is the complement of what is passing here. I cannot be everywhere; but I
must go back to Paris; my presence there is indispensable to reanimate
public opinion. I must have men and money. Great successes and great
victories will repair all. I must set off." Such were the motives which
induced the Emperor to leave his army. It is not without indignation
that I have heard his precipitate departure attributed to personal
cowardice. He was a stranger to such feelings, and was never more happy
than on the field of battle. I can readily conceive that he was much
alarmed on hearing of Mallet's enterprise. The remarks which he made to
Rapp were those which he knew would be made by the public, and he well
knew that the affair was calculated to banish those illusions of power
and stability with which he endeavoured to surround his government.

On leaving Moscow Napoleon consigned the wrecks of his army to the care
of his most distinguished generals to Murat who had so ably commanded the
cavalry, but who abandoned the army to return to Naples; and to Ney, the
hero, rather than the Prince of the Moskowa, whose name will be immortal
in the annals of glory, as his death will be eternal in the annals of
party revenge. Amidst the general disorder Eugene, more than any other
chief, maintained a sort of discipline among the Italians; and it was
remarked that the troops of the south engaged in the fatal campaign of
Moscow had endured the rigour of the cold better than those troops who
were natives of less genial climates.

Napoleon's return from Moscow was not like his returns from the campaigns
of Vienna and Tilsit when he came back crowned with laurels, and bringing
peace as the reward of his triumphs. It was remarked that Napoleon's
first great disaster followed the first enterprise he undertook after his
marriage with Maria Louisa. This tended to confirm the popular belief
that the presence of Josephine was favourable to his fortune; and
superstitious as he sometimes was, I will not venture to affirm that he
himself did not adopt this ides. He now threw off even the semblance of
legality in the measures of his government: he assumed arbitrary power,
under the impression that the critical circumstances in which he was
placed would excuse everything. But, however inexplicable were the means
to which the Emperor resorted to procure resources, it is but just to
acknowledge that they were the consequence of his system of government,
and t