the way. They were followed by Ney with four
hundred, Wrede with two thousand, and finally by two or three thousand
stragglers. After a few half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to
organize this mob into the semblance of an army, Murat abandoned the
attempt and posted away to his kingdom of Naples--a course severely
censured by the Emperor. This was the closing scene of Napoleon's
great drama of invasion. His men and horses had succumbed to summer
heats as rapidly and extensively as to winter frosts; he had brought
ruin to his enterprise by miscalculating the proportions of inanimate
nature and human strategy, and by fatal indecision at critical moments
when the statesman's delay was the soldier's ruin. Russia, like Spain,
had the strength of low organisms; her vigor was not centralized in
one member, the destruction of which would be the destruction of the
whole; Moscow was not the Russian empire, as Berlin was the Prussian
kingdom.

Yet justice requires the consideration of certain undoubted facts.
Making all due allowance, it is true that the elements were Napoleon's
worst foe when once his retreat was fairly under way, and it was not
the least of Napoleon's magnificent achievements that after the
crossing of the Beresina there was still the framework of an army
which within a few months was again that marvelous instrument with
which the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were fought. This miracle was due
to the shortsightedness and timidity of the Russian generals.
Tchitchagoff is inexcusable both for the indifference he displayed
regarding the various points at which the Beresina might be crossed,
and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and
misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised
because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his
snail-like movements prevented any efficient cooeperation in the
general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which
left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these
two had any adequate conception of the losses suffered by the French,
and they permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders
to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter
disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the
main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he
saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history
as the man wh