It was four in the morning of January twenty-fifth when Napoleon left for Chalons. From that moment he was no longer Emperor. During the long winter nights just past he had wrought with an intensity and a feverish activity which he had never surpassed, sparing neither himself nor others, displaying no consideration for prejudice or honest opposition, calling on every Frenchman to sacrifice everything for France, to which, as he vehemently asserted, he himself was more necessary than she to him. If he had come honestly to believe what millions of others believed, it was little wonder; he had thenceforth but one aim--to prove that he was, as of yore, the first general of France, the only one able to save the country in an hour when all her glories were falling in wreck about her. His strategic plans, immense and intricate as was his task, were complete and excellent. The first was intended to prevent invasion by way of Liege, the most direct line and that which Prussia preferred. The second, which was partly defensive, was the one eventually used against the clumsy form of advance actually chosen by the invaders. Of the two, the former was the more brilliant, but the second was almost as clever. By it the Rhine bank was divided into three parts for purposes of defense. Macdonald was stationed at Cologne to protect the lower course; Marmont was to guard the central stretch, and they two divided between them the remnants of the army which had been swept out of Germany; Victor was stationed on the upper course to command the garrisons of the great frontier fortifications and strengthen himself by the new levies; Bertrand remained as a sort of rear post on the right bank of the river at Kastel, opposite Mainz. All told, these generals had at first only fifty thousand men.