Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/249

Rh rushing upon their Philistine oppressors, chased them with tremendous slaughter to the very gates of their own fastnesses. It was a glorious victory; but it would scarcely have been won at all if the Hebrew champion had not first slain Goliath "in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel." In like manner the battle of the deliverance of Europe was really fought and won upon the frozen plains of Russia.

The early days of 1813 found the Russian hosts upon the frontiers of their own country. Within that country, through the blessing of God upon their valour and constancy, not an enemy remained except in captivity. By the first month of 1814 the still victorious armies of the Czar had reached the boundaries of France. That unhappy land seemed now about to suffer what she, or her rulers, had once and again inflicted upon others. "Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." So has it ever been since the world began: wrong begets wrong, cruelty engenders cruelty; "they that take the sword perish with the sword." It was the hour of retribution. Slavs and Teutons, whose homes and hearths had been made desolate by French bayonets, gazed, flushed with triumph, on the fertile plains of France, and promised themselves and their dead a terrible vengeance. "We will reward her even as she rewarded us, and the cup which she hath filled we will fill to her double," they said in their hearts. It was the voice of Nature.

But in that hour another voice was heard. "Soldiers," said Alexander to the armies of Russia, "your valour and your perseverance have brought you from the Oka to the Rhine. We are about to enter a country with which we are waging a sanguinary and obstinate war. The enemy, entering our