mmissary stores were prodigious, and there were thousands of
ox-wagons to transport them. The cattle were eventually to be
slaughtered and eaten. In various convenient strongholds there were,
besides, stores for four hundred thousand men for fifty days. Knowing
Russia, he had prepared to conquer streams and morasses, to feed the
army without fear of a devastating population, and to trust the seat
of war for nothing except forage. His strategic plan was amazing,
containing, as it did, the old elements of unexpected concentration,
of breaking through the opposing line, of conclusive victory, and
occupation of the enemy's capital. It was carried also to successful
completion, and in one respect the execution was fine. The obstacles
to be surmounted made every movement slow, and while a vast,
complicated military organization may be reliable for weeks, to make
it work for months requires qualities of greatness which increase in
geometrical ratio according to the extension of time. Twice Napoleon
bared his inmost thought, once to Metternich in Dresden, once to
Jomini at a dinner company in Vilna. The first season he intended to
seize Minsk and Smolensk, winter there, and organize his conquests. If
this should not produce a peace, he would advance in the following
season into the heart of the country, and there await the Czar's
surrender. To his army he issued an address as direct and ringing as
that which had echoed sixteen years before across the plains of
Lombardy. Its substance is that the second Polish war would bring the
same renown to French arms as the first, but the peace would be such
as should end forever the haughty interference of Russia in European
affairs. It seemed to those who heard it as if Russia's hour had
struck.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE INVASION OF RUSSIA--BORODINO[42]

[Footnote 42: References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier et
Napoleon. Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: Oeuvres. Segur:
La campagne de Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciee de la
campagne de Russie. Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in
Russia during the Year 1812. Du Casse: Memoires et
Correspondance du Prince Eugene. Rapp: Memoires. Bausset:
Memoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol.
III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben waehrend
d. Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon
als Feldherr. Stoltyk: N