The battle of Marengo was lost for a couple of hours:  the negligence of General Melas, who trusted too much to the advantages he had gained, and the audacity of General Desaix, restored the victory to the French arms.  While the fate of the battle was almost desperate, Bonaparte rode about slowly on horseback, pensive, and looking downward, more courageous against danger than misfortune, attempting nothing, but waiting the turn of the wheel.  He has behaved several times in a similar way, and has found his advantage in it.  But I cannot help always thinking, that if Bonaparte had fairly encountered among his adversaries a man of character and probity, he would have been stopped short in his career.  His great talent lies in terrifying the feeble, and availing himself of unprincipled characters.  When he encounters honour any where, it may be said that his artifices are disconcerted, as evil spirits are conjured by the sign of the cross.

The armistice which was the result of the battle of Marengo, the conditions of which included the cession of all the strong places in the North of Italy, was most disadvantageous to Austria.  Bonaparte could not have gained more by a succession of victories.  But it might be said that the continental powers appeared to consider it honorable to give up what would have been worth still more if they had allowed them to be taken.  They made haste to sanction the injustice of Napoleon, and to legitimate his conquests, while they ought, if they could not conquer, at least not to have seconded him.  This certainly was not asking too much of the old cabinets of Europe; but they knew not how to conduct themselves in so novel a situation, and Bonaparte confounded them so much by the union of promises and threats, that in giving up, they believed they were gaining, and rejoiced at the word peace, as much as if this word had preserved its old signification.  The illuminations, the reverences, the dinners, and firing of cannon to celebrate this peace, were exactly the same as formerly:  but far from cicatrizing the wounds, it introduced into the government which signed it a most certain and effectual principle of dissolution.

The most remarkable circumstance in the fortune of Napoleon is the sovereigns whom he found upon the throne.  Paul I. particularly did him incalculable service; he had the same enthusiasm for him that his father had felt for Frederic the Second, and he abandoned Austria at the moment when she was still attempting to struggle.  Bonaparte persuaded him that the whole of Europe would be pacified for centuries, if the two great empires of the East and West were agreed; and Paul, who had something chivalrous in his disposition, allowed himself to be entrapped by these fallacies.  It was an extraordinary piece of good fortune in Bonaparte to meet with a crowned head so easily duped, and who united violence and weakness in such equal degrees:  no one therefore regretted Paul more than he did, for no one was it so important to him to deceive.