Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/292

262 fight of the century." For the French the victory is almost worse than a defeat, since they are thus beguiled farther into Russia. No one can paint adequately the horrors of that bitter campaign. Of the hundreds of thousands who had crossed the Niemen a few months earlier, only twenty thousand frost-bitten spectres stagger again over the bridge in the middle of December.

Napoleon's thoughts are gloomy enough as he rides desperately back to France, leaving his fragment of an army in charge of Moreau. No one envies him now, with the world against him. Soon he hears that Joseph has been driven from Spain. Already he feels the strength of the coalition formed to overthrow him. Does he realize that Austria is no longer his friend—that Prussia is ready to fall upon him? All Germany is waking to new life, and to a great extent its energy is the result of the teachings of Napoleon himself. We see him struggling to hold his own, unwilling to admit that he has lost anything. There is likely to be discontent in France. The flower of French youth has gone with the army, and there are hardly men enough to till