atched hovel for his
headquarters at Osterode, and, as he wrote to his brother Joseph,
lived in snow and filth, without wine, brandy, or bread. "We shall be
in fine condition when we get bread," he said to Soult. "My position
would be fine if I had food; the lack of food makes it only moderate,"
he wrote, on February twenty-seventh, to Talleyrand. This was true,
because now the army was more concentrated than before; and when
headquarters were moved in the spring to Finkenstein the Emperor was
more comfortable. The movements culminating in Pultusk clearly prove
that Napoleon could not until then adapt his means to the novel
conditions of warfare he found in Poland. But in the movements
antecedent to Eylau there are, in spite of virtual defeat, a clear
apprehension of the difficulties, and an evident ability to surmount
them. While Bennigsen constantly assumes the offensive, Napoleon
always seizes the initiative, and in the retreat his choice of the
plateau around Osterode as a rallying-point displays a continued
mastery of all the conditions.

Around the camp-fires there was, during the remaining months of
winter, a passive endurance, mingled with some murmuring about the
horrors caused by one man's ambition. The Emperor set his men an
example of uncomplaining cheerfulness. His health continued as
exuberant as it had been for the year past, and his activity, though
no longer feverish, lost nothing of its intensity. Savary thought he
outdid himself, accomplishing in one month what elsewhere would have
been, even for him, the work of three. Mme. de Remusat remembered to
have heard him say that he felt better during those months than ever
before or after. This vigor of body, combined with the same iron
determination as of old, did indeed work miracles, and this in spite
of the fact that his indefatigable secretary, Maret, was long at the
point of death.

To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of
the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer
it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka;
Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members
of the coalition, were finally about to take an active share in the
fighting. To strengthen the weakened ranks of the invaders, new levies
were ordered in both Switzerland and Poland, while at the same time
some of the soldiers occupying Silesia and besieging her fortresses
were called in. Both Neis