Raise once more those noble fronts, which have been furrowed with all
the thunders of Europe! Cast not down those eyes, which have seen so
many subject capitals, so many vanquished kings! Fortune, doubtless,
owed you a more glorious repose; but, such as it is, it depends on
yourselves to make a noble use of it. Let history inscribe your
recollections. The solitude and silence of misfortune are propitious to
her labours; and let truth, which is always present in the long nights
of adversity, at last enlighten labours that may not prove unproductive.

As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful,
sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing,
perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling
that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those gigantic
feats, without which we should never have known the extent to which
human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME FIRST.


BOOK I.

CHAP. I.--Political relations of France and Russia since 1807 1

II.--Prussia.--Frederick William 6