eternally reproach the ministry with having forced her whole people to
pass under the Caudine-forks, by ordering the disbanding of an army that
had for twenty-five years been its country's glory, _and by giving up to
our astonished enemies our still invincible fortresses_."

History fully supports Napoleon's opinion of the great danger of
penetrating far into a hostile country to attack the capital, even when
that capital is without fortifications. The fatal effects of such an
advance, without properly securing the means of retreat, is exemplified
by his own campaign of 1812, in Russia. If, after the fall of Smolensk,
he had fortified that place and Vitepsk, which by their position closed
the narrow passage comprised between the Dnieper and the Dwina, he might
in all probability, on the following spring, have been able to seize
upon Moscow and St. Petersburg. But leaving the hostile army of
Tschkokoff in his rear, he pushed on to Moscow, and when the
conflagration of that city cut off his hopes of winter quarters there,
and the premature rigor of the season destroyed the horses of his
artillery and provision-trains, retreat became impossible, and the awful
fate of his immense army was closed by scenes of horror to which there
is scarcely a parallel in history. This point might be still further
illustrated by the Russian campaign of Charles XII., in 1708-9, the
fatal advance of the French army on Lisbon, in the Peninsular war, and
other examples of the same character.

Even single works sometimes effect the object of lines of
fortifications, and frustrate the operations of an entire army. Thus,
Lille suspended for a whole year the operations of Prince Eugene and
Marlborough; the siege of Landrecies gave Villars an opportunity of
changing the fortunes of the war; Pavia, in 1525, lost France her
monarch, the flower of her nobility, and her Italian conquests; Metz, in