ule of the French in Spain in this
campaign, his ultimate failure showed how firm a military hold they
still possessed there. But the disappointment was forgotten in the news
which followed it. At the moment when the English troops fell back from
Burgos began the retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow. Victorious in a
battle at Borodino, Napoleon had entered the older capital of Russia in
triumph, and waited impatiently to receive proposals of peace from the
Czar. But a fire kindled by its own inhabitants reduced the city to
ashes; Alexander still remained silent; and the gathering cold bent even
the stubborn will of Napoleon to own the need of retreat. The French
were forced to fall back amidst the horrors of a Russian winter; and of
the four hundred thousand combatants who formed the Grand Army at its
first outset, only a few thousands recrossed the Niemen in December. In
spite of the gigantic efforts which Napoleon made to repair his losses,
the spell which he had cast over Europe was broken. Prussia rose against
him as the Russians crossed the Niemen in the spring of 1813; and the
forces which held it were at once thrown back on the Elbe. In this
emergency the military genius of the French Emperor rose to its height.
With a fresh army of two hundred thousand men whom he had gathered at
Mainz he marched on the allied armies of Russia and Prussia in May,
cleared Saxony by a victory over them at Lutzen, and threw them back on
the Oder by a fresh victory at Bautzen. Disheartened by defeat, and by
the neutral attitude which Austria still preserved, the two powers
consented in June to an armistice, and negotiated for peace. But
Austria, though unwilling to utterly ruin France to the profit of her
great rival in the East, was as resolute as either of the allies to
wrest from Napoleon his supremacy over Europe; and at the moment when it
became clear that Napoleon was only bent on playing with her proposals,
she was stirred to action by news that his army was at last driven from
Spain. Wellington had left Portugal in May with an army which had now
risen to ninety thousand men; and overtaking the French forces in
retreat at Vitoria on the twenty-first of June he inflicted on them a
defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at
once evacuated; and Clausel fell back from Zaragoza into France. The
victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit
of the Allies. The close of the armist