oo short for a despot both to gratify his passions and at
the same time to be a beneficent ruler, even under the simplest
conditions. On the recovery of Maret, the Emperor relaxed very much in
his personal attention to detail, while his secretary sought to drown
a domestic sorrow and scandal in a feverish activity still greater
than that which he had always displayed. This conjunction gave the
secretary an eminence he had not hitherto reached, and made him
thereafter a power behind the throne whose influence was dangerous to
the Empire, to France, and to the peace of Europe.

In spite of the enemy's numerical inferiority, Napoleon had been
thwarted at Eylau by the weather, by the unsurpassed bravery of the
Russian soldiers, and by the able tactics of Bennigsen. The latter had
not been worsted in the arbitrament of arms, yet the Emperor's
character for resolution and energy had virtually defeated the
Russians, and had given him not only a technical but a real victory.
Although he fell back and assumed the defensive, feeling that without
enormous reinforcements and the capture of Dantzic he could not
resume the offensive, yet nevertheless he had remained for four months
unmolested by his foe. Bennigsen's perplexities were great. The
Russian court was rent by dissensions, affairs at Constantinople were
occupying much of the Czar's attention, and the force available for
fighting in the North seemed too small for a decisive victory: he
remained virtually inert. There was an effort late in February to
drive the French left wing across the Vistula, but it failed. A few
days later Napoleon in person made a reconnaissance on his right, and
this show of activity reduced the opposing ranks to inactivity. He had
proposed to resume hostilities on June tenth, and had by that time
increased his strength on the front to one hundred and sixty thousand
men, all well equipped and fairly well fed. The reserve army in
central Europe was much larger; there were about four hundred thousand
men, all told, in the field.

[Illustration: Battle of Heilsberg.]

Meanwhile, however, the pleasant season had mended the roads and dried
the swamps. The Russians were refreshed by their long rest, and,
children of nature as they were, felt the summer's warmth as a spur to
activity. Bennigsen had by that time about ninety thousand men,
excluding the Prussians, who now numbered eighteen thousand. By his
delay he had lost the services of his best ally, th