n
back on France. But Napoleon comes back among us with fresh troops;
conscripts they were, and famous conscripts too; he had put some
thorough notions of discipline into them--the whelps were good to set
their teeth in anybody. He had a bourgeois guard of honor too, and fine
troops they were! They melted away like butter on a gridiron. We may
put a bold front on it, but everything is against us, although the army
still performs prodigies of valor. Whole nations fought against nations
in tremendous battles, at Dresden, Lutzen, and Bautzen, and then it was
that France showed extraordinary heroism, for you must all of you bear
in mind that in those times a stout grenadier only lasted six months.

"We always won the day, but the English were always on our track,
putting nonsense into other nations' heads, and stirring them up to
revolt. In short, we cleared a way through all these mobs of nations;
for wherever the Emperor appeared, we made a passage for him; for on the
land as on the sea, whenever he said, 'I wish to go forward,' we made
the way.

"There comes a final end to it at last. We are back in France; and in
spite of the bitter weather, it did one's heart good to breathe one's
native air again, it set up many a poor fellow; and as for me, it put
new life into me, I can tell you. But it was a question all at once of
defending France, our fair land of France. All Europe was up in arms
against us; they took it in bad part that we had tried to keep the
Russians in order by driving them back within their own borders, so
that they should not gobble us up, for those Northern folk have a strong
liking for eating up the men of the South, it is a habit they have; I
have heard the same thing of them from several generals.

"So the Emperor finds his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had
made crowned kings, and the rabble of princes to whom he had given back
their thrones, were all against him. Even Frenchmen and allies in
our own ranks turned against us, by orders from high quarters, as at
Leipsic. Common soldiers would hardly be capable of such abominations;
yet these princes, as they called themselves, broke their words three
times a day! The next thing they do is to invade France. Wherever our
Emperor shows his lion's face, the enemy beats a retreat; he worked
more miracles for the defence of France than he had ever wrought in the
conquest of Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia; he has a mind to
bury every fo