o is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which
were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he and Wittgenstein
unloaded all the blame on Admiral Tchitchagoff, and contemporary
opinion sustained them. "Had it not been for the admiral," said the
commander-in-chief, replying to a toast proposed to the conqueror of
Napoleon, "the plain gentleman of Pskoff (namely, himself) could have
said: Europe breathes free again." This opinion is one which history
must reject as utterly false.

When the soldiers heard that their Emperor had departed there was an
almost universal outburst of frenzied wrath. "He flies," they
shrieked, "as in Egypt! He abandons us after he has sacrificed us!" As
has been remarked, this despair was natural, but the accusation was
unjust. Napoleon's abandonment of the grand army at Smorgoni was not a
desertion like the secret flight from Egypt; for now he was chief and
not subordinate, his own judgment was the court of final appeal.
Moreover, it was necessary for the very existence of the army that its
general should once more be emperor, the head of the state. Traveling
incognito, he passed through Vilna, Warsaw, and Dresden. Maret was
left in charge of matters in Lithuania, de Pradt was carefully
instructed how to treat the Poles, and on December fourteenth, at
Dresden, despatches were written to both Francis and Frederick William
in order to assure their continued adhesion. The King of Saxony was
firmly bound in the fetters of a personal fascination never entirely
dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by
disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped
by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of
what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when
compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the
Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a
settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits;
it was only too clear that the constitution, codes, and admirable
administrative system were operative, not from political habit, but
by personal impulsion. This was the real sore; the conspiracy itself
was a grotesque affair, the work of a brain-sick enthusiast, lightly
formed and easily crushed.

Malet was a fiery nobleman who, having run the gamut between royalist
and radical, had turned conspirator, having, in 1800, plotted to seize
the First Consul on