to a minimum the usual incumbrances of baggage trains, and greatly accelerated the marches of his armies. Napoleon's armies were noted for the celerity of their movements, and often gained victories because they found their enemies unprepared. With an occasional supply of "biscuits and brandy," which could be shipped in barrels and hogsheads to central points to meet the armies on their marches, the French troops were usually required to supply the rest of their subsistence by pillaging the invaded territory.

This expedient was very convenient to the generals and economic for the commissary department, but it was ter ribly wasteful of human life. The foraging parties in a friendly country soon aroused a sentiment of hostility among the people, which showed itself by numerous assassinations of the foraging troops. That feature of the case was observed in Italy, where Napoleon bitterly complained of the numerous assassinations of his men. He mentioned it as one of the causes of hostility toward Venice, when seeking pretexts for the future spoliation of that country. In hostile countries it showed itself in perpetual skirmishes on the flanks and outskirts of the invading armies.

This fact was verified in Russia, where the French losses during the march of the Grand Army were frightful. Napoleon's army was spread out over a wide extent of country in order to be able to subsist as it marched. There were 600,000 men, with horses sufficient for the numerous bodies of cavalry, the heavy trains of artillery, and the carriages and wagons for the transportation of men and munitions. It was probably the largest body of armed men under a single commander ever seen in the world. Its consuming capacity was immense. The Russian army which met the French at the frontier on the Niemen was about half as numerous as the invaders. It could not meet them on equal terms in regular battle with any hope of success. The Russians therefore adopted the policy of retiring before the enemy and exhausting the country of its supplies as it retreated. This compelled the French foragers to spread out to the right and left of the army in order to obtain supplies. Thus scattered abroad in detached parties they were continually attacked and cut off by the Cossacks and other light troops. These skirmishes were perpetual, from day to day, every hour after the French army entered Russian territory. It was a fight for life from the beginning to the very last moment of

the occupation of Russian soil. And during almost the entire time the French army was in the midst of a severe and decimating famine. Marshal St. Cyr estimated that Napoleon lost 300,000 men from famine alone, because it was not possible to supply the men with food on the Napoleonic plan. The losses by sickness, battle, and capture were very great. The general impression prevails that Napoleon lost most of his men by the cold weather. This is not true. Alison (vol. xi, p. 309), speaking of this matter, says:

But the decisive circumstance which proves that Napoleon's disasters in 1812 were owing, not to the severity of the climate, but to the natural consequences of his own measures, is to be found in the fact, now fully ascertained, that five-sixths of his losses had been sustained before the cold weather began; and that out of 302,000 men and 104,000 horses, which he in person led across the Niemen, there remained only 55,000 men and 12,000 horses when the frost set in; that is, he had lost 247,000 men and 92,000 horses under his immediate command before a flake of snow fell. It is neither, therefore, in the rigor of the elements, nor in the accidents of fortune that we are to seek the real cause of Napoleon's overthrow, but in the natural consequences of his system of conquest; in the oppressive effects of the execrable maxim that war should maintain war; . . . by throwing the armies they had on foot upon external spoliation for support, at once exposed them, the moment the career of conquest was checked, to unheard-of sufferings, and excited unbounded exasperation among every people over whom their authority prevailed.

It would be interesting and instructive to pursue the track of Napoleon's armies in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, and other places, to show the great destruction of human life in all cases where an army must support itself by pillage. I will recite but one additional case. Alison (vol. xi, p. 213) says:

The French army lost one-third of its number by the march through Lithuania in summer (1812), before the bloodshed began, when the resources of the country were still untouched and the army fresh and in high spirits.

Subsistence by pillage also affords uncommon opportunities for desertions, and it usually damages the discipline of an army; yet there is a fascination about it which greatly pleases a licentious soldiery. They especially delight in brigandage and rapine in countries filled with villages and towns. The evil passions of men have full play when let loose to prey upon society, with the one condition that there must be a prompt return to the ranks at stated hours and in obedience to given signals or orders in cases of emergency. This Napoleonic device was a system of devastation which no people could endure or forget. It multiplied the conqueror's enemies and intensified their

enmities to the last degree of desperation, insuring the downfall of the tyrant at the earliest possible moment.

If any one desires to understand the rapacity and ferocity of pillaging by a licentious soldiery he has but to read Napoleon's opinion of it when in St. Helena, after years of experience and personal observation. On one occasion he had promised his soldiers twenty-four hours of pillage in the town of Pavia; "but after three hours," said he, “I could stand it no longer, and put an end to it. I had but 1,200 men; the cries of the populace which reached my ears prevailed. If there had been 20,000 soldiers, their number would have drowned the complaints of the people, and I should have heard nothing of it." The emperor in St. Helena was quite a moralist, very different from the same emperor in Europe at the head of an army marching through a conquered country. He fully saw that his early expedient of subsistence by pillage was a very grave mistake, though at first it facilitated the celerity of his movements and aided vastly in his brilliant conquests.

Napoleon's mistake in choosing his financial system has already been sufficiently discussed except in a single particular. It was this system, with its inevitable crises and distresses, which excused or compelled his great political blunders. When he first attained the military leadership, had he quietly accepted the situation in the spirit of selfdefence only, the French revolutionary wars would then have ended. This he was not willing to do.

Two impelling causes induced Napoleon to adopt the policy of invasion: first, his personal ambition; and second, his financial necessities. These two causes operated together at the very commencement of his career, and he was unwilling or unable, through lack of knowledge or patriotism, afterwards to separate them. By admitting both of these impelling agencies all his foolish, wicked, and fatal invasions may be accounted for. To leave out either, they cannot be. On the mere ground of personal ambition the invasions of San Domingo, Russia, Syria, and other wild expeditions, presuppose the extreme of lunacy. But Napoleon was not a lunatic. Merely on the ground of personal ambition there was no reason for invading the Batavian, the Swiss, or the Venetian republics; nor for trampling to death so unmercifully the territories of Prussia and Russian Poland, both countries, at the time, being friendly to France.

The neglect of the financial element in the problem of Napoleon's career causes many of the diverse opinions re

specting the man. As well try to account for the perturbations of the planets of the solar system with one-half of them left out of the account. It was utterly impossible to account for the strange movements of the planet Uranus until the discovery of Neptune. So important and true is this statement that the size, location and movements of Neptune were pointed out by the mathematicians at their desks before the telescope had identified the planet.

The laws of nature which govern society are just as fixed and certain as are the laws which govern the material universe, and they apply as exactly to the volitions of a single mind acting under a single condition or circumstance as to a combination of numerous wills acting under a combination of circumstances. In the material world these laws, and the facts and phenomena which reveal them, have been so thoroughly studied that the velocities, times, and orbits of all the planets, satellites, and asteroids, and even several of the comets, are now matters of certainty, about which there cannot be two opinions. When the same knowledge and exactness have been applied to the study of the character of Napoleon there will be less disagreement among writers.

When studying his career as a military hero, all agree that we must know the style of tactics with which he gov erned his armies and the nature and character of the arms with which his soldiers were supplied. No man can explain his victories, or even his existence and safety for a single day in the deserts of Egypt or Syria, unless it is known that he was supplied with artillery to defend his squares of infantry against the terrific charges of the Turks and Mamelukes. But when we hear the command, "Infantry in squares, six deep, artillery at the angles!" then all becomes plain. We can then understand Napoleon's cheap and easy victory at the Pyramids, and can see how it was possible for 6,000 Frenchmen to win the battle of Mount Thabor against 30,000 brave and determined Turkish cav alry. So in considering the general career of Napoleon we must understand his tactics, his arms and munitions, and also his finances. To leave out a single item deranges the entire calculation, and the results are diverse and enigmatical. Include all the elements necessary to the calculation, and definite and correct results are possible.

In 1796 Napoleon and the French Directory found themselves sorely in need of money. The assignats had failed through over-issue in the form of counterfeits sent over from London, and there was no coin in circulation. There

were several systems any one of which could have been adopted then, since the government had acquired considerable stability. First, a new paper currency manufactured by the government, in a high style of art, above the arts of the counterfeiters, might have been issued in moderate quantity, accompanied by a levy of taxes on the property of the country, the new paper to be receivable for taxes, and to be a general legal-tender in all payments. Such a currency would have circulated in France, and would have been as good as the issuing government, which, from that moment, was continually growing more and more stable and reliable. A second plan might have been instituted, similar to the system adopted in England a year later. A third plan could have been an exact copy of the Venetian system, which had proved a magnificent success for more than six centuries, through war and peace, without a single panic or failure.

None of these plans suited Napoleon. He preferred metallic money, to be obtained in the only way possible, by the invasion and robbery of other countries; and he at once set the example of its success by the invasion and spoliation of Italy. Under the republic, before Napoleon was placed at the head of the army, the war in Italy had been a war of liberation, to deliver the Italians from the despotism of Austria. He professed the same intention, but immediately made it a war of spoliation. And thus commenced that scheme of military brigandage which has so long enjoyed honorable mention by so many writers, as "war supporting war." When Italy was exhausted, other countries were invaded; this required more money and made further conquests necessary, and thus when the system got started it was like a moving avalanche on the face of a mountain; there was no stopping-place until it went to pieces at the bottom, with no means of recovery.

If it is objected that the French government was not sufficiently established in 1796 to insure the success of a paper system of finance, we have but to compare its stability at that date under Napoleon and the Directory, with the critical condition of the British government in 1797, when the British paper system was adopted. In 1797 the British armies had been defeated, the bank had suspended payment, and the fleet, the pride and safety of the empire, was in a state of mutiny, actually blockading the city of London under the flag of "the Floating Republic." "Everything," says Alison, "seemed falling to pieces at once." In that dangerous crisis and condition of uncertainty the British