after hours of desperate fighting, the Emperor, seeing that the decisive moment had arrived, ordered up the Imperial Guard; how the veterans, whose hairs had bleached in the smoke of a hundred battles, advanced to fulfil their mission; how with firm tread and lofty bearing, proud in the recollections of the past and strong in the consciousness of strength, they entered the well-fought field; and how from rank to rank of their exhausted countrymen pealed the shout of exultation, for they knew that the hour of their deliverance had come; and then, with overwhelming might, all branches of the service, comprised in that magnificent reserve, swept like a whirlwind, driving before them horse and foot, artillery, equipage, and standards, all mingled in irremediable confusion.

With what freedom did our young hero comment on the campaign, speaking such names as Lannes and Ney, Murat and Massena, like household words!  He did not, perhaps, state that the favorable result of things was entirely owing to his presence, but it might be inferred that it was well he threw in his sword when the fortunes of the Empire trembled in the balance.

Under such influences, and with the excitement produced by the marvellous success of the French armies, it is not singular that young men looked eagerly forward to a participation in the prodigies and splendors of their time,—­that they should turn disdainfully from the paths of honest industry, and that everything which constitutes the true wealth and greatness of a state should have been despised or forgotten in the lurid and blood-stained glare of military glory, which cowered like an incubus on the breast of Europe.  The battle-fields were beyond the frontiers of their own country; the calamities of war were too far distant to obtrude their disheartening features; and no lamentations mingled with the public rejoicings.  Many a broken-hearted mother mourned in secret for her son lying in his bloody grave; but individual grief was disregarded in the madness which pervaded all classes, vain-glorious from repeated and uninterrupted success.

But the time had come when the storm was to pour in desolation over the fields of France, and the nations which had trembled at her power were to tender back to her the bitter cup of humiliation.  The unaccustomed sound of hostile cannon broke in on the dreams of invincibility which had entranced the people, and deeds of violence and blood, which had been complacently regarded when the theatre of action was on foreign territory, seemed quite another thing when the scene was shifted to their own vineyards and villages.