shing great ends by means beyond the invention of
others, he was a genius. Every act of his career was a superb
innovation. As a soldier, he changed the whole art of war. Instead of
making campaigns of tactics, he made campaigns of triumphs. He wasted no
time in besieging towns; he rushed on the capital. He made no wars of
detachments, but threw a colossal force across the frontier, held its
mass together, and fought pitched battles day after day, until he
trampled down all resistance by the mere weight of a phalanx of 250,000
men. Thus, in 1800, at Marengo, he reconquered Italy in twelve hours. In
1805, he broke down Austria in a three months' war. In 1806, he crushed
the Prussian army in four-and-twenty hours, and walked over the
monarchy. In 1807, he drove the Russians out of Germany, fought the two
desperate battles of Eylau and Friedland, and conquered that treaty of
Tilsit, by which he gave the Emperor Alexander a shadow of empire in
Asia, in exchange for the substance of universal empire in Europe.

But his time was come. His wars had been wholly selfish. To aggrandise
his own name, he had covered Europe with blood. To place _himself_ at
the head of earthly power, he had broken faith with Turkey, with Russia,
with Germany, and with Spain. The blood, the spoil, and the misery of
millions were upon his head. His personal crimes concentrated the
vengeance of mankind upon his diadem. For the last three years of his
political and military existence, he seems to have lain under an actual
spell. Nothing but the judicial clouding of his intellect can account
for the precipitate infirmities of his judgment. His march to Russia, as
we have already observed, was a gigantic absurdity in the eyes of all
Europe--his delay at Moscow was a gigantic absurdity in the eyes of
every subaltern in his army. But his campaigns in France were only a
continuation of those absurdities. With fifty thousand men he was to
conquer three hundred thousand, backed by an actual million ready to
rush into the province of France. How was resistance possible? Treaty
was his only hope: yet he attempted to resist, and refused to treat. He
was beaten up to the walls of Paris. The Allies then offered him France:
he still fought, and only affected to negociate. At length the long
infatuation was consummated in his march _from_ Paris; the Allies
marched _to_ Paris; and Napoleon was instantly deposed, outlawed, and
undone.

Even his second great experiment