Atlantic Monthly | Page 3

their deliverance had come; and then, with overwhelming might, all branches of the service, comprised in that magnificent reserve, swept like a whirlwind, driving before them horse and foot, artillery, equipage, and standards, all mingled in irremediable confusion.
With what freedom did our young hero comment on the campaign, speaking such names as Lannes and Ney, Murat and Massena, like household words! He did not, perhaps, state that the favorable result of things was entirely owing to his presence, but it might be inferred that it was well he threw in his sword when the fortunes of the Empire trembled in the balance.
Under such influences, and with the excitement produced by the marvellous success of the French armies, it is not singular that young men looked eagerly forward to a participation in the prodigies and splendors of their time,--that they should turn disdainfully from the paths of honest industry, and that everything which constitutes the true wealth and greatness of a state should have been despised or forgotten in the lurid and blood-stained glare of military glory, which cowered like an incubus on the breast of Europe. The battle-fields were beyond the frontiers of their own country; the calamities of war were too far distant to obtrude their disheartening features; and no lamentations mingled with the public rejoicings. Many a broken-hearted mother mourned in secret for her son lying in his bloody grave; but individual grief was disregarded in the madness which pervaded all classes, vain-glorious from repeated and uninterrupted success.
But the time had come when the storm was to pour in desolation over the fields of France, and the nations which had trembled at her power were to tender back to her the bitter cup of humiliation. The unaccustomed sound of hostile cannon broke in on the dreams of invincibility which had entranced the people, and deeds of violence and blood, which had been complacently regarded when the theatre of action was on foreign territory, seemed quite another thing when the scene was shifted to their own vineyards and villages.
The genius of Napoleon never exhibited such vast fertility of resources as when he battled for life and empire in his own dominions. Every foot of ground was wrested from him at an expense of life which thinned the innumerable hosts pressing onward to his destruction. He stood at bay against all Europe in arms; and so desperately did he contend against the vast odds opposed to him, and so rapidly did he move from one invading column to another, successively beating back division upon division, that his astonished foes, awed by his superhuman exertions, had wellnigh turned their faces to the Rhine in panic-stricken retreat. But the line of invasion was so widely extended that even his ubiquity could not compass it. His wonderful power of concentration was of little avail to him when the mere skeletons of regiments answered to his call, and, along his weakened line, the neglected gleanings left by the conscription, now hastily garnered in this last extremity, greeted him in the treble notes of childhood. The voices of the bearded men, which once hailed his presence, were hushed in death. They had shouted his name in triumph over Europe, and it had quivered on their lips when parched with the moral agony. Their bones were whitening the sands of Egypt, the harvests of Italy had long waved over them, their unnumbered graves lay thick in the German's Fatherland, and the floods of the Berezina were yet giving up their unburied dead. The remnant of that once invincible army did all that could be done; but there were limits to endurance, and exhaustion anticipated the hour of combat. Men fell dead in their ranks, untouched by shot or steel; and yet the survivors pressed on to take up the positions assigned by their leader, who seemed to be proof against either fatigue or despair. His last bold move, on which he staked his empire, was a splendid effort, but it failed him. It was the daring play of a desperate gamester, and nearly checkmated his opponents. But when, instead of pursuing him, they marched on Paris, he left his army to follow as it could, and hastened to anticipate his enemies. When about fifteen miles from Paris, he received news of the battle of Montmartre and the capitulation of the city. The post-house where he encountered this intelligence was within sight of the place where I passed my vacations. I often looked at it with interest, for it was there that the vision first flushed before him of his broken empire and the utter ruin which bade farewell to hope. He had become familiar with reverses. His veteran legions had perished in unequal strife with the elements, or melted away in the hot flame of conflict;