The order was issued: Blucher was reinforced; Napoleon was beaten at Laon; and the campaign rapidly approached its close. Still, formidable difficulties arose. Napoleon, though he had at last found that he could not face the army of the Allies, conceived the daring manoeuvre of throwing himself in their rear--thus alarming them for their communications, and forcing them to follow him back through France. The consequences of a desultory war might have been the revival of French resistance, and the ruin of the campaign. The manoeuvre became the subject of extreme anxiety in the Allied camp, and some of the chief authorities were of opinion, that he ought to be pursued. It is said (though the Memoir has not yet reached that part of the subject,) that the decision of leaving him behind, and marching direct on Paris, was chiefly owing to Lord Castlereagh; who pointed out the weakness of taking counsel from an enemy, the advantage of finding the road to Paris open at last, and the measureless political importance of having the capital in their possession. This advice prevailed: a few thousand cavalry were sent in the track of Napoleon, to entrap him into the idea that he was followed by the Grand Army, while Schwartzenberg marched in the opposite direction; and the first intelligence which reached the French army was in the thunderclap which announced the fall of the Empire! Lord Harrowby's letter, in referring to a subsequent period, gives a curious instance of the chances on which the highest events may turn. "Now for my other service in the dark. After the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington at Paris, the Government was naturally most anxious to get him away. But how? Under whatever pretext it might be veiled, _he_ would still call it running away, to which he was not partial. But, when Castlereagh was obliged to leave Vienna, in order to attend his duty in parliament, I was fortunate enough to suggest that the Duke should be sent to replace him; and that would be a command which he could not refuse to obey. "When I mentioned this to the Duke, just after I left you--for I was then quite full of the memory of my little exploits--he quite agreed that, if he had been at Paris, on the return of Buonaparte to France, it would have been _highly probable that they would have seized him_. "Small events are great to little men; and it is not _nothing_, to have contributed in the smallest degree to the success of the Congress at Vienna, (nor was it then so called,) and of the subsequent campaign, and to the saving of the Duke for WATERLOO!" After this triumphant course of political life, with every gift of fortune around him, and perhaps the still higher consciousness of having achieved a historic name, how can we account for the closing of such a career in suicide?