Luetzen, Bautzen, and Dresden.  But those young generals of the Republic and the Empire were sometimes found unequal to the work of contending against the old generals of the Coalitionists.  Suvaroff was in his seventieth year when he defeated Macdonald at the Battle of the Trebbia, the Frenchman being but thirty-four; and a few months later he defeated Joubert, who was thirty, at Novi.  Joubert was one of Bonaparte’s generals in his first Italian wars, and was so conspicuous and popular that he had been selected to command the Army of Italy by the moderate reactionists, in the hope that he might there win such glory as should enable him to play the part which Bonaparte played but a few months later,—­Bonaparte being then in the East, with the English fleets between him and France, so that he was considered a lost man.  “The striking similarity of situation between Joubert and Bonaparte,” says Madame d’Abrantes, “is most remarkable.  They were of equal age, and both, in their early career, suffered a sort of disgrace; they were finally appointed to command, first, the seventeenth military division, and afterward the Army of Italy.  There is in all this a curious parity of events; but death soon ended the career of one of the young heroes.  That which ought to have constituted the happiness of his life was the cause of Joubert’s death,—­his marriage.  But how could he refrain from loving the woman he espoused?  Who can have forgotten Zaphirine de Montholon, her enchanting grace, her playful wit, her good humor, and her beauty?” Like another famous soldier, Joubert loved too well to love wisely.  Bonaparte, who never was young, had received the command of the Army of Italy as the portion of the ex-mistress of Barras, who was seven years his senior, and, being a matter-of-fact man, he reduced his lune de miel to three days, and posted off to his work.  He knew the value of time in those days, and not Cleopatra herself could have kept him from his men.  Joubert, more of a man, but an inferior soldier, took his honeymoon in full measure, passing a month with his bride; and the loss of that month, if so sweet a thirty days could be called a loss, ruined him, and perhaps prevented him from becoming Emperor of the French.  The enemy received reinforcements while he was so lovingly employed, and when he at length arrived on the scene of action he found that the Allies had obtained mastery of the situation.  It was no longer in the power of the French to say whether they would fight or not.  They had to give battle at Novi, where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority over the heros de roman who had posted from Paris to retrieve the fortune of France, and to make his own.  When he left Paris, he said to his wife, “You will see me again, dead or victorious,”—­and dead he was, in less than a month.  He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth year.  Moreau took the command, but failed to turn