management of foreign policy, especially where it required that knowledge of mankind and of courts, and that superiority of address, which high birth affords most advantage of acquiring, Napoleon found and lamented this deficiency. He owned at St. Helena, that had he kept Talleyrand, the Russian war might have been avoided; he might have added, the Spanish war also. The high views of policy, the conceptions of the head of the state, of Napoleon himself, never wanted sagacity. He foresaw all the perils of the peninsular insurrection, should it break out; he saw the inopportuneness, as well as the necessity, of the Russian war. Want of tact in subordinate agents precipitated both. Murat, at Madrid, embroiled one country; a correspondence, rather than a negotiation, carried on through generals and aides-de-camp, marred all hopes of reconciliation with the other. Napoleon felt this, when he chose the comte de Narbonne, a noble, a liberal emigrant, and a friend of madame de Staël, like Talleyrand, to send on a mission to Russia. Another personage, whom he selected from the same feeling, was the abbé de Pradt, archbishop of Mechlin or Malines. Him he sent to Warsaw. But a body of diplomatic sages were not to be improvised; and the archbishop proved as little satisfactory as the aidede-camp.

After two years of prelude and preparation, with armies on either side of the Niemen, the rupture became imminent at the commencement of 1812. Professions of peace, as usual, preceded hostilities. Napoleon made offers to England and to Russia. These to the former were idle: Alexander, in reply, demanded that the French troops should retire from East Prussia. Napoleon, at the same time that he sent the count de Narbonne to the emperor Alexander, to show his wish to avoid hostilities, left Paris on the 9th of May for Dresden. At this town he had given rendezvous to his allies; and never certainly did Europe see such a court: the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, were amongst those who waited on Napoleon. Kings and princes of inferior rank crowded his antechamber and saloons, and stooped before the mighty emperor of yesterday. Certes, here the French revolution retaliated its vengeance on the pride that had scorned and endeavored to crush it. Its representative trod beneath his feet all that was regal and illustrious in Europe. The reunion of Dresden seemed a parting pageant, given to Napoleon by fortune ere she abandoned him. The richest incense that could be burned to mortal pride was there offered to Bonaparte.

The emperor awaited at Dresden the return of Narbonne. He arrived on the 28th of May, had seen Alexander, and had

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found him inflexible, "neither. elated nor despondent." Set ting aside the ambitious schemes and jealousies which might have led to the quarrel, Alexander felt that his cause was the independence of his nation, and that even to succumb to defeat in this was glorious. Immediately after these tidings, Napoleon quitted Dresden, and in a few days was in the midst of his army beyond the Vistula. It is estimated at 800,000 soldiers, most certainly not short of the exaggerated million of Xerxes. The French, like the Persian, monarch might have moralized and reflected how far actual power is from keeping pace with the magnitude of its means. It required all, and more than all the energy and talent of Napoleon to feed this mass; and even if he possessed the means, it became evident that the mere distribution could not be always effected. Ere the army had marched fifty leagues into Russia, several of the very guards died of hunger. The old system of preying and living upon the enemy's country, was here, as in Spain, impossible. But the habits of the French soldiery thus to provide for themselves had left them without that order and accuracy which could alone render the present expedition practicable.

It was too late, however, for reflection. On the 24th of June, the French army crossed the frontier river Niemen. A solitary officer of Cossacks was the only enemy that appeared to challenge them; but a tremendous thunder-storm burst forth over the French as they first trod the Russian soil. It appeared as if the elements promised to supply the weakness of the men of the north in defending their territory. The Russians did not even appear: their plan was to retreat, avoid a battle, still drawing the French far from support and resources, to fall on them at last, when winter, famine, and fatigue, had daunted their confidence and diminished their strength. This is said to have been the plan of Barclay de Tolly, the Russian commander.

Napoleon thus entered Wilna without a blow; and here was his last opportunity for declaring the ancient kingdom of Poland re-established. Lithuania was in his power. By uniting it to the duchy of Warsaw, and giving it the name of Poland, he would have raised a stronger bulwark to support him, than fortified lines or walls, or than all the allies that fear bound to him could afford. It is said that he hesitated, in fear to excite the jealousy of Austria; but that power would have accepted on the side of Italy an indemnity for Gallicia, an exchange already the subject of negotiation. But no; it was not the dread of Austria, but his wish to leave the door open for accommodation with Russia, that tied down Napoleon from proclaiming Polish freedom. The diet of

Warsaw addressed him. He replied vaguely; and the provinces, indisposed also towards the French by the violence of their soldiers, remained cold to one so parsimonious even of encouraging words.

When Napoleon advanced upon Wilna with the principal division of the great army, a large force under Macdonald kept along the Baltic, and formed the left wing. The Austrians, under prince Schwartzenberg, entered Volhynia and protected the right flank of the French: but their wings may for the moment be left out of consideration. Immediately before Napoleon, the Russians composed two armies: the greater one, under Barclay, had retired from Wilna to Drissa, on the river Dwina, where an intrenched camp defended the road to St. Petersburgh; the lesser, under Bagration, was at Grodno, and, by the French advance, had been separated from Barclay. This was a sad blunder on the part of the Russians; such a one that, had it been committed before Bonaparte commanding a small and manageable army, by a force of proportionate numbers, not one would have escaped; but, with the masses which he had now to move by word or writing, not by personal order, all depended upon lieutenants. Some were tardy, some inapt; others, active and skilful, had jealousies which paralyzed them. The Spanish war failed of success, in part, from such dissensions; the Russian no less. Of his great system Napoleon was chief indeed, a monarch well obeyed; but there was no gradation, no discipline amongst his high officers: princes and marshals jostled, and displayed in their altercation the meanness of their origin. It was thus that the French lost now the first opportunity which the chance of the war afforded,—that of cutting off Bagration,— by the differences betwixt Davoust and Jerome Bonaparte and the consequent inertness of both. Jerome was disgraced, and sent back to Westphalia; but this could not restore lost time: Bagration had made good his retreat.

Napoleon now moved with his main body from Wilna to the banks of the Dwina, to occupy Witepsk, having still the hope of preventing the junction betwixt the two Russian armies. It was at Witepsk that Barclay reckoned on meeting Bagration; he had marched thither from Drissa, and found the French approaching it. Preparing to fight, in order to allow Bagration time, he received word that his lieutenant was marching on Smolensk, in the rear: Barclay accordingly retired, having supported but a skirmish.

The natural avenue leading into the centre of Russia, that followed by the main army of the French, was the strip of high land lying betwixt the Dwina and the Dnieper; the first of which it rejects to the north, the second to the south.

812.

FRENCH TAKE SMOLENSKO.

253 Witepsk, where the French now lay, is on the Dwina; Smolensko, where the Russian armies had united, was on the opposite side of the Dnieper. Napoleon tarried the two first weeks of August at Witepsk. Such long delay, in such a man, is inconceivable; so much so, that some of his followers have attributed it to the decline of his health: but, in fact, he was overpowered by the enormity of affairs; the difficulties of moving and providing for his immense army, the disorder of which he saw, and vainly exerted himself to remedy. He now resembled the spirit of an eagle put to vivify and move the body of an elephant, forced to plod, when its nature was to fly. Emboldened by his inaction, the Russians at Smolensko prepared to brave him and beat up his quarters. Tidings of their motion restored Napoleon to military duties, and recalled him to manœuvres, from the ordering of ovens, wagons, hospitals, and all the minutiae of affairs in which he was obliged to busy himself by the neglect of all around. Learning the Russian advance upon Witepsk, he moved off his army from the Dwina to the Dnieper, changing his whole line of operations, and braving the inconvenience of this for the sake of getting to Smolensko before the enemy, intercepting them, and forcing them to battle. In this, too, he failed the Russians retreated in time; whilst the troops covering Smolensko fought with that dogged indomitable courage which the French could not overcome. Their cavalry charged the Russian squares, entered them even; they slew, but could not rout. The Russians, in whatever confusion thrown, refused to fly; unlike the Austrians, who, "when turned," or spying an enemy even on their flank, thought themselves released from the task of resistance. But war with the Austrians had become a profession; with the Russians it was waged with national feeling and inveteracy.

Barclay, having succeeded in entering Smolensko before the enemy, resolved to defend it long enough to allow of a measured retreat. Napoleon's impatience impelled him to an assault: it was ordered. But the Russians, from behind their ancient walls, defied all the efforts of the French, and repulsed them with the slaughter of thousands. The attack was given over. Napoleon pitched his tent before the town, when, at night-fall, the towers and buildings of Smolensko were seen in a flame. Barclay, in evacuating it, had set it on fire. On the morrow the French entered; and where they expected to meet with good quarters, and the sight of humar habitations, after the deserts they had crossed, they met with disappointment. Still, amidst these ruins, the emperor might perhaps have strengthened his communications, brought up

provisions and reinforcements, and organized his army. This was the prayer of all his generals, even of the impetuous Murat. But to check his advance in the month of August, and within but eighty leagues of Moscow, was too much to expect of Napoleon's impatience. Perhaps he was right in calculating that the difficulties at Smolensko were little less than those at Moscow; whilst the grand object gained, of occupying the enemy's capital, would awe malcontents both in Paris and in the courts of Europe, and also, perhaps, humble Alexander to sue for terms.. His generals, who looked on the conduct of the campaign merely in a military point of view, dissuaded with earnestness, that swelled to choler, all idea of further advance. Napoleon, who was not blind to their views, but who joined with them those of the statesman and the monarch, decided on penetrating to Moscow.

Another circumstance on which he counted, was the im possibility of restraining much longer the angry spirits of the Russians from giving battle. It was known that Barclay alone was the counsellor of retreat, and that Bagration, with all the voices in the army, clamored for battle. It seemed inevitable, that they would risk one to save Moscow. In search of the engagement, then, as well as of the capital, Napoleon held on his march. Nor was he wrong in his calculations. In obedience to the cry of the Russian army, Barclay was superseded by Kutusoff; and this general chose the place of his stand near Borodino, on the Moskwa. The Russian retreat, even so far, was not such as gives courage to the pursuer. At Valoutina, not far from Smolensko, Barclay made a stand, in order to preserve some baggage and cannon, resolving to leave no trophies to the enemy; and Ney was severely repulsed. Junot, who should have taken the Russians in flank, hesitated on this occasion, and showed a want of courage. It was not thus that Napoleon had been served in Italy; and yet, inconceivable to say, Junot was continued in the command of his division. Quarrels between Davoust and Murat, both at the vanguard, were now the only incidents of the army. These occupied Napoleon's attention and care, which so many more important subjects craved.

On the 5th of September the French came in view of their enemies, posted on heights extending southward from th village of Borodino. Driving them from an advanced redoubt, Napoleon established his line opposite to theirs, and prepared for a battle on the morrow. He refused to manœuvre on their flanks, or menace to intercept them, lest such a movement should bring about their retreat, and put off the engagement. Each army was about 120,000 strong, so much had the French numbers dwindled: the Russians were perhaps more.

The