[122] "Those who were nearest to Napoleon's person said to each other, that a genius so vast as his, and always increasing in activity and audacity, was not now seconded as it had been formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at no longer finding their chief insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished, the certain forerunner of premature decay."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 165. [123] "How happens it that the English author is more just towards Napoleon than one of his generals? Sir Walter allows here, what I have already observed, namely, the inconceivable accusation brought against the faculties of Napoleon at a time when he showed so much energy and perseverance, and when he not only resisted, and extricated himself from, the most frightful reverses imaginable, but even rose from them with surprising splendour. In an operation so gigantic as the attack upon Russia, in a plan for the boldest campaign, prudence and extreme slowness were imperative. How then, under such circumstances, can a general officer, a pupil, as it were, of Napoleon, criticise his stay at Wilna, and the extraordinary slowness of his movements? Would to heaven that this delay had been carried far enough to prevent the grand army from crossing the Dnieper during this campaign! But the great inconvenience of Napoleon, as general of the grand army, was the necessity of not prolonging his absence from Paris, and consequently of terminating the campaign as quickly as possible; and this is another powerful reason why he should not have hazarded so distant an expedition."--LOUIS BUONAPARTE, p. 82. [124] "This was no doubt taking a great circuit; but the prince succeeded in his object, and restored to the hostile army a large body of troops, which would have been rendered completely useless if Napoleon's orders had been punctually executed. The success of this movement proved for the Russians fully equivalent to the gain of a battle. They were drawing nearer to their resources, whilst the French army was compelled to follow them through vast barren wastes, where it could not fail to be eventually annihilated."--SAVARY, tom. ii., p. 187. [125] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 66; Ségur, tom. i., p. 160. [126] Ségur, tom. i., p. 171; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 84.