ier,
Joubert loved too well to love wisely. Bonaparte, who never was young,
had received the command of the Army of Italy as the portion of the
ex-mistress of Barras, who was seven years his senior, and, being a
matter-of-fact man, he reduced his _lune de miel_ to three days, and
posted off to his work. He knew the value of time in those days, and not
Cleopatra herself could have kept him from his men. Joubert, more of a
man, but an inferior soldier, took his honeymoon in full measure,
passing a month with his bride; and the loss of that month, if so sweet
a thirty days could be called a loss, ruined him, and perhaps prevented
him from becoming Emperor of the French. The enemy received
reinforcements while he was so lovingly employed, and when he at length
arrived on the scene of action he found that the Allies had obtained
mastery of the situation. It was no longer in the power of the French to
say whether they would fight or not. They had to give battle at Novi,
where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority
over the _heros de roman_ who had posted from Paris to retrieve the
fortune of France, and to make his own. When he left Paris, he said to
his wife, "You will see me again, dead or victorious,"--and dead he was,
in less than a month. He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of
August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth
year. Moreau took the command, but failed to turn the tide of disaster.
The French are unanimous in ascribing their defeat to Joubert's delay at
Paris, and it is certain that the enemy did take Alexandria and Mantua
during that month's delay, and thus were enabled to add the besieging
forces to their main army, so that Joubert was about to retreat to the
Apennines, and to assume a defensive position, when Suvaroff forced him
to accept battle. But something should be allowed for the genius of the
Russian general, who was one of the great master-spirits of war, and who
seldom fought without being completely victorious. He had mostly been
employed against the Turks, whose military reputation was then at the
lowest, or the Poles, who were too divided and depressed to do
themselves and their cause justice, and therefore his character as a
soldier did not stand so high as that of more than one man who was his
inferior; but when, in his seventieth year, he took command in Italy,
there to encounter soldiers who had beaten the armies of almost all
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