_At night._--Went to Lady Glengall's to meet Marmont. He likes talking of his adventures, but he had done his Paris talk before I got there; however, he said a great deal about old campaigning and Buonaparte, which, as well as I recollect, I will put down. As to the battle of Salamanca, he remarked that, without meaning to detract from the glory of the English arms, he was inferior in force there; our army was provided with everything, well paid, and the country favourable, his 'denuee de tout,' without pay, in a hostile country; that all his provisions came from a great distance and under great escorts, and his communications were kept up in the same way. Of Russia, he said that Buonaparte's army was destroyed by the time he got to Moscow, destroyed by famine; that there were two ways of making war, by slow degrees with magazines, or by rapid movements and reaching places where abundant means of supply and reorganisation were to be found, as he had done at Vienna and elsewhere, but in Russia supplies were not to be had. Napoleon had, however, pushed on with the same rapidity and destroyed his army. Marshal Davoust (I think, but am not sure) had a _corps d'armee_ of 80,000 men and reached Moscow with 15,000; the cavalry were 50,000 sabres, at Moscow they were 6,000. Somebody asked him if Napoleon's generals had not dissuaded him from going to Russia. Marmont said no; they liked it; but Napoleon ought to have stopped at Smolensk, made Poland independent, and levied 50,000 Cossacks, the Polish Cossacks being better than the Russian, who would have kept all his communications clear, and allowed the French army to repose, and then he would have done in two campaigns what he wished to accomplish in one; instead of which he never would deal with Poland liberally, but held back with ulterior views, and never got the Poles cordially with him. Of the campaign of 1813 he said that it was ill conducted by Napoleon and full of faults; his creation of the army was wonderful, and the battle of Dresden would have been a great movement if he had not suddenly abandoned Vandamme after pushing him on to cut off the retreat of the Allies. It was an immense fault to leave all the garrisons in the Prussian and Saxon fortresses. The campaign of 1814 was one of his most brilliant. He (Marmont) commanded a _corps d'armee_, and fought in most of the celebrated actions, but he never had 4,000 men; at Paris, which he said was 'the most honourable part of his whole career,' he had 7,500.[5] Napoleon committed a great fault in throwing himself into the rear as he did; he should have fallen back upon Paris, where his own presence would have been of vast importance, and sent Marmont into the rear with what troops he could collect. I repeated what the Duke of Wellington had once told me, that if the Emperor had continued the same plan, and fallen back on Paris, he would have obliged the Allies to retreat, and asked him what he thought. He rather agreed with