through dark, gloomy, dreadful woods to the northward. Where? For what purpose? The dumb, wrathful, insubordinate, despairful army indeed moved at the will of its master, but largely because it realized that it could not stay where it was, and largely because it was better to move on and die than to lie down and die. They were at least warmer on the march! 

 The spirit of the guard and of the subordinate officers, say from the colonels down, was good enough, but the generals and the marshals were sick of fighting. They had had enough of it. They had gained all that they could gain in their world-wide campaigns, in fame, money, titles, estates. They had everything to lose and nothing to win. They wanted rest, an opportunity to enjoy. Some of them were devoted to the Emperor, in fact, all of them were, but their own comfort and self-interest bulked larger and larger before them. They saw nothing but defeat at the end of their endeavors, and they wanted to negotiate peace with such honor as could be had while they were still a force to be reckoned with. 

 Their unwillingness and mutinous spirit, however, had not yet reached its highest development. That came later, and brought treachery in its train. The awful will of the Emperor still overruled them. Wrathfully, insubordinately, protestingly, they still marched when he gave the word. 

 The Emperor had been working with that furious concentration which he alone of all men seemed to be able to bring about, and which was one of the secrets of his power. Orders borne by couriers had streamed in all directions over the roads. Napoleon was about to undertake the most daring and marvelous campaign of his whole history. The stimulus of despair, the certainty of ruin unless the advance of the allies could be stayed, had at last awakened his dormant energies, filled his veins with the fire of youth and spring. 

 With that comprehensive eye which made him the master of battlefields and nations he had forseen everything. Soldiers were coming from Spain. He had given instructions to magnify their number and their strength. He shrewdly surmised that their appearance on the left flank would cause the cautious Schwarzenberg to pause, to withdraw his flankers, to mass to meet them. There would be a halt in the advance. The allies still feared the Emperor. Although much of his prestige was gone, they never made little of Napoleon. He intended to leave some of the best troops to confront Schwarzenberg between Nogent and Montereau, under Victor and Oudinot, hard fighters both, with instructions not to 

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