uered without a combat by their weakness alone;
by the memory of our victories; by the remorse which dictates the
restitution of that Lithuania, which they have acquired neither by peace
nor war, but solely by treachery."

To these motives of the stay, perhaps too protracted, which Napoleon
made at Wilna, those who were nearest to his person have added another.
They remarked to each other, "that a genius so vast as his, and always
increasing in activity and audacity, was not now seconded as it had been
formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at finding their
chief no longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they
remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to
corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of a
premature debility of system."

Some of them attributed this to his frequent use of the bath. They were
ignorant, that, far from being a habit of luxury, this had become to him
an indispensable relief from a bodily ailment of a serious and alarming
character[17], which his policy carefully concealed, in order not to
excite cruel expectations in his adversaries.

[Footnote 17: The _dysuria_, or retention of urine.]

Such is the inevitable and unhappy influence of the most trivial causes
over the destiny of nations. It will be shortly seen, when the
profoundest combinations, which ought to have secured the success of the
boldest, and perhaps the most useful enterprise in a European point of
view, come to be developed;--how, at the decisive moment, on the plains
of the Moskwa, nature paralysed the genius, and the man was wanting to
the hero. The numerous battalions of Russia could not have defended her;
a stormy day, a sudden attack of fever, were her salvation.

It will be only just and proper to revert to this observation, when, in
examining the picture which I shall be forced to trace of the battle of
the Moskwa, I shall be found repeating all the complaints, and even the
reproaches, which an unusual inactivity and languor extorted from the
most devoted friends and constant admirers of this great man. Most of
them, as well as those who have subsequently given an account of the
battle, were unaware of the bodily sufferings of a chief, who, in the
midst of his depression, exerted himself to conceal their cause. That
which was eminently a misfortune, these narrators have designated as a
fault.

Besides, at 800 leagues' distance from one's