Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/83

Rh of them are killed, the heavier becomes his hand, the greater the exactions, the more unsparing the conscription. Between January and October in the year 1813, 800,000 men had been raised. Other levies followed, and altogether 1,300,000 men were summoned in one year. "Never," says a writer of the time, "has any nation been thus asked to let itself be voluntarily led to the slaughter-house." Young men were torn from their wives the day after marriage, from the bedside of a wife in her confinement, from a dying father or sick child. "Some looked so feeble that they seemed dying;" and one-half of them died in the campaign of 1814. Self-mutilation became common; desertion still commoner. It had taken a long time; but Napoleon had at length exhausted France.

But Napoleon held out still; uncowed, unmoved by these awful catastrophes.

What do they want of me?' said he to M. de Metternich. 'Do they want me to dishonour myself? Never! I can die, but never will yield an inch of territory! Your sovereigns born on the throne may be beaten twenty times over and yet return to their capitals. I cannot do this, because I am a parvenu soldier. My dominion will not survive the day when I shall have ceased to be strong and, consequently, feared.' In fact, his despotism in France is founded on his European omnipotence; if he does not remain master of Rh