Victor:  on the 17th they drove back the outposts of Schwarzenberg’s centre, while Macdonald and Oudinot marched towards Nogent to threaten his right.  These rapid moves alarmed the Austrian commander, whose left, swung forward on Fontainebleau, was in some danger of being cut off.  He therefore sued for an armistice.  It was refused; and the request drew from Napoleon a letter to his brother Joseph full of contempt for the allies (February 18th).  “It is difficult,” he writes, “to be so cowardly as that!  He [Schwarzenberg] had constantly, and in the most insulting terms, refused a suspension of arms of any kind, ... and yet these wretches at the first check fall on their knees.  I will grant no armistice till my territory is clear of them.”  He adds that he now expected to gain the “natural frontiers” offered by the allies at Frankfurt—­the minimum that he could accept with honour; and he closes with these memorable words, which flash a searchlight on his pacific professions of thirteen months later:  “If I had agreed to the old boundaries, I should have rushed to arms two years later, telling the nation that I had signed not a peace, but a capitulation."[414]

The events of the 18th strengthened his resolve.  He then attacked the Crown Prince of Wuertemberg on the north side of the Seine, opposite Montereau, overthrew him by the weight of the artillery of the Guard, whereupon a brilliant charge of Pajol’s horsemen wrested the bridge from the South Germans and restored to the Emperor the much-needed crossing over the river.  Napoleon’s activity on that day was marvellous.  He wrote or dictated eleven despatches, six of them long before dawn, gave instructions to an officer who was to encourage Eugene to hold firm in Italy, fought a battle, directed the aim of several cannon, and wound up the day by severe rebukes to Marshal Victor and two generals for their recent blunders.  Thus, on a brief winter’s day, he fills the role of Emperor, organizer, tactician, cannoneer, and martinet; in fact, he crowns it by pardoning Victor, when that brave man vows that he cannot live away from the army, and will fight as a common soldier among the Guards:  he then and there assigns to him two divisions of the Guard.  To the artillerymen the camaraderie of the Emperor gave a new zest:  and when they ventured to reproach him for thus risking his life, he replied with a touch of the fatalism which enthralls a soldier’s mind:  “Ah! don’t fear:  the ball is not cast that will kill me.”

Yes:  Napoleon displayed during these last ten days a fertility of resource, a power to drive back the tide of events, that have dazzled posterity, as they dismayed his foes.  We may seek in vain for a parallel, save perhaps in the careers of Hannibal and Frederick.  Alexander the Great’s victories were won over Asiatics:  Caesar’s magnificent rally of his wavering bands against the onrush of the Nervii was but one effort of disciplined valour crushing