[266] "Sir Walter Scott must allow that the end has too clearly shown how well this opinion of Napoleon was founded. I confess having, at this period, urged a peace at whatever price it might be obtained, and having used every effort, however feeble, to influence my brother; but I also confess, I then believed peace really was desired; whereas subsequent events have proved, that the destruction of Napoleon and the abasement of France, were the object in view."—Louis Buonaparte.
[267] Journal, &c. par le Comte de Las Cases, tom. iv., partie 7tième, p. 26.—S.
[268] The following is a ludicrous instance. When the explosion of the infernal machine took place, a bystander rushed into a company, and exclaimed, "The First Consul is blown up." An Austrian veteran chancing to be of the party, who had witnessed Napoleon's wonderful escapes during the Italian campaigns, exclaimed, in ridicule of the facile credulity of the newsmonger, "He blown up!—Ah, you little know your man—I will wager at this moment he is as well as any of us. I know all his tricks many a day since."—S.
[269] Fouché, tom. ii., p. 152.
[270] Fouché, tom. ii., p. 148. See also Savary, tom. iii., p. 78.
[271] Fouché, tom. ii., p. 150.
[272] The court of Napoleon were amused at this time by an incident connected with Soult's departure. As he had been designed to command in the German campaign, this new destination compelled him to sell his horses, and make various other inconvenient sacrifices to the hurry of the moment. His wife, the Duchess of Dalmatia, a lady of a spirit equal to that of the great soldier to whom she was wedded, went boldly into the Emperor's presence to state her grievances; to insist that her husband had been subjected to too much fatiguing service, and to remonstrate against his being employed in the Pyrenees. "Go, madam," said Napoleon sternly; "remember that I am not your husband, and if I were, you dared not use me thus. Go, and remember it is a wife's duty to assist her husband, not to tease him." Such was (with every respect to the lady, who might, notwithstanding, do well to be angry,) the Imperial "Taming of a Shrew."—S.—See Mémoires de Fouché, tom. ii., p. 144.
[273] According to orders accurately calculated, the little bands of recruits, setting off from different points, or depôts on the frontier, met together at places assigned, and, as their numbers increased by each successive junction, were formed first into companies, next into battalions, and last into regiments; learning, of course, to practise successively the duties belonging to these various bodies. When they joined the army, these combinations, which had but been adopted temporarily, were laid aside, the union of the marching battalion dissolved, and the conscripts distributed among old regiments, whose example might complete the discipline which they had thus learned in a general way.—S.
[274] Given on account of the marriage of Napoleon and Maria Louisa.—See ante, p. [26].
[275] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 390; Savary, tom. iii., p. 106; Military Reports to the Empress; Baron Fain, tom. ii., p. 309.