ide campaigns, in fame, money, titles,
estates. They had everything to lose and nothing to win. They wanted
rest, an opportunity to enjoy. Some of them were devoted to the
Emperor, in fact, all of them were, but their own comfort and
self-interest bulked larger and larger before them. They saw nothing
but defeat at the end of their endeavors, and they wanted to negotiate
peace with such honor as could be had while they were still a force to
be reckoned with.

Their unwillingness and mutinous spirit, however, had not yet reached
its highest development. That came later, and brought treachery in its
train. The awful will of the Emperor still overruled them.
Wrathfully, insubordinately, protestingly, they still marched when he
gave the word.

The Emperor had been working with that furious concentration which he
alone of all men seemed to be able to bring about, and which was one of
the secrets of his power. Orders borne by couriers had streamed in all
directions over the roads. Napoleon was about to undertake the most
daring and marvelous campaign of his whole history. The stimulus of
despair, the certainty of ruin unless the advance of the allies could
be stayed, had at last awakened his dormant energies, filled his veins
with the fire of youth and spring.

With that comprehensive eye which made him the master of battlefields
and nations he had forseen everything. Soldiers were coming from
Spain. He had given instructions to magnify their number and their
strength. He shrewdly surmised that their appearance on the left flank
would cause the cautious Schwarzenberg to pause, to withdraw his
flankers, to mass to meet them. There would be a halt in the advance.
The allies still feared the Emperor. Although much of his prestige was
gone, they never made little of Napoleon. He intended to leave some of
the best troops to confront Schwarzenberg between Nogent and Montereau,
under Victor and Oudinot, hard fighters both, with instructions not to
engage in any decisive battle, not to allow themselves to be trapped
into that, but to stand on the defensive, to hold the River Seine, to
retreat foot by foot, if pressed, to take advantage of every cover, to
hold the enemy in check, to contest every foot of the way, to assume a
strength which they did not have.

He promised that so soon as he had fallen upon Bluecher he would send
the news and see that it got to Schwarzenberg and the allied monarchs
who were with him.