There can be no question that the Marshal’s reasoning was sound; but Napoleon persisted in his course. What he lost by not having Davout with him in this campaign, it is not easy to estimate; it is perhaps foolish to conjecture. But it would probably not be going too far to say that Davout in the place of either Ney or Grouchy would have prevented the catastrophe of Waterloo. This sketch of the _personnel_ of the French army naturally leads up to an estimate of its chief, that is, of his comparative fitness at this period of his life to undertake the tasks of such a daring, laborious and perilous campaign as this attack on Blücher and Wellington was sure to prove. Most historians have agreed that in point of bodily activity the Emperor did not show himself in this campaign the equal of his former self; in fact, most writers have gone farther than this; they have attributed to him a lassitude of mind as well as of body, they have found a want of the mental activity and a lack of the resolute will, which had been so characteristic of him in his earlier days. The portrait of Napoleon by General Foy is one of the best we have, and is of especial value as having been drawn by a contemporary, who served throughout his wars and commanded a division at Waterloo. “With his passions, and in spite of his errors, Napoleon is, taking him all in all, the greatest warrior of modern times. He carried into battle a stoical courage, a profoundly calculated tenacity, a mind fertile in sudden inspirations, which by unhoped-for resources disconcerted the plans of the enemy. * * * Napoleon possessed in an eminent degree the faculties requisite for the profession of arms; temperate and robust, watching and sleeping at pleasure, appearing unawares where he was least suspected, he did not disregard the details to which important results are sometimes attached. * * * He carried with him into battle a cool and impassible courage; never was a mind so deeply meditative more fertile in rapid and sudden illuminations. On becoming Emperor he ceased not to be the soldier. If his activity decreased with the progress of age, this was owing to the decrease of his physical powers.” And in a note he adds: “In the latter years the Emperor had grown fat; he ate more, slept longer, and rode less; but he retained all the vigor of his mind, and his passions had lost little of their strength.”[30]