There was another reason for Napoleon’s sudden return.  Rumours had reached him as to the rapprochement of those usually envious rivals, Talleyrand and Fouche, who now walked arm in arm, held secret conclaves, and seemed to have some understanding with Murat.  Were they plotting to bring this ambitious man and his still more ambitious and vindictive consort from the despised throne at Naples to seize on power at Paris while the Emperor was engulfed in the Spanish quagmire?  A story ran that Fouche had relays of horses ready between Naples and Paris for this enterprise.[206] But where Fouche and Talleyrand are concerned, truth lurks at the bottom of an unfathomable well.

All that we know for certain is that Napoleon flew back to Paris in a towering rage, and that, after sharply rebuking Fouche, he subjected the Prince of Benevento to a violent tirade:  just as he (Talleyrand) had first advised the death of the Duc d’Enghien and then turned that event to his sovereign’s discredit, so now, after counselling the overthrow of the Spanish dynasty, he was making the same underhand use of the miscarriage of that enterprise.  The Grand Chamberlain stood as if unmoved until the storm swept by, and then coldly remarked to the astonished circle:  “What a pity that so great a man has been so badly brought up.”  Nevertheless, the insult rankled deep in his being, there to be nursed for five years, and then in the fullness of time to dart forth with a snake-like revenge.  In 1814 and 1815 men saw that not the least serious result of Napoleon’s Spanish policy was the envenoming of his relations with the two cleverest of living Frenchmen.

NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.—­In the foregoing narrative, describing the battle of the Somosierra, I followed the usually accepted account, which assigns the victory solely to the credit of the Polish horsemen.  But Mr. Oman has shown ("History of the Peninsular War,” vol. i., pp. 459-461) that their first charge failed, and that only when a brigade of French infantry skirmished right up to the crest, did a second effort of the Poles, supported by cavalry of the Guard, secure the pass.  Napier’s description (vol. i., p. 267), based on the French bulletin, is incorrect.

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CHAPTER XXX

NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA

“Never maltreat an enemy by halves”:  such was the sage advice of Prussia’s warrior King Frederick the Great, who instinctively saw the folly of half measures in dealing with a formidable foe.  The only statesmanlike alternatives were, to win his friendship by generous treatment, or to crush him to the earth so that he could not rise to deal another blow.