nadequate to the demand.
The bravest and the best are usually the first to fall; the boldest and
most venturesome the most liable to capture. Perhaps, if the Emperor
had broken up his guard and distributed the veterans among the raw
troops, the effect might have been better, but in that case he would
have destroyed his main reliance in his army. No, it was better to
keep the guard together at all hazards. It had already been drawn
heavily upon for officers for other corps.

War was popularly supposed to be a thing of dashing adventure, of
victory, and plunder. It had been all that before. Experience had
thrust them all unprepared face to face with the naked reality of
defeat, disease, weary marches over awful roads in freezing cold, in
drifting snow, or in sodden mire. They had no guns, they had little
food, thank God, there was some clothing, such as it was, but even the
best uniforms were not calculated to stand such strains as had been
imposed upon these.

Only the old guard, staunch, stern, splendid, indomitable, a
magnificent body of men, held the army together--they and the cavalry.
Murat, peerless horseman, was playing the traitor to save his wretched
Neapolitan throne. But Grouchy, Nansouty, Sebastiani and others
remained. Conditions were bad in the cavalry, but they were not so bad
as they were in the infantry. And Druot of the artillery also kept it
together in the retreat. Guns, cannon, were more precious almost than
men.

Now early that morning, while it was yet dark, they were called up from
their broken sleep to undertake what to them was another purposeless
march. Even the Eagles drooped in the hands of their bearers. The
soldiers did not know, they could not see. The great high roads that
led to Paris were being abandoned; they were plunging into unfathomable
morasses; they were being led through dark, gloomy, dreadful woods to
the northward. Where? For what purpose? The dumb, wrathful,
insubordinate, despairful army indeed moved at the will of its master,
but largely because it realized that it could not stay where it was,
and largely because it was better to move on and die than to lie down
and die. They were at least warmer on the march!

The spirit of the guard and of the subordinate officers, say from the
colonels down, was good enough, but the generals and the marshals were
sick of fighting. They had had enough of it. They had gained all that
they could gain in their world-w