er told
me that Smolensk was taken and Moscow in the greatest danger.
Discouragement immediately seized me. I fancied that I already saw a
repetition of the deplorable history of the Austrian and Prussian
treaties of peace, the result of the conquest of their capitals.
This was the third time the same game had been played, and it might
again succeed. I did not perceive the public spirit; the apparent
inconstancy of the impressions of the Russians prevented me from
observing it. Despondency had frozen all minds, and I was ignorant,
that with these men of vehement impressions, this despondency is the
forerunner of a dreadful awakening. In the same way, you remark in
the common people, an inconceivable idleness up to the very moment
when their activity is roused; then it knows no obstacle, dreads no
danger, and seems to triumph equally over the elements and men.

I had understood that the internal administration, that of war as
well as of justice, frequently fell into the most venal hands, and
that by the dilapidations which the subaltern agents allowed
themselves, it was impossible to form any just idea either of the
number of troops, or of the measures taken to provision them; for
lying and theft are inseparable, and in a country of such recent
civilization the intermediate class have neither the simplicity of
the peasantry, nor the grandeur of the boyars; and no public opinion
yet exists to keep in check this third class, whose existence is so
recent, and which has lost the naivete of popular faith without
having acquired the point of honor. A display of jealous feeling was
also remarked between the military commanders. It is in the very
nature of a despotic government to create, even in spite of itself,
jealousy in those who surround it: the will of one man being able to
change entirely the fortune of every individual, fear and hope have
too much scope not to be constantly agitating this jealousy, which
is also very much excited by another feeling, the hatred of
foreigners. The general who commanded the Russian army, General
Barclay de Tolly, although born on the territories of the empire,
was not of the pure Sclavonian race, and that was enough to make him
be considered incapable of leading the Russians to victory: he had,
besides, turned his distinguished talents towards systems of
encampment, positions, and manoeuvres, while the military art, which
best suits the Russians, is attack. To make them fall back, even
f