If ever there was an instance of a powerful mind delivered over for its ruin to a strong delusion, it is to be found in Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. An unparalleled series of victories appears to have confirmed the turn of his mind to fatalism, and to have inspired a belief that no difficulties were insuperable by his genius and fortune. It is in such a belief, and in his natural resoluteness of purpose, aggravated into inflexibility by the habit of dictating to all who came within his widely extended sphere, that we must look for the explanation of conduct into which no man would have been betrayed while in the full and sane possession of his judgment, however just and unbounded his confidence in himself and his troops. That he was fully aware of the difficulties which he was about to meet (it is impossible that they should have escaped his penetration) is evident from his own declarations. “For masses like those we are about to move, if precautions be not taken, the grain of no country can suffice. The result of my movements will be to assemble four hundred thousand men on a single point. There will be nothing to expect from the country, and it will be necessary to have everything within ourselves.”[209] Immense preparations were accordingly made, but made in vain, for a very small portion of them ever reached the borders of Russia, and those too late to supply the needs of the army. It is here that the obstinacy and infatuation of which we have spoken first appear. Too impatient to wait for the supplies which he had declared indispensable, and unable to resist the temptation of endeavouring to gain his object by one decisive stroke, Napoleon plunged headlong into a savage country, without a commissariat, and with a most insufficient hospital department, and suffered grievous loss before an enemy was even seen. Without anything approaching to a general action, the effective force under his immediate command was reduced in six weeks, between the passage of the Niemen and his departure from Witepsk, from two hundred and ninety–seven thousand to one hundred and eighty–five thousand; and was besides in so shattered and unsoldier–like a condition, that a fortnight later, at Smolensk, Napoleon himself declared halt or retreat to be impracticable. “This army cannot stop: with its composition, and in its disorganized state, movement alone supports it. We may advance at its head, but not stop or retreat. It is an army of attack, not of defence; of operation, not of position.”[210] The desperate enterprise was therefore pursued, and the nominal victory of Borodino, which cost in killed and wounded thirty thousand men, gave Moscow into his hands—the specious prize which he hazarded so much to gain. But the advantages hoped from its possession vanished when in his grasp, and this seeming success proved but a snare to disguise his failure, and ensure destruction by delaying retreat.