Note 236 — Chapter LXIII

"Sir Walter Scott has not, in this outrage against Napoleon, the merit of novelty: and what is more painful, French writers have been guilty of repeating the ridiculous accusation. What! he who threw himself upon his gigantic adversary at the head of an innumerable army, and conducted it six hundred leagues from his country; who defeated all the armies of his enemy—burned his capital, or was the cause of its destruction—had such a man lost his senses? The expedition to Russia, according to common rules, was ill-judged and rash, and the more so when undertaken without the basis of Poland; and when we consider the formation of the grand army, composed of so many different nations, and that Napoleon persisted in the project in spite of all obstacles, and the disapprobation of the majority of his greatest generals, we are astonished how he succeeded in invading a great portion of the vast territory of Russia, and penetrated as far as the capital of that empire. Whatever his enemies may assert, had it not been for the extraordinary havoc of the winter, the grand army would have returned to the frontiers of Poland, established itself on that line, and menaced the Russian empire anew, and in a more definitive manner, during the following campaign."—Louis Buonaparte, p. 86.