While the French were growing tired of the ceaseless struggle, they had nobly supported the Emperor in his appeal for soldiers to fill the gaps in the ranks caused by the campaign of 1812. No fewer than 350,000 conscripts were voted, cities gave liberally and equipped volunteer regiments, the people still seemed to be fascinated by his genius and afraid of incurring his displeasure. But the army for the first Saxon campaign was unlike the old army. There were too many youths in it, fellows brave enough no doubt but unused to the rough life of field and camp. Fortunately for the Emperor the best of his officers had survived, and although Murat called his brother-in-law a madman, they still believed in his sanity and ability. Had the King of Naples termed Napoleon imprudent there would have been more justification in his remark, for his constant warfare tended to become an obsession. “I grew up in the field,” he told Metternich, “and a man like me troubles himself little about the lives of a million of men.” This was not the Napoleon of the Italian campaign, but a gambler, a man who put his trust in material forces rather than in carefully-chosen strategic positions, and swift, decisive strokes. De Fezensac had noted Napoleon’s lack of care in the Polish campaign. “The order,” he says, “must be executed without waiting for the means.... This habit of attempting everything with the most feeble instruments, this wish to overlook impossibilities, this unbounded assurance of success, which at first helped to win us advantages, in the end became our destruction.”