CHARLES VI. AND THE POLISH WAR.
From 1727 to 1735.
Cardinal Fleury.--The Emperor of Austria Urges the Pragmatic Sanction.--
He Promises His Two Daughters to the Two Sons of the Queen of
Spain.--France, England and Spain Unite Against Austria.--Charles VI.
Issues Orders to Prepare for War.--His Perplexities.--Secret Overtures
to England.--The Crown of Poland.--Meeting of the Polish Congress.--
Stanislaus Goes to Poland.--Augustus III. Crowned.--War.--Charles Sends
an Army to Lombardy.--Difficulties of Prince Eugene.--Charles's
Displeasure with England.--Letter to Count Kinsky.--Hostilities Renewed.
The young King of France, Louis XV., from amidst the orgies of his court
which rivaled Babylon in corruption, was now seventeen years of age, and
was beginning to shake off the trammels of guardianship and to take some
ambitious part in government. The infamous regent, the Duke of Orleans,
died suddenly of apoplexy in 1723. Gradually the king's preceptor,
Fleury, obtained the entire ascendency over the mind of his pupil, and
became the chief director of affairs. He saw the policy of reuniting the
Bourbons of France and Spain for the support of each other. The policy
was consequently adopted of cultivating friendly relations between the
two kingdoms. Cardinal Fleury was much disposed to thwart the plans of
the emperor. A congress of the leading powers had been assembled at
Soissons in June, 1728, to settle some diplomatic questions. The
favorite object of the emperor now was, to obtain from the European
powers the formal guarantee to support his decree of succession which
conveyed the crown of Austria to his daughters, in preference to those
of his brother Joseph.
The emperor urged the Pragmatic Sanction strongly upon the congress, as
the basis upon which he would enter into friendly relations with all the
powers. Fleury opposed it, and with such influence over the other
plenipotentiaries as to secure its rejection. The emperor was much
irritated, and intimated war. France and England retorted defiance.
Spain was becoming alienated from the emperor, who had abandoned her
cause, and was again entering into alliance with France. The emperor had
promised his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Carlos, son of the Queen
of Spain, and a second daughter to the next son, Philip. These were as
brilliant matches as an ambitious mother could desire. But while the
emperor was making secret and solemn promises to the Queen of Spain,
that these marriages should be consummated, which would secure to the
son of the queen the Austrian, as well as the Spanish crown, he was
declaring to the courts of Europe that he had no such plans in
contemplation.
The Spanish queen, at length, annoyed, and goaded on by France and
England, sent an ambassador to Vienna, and demanded of the emperor a
written promise that Maria Theresa was to be the bride of Carlos. The
emperor was now brought to the end of his intrigues. He had been careful
heretofore to give only verbal promises, through his ministers. After
his reiterated public denials that any such alliance was anticipated, he
did not dare commit himself by giving the required document. An
apologetic, equivocal answer was returned which so roused the ire of the
queen, that, breaking off from Austria, she at once entered into a
treaty of cordial union with England and France.
It will readily be seen that all these wars and intrigues had but little
reference to the welfare of the masses of the people. They were hardly
more thought of than the cattle and the poultry. The only purpose they
served was, by unintermitted toil, to raise the wealth which supported
the castle and the palace, and to march to the field to fight battles,
in which they had no earthly interest. The written history of Europe is
only the history of kings and nobles--their ambitions, intrigues and
war. The unwritten history of the dumb, toiling millions, defrauded of
their rights, doomed to poverty and ignorance, is only recorded in the
book of God's remembrance. When that page shall be read, every ear that
hears it will tingle.
The frail connection between Austria and Spain was now terminated.
England, France and Spain entered into an alliance to make vigorous war
against Charles VI. if he manifested any hostility to any of the
articles of the treaty into which they had entered. The Queen of Spain,
in her spite, forbade the subjects of the emperor from trading at all
with Spain, and granted to her new allies the exclusive right to the
Spanish trade. She went so far in her reconciliation with England as to
assure the king that he was quite welcome to retain the rock of
Gibraltar which he held with so tenacious a grasp.
In this treaty, with studied neglect, even the name of the emperor was
not mentioned; and yet the allies, as if to provoke a quarrel, sent
Charles VI. a copy, peremptorily demanding assent to the treaty without
his having taken any part whatever in the negotiation.
This insulting demand fell like a bomb-shell in the palace at Vienna.
Emperor, ministers, courtiers, all were aroused to a frenzy of
indignation. "So insulting a message," said Count Zinzendorf, "is
unparalleled, even in the annals of savages." The emperor condescended
to make no reply, but very spiritedly issued orders to all parts of the
empire, for his troops to hold themselves in readiness for war.
And yet Charles was overwhelmed with anxiety, and was almost in despair.
It was a terrible humiliation for the emperor to be compelled to submit,
unavenged, to such an insult. But how could the emperor alone, venture
to meet in battle England, France, Spain and all the other powers whom
three such kingdoms could, either by persuasion or compulsion, bring
into their alliance? He pleaded with his natural allies. Russia had not
been insulted, and was unwilling to engage in so distant a war. Prussia
had no hope of gaining any thing, and declined the contest. Sardinia
sent a polite message to the emperor that it was more for her interest
to enter into an alliance with her nearer neighbors, France, Spain and
England, and that she had accordingly done so. The treasury of Charles
was exhausted; his States were impoverished by constant and desolating
wars. And his troops manifested but little zeal to enter the field
against so fearful a superiority of force. The emperor, tortured almost
beyond endurance by chagrin, was yet compelled to submit.
The allies were quite willing to provoke a war with the emperor; but as
he received their insults so meekly, and made no movement against them,
they were rather disposed to march against him. Spain wanted Parma and
Tuscany, but France was not willing to have Spain make so great an
accession to her Italian power. France wished to extend her area north,
through the States of the Netherlands. But England was unwilling to see
the French power thus aggrandized. England had her aspirations, to which
both France and Spain were opposed. Thus the allies operated as a check
upon each other.
The emperor found some little consolation in this growing disunion, and
did all in his power to foment it. Wishing to humble the Bourbons of
France and Spain, he made secret overtures to England. The offers of the
emperor were of such a nature, that England eagerly accepted them,
returned to friendly relations with the emperor, and, to his extreme
joy, pledged herself to support the Pragmatic Sanction.
It seems to have been the great object of the emperor's life to secure
the crown of Austria for his daughters. It was an exceedingly
disgraceful act. There was no single respectable reason to be brought
forward why his daughters should crowd from the throne the daughters of
his elder deceased brother, the Emperor Joseph. Charles was so aware of
the gross injustice of the deed, and that the ordinary integrity of
humanity would rise against him, that he felt the necessity of
exhausting all the arts of diplomacy to secure for his daughters the
pledged support of the surrounding thrones. He had now by intrigues of
many years obtained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from Russia,
Prussia, Holland, Spain and England. France still refused her pledge, as
did also many of the minor States of the empire. The emperor, encouraged
by the success he had thus far met with, pushed his efforts with renewed
vigor, and in January, 1732, exulted that he had gained the guarantee of
the Pragmatic Sanction from all the Germanic body, with the exception of
Bavaria, Palatine and Saxony.
And now a new difficulty arose to embroil Europe in trouble. When
Charles XII., like a thunderbolt of war, burst upon Poland, he drove
Augustus II. from the throne, and placed upon it Stanislaus Leczinski, a
Polish noble, whom he had picked up by the way, and whose heroic
character secured the admiration of this semi-insane monarch. Augustus,
utterly crushed, was compelled by his eccentric victor to send the crown
jewels and the archives, with a letter of congratulation, to Stanislaus.
This was in the year 1706. Three years after this, in 1709, Charles XII.
suffered a memorable defeat at Pultowa. Augustus II., then at the head
of an army, regained his kingdom, and Stanislaus fled in disguise. After
numerous adventures and fearful afflictions, the court of France offered
him a retreat in Wissembourg in Alsace. Here the ex-king remained for
six years, when his beautiful daughter Mary was selected to take the
place of the rejected Mary of Spain, as the wife of the young dauphin,
Louis XV.
In the year 1733 Augustus II. died. In anticipation of this event
Austria had been very busy, hoping to secure the elective crown of
Poland for the son of Augustus who had inherited his father's name, and
who had promised to support the Pragmatic Sanction. France was equally
busy in the endeavor to place the scepter of Poland in the hand of
Stanislaus, father of the queen. From the time of the marriage of his
daughter with Louis XV., Stanislaus received a handsome pension from the
French treasury, maintained a court of regal splendor, and received all
the honors due to a sovereign. All the energies of the French court were
now aroused to secure the crown for Stanislaus. Russia, Prussia and
Austria were in natural sympathy. They wished to secure the alliance of
Poland, and were also both anxious to destroy the republican principle
of _electing_ rulers, and to introduce hereditary descent of the crown
in all the kingdoms of Europe. But an election by the nobles was now
indispensable, and the rival powers were, with all the arts known in
courts, pushing the claims of their several candidates. It was an
important question, for upon it depended whether warlike Poland was to
be the ally of the Austrian or of the French party. Poland was also
becoming quite republican in its tendencies, and had adopted a
constitution which greatly limited the power of the crown. Augustus
would be but a tool in the hands of Russia, Prussia and Austria, and
would cooperate with them in crushing the spirit of liberty in Poland.
These three great northern powers became so roused upon the subject,
that they put their troops in motion, threatening to exclude Stanislaus
by force.
This language of menace and display of arms roused France. The king,
while inundating Poland with agents, and lavishing the treasure of
France in bribes to secure the election of Stanislaus, assumed an air of
virtuous indignation in view of the interference of the Austrian party,
and declared that no foreign power should interfere in any way with the
freedom of the election. This led the emperor to issue a
counter-memorial inveighing against the intermeddling of France.
In the midst of these turmoils the congress of Polish nobles met to
choose their king. It was immediately apparent that there was a very
powerful party organized in favor of Stanislaus. The emperor was for
marching directly into the kingdom with an army which he had already
assembled in Silesia for this purpose, and with the bayonet make up for
any deficiency which his party might want in votes. Though Prussia
demurred, he put his troops in motion, and the imperial and Russian
ambassadors at Warsaw informed the marshal of the diet that Catharine,
who was now Empress of Russia, and Charles, had decided to exclude
Stanislaus from Poland by force.
These threats produced their natural effect upon the bold warrior barons
of Poland. Exasperated rather than intimidated, they assembled, many
thousands in number, on the great plain of Wola, but a few miles from
Warsaw, and with great unanimity chose Stanislaus their king. This was
the 12th of September, 1733. Stanislaus, anticipating the result, had
left France in disguise, accompanied by a single attendant, to undertake
the bold enterprise of traversing the heart of Germany, eluding all the
vigilance of the emperor, and of entering Poland notwithstanding all the
efforts of Austria, Russia and Prussia to keep him away. It was a very
hazardous adventure, for his arrest would have proved his ruin. Though
he encountered innumerable dangers, with marvelous sagacity and heroism
he succeeded, and reached Warsaw on the 9th of September, just three
days before the election. In regal splendor he rode, as soon as informed
of his election, to the tented field where the nobles were convened. He
was received with the clashing of weapons, the explosions of artillery,
and the acclamations of thousands.
But the Poles were not sufficiently enlightened fully to comprehend the
virtue and the sacredness of the ballot-box. The Russian army was now
hastening to the gates of Warsaw. The small minority of Polish nobles
opposed to the election of Stanislaus seceded from the diet, mounted
their horses, crossed the Vistula, and joined the invading array to make
war upon the sovereign whom the majority had chosen. The retribution for
such folly and wickedness has come. There is no longer any Poland. They
who despise the authority of the ballot-box inevitably usher in the
bayonets of despotism. Under the protection of this army the minority
held another diet at Kamien (on the 5th of October), a village just
outside the suburbs of Warsaw, and chose as the sovereign of Poland
Augustus, son of the deceased king. The minority, aided by the Russian
and imperial armies, were too strong for the majority. They took
possession of Warsaw, and crowned their candidate king, with the title
of Augustus III. Stanislaus, pressed by an overpowering force, retreated
to Dantzic, at the mouth of the Vistula, about two hundred miles from
Warsaw. Here he was surrounded by the Russian troops and held in close
siege, while Augustus III. took possession of Poland. France could do
nothing. A weary march of more than a thousand miles separated Paris
from Warsaw, and the French troops would be compelled to fight their way
through the very heart of the German empire, and at the end of the
journey to meet the united armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Poland
under her king, now in possession of all the fortresses.
Though Louis XV. could make no effectual resistance, it was not in human
nature but that he should seek revenge. When shepherds quarrel, they
kill each other's flocks. When kings quarrel, they kill the poor
peasants in each other's territories, and burn their homes. France
succeeded in enlisting in her behalf Spain and Sardinia. Austria and
Russia were upon the other side. Prussia, jealous of the emperor's
greatness, declined any active participation. Most of the other powers
of Europe also remained neutral. France had now no hope of placing
Stanislaus upon the throne; she only sought revenge, determined to
humble the house of Austria. The mercenary King of Sardinia, Charles
Emanuel, was willing to serve the one who would pay the most. He first
offered himself to the emperor, but upon terms too exorbitant to be
accepted. France and Spain immediately offered him terms even more
advantageous than those he had demanded of the emperor. The contract was
settled, and the Sardinian army marched into the allied camp.
The King of Sardinia, who was as ready to employ guile as force in
warfare, so thoroughly deceived the emperor as to lead him to believe
that he had accepted the emperor's terms, and that Sardinia was to be
allied with Austria, even when the whole contract was settled with
France and Spain, and the plan of the campaign was matured. So utterly
was the emperor deluded by a fraud so contemptible, in the view of every
honorable mind, that he sent great convoys of grain, and a large supply
of shot, shells and artillery from the arsenals of Milan into the
Sardinian camp. Charles Emanuel, dead to all sense of magnanimity,
rubbed his hands with delight in the successful perpetration of such
fraud, exclaiming, "_An virtus an dolos, quis ab hoste requirat_."
So cunningly was this stratagem carried on, that the emperor was not
undeceived until his own artillery, which he had sent to Charles
Emanuel, were thundering at the gates of the city of Milan, and the shot
and shells which he had so unsuspectingly furnished were mowing down the
imperial troops. So sudden was the attack, so unprepared was Austrian
Lombardy to meet it, that in twelve weeks the Sardinian troops overran
the whole territory, seized every city and magazine, with all their
treasures, leaving the fortress of Mantua alone in the possession of the
imperial troops. It was the policy of Louis XV. to attack Austria in the
remote portions of her widely-extended dominions, and to cut off
province by province. He also made special and successful efforts to
detach the interests of the German empire from those of Austria, so that
the princes of the empire might claim neutrality. It was against the
possessions of Charles VI., not against the independent States of the
empire, that Louis XV. urged war.
The storms of winter were now at hand, and both parties were compelled
to abandon the field until spring. But during the winter every nerve was
strained by the combatants in preparation for the strife which the
returning sun would introduce. The emperor established strong defenses
along the banks of the Rhine to prevent the passage of the French; he
also sent agents to all the princes of the empire to enlist them in his
cause, and succeeded, notwithstanding the remonstrances of many who
claimed neutrality, in obtaining a vote from a diet which he assembled,
for a large sum of money, and for an army of one hundred and twenty
thousand men.
The loss of Lombardy troubled Charles exceedingly, for it threatened the
loss of all his Italian possessions. Notwithstanding the severity of the
winter he sent to Mantua all the troops he could raise from his
hereditary domains; and ordered every possible effort to be made to be
prepared to undertake the offensive in the spring, and to drive the
Sardinians from Lombardy. In the beginning of May the emperor had
assembled within and around Mantua, sixty thousand men, under the
command of Count Merci. The hostile forces soon met, and battle after
battle thundered over the Italian plains. On the 29th of June the two
armies encountered each other in the vicinity of Parma, in such numbers
as to give promise of a decisive battle. For ten hours the demoniac
storm raged unintermitted. Ten thousand of the dead covered the ground.
Neither party had taken a single standard or a single prisoner, an event
almost unparalleled in the history of battles. From the utter exhaustion
of both parties the strife ceased. The Sardinians and French, mangled
and bleeding, retired within the walls of Parma. The Austrians, equally
bruised and bloody, having lost their leader, retired to Reggio. Three
hundred and forty of the Austrian officers were either killed or
wounded.
The King of Sardinia was absent during this engagement, having gone to
Turin to visit his wife, who was sick. The morning after the battle,
however, he joined the army, and succeeded in cutting off an Austrian
division of twelve hundred men, whom he took prisoners. Both parties now
waited for a time to heal their wounds, repair their shattered weapons,
get rested and receive reinforcements. Ten thousand poor peasants, who
had not the slightest interest in the quarrel, had now met with a bloody
death, and other thousands were now to be brought forward and offered as
victims on this altar of kingly ambition. By the middle of July they
were again prepared to take the field. Both parties struggled with
almost superhuman energies in the work of mutual destruction; villages
were burned, cities stormed, fields crimsoned with blood and strewn with
the slain, while no decisive advantage was gained. In the desperation of
the strife the hostile battalions were hurled against each other until
the beginning of January. They waded morasses, slept in drenching
storms, and were swept by freezing blasts. Sickness entered the camp,
and was even more fatal than the bullet of the foe. Thousands moaned and
died in their misery, upon pallets of straw, where no sister, wife or
mother could soothe the dying anguish. Another winter only afforded the
combatants opportunity to nurse their strength that they might deal
still heavier blows in another campaign.
While the imperial troops were struggling against Sardinia and France on
the plains of Lombardy, a Spanish squadron landed a strong military
force of French and Spaniards upon the peninsula of southern Italy, and
meeting with no force sufficiently powerful to oppose them, speedily
overran Naples and Sicily. The Spanish troops silenced the forts which
defended the city of Naples, and taking the garrison prisoners, entered
the metropolis in triumphal array, greeted by the acclamations of the
populace, who hated the Austrians. After many battles, in which
thousands were slain, the Austrians were driven out of all the
Neapolitan States, and Carlos, the oldest son of Philip V. of Spain, was
crowned King of Naples, with the title of Charles III. The island of
Sicily was speedily subjugated and also attached to the Neapolitan
crown.
These losses the emperor felt most keenly. Upon the Rhine he had made
great preparations, strengthening fortresses and collecting troops,
which he placed under the command of his veteran general, Prince Eugene.
He was quite sanguine that here he would be abundantly able to repel the
assaults of his foes. But here again he was doomed to bitter
disappointment. The emperor found a vast disproportion between promise
and performance. The diet had voted him one hundred and twenty thousand
troops; they furnished twelve thousand. They voted abundant supplies;
they furnished almost none at all.
The campaign opened the 9th of April, 1734, the French crossing the
Rhine near Truerbuch, in three strong columns, notwithstanding all the
efforts of the Austrians to resist them. Prince Eugene, by birth a
Frenchman, reluctantly assumed the command. He had remonstrated with the
emperor against any forcible interference in the Polish election,
assuring him that he would thus expose himself, almost without allies,
to all the power of France. Eugene did not hesitate openly to express
his disapprobation of the war. "I can take no interest in this war," he
said; "the question at issue is not important enough to authorize the
death of a chicken."
Eugene, upon his arrival from Vienna, at the Austrian camp, found but
twenty-five thousand men. They were composed of a motley assemblage from
different States, undisciplined, unaccustomed to act together and with
no confidence in each other. The commanders of the various corps were
quarreling for the precedence in rank, and there was no unity or
subordination in the army. They were retreating before the French, who,
in numbers, in discipline, and in the materiel of war, were vastly in
the superiority. Eugene saw at once that it would be folly to risk a
battle, and that all he could hope to accomplish was to throw such
embarrassments as he might in the path of the victors.
The young officers, ignorant, impetuous and reckless, were for giving
battle, which would inevitably have resulted in the destruction of the
army. They were so vexed by the wise caution of Eugene, which they
regarded as pusillanimity, that they complained to the emperor that the
veteran general was in his dotage, that he was broken both in body and
mind, and quite unfit to command the army. These representations induced
the emperor to send a spy to watch the conduct of Eugene. Though deeply
wounded by these suspicions, the experienced general could not be
provoked to hazard an engagement. He retreated from post to post, merely
checking the progress of the enemy, till the campaign was over, and the
ice and snow of a German winter drove all to winter quarters.
While recruiting for the campaign of 1735, Prince Eugene wrote a series
of most earnest letters to his confidential agent in London, which
letters were laid before George II., urging England to come to the help
of the emperor in his great extremity. Though George was eager to put
the fleet and army of England in motion, the British cabinet wisely
refused to plunge the nation into war for such a cause, and the emperor
was left to reap the bitter fruit of his despotism and folly. The
emperor endeavored to frighten England by saying that he was reduced to
such an extremity that if the British cabinet did not give him aid, he
should be compelled to seek peace by giving his daughter, with Austria
in her hand as her dowry, to Carlos, now King of Naples and heir
apparent to the crown of Spain. He well knew that to prevent such an
acquisition of power on the part of the Spanish monarch, who was also in
intimate alliance with France, England would be ready to expend any
amount of blood and treasure.
Charles VI. waited with great impatience to see the result of this
menace, hardly doubting that it would bring England immediately to
terms. Bitter was his disappointment and his despair when he received
from the court of St. James the calm reply, that England could not
possibly take a part in this war, and that in view of the great
embarrassments in which the emperor was involved, England would take no
offense in case of the marriage of the emperor's second daughter to
Carlos. England then advised the emperor to make peace by surrendering
the Netherlands.
The emperor was now greatly enraged, and inveighed bitterly against
England as guilty of the grossest perfidy. He declared that England had
been as deeply interested as he was in excluding Stanislaus from the
throne of Poland; that it was more important for England than for
Austria to curb the exorbitant power of France; that in every step he
had taken against Stanislaus, he had consulted England, and had acted in
accordance with her counsel; that England was reaping the benefit of
having the father-in-law of the French king expelled from the Polish
throne; that England had solemnly promised to support him in these
measures, and now having derived all the advantage, basely abandoned
him. There were bitter charges, and it has never been denied that they
were mainly true. The emperor, in his indignation, threatened to tell
the whole story to the _people_ of England. It is strange that the
emperor had found out that there were _people_ in England. In no other
part of Europe was there any thing but _nobles_ and _peasants_.
In this extraordinary letter, addressed to Count Kinsky, the imperial
ambassador in London, the emperor wrote:
"On the death of Augustus II., King of Poland, my first care was to
communicate to the King of England the principles on which I acted. I
followed, in every instance, his advice.... England has never failed to
give me promises, both before and since the commencement of the war, but
instead of fulfilling those promises, she has even favored my
enemies.... Let the king know that I never will consent to the plan of
pacification now in agitation; that I had rather suffer the worst of
extremities than accede to such disadvantageous proposals, and that even
if I should not be able to prevent them, I will justify my honor and my
dignity, by publishing a circumstantial account of all the transaction,
together with all the documents which I have now in possession.... If
these representations fail, means must be taken to publish and circulate
throughout England our answer to the proposal of good offices which was
not made till after the expiration of nine months. Should the court of
London proceed so far as to make such propositions of peace as are
supposed to be in agitation, you will not delay a moment to circulate
throughout England a memorial, containing a recapitulation of all
negotiations which have taken place since 1710, together with the
authentic documents, detailing my just complaints, and reclaiming, in
the most solemn manner, the execution of the guaranties."
One more effort the emperor made, and it was indeed a desperate one. He
dispatched a secret agent, an English Roman Catholic, by the name of
Strickland, to London, to endeavor to overthrow the ministry and bring
in a cabinet in favor of him. In this, of course, he failed entirely.
Nothing now remained for him but to submit, with the best grace he
could, to the terms exacted by his foes. In the general pacification
great interests were at stake, and all the leading powers of Europe
demanded a voice in the proceedings. For many months the negotiations
were protracted. England and France became involved in an angry dispute.
Each power was endeavoring to grasp all it could, while at the same time
it was striving to check the rapacity of every other power. There was a
general armistice while these negotiations were pending. It was,
however, found exceedingly difficult to reconcile all conflicting
interests. New parties were formed; new combinations entered into, and
all parties began to aim for a renewal of the strife. England,
exasperated against France, in menace made an imposing display of her
fleet and navy. The emperor was delighted, and, trusting to gain new
allies, exerted his skill of diplomacy to involve the contracting
parties in confusion and discord.
Thus encouraged, the emperor refused to accede to the terms demanded. He
was required to give up the Netherlands, and all his foreign
possessions, and to retire to his hereditary dominions. "What a severe
sentence," exclaimed Count Zinzendorf, the emperor's ambassador, "have
you passed on the emperor. No malefactor was ever carried with so hard a
doom to the gibbet."
The armies again took the field. Eugene, again, though with great
reluctance, assumed the command of the imperial forces. France had
assembled one hundred thousand men upon the Rhine. Eugene had but thirty
thousand men to meet them. He assured the emperor that with such a force
he could not successfully carry on the war. Jealous of his reputation,
he said, sadly, "to find myself in the same condition as last year, will
be only exposing myself to the censure of the world, which judges by
appearance, as if I were less capable, in my old age, to support the
reputation of my former successes." With consummate generalship, this
small force held the whole French army in check.