Note 218 — Chapter VII · THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.

The overwhelming catastrophe that overtook Napoleon I. in 1812, when, in spite of his military genius, he lost his whole army of 500,000 and his great power in Europe, calmed the impetuosity of those who might have hoped to invade Russia, as if she were an ordinary European nation. Yet the object-lesson could have been, and it is feared was, pushed too far. Napoleon’s disaster was due to his own perversity and to his military pride; for had he been content to re-organize and emancipate Poland, and avoid the snow-covered and barren steppes of the interior, his success, in destroying the sources of the power of Russia, could not have failed to be complete, and the tide of her encroachments must have rolled back for generations.