the Niemen-and, while Napoleon is fighting his way through Lithuania and Old Russia towards Moscow, Wellington wins the battle of Salamanca, occupies Valladolid, expels King Joseph from his capital, and enters Madrid.

Of the battle of Salamanca, complete and important as it has been always thought, M. Maurel enhances the collateral influence to a height that will probably be new to most of our readers— and to our author's statements we can, we think, add something not less interesting:

'This was no longer one of those battles which the Bulletin could venture to win on paper, after the General had lost it in the field. It was a fatal day-the army received a mortal wound-there was no ambiguous Te Deum to be sung-and the French army was forced to seek refuge and reinforcement on the frontier of France.'-p. 79.

We find in the private record before us the following memorandum of the Duke's own opinion of his battles :—

'D. of W.—I look upon Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo as my three best battles-that is, those that had the greatest permanent consequences. Salamanca relieved the whole south of Spain at oncechanged the character of the war there, and was felt even in Russia: Vittoria freed the Peninsula altogether, broke up the armistice at Dresden, and so led to Leipzic and the deliverance of Europe : and Waterloo did more than any battle I know of towards-what ought to be the object of all battles-the peace of the world.

'Did you ever talk to Marmont about Salamanca ?

'D. of W.-Why it was a delicate subject to allude to: he once brought it on the tapis, but all I said was that I had perceived very early that he was wounded.

That was a compliment. Did he seem to take it so?

'D. of W.-Oh yes! and it was true enough. I did not say what was equally true, that he gave me the opening. I did not intend to fight unless he should give me an advantage. He wished to cut me off; I saw that in attempting to do this he was spreading himself over more ground than he could defend, and I resolved at once to attack him, and succeeded so quickly that one of the French officers told me, "Monsieur, vous avez battu quarante mille hommes en quarante minutes." Marmont was a good officer and, notwithstanding all his ill-luck, both a clever and a worthy man.'-MS. Notes.

In the synopsis that M. Maurel makes of the two distant, but not unconnected campaigns of Spain and Russia, he quotes (p. 80) Kutusof's proclamation to his army (18th October), after the French had begun their retreat:

"The French part in the campaign is over, ours is about to begin. The hand of God is falling heavy on Napoleon. Madrid is taken !" He tells us also that when, previously to this, the Russian generals determined to accept battle on the heights of Borodino, 'they

they had heard that the French had lost a great battle-in Spain.' It certainly is possible that, as M. Maurel seems to think, the Russian generals might have heard of the battle of Salamanca (22nd July) before they resolved (about the beginning of September) to make their final stand at Borodino; and the allusion to its having been felt in Russia' made by the Duke in the conversation last quoted seems to imply his belief that it had; but, extraordinary as it may seem, it is certain that Buona¬ parte had not heard of it so soon; and we think it more probable that the Russians had only heard of the minor successes which preceded Salamanca. However that may be, the details of this question, when closely examined, throw a new and unexpected light on a very remarkable point of Buonaparte's history. Though all the writers on the Russian campaign mention the separate circumstances that compose the case we are about to produce, no one that we have yet seen has combined them to their logical results, and it seems strange enough that it should be left to us at this time of day to arrive at a conclusion, the premises of which are to be found in M. de Segur's celebrated work, and which all the other evidence substantiates in its separate parts. The following is the substance of M. de Segur's narrativewhich we request our readers to follow attentively-it may seem a long way round, but it will bring us back to Salamanca again :On the morning before the battle of Borodino (6th Sept. 1812), and in sight of the Russian position, the Emperor wrote one of his most striking and celebrated proclamations :

"Soldiers!--Here is the battle you have so long desired. Henceforth the victory depends on yourselves. It is necessary to us. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters, and a speedy return to France. Be what you were at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, at Smolensko; let the latest posterity cite your conduct on this day, and let it be said of each of you-He was at that great battle under the walls of Moscow!"

This last burst of military eloquence forcibly reminds us of that which Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Henry V. on the morning of Agincourt. If ever Buonaparte read a translation of any of Shakspeare's plays, it would probably be Henry V.

Just after the Emperor had dictated this spirited and inspiring appeal, another circumstance occurred that looked like a good augury, and increased his satisfaction. About nine o'clock A.M. arrived from Paris M. Bausset, Préfet du Palais Impérial, bringing with him a picture of the King of Rome by Gerard. Napoleon was delighted; he had it placed in front of his tent, and invited his generals and the veterans of his Garde to partake of his exhilaration. There the picture remained all day, and at the sight of the homage paid to it by his vieilles moustaches (says Constant,

Constant, his valet-de-chambre) the Emperor's countenance expressed that expansive joy of a father, who knew that next to himself his son had no better friends than these old partners of his toils and his fame.'-(Mém. Const. v. 60.)

I found the Emperor, (says M. de Bausset in his Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 77), in perfect health in mind and body, the same as I had ever known him, and not in the least incommoded by the excessive fatigues of such a rapid and complicated war.'

But this remarkable good humour, good health, and brilliant hope, were soon, and most unaccountably, to vanish. By bedtime Buonaparte had become exceedingly uneasy. M. de Segur, who dwells on all these details, thought (or, we believe, affected to think) that his anxiety was, lest the Russians should retire. without fighting, and should thus prolong a crisis very unpopular in his army-but this motive, the only one assigned, could hardly be the real one, for the Russians could not retreat without abandoning Moscow, which was Buonaparte's ultimate object, and where he would have found, without risk or delay (Fain, ii. 38), the abundant winter quarters' of which his army was so much in need. He goes to bed, but cannot sleep; he frequently gets up he gives utterance to the most opposite apprehensionshe calls his attendants several times to inquire if the enemy are still where they had been. At one time he seems to fear that they have retreated; then he expresses a contrary fear that his own soldiers are so weak and extenuated that they will not be able to resist so long and terrible a struggle.' 'In this danger he thinks his Gurde his only resource (unique ressource). Marshal Bessières, who commands it and enjoys his special confidence, is called up several times to answer, whether the Garde wanted anything?" Then he orders that an immediate distribution in the middle of the night should be made to each man of the Garde of three days' provisions, to be taken out of his own private stores; and so morbidly anxious was he about all this, that, lest he should not be exactly obeyed, he again got out of bed and went, undressed, to the outside of the tent to ask the sentinels whether they had received their quota of the provisions: when they said they had, he went to bed once more and tried to slumber. Hardly in bed he again calls for his aide-de-camp. Rapp* finds him sitting up, with his head resting on his hands. He talks

*Segur says Rapp, and so says Rapp himself in the Memoirs attributed to him, but Fain says that Auguste de Caulaincourt (who was killed next day) was the aide-de-camp. Fain tells us that he himself slept in the same tent, aud à côté of Caulaincourt, but, strange to say, he does not make the slightest allusion to Segur's details of the transactions of the night. Can it be doubted that he would have contradicted them if he could?-all he states that is at variance with them is the name of the aide-de-camp.

incoherently

6

incoherently of the vanity of glory,' 'of the horrors of war,' 'of the inconstancy of fortune, which,' he says, 'he begins to suffer'then he dwells on the critical situation in which he is placedsays it will be a great day-a terrible battle. He asks Rapp if he thinks it will be a victory. To be sure,' said Rapp, but bloody.' Then he and Rapp, as the aide-de-camp relates, drank punch-('fort léger,' says Constant)—and Buonaparte reverted to his former anxieties about the enemy's retreat:-being assured that the Russians were still there he appeared to tranquillize himself, and tried to get some sleep-but a violent fever, a dry cough, and a revolution in his whole system seemed to consume him, and the rest of the night was passed in vain attempts to quench the burning thirst which devoured him.'-(Segur, vol. i. p. 378 et seq.)

All this is like insanity; and his conduct next day during the great battle, in which he took little, or rather indeed, no part, was equally extraordinary. He was timid and irresolute-though urged by every one round to allow the Garde to advance-never would part with a man of it*—and he treated all who came near him with the utmost ill humour, and even insult. What could have caused such a bouleversement, such a 'revolution of the man's whole system,' at such a moment? M. de Segur suggests the fatigues of the previous campaign; but that solution the more intimate observation and positive evidence of the Préfet du Palais (who tells us that he had, from the moment of his arrival, resumed his personal attendance on the Emperor) absolutely contradicts; as do indeed all the peculiar traits which M. de Segur himself enumerates. What then had happened between the remarkable 'good health in mind and body and the expansive joy' of the afternoon, and the bed-time of that agitated night? A single factknown to no one at the time--now known to all-but by no one even to this day signalised as having any relation to the transaction-nay, which Segur mentions only incidentally, without appearing to attach to it the least importance! Late that

The excuses which Buonaparte subsequently made for the inaction of the Garde by the pens of Fain and Gourgaud are futile, and only prove that there was a mystery which he did not venture to explain. If the Garde,' said he to Gourgaud, had been weakened at the battle of Moscowa, the whole army (of which the Garde was, in our retreat, the noyau and the support) would have had great difficulty in recrossing the Niemen,-Gourgaud, p. 244.

Of the many reasons that prove that this was an after-thought, one will satisfy our readers, namely, that it leaves totally unexplained, and inexplicable, all the transactions of the preceding night, and especially the sudden distribution of the three days' provision made to the Garde in the middle of the night preceding the battle from which he expected, when he wrote his proclamation, such a triumphant conclusion of the campaign. The battle itself, we admit, turned out to be of so undecided a complexion that we should not be surprised, however inconsistent it might seem with Buonaparte's general practice, at his having hesitated to risk his last resource. But this could have had no influence on the strange proceeding of the night before.

same

same evening the Emperor received, by a special courier, the news of

THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA!'

This sufficiently accounts-and nothing else can-for the impatience, the vexation, the nervous ill-humour, the change which came over the spirit-not of his dream-but of his sleepless agitation. It does not, however, at first sight, explain the more extraordinary events of the night. No indisposition, no fever short of delirium, could have produced such a moral bouleversement-the distribution at one o'clock in the morning of three days' provisions to the Garde-the calling up several times in the night on the eve of such a battle Marshal Bessières, only to inquire after the comforts of 6000 men out of the 130,000 who were bivouacked around him-the affected fear, betraying the real hope, that the enemy should have retired, and the physical and moral dejection and sinister forebodings that ensued when he found that they had not-and then the irresolute and timid conduct next day, and the fact that in that tremendous and nearly balanced battle he took little or no part, while the Garde -about which he seemed raving all night-stood in the rear, laden with three days' provisions, and never fired nor received a shot! How is all this to be accounted for? Still, as far as we can discover, only by the news from Spain. The single solution which reconciles all these strange, and some of them apparently contradictory, circumstances, seems to be, that he himself had resolved on a precipitate retreat if the Russians, by going off in the night, had afforded him a reasonable pretence for abandoning the further advance on Moscow, which he knew would be approved by all his officers and confidants. This he had hitherto resisted, but the news of the evening from Salamanca had shaken him. We cannot guess at the detail of the conflicting projects that were passing through that distracted mind. One thing only is certain —that the 'six thousand men of the Garde wanting nothing, and with three days' provisions' (that is, as much as the men could carry), were to be, what he himself called them that night, his 'unique ressource.' Was it that they should be fresh and intact, to cover the general retreat, if that should be resolved on? oras we, on a review of the whole case, incline to believe-did he reckon on them to protect his own personal escape? This latter idea would seem hardly credible, if, in addition to the circumstances related by Segur, we had not the evidence of three subsequent escapes de sa personne from difficulties of the same kind

a month later, when he fled, with a single attendant, from the débris of this army-at Leipsic, the year after, when he again made a personal flight, and blew up a bridge and sacrificed 20,000 men to secure it; and finally at Waterloo, when

he