Читать книгу The Works of Napoleon Bonaparte - Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - Страница 149

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Palais des Tuileries, Feb. 14, 1813.

"I entered Russia. The French armies were constantly victorious on the fields of Ostrono, Polotsk, Mohilef, Smolensk, Moskova, Malo-Yaroslavetz. Nowhere could the Russian armies stand before our eagles. Moscow fell into our power.

"When the Russian borders were forced and the powerlessness of their arms was recognized, a swarm of Tartars turned their parricidal hands against the most beautiful provinces of the empire they had been called upon to defend. Inside a few weeks, in spite of the grief and despair of the unfortunate Muscovites, they set fire to over four thousand of their most prosperous villages, and more than fifty of their most beautiful cities; thus gratifying their ancient hatred, and, on the pretext of retarding our progress, surrounding us by a desert waste.

"But we triumphed over all these obstacles; even the conflagration of Moscow, where, in four days, they destroyed the fruits of the toil and thrift of forty generations, in no way changed the prosperous condition of my affairs. But the rigor of an extreme and premature winter laid the weight of a terrible calamity upon my army. In a few nights every thing changed. I met with great losses. My soul would have been crushed beneath their weight had I been accessible to any other feelings than the interest, the glory, and the future of my people.

"At sight of the evils that beset us, England's joy was great. Her hopes knew no bounds. She offered our finest provinces as a reward for treachery. As a condition of peace she proposed the extinction of this beautiful empire; which was in other terms a proclamation of perpetual war.

"The energy shown by my people under such grave circumstances, their devotion to the integrity of the empire, the love they have shown me, have dissipated all these chimeras and have brought our enemies to a more just appreciation of affairs.

"The misfortunes occasioned by the severity of the frosts demonstrated to their full extent the grandeur and solidity of this empire, founded upon the exertions and love of fifty million citizens, and upon the territorial resources of the most beautiful countries in the world."