In the campaign of 1805 the French were opposed by Kutusof, then sixty, and Mack, then fifty-three; the plan of operations was drawn up by still more aged generals of the Aulic council.

In the campaign of 1806 the French were opposed by the Duke of Brunswick, then seventy-one, Hohenlohe, then sixty, and Mollendorf, Kleist, and Massenbach, old generals, who had served under the great Frederick,—­men, says Jomini, “exhumed from the Seven Years’ War,”—­“whose faculties were frozen by age,”—­“who had been buried for the last ten years in a lethargic sleep.”

In the campaign of 1807 the French were opposed by Kamenski, then eighty years of age, Benningsen, then sixty, and Buxhowden, then fifty-six.  The Allies now began to profit by their experience, and in 1809 the Austrian army was led by the young, active, skilful, and energetic Archduke Charles; and this campaign, although the commander-in-chief was somewhat fettered by the foolish projects of the old generals of the Aulic council, and thwarted by the disobedience of his brother, was nevertheless the most glorious in the Austrian annals of the wars of the Revolution.

At the opening of the campaign of 1812 the Emperor Alexander, young, (only thirty-five,) active, intelligent, and ambitious, had remodelled his army, and infused into it his own energy and enthusiastic love of glory.  He was himself at its head, and directed its operations.  Kutusof was for a short time the nominal commander-in-chief, and exhibited an activity unusual at his age, but he was surrounded by younger generals—­Barclay-de-Tolley, and Miloradowich, then forty-nine, Wintzengerode, then forty-three, Schouvalof, then thirty-five, and the Archduke Constantine, then thirty-three,—­generals who, at the heads of their corps, and under the young emperor and his able staff of young officers, in the two succeeding campaigns, rolled back the waves of French conquest, and finally overthrew the French empire.  Wellington, who led the English in these campaigns, was of the same age as Napoleon, and had been educated at the same time with him in the military schools of France.  The Austrians were led by Schwartzenburg, then only about thirty, and the Prussians by Yorck, Bulow, and Bluecher.  The last of these was then well advanced in life, but all his movements being directed by younger men,—­Scharnhorst and Gneisenau,—­his operations partook of the energy of his able chiefs of staff.

In the campaign of 1815, Napoleon was opposed by the combinations of Wellington and Gneisenau, both younger men than most of his own generals, who, it is well known, exhibited, in this campaign, less than in former ones, the ardent energy and restless activity which had characterized their younger days.  Never were Napoleon’s, plans better conceived, never did his troops fight with greater bravery; but the dilatory movements of his generals enabled his active enemies to parry the blow intended for their destruction.