d hoped to remedy in the last three weeks
before opening the campaign. The third element in a fatal triad was
the temper of his generals, which was restless and insubordinate
almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men: Berthier as chief
of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney, Bertrand,
Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in readiness
with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau preparing to
lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in Galicia--twelve
corps in all.

The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five
thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a
hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the
Emperor took command. Eugene had forty-seven thousand more.
Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his
enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had
believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day
originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was
already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. In colder phlegm
he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic as soon
as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as
were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he
could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only
seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the
moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were
struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength.
They had only a single advantage--excellent horses in abundance for
both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the
need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these were
two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great strategist had lost his
reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the artillery specialist must
have scorned the antiquated guns which now replaced the splendid
field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds and rivers whither he
had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With his high officers
sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his artillery hastily
collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete, and his prestige
waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily and exclaim, as he
did, "I shall conduct this war as General Bonaparte." This resolution
was sacredly kept.

The prem