[Footnote 12141: M. de Metternich, I., 147.--Fain, "Manuscript," of 1813, II., 26. (Napoleon's address to his generals.) "What we want is a complete triumph. To abandon this or that province is not the question; our political superiority and our existence depend on it. "--II., 41, 42. (Words of Napoleon to Metternich.) "And it is my father-in-law who favors such a project! And he sends you! In what attitude does he wish to place me before the French people? He is strangely deluded if he thinks that a mutilated throne can offer an asylum to his daughter and grandson.... Ah, Metternich, how much has England given you to make you play this part against me?" (This last phrase, omitted in Metternich's narrative, is a characteristic trait; Napoleon at this decisive moment, remains insulting and aggressive, gratuitously and even to his own destruction.)] [Footnote 12142: "Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 235.] [Footnote 12143: Ibid., I., 230. Some days before Napoleon had said to M. de Narbonne, who told me that very evening: "After all, what has this (the Russian campaign) cost me? 300,000 men, among whom, again, were a good many Germans."--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. II. 110. (Apropos of the Frankfurt basis, and accepted by Napoleon when too late.) "What characterizes this mistake is that it was committed much more against the interests of France than against his own.... He sacrificed her to the perplexities of his personal situation, to the mauvaise honte of his own ambition, to the difficulty he finds in standing alone to a certain extent before a nation which had done everything for him and which could justly reproach him with having sacrificed so much treasure and spilled so much blood on enterprises proved to have been foolish and impracticable."] [Footnote 12144: Leonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale de la France," P.40. (According to the former director of the conscription under the Empire.)] BOOK SECOND. FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE NEW STATE. CHAPTER I. THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT I. The Institution of Government. Conditions on which the public power can act.--Two points forgotten by the authors of the preceding constitutions.-- Difficulty of the undertaking and poor quality of the available materials.