Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/465

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A SHORT HISTORY OF NAPOLEON I.
453

were not so extravagant as Napoleon, who complained of treason, and Gneisenau, who published that the French at Ligriy were 150,000 strong ; but they started that warm patriotic colouring against which General Chesney delivered the warning which Mr. Ropes observes more heartily than Mr. Seeley. Lord Anglesey averred that the issue had never been doubtful ; Lord Raglan believed that the English were outnumbered' by 20,000 men ; Wellington knew nothing of the Prussian attack on the right rear of Napoleon until about an hour before he advanced. We are invited to believe that Napoleon showed himself, on 16th June, "an indolent and inefficient general," but we are not told that he gave orders to turn the Prussian right, which would effectually have divided his "enemies and enabled him to overwhelm the Duke of Wellington. Those orders, everybody knows, were not obeyed. D'Erlon says : "Le maréchal Ney, étant au moment d'être forcé aux Quatre Bras, ne tint pas compte des ordres envoyés par l'empereur, et rappela à lui mon corps d'armée." Napoleon saw the consequences in all their gravity when, on the 17th, he said to D'Erlon, "On a perdu la France." It is true that his officers found fault with his conduct of the campaign, and Grouchy even ventured to say : "II a oublié l'art de la guerre." But this burst of criticism was no new thing. Besides the envy of Massena, the bitterness of Marmont, and Bernadotte’s audacious boast that he had won a great battle by disobeying orders, clear-sighted officers were never wanting who knew the limitations of his talent as accurately as the vices of his character. Campredon considered with dismay even the tactics of Austerlitz. After Pultusk and Essling his prestige fell considerably, at Borodino even the fanatic Davout found fault with his manoeuvre ; even Eugene and Murat did not know him again. Decres and Duroc confided to friends that he was losing his head. The most intellectual of the marshals, St. Cyr, declares that he had committed errors of which no ordinary man would be capable. He says : "Dans ce génie, sublime pour certaines parties de la