Chapter XII: Stars of Lesser Magnitude

‟BAD troops do not exist,” said Napoleon on one occasion. “There are only bad officers.” Napoleon did his best therefore to find good officers, and trusted that the rank and file would through them become good soldiers. And yet, was he successful either in his end or in his method? The army of 1796, which he did not train, was timid in retreat though terrible in advance. The men were fanatics, and similar strengths and weaknesses are typical of fanatics in large bodies. In 1800 Napoleon had an army which he could manœuvre in line, and which bore the dreadful strain of Marengo without breaking. Half the men in the ranks, however, were untrained boys, who, as Napoleon’s despatches tell us, were ignorant a few days before the battle as to which eye they should use to aim their muskets. Marengo was largely a personal triumph for Napoleon; it was his vehement encouragement, coupled with the confident expectation of Desaix’ arrival, which held the men together during that long-drawn agony.

The peace which followed Hohenlinden gave Napoleon a chance to train an army as he wished, and the Austerlitz campaign found him at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men, half of them veterans, all of them of very considerable length of service, who were to a man inspired with the utmost enthusiasm for him and for the Empire. Yet at Austerlitz the line was abandoned almost entirely in favour of the column; the columns showed evident signs of disintegration even when victorious. It was already a little obvious that the Imperial armies were only adapted to a furious offensive effort, and that failure of this effort meant unlimited catastrophe. At Jena the Prussians were too heavily outnumbered to offer any serious resistance, but at Eylau the French army was only saved from destruction after the failure of their first offensive by the fact that Napoleon held ready at hand eighteen thousand cavalry, and by the constitutional sluggishness of the Russian army.

Friedland offered the last example of a really heroic defensive by an Imperial force, but the soul of that defensive was Lannes. Few other men could have held a French army corps together against superior forces as did Lannes on that fateful anniversary of Marengo. After Friedland we find the French army growing progressively poorer and more unreliable. We read of panics at Wagram, of the introduction of regimental artillery to give the infantry confidence, of shameless skulking on the field of battle and of heavy desertion while on the march. Discipline was fading at the same time as devotion to the Emperor was losing some of its force. In the Russian campaign of 1812 the Grand Army had barely crossed the frontier before it began to go to pieces. Napoleon could not trust his men to manœuvre at Borodino, and in consequence he had to rely on frontal attacks made against elaborate fieldworks defended by the most stubborn of all Continental infantry. At the crisis of the battle he refused to fling the Imperial Guard into the struggle; some thought it was because he was too far from his base to risk his best reserve; some suspected Bessières of having implored him not to waste his best troops; but perhaps the reason was a more logical one. Had the Guard been sent forward and been beaten back, the whole army would have fallen back routed; at Waterloo Napoleon took the risk and lost; at Borodino he refused to take it and was satisfied with an indecisive gain.

The Grand Army perished in Russia, but in three months Napoleon raised, trained and equipped three hundred thousand more men and was for a time once more successful. Curiously enough, this raw infantry of 1813 was to all intents and purposes of greater military value than the two or three year trained infantry of 1812. The army of 1812 possessed the little knowledge proverbially dangerous, and would not willingly expose itself to sacrifice, but the novices of 1813 knew nothing of war, and suffered losses and privations which would have roused veterans to mutiny. At Lützen Ney’s corps of half-grown boys endured for hours the attack of the whole Allied force, and fought like demons in the shelter of the villages of Gorschen and Kaya. At Bautzen the French attacked with a dash and fury reminiscent of Elchingen or Saalfeld. Before Dresden they accomplished a march which easily bears comparison with anything achieved in 1796. But the decline of their fame had already begun. At the Katzbach, at Gross Beeren, at Dennewitz, the conscripts fled in panic. They had discovered by this time that a battle generally implies the sacrifice of one portion of the army while the rest gains the victory, and they were one and all determined not to be the sacrifice. At Leipzig what was left of the army of 1813 lost the greater part of its numbers—a new lesson to the effect that it is easier to surrender than to fight had been learned. Napoleon’s last victorious phase, in the campaign of France in 1814, coincides with his use of a fresh army of raw conscripts, and his surrender took place when the men of the ranks had once more learnt the lessons of their predecessors.

Waterloo, the last battle of the Empire, epitomizes all these observations. The French attacked with dash, but a single reverse was sufficient to weaken the infantry so much that no support was forthcoming for the later cavalry attacks. A powerful counter-attack by the enemy brought about, not merely retreat, but unspeakable panic. Practically every battalion which had been in action broke and fled. The Guard, which had moved forward so majestically, dispersed like the merest conscripts. The only troops which held together were the reserve battalions of the Old Guard, which had not yet been engaged, and for a time Lobau’s corps at Planchenoit. The Prussians after Jena were not so hopelessly disorganized as were the French after Waterloo.

Napoleon undoubtedly appreciated this weakness of his army, and this explains the reckless manner in which he sought battle at all costs, and the risks he cheerfully ran in his endeavour to get to grips with his enemy. His headlong, energetic strategy gave him the initiative, and this initiative he retained on the field of battle. Jena, Eylau, Eckmühl, Aspern, Wagram, Borodino, were all examples of a fierce tactical offensive. On the two principal occasions, at Austerlitz and Friedland, when he confined some part of his force to a dogged defensive, he saw that the generals in command were men of wide personal influence, and that the troops they led were the best available. Davout and Lannes were certainly successful. At Lützen Ney’s necessarily defensive rôle was not fully foreseen, but he was able to hold on, partly through the enthusiasm of his young men, partly through the advantage they possessed in holding the villages, and partly through Wittgenstein’s bungling of the attack.

At no period in its development will Napoleon’s army bear comparison with, say, the army of Cromwell, or the original force of Gustavus Adolphus, or with the army of the Third Republic. It incidentally follows that Napoleon’s military achievements should be rated even higher than they usually are, seeing that the immense successes he gained were gained with inferior troops.

But if the rank and file were of this doubtful quality, it was far otherwise with the officers, and the statement of Napoleon’s with which this chapter opens is therefore subject to doubt. Napoleon’s method of making war support war exposed his armies, as he candidly admitted, to a loss of one-half of their numbers every year, and since this loss fell far more heavily on the privates than on the officers, it followed that a very widely experienced corps of officers was built up. It was quite usual for men of good birth to serve a few months in the ranks before taking commissions; Marbot and Bugeaud are good examples of this among the younger men. Once they had gained their lieutenancy anything might happen. They might in ten years be dukes and generals, or they might still be lieutenants. The open system of promotion was stimulating, certainly, but it was undoubtedly unfair at times. Curély, who served from 1800 to 1814, and was subsequently admitted to be the best light cavalry officer in the French service, only attained his colonelcy in his last campaign. The men who received the most rapid promotion were those who had attracted Napoleon’s notice in 1796 or in the Egyptian campaign. Some of these choices were highly successful, as witness the career of Davout, but others were positively harmful. Marmont was a failure, Junot was a failure, Murat was a failure, while men of undoubted talent served in twenty campaigns without receiving promotion. Kellermann the younger fought at Waterloo with the same military rank as he had held at Marengo. Suchet, who was one of the most successful generals of division in 1799, remained a general of division until 1811. If this was the case with the higher ranks, it must have been nearly as bad with the lower ranks. When the rush of promotion of the Revolutionary era ended, advancement became very slow indeed. A man who was a captain at the battle of the Pyramids might well consider himself fortunate if he commanded a battalion at Ligny. Occasionally, however, the divisional generals were given their chance. The vast expansion of the Imperial Army for the Russian campaign increased the commands of some of the Marshals to eighty or a hundred thousand men, and generals of division similarly found themselves at the head of twenty or thirty thousand. Many of them displayed talents of a very high order. St. Cyr won the battle of Polotsk, for which he received his bâton. The most remarkable example occurred at Salamanca. Here Wellington had flung himself suddenly on the over-extended Army of Portugal, had shattered one wing, and had beaten back the remainder in dire confusion; Marmont, the commander-in-chief, was badly wounded. Bonnet had hardly succeeded to the command when he was killed. Several other generals of division were struck down. The man who took over command of the fleeing mob was already wounded. He was practically unknown; he was leading a beaten army in wild retreat from the finest troops in the world. And yet he rallied that beaten army; in the course of a few hours he had them once more in hand. He faced about time and again as he toiled across the wasted Castilian plains; in a dozen fierce rearguard actions he taught the exultant English that some Frenchmen, as well as being more than men in victory, were not less than women in defeat, and he showed Wellington that every French general was not a Marmont. Every morning found his army posted in some strong position; all day long the English marched by wretched roads and over thirsty plains to turn the flanks; every evening as the movement was nearing completion the French fell back to some new position where the English had to resume the whole weary business next day. The French survived the severest defeat they had yet received in the Peninsula at English hands with astonishingly little loss; a few weeks later they had so far recovered as to thrust fiercely forward once more, and aid in driving Wellington from Madrid. The man who was responsible for this wonderful achievement deserved reward. Bessières and Marmont had been given bâtons for much less. A title, a marshalate, a dotation of a million francs would not have seemed too much for saving for France a kingdom, an army of forty thousand men, and dependent forces numbering a quarter of a million. But Clausel was not made Marshal, nor Duke of Burgos. Instead he was recalled, and an inferior general, Souham, sent in his place. Napoleon had a prejudice against “retreating generals” dating from the days of Moreau. Clausel took the affront philosophically, and fought on for his Emperor. When it was too late, his worth was recognized, and during the Hundred Days he was given the independent command of the Pyrenees. After Waterloo he fled from France with a price on his head. Clausel went unrewarded; Murat was over-rewarded. Their lines of conduct differed greatly.

The men who were never granted the coveted rank of Marshal, but who did each as much for France as any one of half the Marshals, are in number legion. Their very names would fill a page. Kellermann the younger has already been mentioned. At Marengo his desperate charge at the head of the heavy cavalry saved the day, and “set the crown of France on Napoleon’s head.” But Napoleon found it far safer and far cheaper to praise a dead man, and he awarded the chief credit to the slain Desaix. D’Hautpoult died at the head of his Cuirassiers at Eylau, charging one army to save another. St. Hilaire, the finest of them all, died miserably at Essling, with the Empire reeling round him. Lasalle, the pride of the light cavalry, the man who captured Stettin with a few score Hussars, fell at the head of his men in the pursuit after Wagram. Montbrun, another Cuirassier, was killed in the great redoubt at Borodino.

Their names are carved upon the Arc de Triomphe, and the bourgeois peer at them with self-satisfaction. They fell in a far less worthy cause than did the myriad Frenchmen who died by poison gas and shrapnel in the trenches a few years ago. To us now it seems to be nearly blasphemy to think in the same moment of the Moskowa and the Marne, or to speak in the same breath of the sieges of Verdun and of Hamburg. The Englishman turns lightly from the great names on the Arc de Triomphe, and thinks with proud regret of the simple inscription on an empty tomb in Whitehall. And yet these men were the wonders of their time. They did their duty; more cannot be said of any man, and much less of most. They gave their lives with a smile for a country which they adored. Danger was as usual to them as was the air they breathed. They gave their blood in streams; they marched with their men into every Continental capital. Their cowed enemies regarded them timidly, as though they were beings from another world. Their continued success and their overwhelming victories might well have led them to believe themselves superhuman. And when Waterloo was fought and lost they went back to their beloved France—such of them as survived—and nursed their wounds on pensions of thirty pounds a year.

There was one general of division who attained as near as might be to a marshalate without quite achieving this last step. He was made a duke and he gained a vast fortune. This man was Junot. Junot, indeed, is often stated to have received his bâton, but he never did, although he was as much a favourite of Napoleon’s at one time as was Marmont. It was Junot who at Toulon was writing a letter at Bonaparte’s dictation, when a cannon shot plunged near-by and scattered earth over them. “We need no sand to dry the ink now,” laughed Junot, and from that day his future was made. He married Mademoiselle Laurette Permon, whom Napoleon had once courted, and whose memoirs are one of the most interesting books of the period. Junot himself served as Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp all over Europe and in Egypt as well. He received promotion steadily, and was a general of division in a very brief while. With that rank, however, he was forced to be content, for Napoleon realized his shortcomings, while a wound in the head which he early received unbalanced him a little mentally. The one outstanding feature of his character was his passionate devotion to Napoleon. Napoleon was his God, and Junot served him with a faithfulness almost unexampled. Adventures came his way with a frequency characteristic of the period. He fell into English hands and was exchanged; he went as ambassador to Portugal and made a large fortune; he was appointed Governor of Paris, and withstood Caroline Bonaparte’s blandishments when she tried to induce him to subvert the Government. Half dead with wounds, he travelled across Europe in November, 1805, and arrived at Austerlitz on the very morning of the battle. He was again wounded heading a charge that day. In 1807 Napoleon gave him a command which he hoped would bring him fame, and a marshalate was promised in the event of success. Junot was to lead the army of Portugal from France to Lisbon; he was to capture the Portuguese royal family and the English shipping in the harbour; he was to tear down the Portuguese Government and to rule the country himself in the name of the Emperor. Junot set out with a mixed French and Spanish force numbering nearly forty thousand men. At every stage he received frantic orders from Paris demanding greater speed from him and his men. Junot did what he could. The whole valley of the Tagus was littered with the guns, dead horses and exhausted men whom he had left behind. His army was dispersed into fragments, and it was only with four hundred men at his back that Junot burst into Lisbon. The English shipping and the Portuguese royal family had fled the day before.

Junot was in a serious position. With four hundred men he had to rule a large town simmering with rebellion, but he succeeded, and held the country down while the rest of his army trailed disconsolately into Lisbon. His astonishing march had not achieved its object, and the marshal’s bâton was therefore withheld. Napoleon offered some sort of consolation by creating Junot Duke of Abrantès, but there is no doubt that the disappointment weighed heavily upon him. Napoleon had meditated making Junot Duke of Nazareth, in memory of his victory during the Syrian campaign, but he had decided that it would be inadvisable, as the soldiers would call him “Junot of Nazareth.”

Napoleon was not quite so far-sighted when at the same time he made Victor, at the suggestion of one of the wits of his court, Duke of Belluno. Victor was commonly called the Beau Soleil of the French Army. Napoleon’s investiture made him Duke of Belle Lune.

Immediately afterwards the Spanish war broke out, and Junot found himself isolated at Lisbon. He gathered his forces together, and without any help whatever from France he maintained them and re-equipped them at the cost of unfortunate Portugal. But it was not to last long, for Wellington landed in Mondego bay, and Junot, furiously attacking him, was badly beaten at Vimiero. There followed the Convention of Cintra. By it Junot and his men were transported back to France with their arms, baggage and plunder; all that the English gained was a bloodless occupation of Portugal. It is difficult now to decide who had the best of this agreement. Certainly Napoleon thought that Junot had made a good bargain, and equally certainly the English public thought that Wellington had blundered badly.

If the Convention had not been concluded, the English would have cut Junot off from France (two hundred thousand Spanish insurgents had done that already) and would have shut him up in Lisbon. Without a doubt, Junot would have made a desperate resistance there. Masséna’s holding of Genoa in 1800 might have been re-enacted, and the wretched Portuguese might have starved while Junot held out. In this event the hands of the English would have been so full that no help could have been offered to the Spanish armies; Moore’s skilful thrust at Sahagun could never have been made, and the Spaniards might have met with utter annihilation. By the Convention of Cintra, France gained an immediate benefit, but England eventually gained even more.

After Vimiero, Junot’s military career is one of continued failure—failure under Masséna in the Busaco campaign, failure under Napoleon in the Russian campaign, until at last the Duke of Abrantès was sent into comparative exile as Governor of Illyria. Here his troubles, his wounds and his disappointments bore too heavily upon him. He went raving mad, and performed all sorts of lunatic actions in his Illyrian province until he was removed to France. At Dijon he flung himself from a window and killed himself. Junot is one more example of those whom Napoleon favoured, who met with horrible ends.

But Marshals and Generals alike, Napoleon’s superior officers were nearly all distinguished by one common failing—a dread of responsibility and a hopeless irresolution when compelled to act on their own initiative. The examples of this are almost too numerous to mention; the most striking perhaps is Berthier’s failure during the early period of the campaign of 1809. There are many others which had much more important results, although at first they seem trivial in comparison. Thus, Dupont’s surrender at Baylen, although it only involved twenty thousand men, was one of the principal causes of the prolongation of the Peninsular War. Dupont surrendered with twenty thousand men; his action necessitated the employment in the Peninsula of three hundred thousand men for six years afterwards.

Another incident of the same type was Vandamme’s disaster at Kulm. Vandamme was a burly, heavy-jawed soldier of the furious and thoughtless kind, who had learnt his trade thoroughly well by rule of thumb, and who had made his name a byword throughout Germany on account of his dreadful depredations. His boast was that he feared neither God nor devil, and Napoleon referred to this once when he said that Vandamme was the most valuable of all his soldiers because he was the only one he could employ in a war against the Infernal regions, should such a contingency arise.

In July, 1813, the Armistice of Pleisswitz had come to an end, and Austria had joined the ranks of Napoleon’s enemies. The Grand Army was in Silesia when the news arrived that the Austrians were marching on Dresden. Napoleon turned back without hesitation, marched a hundred and twenty miles in four days, and by what was almost his last victory he saved the town. At the commencement of his march he had detached Vandamme with twenty thousand men to hold the passes of the Erz Gebirge against the retreating forces. The beaten Austrian army came reeling back towards them. The Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia were present in its ranks, and it seemed as if nothing could save them from surrender. Fortunately, perhaps, for Europe, Napoleon was unwell and did not press the pursuit as closely as he might have done, and Vandamme, who rushed into peril like a bull into the ring, without outposts, without flank guards, without any reasonable protection, was overwhelmed by forces outnumbering his by four to one, and was forced to surrender. Vandamme may have feared neither God nor devil, but he had not the brains for a command in chief, even against men.

His own honour he redeemed from all possible accusations of cowardice, when, a prisoner in Austrian hands, with all the possibilities before him of condemnation to slow death in a salt-mine or speedy death on the spot, he was led before the Czar, and he did not quail. Alexander rated him for his excesses in Prussia, and Vandamme hit back at Alexander’s tender spot—his conscience. “At least I did not kill my own father,” said Vandamme.

Indecision characterizes the actions of many French generals during the Empire. The most discussed case perhaps was Grouchy’s hesitation at Wavre during the Waterloo campaign, and this, curiously enough, was not really hesitation. The sole military crime of which Grouchy was guilty was a too pedantic obedience to orders. Grouchy has been blamed for misreading the situation and for not marching from Wavre on Waterloo, but Napoleon misread the situation just as badly, as his orders to Grouchy clearly prove. Moreover, once Grouchy’s hands had been freed by the destruction of the main French army, his actions were exceedingly bold and competent. His retreat across the Allies’ rear and his capture of Namur were manœuvres of sound military skill.

Grouchy’s military career had been in every way honourable throughout his life. He had ridden bravely to destruction at the head of his dragoons during Murat’s charge at Eylau. He had fought magnificently at Friedland and elsewhere. The only other time when he had been in independent command, and when he did display genuine dilatoriness was many years before when he had found himself in command owing to the loss of Hoche on the French expedition to Bantry Bay in 1796. Grouchy’s courage failed him then, and he withdrew at the very time when his landing would have set Ireland in an inextinguishable blaze. For a series of quite strictly correct actions at Waterloo Grouchy has gone down to history as a fool and a humbug, but he was neither—to any great extent.

During the Waterloo campaign there was certainly one example of a general being overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility. Up to the moment of execution not one of Napoleon’s plans of attack had been more brilliantly conceived or better arranged. A hundred and twenty thousand men were assembled at the crossings of the Sambre by Charleroi without the enemy gathering more than a hint as to what was in the air; in fact the Allies’ Intelligence completely lost sight of Gérard’s corps of sixteen thousand men. From this point, however, the arrangements rapidly grew worse and worse. Bad staff work caused delays at the crossing of the Sambre; Ney’s unexpected appointment to the command of the left wing was disturbing, in that he was without a staff and his sudden elevation annoyed d’Erlon and Reille, his subordinate corps commanders. Zieten’s stubborn rearguard actions held up the French columns for a considerable time; and finally a sort of universal misunderstanding led to everyone being more or less in the dark as to the need for a determined and immediate attack. Ney, goaded by repeated orders, at last attacked at Quatre Bras quite six hours later than he should have done, and even then he had only half his force in hand. The other half, under d’Erlon, was making its way towards him, when it was caught up by an aide-de-camp of Napoleon’s, who was bearing a message to Ney requesting him to send help to the Emperor at Ligny. The aide-de-camp, on his own responsibility, sent d’Erlon marching over towards Ligny instead of to Quatre Bras, and went on to inform Ney of his action. Ney was furious. Every moment the British army in front of him was being reinforced, and he was now being steadily pushed back. He saw defeat close upon him, and he sent off a frantic order to d’Erlon to retrace his steps and march on Quatre Bras. The order reached d’Erlon at the crisis of the battle of Ligny. For hours a fierce and sanguinary battle had raged there, and at the crucial moment d’Erlon had appeared, like a god from a machine, with twenty thousand men on the Prussian flank. Napoleon sent him urgent orders to attack, but the officier d’ordonnance returned disconsolate. D’Erlon had just received Ney’s order and had marched back towards Quatre Bras, where he arrived just as darkness fell, two hours too late. His sense of responsibility did not permit him to disregard the orders of his immediate superior, although it had lain in his power, by disregarding them, to have dealt the Prussian army a blow from which it could hardly have recovered. The attack d’Erlon should have made was later made by six thousand weary men who had fought all day long, and naturally did not have the immense success d’Erlon might have achieved.

Drouet, Comte d’Erlon, had built himself up during twenty campaigns a reputation as a skilful and hard-fighting officer. He was neither a poltroon nor congenitally weak-minded; what was the matter with him was that he had fought twenty campaigns under Napoleon. The brilliance of the Emperor and the implicit, blind obedience he demanded had weakened d’Erlon’s initiative past all reckoning. It is interesting to compare d’Erlon’s action at Ligny with Lannes’ at Friedland, or with the daring of the subordinate Prussian officers at Mars-la-Tour and at Gravelotte in 1870.

And yet one cannot help but think, on reading military history, that the Lannes and the Davouts of this world are astonishingly few when compared with the d’Erlons and the Duponts. Military history is a history of blunders, fortunate or unfortunate. Men are found everywhere in control of the lives and destinies of ten, twenty, a hundred thousand men, and completely unable even to expend them in an efficient manner. On reading of the fumbling campaigns of Schwartzenberg, of Carlo Alberto, of Napoleon III., or even of wars waged more recently still, and of which we ourselves have had experience, one cannot help feeling overwhelming pity at the thought of the wretched men—every one of them as full of life as you or I—who were called upon to lay down everything at the call of duty or patriotism—and to lay down everything _uselessly_. The argument against war which appeals most to those who may have to take part in it is not so much that it is expensive or that it costs lives, but that it is so blightingly inefficient. To die because one’s country is in need, that is one thing; but to die because one’s commanding officer has bad dreams, is quite another matter.

But the armies of Napoleon were at least free from a horrible slur which has been cast upon other armies. We cannot find anywhere any hint that the officers did not do all their duty as far as they visualized it. On going into action the men did not shout “Les epaulettes en avant” as did the army of the Second Empire at Solferino. No officer of Napoleon’s ever wasted his men’s lives to gratify his own pride, in the way that English marines died at Trafalgar. It was said with pride of an officer of Marlborough’s that he always said, “Come on” not “Go on” to his men. The same could be said of every one of the higher officers of the army of the First Empire. The hundreds of volumes of memoirs written by Napoleon’s men teem with examples (grudgingly given, in some cases) of valour, but there is hardly one case where an Imperial officer is accused of cowardice, or even of shirking. The officers bore exactly the same hardships as did the men, and the friendship and trust which existed between the rank and file and the commissioned officers of the army of the First Empire has never been excelled in any other army in history.

A simple calculation at any Napoleonic battle will show that the number of generals killed is proportionate to that of the privates, while of the twenty-four Marshals of the Empire who fought after the inauguration, three—Lannes, Bessières and Poniatowski—were killed in action, and all the others were wounded at various times. Napoleon himself, as is well known, was wounded during the fighting round Ratisbon in 1809, and Duroc, his trusted Grand Marshal of the Palace, was struck down at his side by a stray cannon shot at Bautzen in 1813, and died an hour later in horrible agony.

The facts about the Imperial army are curiously contradictory. The men were devoted to Napoleon, but their devotion did not hold them together in moments of panic. The officers were experienced in all the details of war, but for all their experience they lost touch with the Prussian army during the vital period following Ligny. Napoleon had laid down as essential various rules of strategy—but he departed from them during the autumn campaign of 1813. Nothing seems consistent or satisfactory during the whole period.

Yet there are hundreds upon hundreds of incidents of which one cannot read without a thrill. Cambronne at Waterloo replying with a curse when called upon to surrender in the face of certain destruction; the Red Lancers of the Guard gaining the Somo Sierra in the teeth of a tempest of cannon shot; the conscripts of 1814, in sabots and blouses, facing undaunted the savage enemy cavalry at Champaubert; Ney rallying the rearguard during the retreat from Moscow; Kellermann charging an army at Quatre Bras; the engineers dying gladly to save the army at the Beresina; all these incidents are worthy to be remembered with pride, and almost blot out the memory of the hideous ferocity of these selfsame men in Spain, in Germany and in Russia.

It is the fate of the Emperor and the Grand Army to be equally at the mercy of the panegyrics of the admirer and the insults of anyone who chooses to inveigh against them.