skill as an engineer, but he was not a
man of commanding abilities. Lord Castlereagh rather flippantly called
him a foolish mathematician. Once, having quarrelled with his former
comrade Fouche and having been condemned to banishment, he had this
conversation with him: "Where am I to go, traitor?" "Wherever you
like, idiot." As an austere republican he was out of favour during
the empire; but his defence of Antwerp is a bright spot in the decline
of Napoleon. He became Minister of the Interior on the return from
Elba, and his advice might have changed the history of the world. For
he wished the emperor to fall upon the English before they could
concentrate, and then to fight the Prussians at his leisure. One
night, during a rubber of whist, the tears that ran down his cheek
betrayed the news from Waterloo.

Carnot owed his success to two things--arbitrary control over
promotion, and the cheapness of French lives. He could sacrifice as
many men as he required to carry a point. An Austrian on the Sambre,
1,000 miles from home, was hard to replace. Any number of Frenchmen
were within easy reach. Colonel Mack observed that whenever a
combatant fell, France lost a man, but Austria lost a soldier. La
Vendee had shown what could be done by men without organisation or the
power of manoeuvring, by constant activity, exposure, and courage.
Carnot taught his men to win by a rush many times repeated, and not to
count their dead. The inferior commanders were quickly weeded out,
sometimes with help from the executioner, and the ablest men were
brought to the front. The chief army of all, the army of Sambre et
Meuse, was commanded by Kleber, Moreau, Reynier, Marceau, and Ney.
Better still, on the Rhine were Hoche, Desaix, and St. Cyr. Best of
all, in the Apennines, the French were led by Bonaparte and Massena.

All these armaments had scarcely begun when the victory of Neerwinden
and the flight of Dumouriez brought the Austrians up to the Belgian
frontier. Carnot was not discovered, the better men had not risen to
command, the levy _en masse_ had not been thought of. The French could
do nothing in the field while the Prince of Coburg, supported by the
Dutch, and by an Anglo-Hanoverian army under the Duke of York, sat
down before the fortresses. By the end of July Conde and Valenciennes
had fallen, and the road to Paris was open to the victors. They might
have reached the capital in overwhelming force by the middle of
August. But th