s with the
late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had
never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he
was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly
with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one
occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our
side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly
showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, and all else was
overlooked in admiration of the skill and the audacity with which he
then had done his evil work. So it was with Benningsen, and with more
justice. The man who had bearded Napoleon but a few months after Jena,
and not much more than a year after Austerlitz, and who had fought an
even battle with him, in which fifty thousand men fell, must have had
some high moral qualities that entitled him to respect; and he continued
to be much talked of until greater and more fruitful campaigns had
obscured his deeds. The pluck which he had exhibited tended to keep
alive the spirit of European resistance to Napoleon, as it showed that
the conqueror had only to be firmly met to be made to fight hardly for
victory; and that was much, in view of the rapidity with which Napoleon
had beaten both Austria and Russia in 1805, and Prussia in 1806.
Benningsen completed his sixty-second year two days after the Battle of
Eylau. He was employed in 1812, '13, '14, but not in the first line, and
his name is not of much mention in the histories of those eventful
years.

Prince Kutusoff, though a good soldier in the Turkish and Polish wars,
did not have a command against the French until he had completed his
sixtieth year, in 1805, when he led a Russian army to the aid of
Austria. He checked the advance of the French after Ulm, and was in
nominal command of the Allies at Austerlitz; but that battle was really
fought in accordance with the plans of General Weyrother, for which
Kutusoff had a profound contempt. If thorough beating could make good
soldiers of men, the vanquished at Austerlitz ought to have become the
superiors of the victors. In 1812, when the Russians had become weary of
that sound policy which was drawing Napoleon to destruction, Kutusoff
assumed command of their army, and fought the Battle of Borodino, which
was a defeat in name, but a victory in its consequences, to the invaded
party. His conduct while the French were at Moscow had the effe