soldiers gain in
these conflicts! In spite of prodigies of valour the enemy's masses
advanced, and gradually concentrated, so that this war might be compared
to the battles of the ravens and the eagle in the Alps. The eagle slays
hundreds of his assailants--every blow of his beak is the death of an
enemy, but still the vultures return to the charge, and press upon the
eagle until they destroy him.

As the month of February drew to its close the Allies were in retreat on
several points, but their retreat was not a rout. After experiencing
reverses they fell back without disorder, and retired behind the Aube,
where they rallied and obtained numerous reinforcements, which daily
arrived, and which soon enabled them to resume the offensive.

Still Napoleon continued astonishing Europe, leagued as it was against
him. At Craonne, on the 7th of March, he destroyed Blucher's corps in a
severe action, but the victory was attended by great loss to the
conqueror. Marshal Victor was seriously wounded, as well as Generals
Grouchy and La Ferriere.

While Napoleon was resisting the numerous enemies assembled to destroy
him it might be said that he was also his own enemy, either from false
calculation or from negligence with respect to his illustrious prisoners,
who, on his departure from Paris, had not yet been sent to their States.
The Pope was then at Fontainebleau, and the Princes of Spain at Valencay.
The Pope, however, was the first to be allowed to depart. Surely
Bonaparte could never have thought of the service which the Pope might
have rendered him at Rome, into which Murat's troops would never have
dared to march had his Holiness been present there. With regard to the
Spanish Princes Napoleon must have been greatly blinded by confidence in
his fortune to have so long believed it possible to retain in France
those useless trophies of defeated pretensions. It was, besides, so easy
to get rid of the exiles of Valencay by sending them back to the place
from whence they had been brought! It was so natural to recall with all
speed the troops from the south when our armies in Germany began to be
repulsed on the Rhine and even driven into France! With the aid of these
veteran troops Napoleon and his genius might have again turned the scale
of fortune. But Napoleon reckoned on the nation, and he was wrong, for
the nation was tired of him. His cause had ceased to be the cause of
France.

The latter days of March were filled up by a