[223] The Emperor once confiscated 3,000,000 francs which Masséna had collected by selling licences to trade with the English at Leghorn and other Italian ports. See the Memoirs of General Lamarque, who carried out the seizure. [224] See Thiébault, iv. 375; Marbot, ii. 380-1; Duchesse d’Abrantes, viii. 50. All these may be called scandal-mongers, but the lady’s presence, and the troubles to which it gave rise, are chronicled by more serious authorities. [225] See Foy’s complaints on p. 114 of his _Vie Militaire_ (ed. Girod de L’Ain) as to the way in which the Marshal suspected him of undermining his favour with the Emperor. [226] See Lord Stanhope’s _Conversations with the Duke of Wellington_, p. 20. [Illustration: ANDRÉ MASSÉNA, DUC DE RIVOLI PRINCE D’ESSLING, Né à Nice, en 1755, Mort à sa Terre près Paris, en Avril 1817.] The fatigues of the late Austrian war, in which he had borne such an honourable part, had tried Masséna’s health; it was not without difficulty that the Emperor had persuaded him to undertake the Portuguese campaign. When he first assembled round him at Salamanca the staff which was to serve him in the invasion, he astonished and somewhat disheartened his officers by beginning his greetings to them with the remark, ‘Gentlemen, I am here contrary to my own wish; I begin to feel myself too old and too weary to go on active service. The Emperor says that I must, and replied to the reasons for declining this post which I gave him, by saying that my reputation would suffice to end the war. It was very flattering no doubt, but no man has two lives to live on this earth--the soldier least of all[227].’ Those who had served under the Marshal a few years back, and now saw him after an interval, felt that there was truth in what he said. Foy wrote in his diary, ‘He is no longer the Masséna of the flashing eyes, the mobile face, and the alert figure whom I knew in 1799, and whose head then recalled to me the bust of Marius. He is only fifty-two, but looks more than sixty; he has got thin, he is beginning to stoop; his look, since the accident when he lost his eye by the Emperor’s hand[228], has lost its vivacity. The tone of his voice alone remains unchanged.’ But if the Marshal’s bodily vigour was somewhat abated, his will was as strong as ever. He needed it at this juncture, for he had to command subordinates who were anything but easy to deal with. Ney, though an honest man and an admirable soldier, had the fault of insubordination in the highest degree. He never obeyed any one save the Emperor in the true military fashion. He quarrelled with every colleague that he met--notably with Soult--and had an old and very justifiable personal dislike for Masséna. Even before the latter appeared at the front, he had been heard to use threatening language concerning him. Junot was almost as bad; having held the chief command in the last Portuguese expedition