enth, without warning, a truce made
by Murat was broken, and his command driven in. Then at last the
captain in Napoleon awakened, the emperor vanished, the retreat was
ordered, and universal empire, a dependent Czar, the march from Tiflis
to the Ganges, England humiliated, and the ocean liberated--all were
forgotten in the presence of reality. Robe, scepter, and crown were
never seen again.

Political considerations prompted a movement of withdrawal toward the
northwest, as if against St. Petersburg, but military considerations
prevailed, and between the two alternatives--a direct retreat to
Smolensk through a devastated land, or a circuit south-westward,
through fertile districts, toward Kaluga, as if to attack
Kutusoff--the choice fell on the latter. The reason is clear. The seat
of war was within a triangle marked by Riga, Brest-Litovski, and
Moscow; from Riga to Moscow, the left flank, is five hundred and fifty
miles; from Riga to Brest, the base, is three hundred and seventy-five
miles; from Brest to Moscow, the right flank, is six hundred and fifty
miles; the perpendicular from Moscow to the base, which was the
shortest line of retreat, is therefore about five hundred and
seventy-five miles. These distances are all enormous; on the left were
only forty-two thousand men, on the right, about thirty-four thousand;
along the line, forty-two thousand. The diagram, if drawn, will
display all the peculiarities of Napoleonic formation in mass,
abstractly considered, but it will likewise display the fact that with
the highest and most perfect army organization then known, it would
have been well-nigh impossible to work the combination. Neither of the
monstrous flanks could be held by the comparatively scanty forces
available; the line of operation was equally weak. What safety was
there for the army in retreat? None.

There will never be complete agreement as to the causes of Napoleon's
disaster in Russia. A comparison of the relative values of
mass-formation, tactics, and organization in modern warfare, which
uses railroads and telegraphs, with the distances practicable in
present-day operations, must nevertheless reveal the chief cause--that
the Napoleonic organization had not kept pace with the development of
Napoleonic strategy. The emperor had overweighted the general, the
former having soared into an ether which would not sustain the
pinions of the latter. The well-used plea of an "act of God" will not
stand. The