ar. Its
immediate necessities relieved, the veterans warmed to their work, and
that notable promise of booty worked them to the pitch of genuine
enthusiasm. The young commander, moreover, was as circumspect as a man
of the first ability alone could be when about to make the venture of
his life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division
were themselves men of mark--personages no less than Massena,
Augereau, Laharpe, and Serurier. Of Massena some account has already
been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of
humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a
fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later
enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his
ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army
of Italy. He was rude in manner and plebeian in feeling, jealous of
Bonaparte, but brave and capable. In the sequel he played an important
part and rose to eminence, though he distrusted both the Emperor and
the empire and flinched before great crises. Neither Laharpe nor
Serurier was distinguished beyond the sphere of their profession, but
in that they were loyal and admirable. Laharpe was a member of the
famous Swiss family banished from home for devotion to liberty. Under
Luckner in Germany he had earned and kept the sobriquet of "the
brave"; until he was mortally wounded in a night attack, while
crossing the Po after Millesimo, he continued his brilliant career,
and would have gone far had he been spared. Serurier was a veteran of
the Seven Years' War and of Portugal, already fifty-four years old.
Able and trustworthy, he was loaded with favors by Napoleon and
survived until 1819. It might have been very easy to exasperate such
men. But what the commander-in-chief had to do was done with such
smoothness and skill that even they could find no ground for carping;
and though at first cold and reticent, before long they yielded to the
influences which filled with excitement the very air they breathed.

At this moment, besides the National Guard, France had an army, and in
some sense a navy: of both the effective fighting force numbered
upward of half a million. Divided nominally into nine armies, instead
of fourteen as first planned, there were in reality but seven; of
these, four were of minor importance: a small, skeleton Army of the
Interior, a force in the west under Hoche twice as large and with
ranks better filled,