Aube, but the Rhine. "To offer a decisive battle to an army fighting with all the confidence gained in small affairs, manoeuvering on its own territory, with provisions and munitions within reach, and with the aid of a peasantry in arms, would be an undertaking to which nothing but extreme necessity could drive me." This retreat put a new aspect on the diplomacy of Châtillon. On the nineteenth Caulaincourt received a despatch from Napoleon revoking the carte blanche entirely; the same day Napoleon received an ultimatum from the congress, written several days before, to the effect that he was to renounce all the acquisitions of France since 1792, and take no share in the arrangements subsequent to the peace. This last clause being a covert suggestion of abdication, the recipient flew into a passion; when finally he was soothed by the pleadings of Berthier and Maret, he gave such a meaningless reply as would enable negotiations to proceed, but his counter-project he addressed directly to the Emperor Francis. It was a refusal to give up Antwerp and Belgium, and an emphatic recurrence to the Frankfort proposals. "If we are not to lay down our arms except on the offensive conditions proposed at the congress, the genius of France and Providence will be on our side."
Napoleon's missive suggested to his father-in-law, as was its intention, that a continental peace on the Frankfort basis would leave France free to recuperate her sea power and continue the war with England alone. This was the wedge which for some time past the writer had been proposing to drive into the coalition so as to separate Austria from Russia. Castlereagh was very uneasy as to the possible effect of the message, and there was much anxiety among all the diplomats. Their first step was to send a pacific reply and renew their request for an armistice. Napoleon consented, but stipulated that hostilities should proceed during the preliminary pourparlers, and that in the protocol a clause should be inserted declaring that the plenipotentiaries were reassembled at Châtillon to discuss a peace on the basis proposed at Frankfort. A commission to arrange the terms of the armistice met on the twenty-fourth. That they were not in earnest is shown by Frederick William's despatch of the twenty-sixth to Blücher, saying, "The suspension of arms will not take place." That very day, also, in a council of war held by the allied generals, it was determined to form an invading army of the south. Blücher was authorized to make a diversion in favor of the main army--a move which he had really begun the day before by a march to the right. Napoleon, leaving Macdonald and Oudinot, with forty thousand men, to follow Schwarzenberg, hurried after Blücher with his remaining force. On the twenty-eighth the commission adjourned its sessions with a formal reiteration of the ultimatum already made by the allied powers.