Nevertheless the political grandeur of that expedition will not be hereafter judged from the wild triumph of his enemies, nor its military merits from the declamation which has hitherto passed as the history of the wondrous, though unfortunate enterprise. It will not be the puerilities of Labaume, of Segur, and their imitators, nor even that splendid military and political essay of general Jomini, called the “_Life of Napoleon_,” which posterity will accept as the measure of a general, who carried four hundred thousand men across the Niemen, and a hundred and sixty thousand men to Moscow. And with such a military providence, with such a vigilance, so disposing his reserves, so guarding his flanks, so guiding his masses, that while constantly victorious in front, no post was lost in his rear, no convoy failed, no courier was stopped, not even a letter was missing: the communication with his capital was as regular and certain as if that immense march had been but a summer excursion of pleasure! However it failed, and its failure was the safety of the Peninsula. In England the retreat from Burgos was viewed with the alarm and anger which always accompanies the disappointment of high-raised public expectation; the people had been taught to believe the French weak and dispirited, they saw them so strong and daring, that even victory could not enable the allies to make a permanent stand beyond the frontiers of Portugal. Hence arose murmurs, and a growing distrust as to the ultimate result, which would not have failed to overturn the war faction, if the retreat of the French from Moscow, the defection of Prussia, and the strange unlooked-for spectacle of Napoleon vanquished, had not come in happy time as a counterpoise.