In opposition to this, we say, the campaign of 1812 did not succeed because the government remained firm, the people loyal and steadfast, because it therefore could not succeed. Buonaparte may have made a mistake in undertaking such an expedition; at all events, the result has shown that he deceived himself in his calculations, but we maintain that, supposing it necessary to seek the attainment of this object, it could not have been done in any other way upon the whole.
Instead of burthening himself with an interminable costly defensive war in the east, such as he had on his hands in the west, Buonaparte attempted the only means to gain his object: by one bold stroke to extort a peace from his astonished adversary. The destruction of his army was the danger to which he exposed himself in the venture; it was the stake in the game, the price of great expectations. If this destruction of his army was more complete than it need have been through his own fault, this fault was not in his having penetrated too far into the heart of the country, for that was his object, and unavoidable; but in the late period at which the campaign opened, the sacrifice of life occasioned by his tactics, the want of due care for the supply of his army, and for his line of retreat, and lastly, in his having too long delayed his march from Moscow.
That the Russians were able to reach the Beresina before him, intending regularly to cut off his retreat, is no strong argument against us. For in the first place, the failure of that attempt just shows how difficult it is really to cut off an army, as the army which was intercepted in this case under the most unfavourable circumstances that can be conceived, still managed at last to cut its way through; and although this act upon the whole contributed certainly to increase its catastrophe, still it was not essentially the cause of it. Secondly, it was only the very peculiar nature of the country which afforded the means to carry things as far as the Russians did; for if it had not been for the marshes of the Beresina, with its wooded impassable borders lying across the great road, the cutting off would have been still less possible. Thirdly, there is generally no means of