When Buonaparte marched to Moscow in 1812, all depended upon whether the taking of the capital, and the events which preceded the capture, would force the Emperor Alexander to make peace, as he had been compelled to do after the battle of Friedland in 1807, and the Emperor Francis in 1805 and 1809 after Austerlitz and Wagram; for if Buonaparte did not obtain a peace at Moscow, there was no alternative but to return—­that is, there was nothing for him but a strategic defeat.  We shall leave out of the question what he did to get to Moscow, and whether in his advance he did not miss many opportunities of bringing the Emperor Alexander to peace; we shall also exclude all consideration of the disastrous circumstances which attended his retreat, and which perhaps had their origin in the general conduct of the campaign.  Still the question remains the same, for however much more brilliant the course of the campaign up to Moscow might have been, still there was always an uncertainty whether the Emperor Alexander would be intimidated into making peace; and then, even if a retreat did not contain in itself the seeds of such disasters as did in fact occur, still it could never be anything else than a great strategic defeat.  If the Emperor Alexander agreed to a peace which was disadvantageous to him, the campaign of 1812 would have ranked with those of Austerlitz, Friedland, and Wagram.  But these campaigns also, if they had not led to peace, would in all probability have ended in similar catastrophes.  Whatever, therefore, of genius, skill, and energy the Conqueror of the World applied to the task, this last question addressed to fate(*) remained always the same.  Shall we then discard the campaigns of 1805, 1807, 1809, and say on account of the campaign of 1812 that they were acts of imprudence; that the results were against the nature of things, and that in 1812 strategic justice at last found vent for itself in opposition to blind chance?  That would be an unwarrantable conclusion, a most arbitrary judgment, a case only half proved, because no human, eye can trace the thread of the necessary connection of events up to the determination of the conquered Princes.

     (*) “Frage an der Schicksal,"a familiar quotation from
     Schiller.—­TR.

Still less can we say the campaign of 1812 merited the same success as the others, and that the reason why it turned out otherwise lies in something unnatural, for we cannot regard the firmness of Alexander as something unpredictable.

What can be more natural than to say that in the years 1805, 1807, 1809, Buonaparte judged his opponents correctly, and that in 1812 he erred in that point?  On the former occasions, therefore, he was right, in the latter wrong, and in both cases we judge by the result.

All action in War, as we have already said, is directed on probable, not on certain, results.  Whatever is wanting in certainty must always be left to fate, or chance, call it which you will.  We may demand that what is so left should be as little as possible, but only in relation to the particular case—­that is, as little as is possible in this one case, but not that the case in which the least is left to chance is always to be preferred.  That would be an enormous error, as follows from all our theoretical views.  There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom.