The campaign of 1814 in France was skilfully executed upon these
principles. Napoleon, with an army inferior in number, an army
discouraged by the disastrous retreats of Moscow and of Leipzig, and
still more by the presence of the enemy in the French territory,
contrived, notwithstanding, to supply his vast inequality of force by
the rapidity and combination of his movements. By the success obtained
at Champ-Aubert, Montmirail, Montereau, and Rheims, he began to restore
the _morale_ of the French army. The numerous recruits of which it
was composed, had already acquired that steadiness of which the old
regiments afforded them an example, when the capture of Paris, and the
astonishing revolution it produced, compelled Napoleon to lay down his
arms.
But this consequence resulted rather from the force of circumstances
than from any absolute necessity; for Napoleon, by carrying his army to
the other side of the Loire, might easily have formed a junction with
the armies of the Alps and Pyrenees, and have reappeared on the field
of battle at the head of a hundred thousand men. Such a force would
have amply sufficed to re-establish the chances of war in his favor;
more especially as the armies of the allied sovereigns were obliged to
manœuvre upon the French territory with all the strong places of Italy
and France in their rear.