“How was it possible, moreover, to avoid seeing that in this war every thing was to be feared, even our allies?  Did not Napoleon hear their discontented kings murmuring that they were only his prefects?  When they, all of them, only waited a suitable occasion in order to turn against him, why run the risk of giving that occasion birth?”

At the same time, supported by his two colleagues, the duke added, “that since 1805 a system of war which compelled the most disciplined soldier to plunder, had sown the seeds of hatred throughout the whole of that Germany, which the emperor now designed to traverse.  Was he then going to precipitate himself and his army beyond all those nations whose wounds, for which they were indebted to us, were not yet healed?  What an accumulation of enmity and revenge would he not, by so doing, interpose between himself and France!

“And upon whom did he call, to be his points d’appui?—­on Prussia, whom for five years we had been devouring, and whose alliance was hollow and compulsive?  He was about, therefore, to trace the longest line of military operations ever drawn, through countries whose fear was taciturn, supple, and perfidious, and which, like the ashes of volcanoes, hid terrific flames, the eruption of which might be provoked by the smallest collision[10].

[Footnote 10:  The Duke of Vicenza, the Count de Segur.]

“To sum up all[11], what would be the result of so many conquests?  To substitute lieutenants for kings, who, more ambitious than those of Alexander, would, perhaps, imitate their example, without, like them, waiting for the death of their sovereign,—­a death, moreover, which he would inevitably meet among so many fields of battle; and that, before the consolidation of his labours, each war reviving in the interior of France the hopes of all kinds of parties, and reviving discussions which had been regarded as at an end.

[Footnote 11:  The Count de Segur.]

“Did he wish to know the opinion of the army?  That opinion pronounced that his best soldiers were then in Spain; that the regiments, being too often recruited, wanted unity; that they were not reciprocally acquainted; that each was uncertain whether, in case of danger, it could depend upon the other; that the front rank vainly concealed the weakness of the two others; that already, from youth and weakness, many of them sank in their first march beneath the single burden of their knapsacks and their arms.

“And, nevertheless, in this expedition, it was not so much the war which was disliked, as the country where it was to be carried on[12].  The Lithuanians, it was said, desired our presence; but on what a soil? in what a climate? in the midst of what peculiar manners?  The campaign of 1806 had made those circumstances too well known!  Where could they ever halt, in the midst of these level plains, divested of every species of position fortified by nature or by art?