h its iron rings, and the names of the Lollards
written on the walls, is not to be touched.

[Page Head: CONVERSATION WITH MARSHAL MARMONT.]

_At night._--Went to Lady Glengall's to meet Marmont. He likes
talking of his adventures, but he had done his Paris talk before
I got there; however, he said a great deal about old campaigning
and Buonaparte, which, as well as I recollect, I will put down.

As to the battle of Salamanca, he remarked that, without meaning
to detract from the glory of the English arms, he was inferior in
force there; our army was provided with everything, well paid,
and the country favourable, his 'denuee de tout,' without pay, in
a hostile country; that all his provisions came from a great
distance and under great escorts, and his communications were
kept up in the same way. Of Russia, he said that Buonaparte's
army was destroyed by the time he got to Moscow, destroyed by
famine; that there were two ways of making war, by slow degrees
with magazines, or by rapid movements and reaching places where
abundant means of supply and reorganisation were to be found, as
he had done at Vienna and elsewhere, but in Russia supplies were
not to be had. Napoleon had, however, pushed on with the same
rapidity and destroyed his army. Marshal Davoust (I think, but am
not sure) had a _corps d'armee_ of 80,000 men and reached Moscow
with 15,000; the cavalry were 50,000 sabres, at Moscow they were
6,000. Somebody asked him if Napoleon's generals had not
dissuaded him from going to Russia. Marmont said no; they liked
it; but Napoleon ought to have stopped at Smolensk, made Poland
independent, and levied 50,000 Cossacks, the Polish Cossacks
being better than the Russian, who would have kept all his
communications clear, and allowed the French army to repose, and
then he would have done in two campaigns what he wished to
accomplish in one; instead of which he never would deal with
Poland liberally, but held back with ulterior views, and never
got the Poles cordially with him. Of the campaign of 1813 he said
that it was ill conducted by Napoleon and full of faults; his
creation of the army was wonderful, and the battle of Dresden
would have been a great movement if he had not suddenly abandoned
Vandamme after pushing him on to cut off the retreat of the
Allies. It was an immense fault to leave all the garrisons in the
Prussian and Saxon fortresses. The campaign of 1814 was one of
his most brilliant. He (Marmont) comm