results. Thus political views were incessantly interfering with the
strategic genius; and to appreciate him properly we must not confine
ourselves within the limits of the art of war. This art is not composed
exclusively of technical details; it has also its philosophy. To find in
this elevated region a rival to Napoleon, we must go back to the times
when the feudal institutions had not yet broken the unity of the ancient
nations. The founders of religions alone have exercised over their
disciples an authority comparable with that which made him the absolute
master of his army. This moral power became fatal to him, because he
strove to avail himself of it even against the ascendancy of material
force, and because it led him to despise positive rules, the long
violation of which will not remain unpunished.

When pride was hurrying Napoleon towards his fall, he happened to say,
"France has more need of me than I have of France." He spoke the truth.
But why had he become necessary? Because he had committed the destiny of
the French to the chances of an interminable war; because, in spite of
the resources of his genius, that war, rendered daily more hazardous by
his staking the whole of his force, and by the boldness of his
movements, risked in every campaign, in every battle, the fruits of
twenty years of triumph; because his government was so modelled that
with him every thing must be swept away, and that a re-action
proportioned to the violence of the action must burst forth at once both
within and without. The mania of conquest had reversed the state of
things in Europe; we, the eldest born of liberty and independence, were
spilling our blood in the service of royal passions against the cause of
nations, and outraged nations were turning round upon us, more terrible
from being armed with the principles which we had forsaken.

At times, this immense mass of passions which he was accumulating