where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority
over the _héros de roman_ who had posted from Paris to retrieve the
fortune of France, and to make his own. When he left Paris, he said to
his wife, "You will see me again, dead or victorious,"--and dead he was,
in less than a month. He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of
August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth
year. Moreau took the command, but failed to turn the tide of disaster.
The French are unanimous in ascribing their defeat to Joubert's delay at
Paris, and it is certain that the enemy did take Alexandria and Mantua
during that month's delay, and thus were enabled to add the besieging
forces to their main army, so that Joubert was about to retreat to the
Apennines, and to assume a defensive position, when Suvaroff forced him
to accept battle. But something should be allowed for the genius of the
Russian general, who was one of the great master-spirits of war, and who
seldom fought without being completely victorious. He had mostly been
employed against the Turks, whose military reputation was then at the
lowest, or the Poles, who were too divided and depressed to do
themselves and their cause justice, and therefore his character as a
soldier did not stand so high as that of more than one man who was his
inferior; but when, in his seventieth year, he took command in Italy,
there to encounter soldiers who had beaten the armies of almost all
other European nations, and who were animated by a fanatical spirit as
strong as that which fired his own bosom, he showed himself to be more
than equal to his position. He was not at all at fault, though brought
face to face with an entirely new state of things, but acted with his
accustomed vigor, marching from victory to victory, and reconquering
Italy more rapidly than it had been conquered three years before by
Bonaparte. When Bonaparte was destroying the Austrian armies in Italy,
Suvaroff watched his operations with deep interest, and said that he
must go to the West to meet the new genius, or that Bonaparte would