eon that this mighty resolution was executed. It was no longer,
therefore, a war of kings that was to be prosecuted, but a war of class,
a war of party, a war of religion, a national war, a combination of all
sorts of war.

The emperor then first perceived the enormous magnitude of his
enterprise; the farther he advanced, the more it became magnified. So
long as he only encountered kings, to him, who was greater than all of
them, their defeats were but sport; but the kings being conquered, he
had now to do with people; and it was another Spain, but remote, barren,
infinite, that he had found at the opposite extremity of Europe. He was
daunted, hesitated, and paused.

At Witepsk, whatever resolution he might have taken, he wanted Smolensk,
and till he should be at Smolensk, he seemed to have deferred coming to
any determination. For this reason he was again seized with the same
perplexity: it was now more embarrassing, as the flames, the prevalent
epidemic, and the victims which surrounded him, had aggravated every
thing; a fever of hesitation attacked him; his eyes turned towards Kief,
Petersburgh, and Moscow.

At Kief he should envelop Tchitchakof and his army; he should rid the
right flank and the rear of the grand army, of annoyance; he should
cover the Polish provinces most productive of men, provisions, and
horses; while fortified cantonments at Mohilef, Smolensk, Witepsk,
Polotsk, Duenabourg, and Riga, would defend the rest. Behind this line,
and during the winter, he might raise and organize all ancient Poland,
and hurl it in the spring upon Russia, oppose nation to nation, and
render the war equal.

At Smolensk, however, he was at the point where the Petersburgh and
Moscow roads meet, 29 marches from the first of these capitals, and 15
from the other. In Petersburgh, the centre of the government, the knot
to which all the threads of the administration were united, the brain of
Russia, were her military and naval arsenals; in short, it was the only
point of communication between Russia and England, of which he should
possess himself. The victory of Polotsk, of which he had just received
intelligence, seemed to urge him in that direction. By marching in
concert with Saint-Cyr upon Petersburgh, he should envelop Wittgenstein,
and cause Riga to fall before Macdonald.

On the other hand, in Moscow, it was the nobility, as well as the
nation, that he should attack in its property, in its ancient honour;
the road