reachery. For in the end it was
treachery that had undone him and France. Still, it may be that even
had Marmont and Mortier remained loyal the end would have been the same.

The odds were too heavy, in fine. The Emperor did not realize their
preponderance until it was too late. If he had assembled every
soldier, abandoning everything else but the defense of France, and if
he had shown with such an army as he could have gathered under those
conditions the same spirit of generalship which he had exhibited in
that marvelous campaign against Bluecher, he might have saved France,
his throne, his wife, his little son, his prestige, everything. As it
was, he lost all. But not without fighting. Stubborn, determined,
magnificently defiant he had been to the last.

Marteau had often thrilled to the recollection during the long hours he
spent in captivity in Austria, and even in the delirium and fever of
his long and wasting illness, begot of the foul prison, he had
remembered it. In all the hard fighting and hard marching of those
mournful if splendid days the young man had faithfully and well borne
his important if humble part. There was a great dearth of officers,
staff officers as well as the others. He had been very near to the
Emperor during those last days.

He remembered the smashing attack upon the van of the allies at
Montereau. He could feel once more the thrill of the army, as the
circumspect Schwarzenberg stopped his advance, retired, concentrated
his columns. He remembered the long, swift march back across the
country, after further demonstrations to keep Schwarzenberg in his
cautious mood, against the rear of the reorganized and advancing army
of Bluecher; the desperate, bloody, fruitless battles of Laon and
Craonne, rendered necessary by treachery.

He could recall again the furious rage of Napoleon, the almost despair
that filled the Emperor's heart, when the news came of the cowardly
surrender of the fort at Soissons by its incapable commandant, which
rendered useless Napoleon's cunning plans, and all the hard marching
and harder fighting of his heroic soldiery.

He recalled the escape of hard-pressed Bluecher again, the return of the
French to face the overwhelming main army of the allies, slowly but
surely moving toward its goal whenever the withdrawal of the Emperor
left it free to advance, the detachment of Marmont and Mortier to
defend Paris, the fierce two-day battle at Arcis-sur-Aube, the