His arrival, preceded as it had been by the twenty-ninth bulletin, in which the veil was at last lifted from the fatal events of the campaign, restored for the moment the appearances of composure, amidst a population of which almost every family had lost a son or a brother.  Such was the influence that still clung to his name.  The Emperor was safe.  However great the present calamity, hope remained.  The elements, as they were taught to believe, had not merely quickened and increased, but wholly occasioned the reverses of the army.  The Russian winter was the only enemy that had been able to triumph over his genius, and the valour of Frenchmen.  The senate, the magistrates, all those public bodies and functionaries who had the means of approaching the throne, now crowded to its footsteps with addresses full of adulation yet more audacious than they had ever before ventured on.  Tho voice of applause, congratulation, and confidence, re-echoed from every quarter, drowned the whispers of suspicion, resentment, and natural sorrow.  Every department of the public service appeared to be animated with a spirit of tenfold activity.  New conscriptions were called for and yielded.  Regiments arrived from Spain and from Italy.  Every arsenal resounded with the preparation of new artillery—­thousands of horses were impressed in every province.  Ere many weeks had elapsed.  Napoleon found himself once more in a condition to take the field with not less than 350,000 soldiers.  Such was the effect of his new appeal to the national feelings of this great and gallant people.

Meanwhile the French garrisons dispersed over the Prussian territory were wholly incompetent to overawe that oppressed and insulted nation, now burning with the settled thirst and the long-deferred hope of vengeance.  The king interposed, indeed, his authority to protect the soldiers of Napoleon from popular violence; but it presently became manifest that their safety must depend on their concentrating themselves in a small number of fortified places; and that even if Frederick William had been cordially anxious to preserve his alliance with France, it would soon be impossible for him to resist the unanimous wishes of his people.  Murat was already weary of his command.  He found himself thwarted and controlled by the other generals, none of whom respected his authority; and one of whom, when he happened to speak of himself in the same breath with the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia, answered without ceremony, “You must remember that these are kings by the grace of God, by descent, and by custom; whereas you are only a king by the grace of Napoleon, and through the expenditure of French blood.”  Murat was moreover jealous of the extent to which his queen was understood to be playing the sovereign in Naples, and he threw up his command; being succeeded by Eugene Beauharnois, and insulted anew by Napoleon himself, in a general order which announced this change, and alleged as its causes, the superior military skill