Three questions, however, remain to be examined ere we can subscribe to this doctrine.--I. Does the mere fall of snow, nay, a march through a country covered with it, necessarily, and of itself, infer the extent of misfortune here attributed to its agency?--II. Was not the possibility of such a storm a contingency which ought in reason to have entered into Napoleon's calculations?--III. Was it the mere severity of the snow-storm, dreadful as it was, which occasioned the destruction of Buonaparte's army; or, did not the effects of climate rather come in to aid various causes of ruin, which were inherent in this extravagant expedition from the very beginning, and were operating actively, when the weather merely came to their assistance? On the first question it is needless to say much. A snow, accompanied with hard frost, is not necessarily destructive to a retreating army. The weaker individuals must perish, but, to the army, it affords, if they are provided for the season, better opportunities of moving than rainy and open weather. In the snow, hard frozen upon the surface, as it is in Russia and Canada, the whole face of the country becomes a road; and an army, lightly equipped, and having sledges instead of wains, may move in as many parallel columns as they will, instead of being confined, as in moist weather, to one high-road, along which the divisions must follow each other in succession. Such an extension of the front, by multiplying the number of marching columns, must be particularly convenient to an army which, like that of Napoleon, is obliged to maintain itself as much as possible at the expense of the country. Where there are only prolonged columns, following each other over the same roads, the marauders from the first body must exhaust the country on each side; so that the corps which follow must send their purveyors beyond the ground which has been already pillaged, until at length the distance becomes so great, that the rearward must satisfy themselves with gleaning after the wasteful harvest of those who have preceded them. Supposing six, eight, or ten columns marching in parallel lines upon the same front, and leaving an interval betwixt each, they will cover six, eight, or ten times the breadth of country, and of course supply themselves more plentifully, as well as much more easily. Such columns, keeping a parallel front, can, if attacked, receive reciprocal aid by lateral movements more easily than when assistance must be sent from the van to the rear of one long moving line; and the march being lateral on such occasions, does not infer the loss of time, and other inconveniences inferred by a counter-march from the front to support the rear. Lastly, the frost often renders bridges unnecessary, fills ravines, and makes morasses passable; thus compensating, in some degree, to a marching army, for the rigorous temperature to which it subjects them.