y showing him a statement of the
immense magazines collected at Wilna, he exclaimed, "that he gave him
fresh life! that he would give him an order to transmit to Murat and
Berthier to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the
army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the
retreat less deplorably."

The subsequent part of Napoleon's journey was effected without
molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkowiski,
where he exchanged his carriage for a sledge, stopped during the 10th at
Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, to grant
them some subsidies, and to promise them he would speedily return at the
head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly crossed
Silesia, visited Dresden, and its monarch, passed through Hanau, Mentz,
and finally got to Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the
19th of December, two days after the appearance of his twenty-ninth
bulletin.

From Malo-Yaroslawetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no
more than the general of a dying and disbanded army. From Smorgoni to
the Rhine, he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile
country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the
conqueror of Europe. A last breeze of the wind of prosperity once more
swelled his sails.

Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his
departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in
it. The army had now only to flee, the road was open, and the Russian
frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a
reinforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great
city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, left to themselves,
fancied themselves able to regulate the flight. But in the midst of the
extreme disorder, it required a colossus for a rallying point, and he
had just disappeared. In the great chasm which he left, Murat was
scarcely perceptible.

It was then too clearly seen that a great man is not replaced, either
because the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another,
or that having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered every thing
himself, he had only formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but
no commanders.

The very first night, a general refused to obey. The marshal who
commanded the rear-guard was almost the only one who returned to the
royal head-quarters. Three thousand