WAR AND MANHOOD 95 



fell in battle. These men of Napoleon's armies were the youth without 

 blemish, " the best that the nation could bring/' chosen as " food for 

 powder/' " ere evening to be trampled like the grass/' in the rush of 

 Napoleon's great battles. These men came from the plow, from the 

 work-shop, from the school, the best there were — those from eighteen to 

 thirty-five years of age at first, but afterwards the older and the younger. 

 " A boy will stop a bullet as well as a man " ; this maxim is accredited 

 to Napoleon. " The more vigorous and well born a young man is," says 

 ISTovicow, " the more normally constituted, the greater his chance to be 

 slain by musket or magazine, the rifled cannon and other similar engines 

 of civilization." Among those destroyed by Napoleon were " the elite 

 of Europe." " Napoleon," said Otto Seeck, " in a series of years seized 

 all the young of high stature and left them scattered over many battle 

 fields, so that the French people who followed them are mostly men of 

 smaller stature. More than once in France since Napoleon's time has 

 the military limit been lowered." 



Says Le Goyt, " It will take long periods of peace and plenty before 

 France can recover the tall statures mowed down in the wars of the re- 

 public and the first empire." 



I need not tell again the story of Napoleon's campaigns. It began 

 with the justice and helpfulness of the Code Napoleon, the prowess of 

 the brave lieutenant whose military skill and intrepidity had caused 

 him to deserve well of his nation. 



The spirit of freedom gave way to the spirit of domination. The 

 path of glory is one which descends easily. Campaign followed cam- 

 paign, against enemies, against neutrals, against friends. The trail of 

 glory crossed the Alps to Italy and to Egypt, crossed Switzerland to 

 Austria, crossed Germany to Kussia. Conscription followed victory 

 and victory and conscription debased the human species. " The 

 human harvest was bad." The first consul became the emperor. The 

 servant of the people became the founder of the dynasty. Again con- 

 scription after conscription. " Let them die with arms in their hands. 

 Their death is glorious, and it will be avenged. You can always fill 

 the places of soldiers." These were Napoleon's words when Dupont 

 surrendered his army in Spain to save the lives of a doomed battalion. 



More conscription. After the battle of Wagram, we are told, the 

 French began to feel their weakness, the Grand Army was not the army 

 which fought at Ulm and Jena. " Eaw conscripts raised before their 

 time and hurriedly drafted into the line had impaired its steadiness." 



On to Moscow, 2 " amidst ever-deepening misery they struggled on, 

 until of the 600,000 men who had proudly crossed the Niemen for the 

 conquest of Kussia, only 20,000 famished, frost-bitten, unarmed spectres 

 staggered across the bridge of Korni in the middle of December." 



" Despite the loss of the most splendid army marshalled by man, 



2 These quotations are from the " History of Napoleon," I., by J. H. Rose. 



