representatives of the
latter certainly did make their way brilliantly and rapidly. The school
was a good one, and the scholars were apt to learn, and did credit to
their masters. They carried the tricolor over Europe and into Egypt, and
saw it flying over the capital of almost every member of those
coalitions which had purposed its degradation at Paris. It was the flag
to which men bowed at Madrid and Seville, at Milan and Rome, at Paris
and at the Hague, at Warsaw and Wilna, at Dantzie and in Dalmatia, at
the same time that it was fast approaching Moscow; and it was thought
of with as much fear as hatred at Vienna and Berlin. No wonder that the
world forgot or overlooked the earlier and fewer triumphs of the first
Republican commanders, when dazzled by the glories that shone from
Arcola, the Pyramids, Zuerich, Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz,
Jena, Eckmuehl, Wagram, Borodino, Luetzen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But those
young generals of the Republic and the Empire were sometimes found
unequal to the work of contending against the old generals of the
Coalitionists. Suvaroff was in his seventieth year when he defeated
Macdonald at the Battle of the Trebbia, the Frenchman being but
thirty-four; and a few months later he defeated Joubert, who was thirty,
at Novi. Joubert was one of Bonaparte's generals in his first Italian
wars, and was so conspicuous and popular that he had been selected to
command the Army of Italy by the moderate reactionists, in the hope that
he might there win such glory as should enable him to play the part
which Bonaparte played but a few months later,--Bonaparte being then in
the East, with the English fleets between him and France, so that he was
considered a lost man. "The striking similarity of situation between
Joubert and Bonaparte," says Madame d'Abrantes, "is most remarkable.
They were of equal age, and both, in their early career, suffered a sort
of disgrace; they were finally appointed to command, first, the
seventeenth military division, and afterward the Army of Italy. There is
in all this a curious parity of events; but death soon ended the career
of one of the young heroes. That which ought to have constituted the
happiness of his life was the cause of Joubert's death,--his marriage.
But how could he refrain from loving the woman he espoused? Who can
have forgotten Zaphirine de Montholon, her enchanting grace, her playful
wit, her good humor, and her beauty?" Like another famous sold