quite new to him. He had been accustomed to attack; but he was now
obliged to stand on his defence, so that, instead of having to execute a
previously conceived plan, as when, in the Cabinet of the Tuileries, he
traced out to me the field of Marengo, he had now to determine his
movements according to those of his numerous enemies. When the Emperor
arrived at Chalons-sur-Marne the Prussian army was advancing by the road
of Lorraine. He drove it back beyond St. Dizier. Meanwhile the Grand
Austro-Russian army passed the Seine and the Yonne at Montereau, and even
sent forward a corps which advanced as far as Fontainebleau. Napoleon
then made a movement to the right in order to drive back the troops which
threatened to march on Paris, and by a curious chance he came up with the
troops in the very place where he passed the boyish years in which he
cherished what then seemed wild and fabulous dreams of his future fate.
What thoughts and recollections must have crowded on his mind when he
found himself an Emperor and a King, at the head of a yet powerful army,
in the chateau of the Comte de Brienne, to whom he had so often paid his
homage! It was at Brienne that he had said to me, thirty-four years
before, "I will do these Frenchman all the harm I can." Since then he
had certainly changed his mind; but it might be said that fate persisted
in forcing the man to realise the design of the boy in spite of himself.
No sooner had Napoleon revisited Brienne as a conqueror than he was
repulsed and hurried to his fall, which became every moment more
certain.'

I shall not enter into any details of the campaign of France, because the
description of battles forms no part of my plan. Still, I think it
indispensable briefly to describe Napoleon's miraculous activity from the
time of his leaving Paris to the entrance of the Allies into the capital.
Few successful campaigns have enabled our Generals and the French army to
reap so much glory as they gained during this great reverse of fortune.