After fifteen hundred years of victories, the revolution of the fourth century, that of the kings and nobles against the people, was, in its turn, vanquished by the revolution of the nineteenth century, that of the people against the nobles and kings.  Napoleon was born of this conflagration; he obtained such complete power over it, that it seemed as if that great convulsion had only been that of the bringing into the world one man.  He commanded the Revolution as if he had been the genius of that terrible element.  At his voice she became tranquil.  Ashamed of her excesses, she admired herself in him, and precipitating herself into his glory, she had united Europe under his sceptre, and obedient Europe rose at his call to drive back Russia within her ancient limits.  It seemed as if the North was in his turn about to be vanquished, even among his own ices.

And yet this great man, with these great circumstances in his favour, could not subdue nature!  In this powerful effort to re-ascend that rapid declivity, so many forces failed him!  After reaching these icy regions of Europe, he was precipitated from their very summit.  The North, victorious over the South in her defensive war, as she had been in the middle ages in her offensive one, now believes herself invulnerable and irresistible.

Comrades, believe it not!  Ye might have triumphed over that soil and these spaces, that climate, and that rough and gigantic nature, as ye had conquered its soldiers.

But some errors were punished by great calamities!  I have related both the one and the other.  On that ocean of evils I have erected a melancholy beacon of gloomy and blood-red light; and if my feeble hand has been insufficient for the painful task, at least I have exhibited the floating wrecks, in order that those who come after us may see the peril and avoid it.

Comrades, my task is finished; it is now for you to bear your testimony to the truth of the picture.  Its colours will no doubt appear pale to your eyes and to your hearts, which are still full of these great recollections.  But which of you is ignorant that an action is always more eloquent than its description; and that if great historians are produced by great men, the first are still more rare than the last?

Volume I

  London:  Printed by Thomas Davison,
  Whitefriars.

Volume II

  London:  Printed by C. Roworth. 
  Bell yard, Temple Bar.

Transcriber’s Notes: 

This was a book of two volumes, written by a Frenchman and printed in English by different printers.  As a result there was a wide variation in spelling.

Original spelling was retained except where noted.

Thus corses for corpses, tressels for trestles, Dantzic for Danzig.

Table of Contents, Volume II, Book IX, Chapter II, Jaroslavetz changed to Yaroslawetz to conform to text.  Also for Chapters IV and V of same.