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I will here mention as illustrations the celebrated battle of Leuthen in 1757, of which I have given an account in the history of Frederick's wars, and the famous days of Krasnoi, in the retreat from Moscow in 1812. The annexed figure explains the combination at Krasnoi. The line A A is Napoleon's line of retreat toward C. He took the position B B to cover his line.
It was not Napoleon's political influence, great as it was, that excited their hatred, but they dreaded the little remaining liberty that the French people possessed, and it was their combined efforts, supported, maintained, and cherished, by the wealth of the people of England, that drove the French nation to submit to the hard and cruel necessity of placing unlimited authority in his hands, and consequently preparing the way for a great tyranny, and compelling him to be a tyrant.
"Do you think," said he to M. Balasheff, "that I care a straw for these Polish jacobins?" And I have been really assured that there is in existence a letter, addressed several years since to M. de Romanzoff by one of Napoleon's ministers, in which it was proposed to strike out the name of Poland and the Poles from all European acts.
It has little value or meaning, except as it may possibly foreshadow the influence on Napoleon's imagination of England's boundless hospitality to political fugitives like Theodore and Paoli. Lieutenant Buonaparte remained in Paris until he succeeded in procuring permission to spend the next six months in Corsica, at his own charges.
As to the resemblance between the master of a hundred legions and "the dead but sceptred sovereign" of 1824, who ruled men's spirits from his urn, we will not stop to inquire; but it can be positively asserted that the mythical Napoleon, if any such creation there was, was the work of the true Napoleon's destroyers.
England refused, however, to recall specifically this blockade of 1806, for that would have been construed as a recognition of Napoleon's right to demand an abandonment of her "new principles of blockade;" but in fact as the British minister in Washington afterward acknowledged the recall of the order in council of 1807 would have annulled the order of blockade of 1806, which it had absorbed.
Tell him that if he wishes to reside in my States he shall be well received, though he brought desolation there. I shall always remember the friendship which united us. He shall have the island of Elba, or something else." After taking leave of the Emperor Alexander, on the 5th of April, Napoleon's Commissioners returned to Fontainebleau to render an account of their mission.
It's true!" replied the soldiers, each of whom had a duck, a chicken or a goose in his knapsack, an abuse which had to be tolerated, because, as I have told you, Napoleon's armies, once in the field, rarely received any rations, and had to live off the country as well as they could.
Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme de pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages, and aides-de-camp.
He himself said at the time, "It is contrary to the rights of man that any one people should be subject to another;" a canon on which his after history formed a lucid commentary. In concluding, and in celebrating the conclusion of his treaty, Napoleon's proud and fiery temperament twice shone out. Cobentzel had set down as the first article, "The Emperor recognises the French Republic."
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