We are aware there are many who think that the justice of a quarrel is of little moment, providing the aggressor has strength and courage to make good what his adversary murmurs against as wrong. With such reasoners, the race is uniformly to the swift, and the battle to the strong; and they reply to others with the profane jest of the King of Prussia, that the Deity always espouses the cause of the most powerful. But the maxim is as false as it is impious. Without expecting miracles in this later age, we know that the world is subjected to moral as well as physical laws, and that the breach of the former frequently carries even a temporal punishment along with it. Let us try by this test the conduct of Napoleon in the Russian war.
The causes assigned for his breach with Russia, unjust in their essence, had been put upon a plan of settlement; yet his armies continued to bear down upon the frontiers of the Russian Empire; so that to have given up the questions in dispute, with the French bayonets at his breast, would have been on the part of Alexander a surrender of the national independence. The demands of Napoleon, unjust in themselves, and attempted to be enforced by means of intimidation, it was impossible for a proud people, and a high-spirited prince, to comply with. Thus the first act of Buonaparte went to excite a national feeling, from the banks of the Boristhenes to the wall of China, and to unite against him the wild and uncivilized inhabitants of an extended empire, possessed by a love to their religion, their government, and their country, and having a character of stern devotion, which he was incapable of estimating. It was a remarkable characteristic of Napoleon, that when he had once fixed his opinion, he saw every thing as he wished to see it, and was apt to dispute even realities, if they did not coincide with his preconceived ideas. He had persuaded himself, that to beat an army and subdue a capital, was, with the influence of his personal ascendency, all that was necessary to obtain a triumphant peace. He had especially a confidence in his own command over the minds of such as he had been personally intimate with. Alexander's disposition, he believed, was perfectly known to him; and he entertained no doubt, that by beating his army, and taking his capital, he should resume the influence which he had once held over the Russian Emperor, by granting him a peace upon moderate terms, and in which the acknowledgment of the victor's superiority would have been the chief advantage stipulated. For this he hurried on by forced marches, losing so many thousands of men and horses in Lithuania, which an attention to ordinary rules would have saved from destruction. For this, when his own prudence, and that of his council, joined in recommending a halt at Witepsk or at Smolensk, he hurried forward to the fight, and to the capture of the metropolis, which he had flattered himself was to be the signal of peace. His wishes were apparently granted. Borodino, the bloodiest battle of our battling age, was gained—Moscow was taken—but he had totally failed to calculate the effect of these events upon the Russians and their emperor. When he expected their submission, and a ransom for their capital, the city was consumed in his presence; yet even the desertion and destruction of Moscow could not tear the veil from his eyes, or persuade him that the people and their prince would prefer death to disgrace. It was his reluctance to relinquish the visionary hopes which egotism still induced him to nourish, that prevented his quitting Moscow a month earlier than he did. He had no expectation that the mild climate of Fontainbleau would continue to gild the ruins of Moscow till the arrival of December; but he could not forego the flattering belief, that a letter and proposal of pacification must at last fulfil the anticipations which he so ardently entertained. It was only the attack upon Murat that finally dispelled this hope.
Thus a hallucination, for such it may be termed, led this great soldier into a train of conduct, which, as a military critic, he would have been the first to condemn, and which was the natural consequence of his deep moral error. He was hurried by this self-opinion, this ill-founded trust in the predominance of his own personal influence, into a gross neglect of the usual and prescribed rules of war. He put in motion an immense army, too vast in numbers to be supported either by the supplies of the country through which they marched, or by the provisions they could transport along with them. And when, plunging into Russia, he defeated her armies and took her metropolis, he neglected to calculate his line of advance on such an extent of base, as should enable him to consolidate his conquests, and turn to real advantage the victories which he attained. His army was but precariously connected with Lithuania when he was at Moscow, and all communication was soon afterwards entirely destroyed. Thus, one unjust purpose, strongly and passionately entertained, marred the councils of the wise, and rendered vain the exertions of the brave. We may read the moral in the words of Claudian,
"Jam non ad culmina rerum
Injustos crevisse queror; tolluntur in altum,
Ut lapsu graviore ruant."
Claudian, in Rufinum, Lib. i., v. 21.
CHAPTER LXIV.
Effects of Napoleon's return upon the Parisians—Congratulations and addresses by all the public Functionaries—Conspiracy of Mallet—very nearly successful—How at last defeated—The impression made by this event upon Buonaparte—Discussions with the Pope, who is brought to France, but remains inflexible—State of Affairs in Spain—Napoleon's great and successful exertions to recruit his Army—Guards of Honour—In the month of April, the army is raised to 350,000 men, independently of the troops left in garrison in Germany, and in Spain and Italy.
Upon the morning succeeding his return, which was like the sudden appearance of one dropped from the heavens, Paris resounded with the news; which had, such was the force of Napoleon's character, and the habits of subjection to which the Parisians were inured, the effect of giving a new impulse to the whole capital. If the impressions made by the twenty-ninth bulletin could not be effaced, they were carefully concealed. The grumblers suppressed their murmurs, which had begun to be alarming. The mourners dried their tears, or shed them in solitude. The safe return of Napoleon was a sufficient cure for the loss of 500,000 men, and served to assuage the sorrows of as many widows and orphans.[237] The emperor convoked the Council of State. He spoke with apparent frankness of the misfortunes which had befallen his army, and imputed them all to the snow.—"All had gone well," he said; "Moscow was in our power—every obstacle was overcome—the conflagration of the city had produced no change on the flourishing condition of the French army; but winter has been productive of a general calamity, in consequence of which the army had sustained very great losses." One would have thought, from his mode of stating the matter, that the snow had surprised him in the midst of victory, and not in the course of a disastrous and inevitable retreat.