No man ever understood how to excite emulation, by distributing praise or blame, as did Napoleon. Chaboulon well says that the ascendancy possessed by the Emperor over the minds and courage of the soldiery was truly incomprehensible. A word, a gesture, was sufficient to inspire them with enthusiasm, and make them face the most terrible ordeals. If ordered to rush to a point, although the extreme danger of the manoeuvre might at first strike the good sense of the soldiers, they immediately reflected that their general would not have issued such a command without a motive, or have exposed them wantonly. "He knows what he is about," they would say, and immediately rush on to death, uttering shouts of "Long live the Emperor!"
No attempt is here made to give a history of France from the time Bonaparte first made his entrance into the drama of which he was so soon to be the leading actor. The successive periods of the Revolution, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire are only introduced when found necessary to explain the rapidly advancing steps of this wonderful character in history, the worshiped idol of an entire nation, that his military career may be the better understood; hence it has been thought advisable to refer briefly, at times, to the relations of France with other countries, and the cause of his spending, during the ten years of his reign as Emperor, exactly fifty-four days less in camp, and under the enemy's fire, so to speak, than he did in his royal residences!
This, then, is the story of the man who personally commanded in 600 skirmishes, and 85 pitched battles, resigning at last his leadership on the field of Waterloo, a victim of treachery and incompetency exceeding even his own well-grounded fears; but even after these years of constant warfare and conquest, after maintaining huge armies in almost all parts of the world, he left France the richest nation in the universe, and in possession of a larger amount of specie than the rest of Europe; and notwithstanding the fact that in 1796, when he was given command of the Army of Italy, he found his government not only incapable of paying its ragged and weary troops, but unable, even, to feed them!
M. B. G.
Chicago, Ill. December 31, 1894.
