The Express.
London, England, 1860-05-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Htvratir, of during the Invemion of !'t is by
NapoJco,4 flowfutporte, avid the Retreat of the
French Army in 1812. By General Sir ROBERT
WI liooN. Murray.
The gallant and distinguished officer to whom
we owe this important piece of military history
would not print it in his lifetime. After the
astonishing campaign he had witneeed, a thousand
'Anisette were offered him and refused for his no:ee
of the strange transaction ; and his personal friends
Lord Holland and Lord Dunfermline, whose letter;
we find here in the appendix, appealed to him in
vain with the flattering suggestion that he should
at once undertake this task of conspicuous author-
ship. But in 1825, with a view to the publication
et his narrative some day, when its disclosures
16.'111,1 no longer threaten to excite any reminiscences
of yr,,f,,sional or conrtietiy citiarrels in the Russian
service, he compiled in their present shape his
&contents cud journals of the war. The Rev.
Herbert Randolph, his nephew and son-in-law,
saw gives them to the world.

Sir Robert Wilson, after serving as a soldier in
Holland, in Egypt, and elsewhere, was sent, on the
&Leming peace of Tilsit, to and fro between St.
Petersburg, or Stockholm, and London, as an
agent of our Foreign-office, to procure and convey
some information of the hostile designs against
Newland ivou which the Cast and Napoleon had
agree 1 For a year or two afterwards he held a
°mutinied as brigadier-general in the Peninsular
war. He went in 1812 to assist our ambassador,
Liston, at Constantinople, in the negotiations
terminating the war between Turkey and Runts.
He was actively instrumental at Bucharest in Fo-
meting a timely settlement of that contest, which
Nepolesin had stirred up to occupy the Russian
Power with eche/nes of Danubian aggrandiaernent.
t liniwinno., in thnintimmow a 7•••••• tad.
petulant favourite of Bellona, who had reduced
Praia and Austria to be his tool' and his slaves,
began a greater war, in that overweening and in-
satiable arrogance of his, to chastise the more inde-
pendent attitude of Russia, Sir Robert Wilson was
selected to watch the course of events. By his
dealings with the Russian ministers in Turkey, and
by some friendly comments he had written on the
Russian military system, lie had won the peculiar
regard and confidence of the Czar hinistdf, and of
his most enlightened officera. For these qualifica-
tions he was properly employed as British military
eninunasioner with the Russian army of defence
lintw.sm the Polish frontier and Moscow. There it
WAR Ilia fortune to be a spectator of the most fearful
distress and destruction that has ever yet rebuked
th inhuman pride of a military potentate. For
the precise statistics of Sir Robert Wilson, unlike
the nimantis tales of old Father Herodotus, are
beyond all question correct ; but even if that in-
wu.tible Persian' host were as authentically recorded
ss the Napolsoniad of 1812, the discomfiture of
Xerxes, described with so much more poetical
animation, was far leas remarkable than the sudden
dissipation of the martial array of half Europe, in
the northern snows of an awful winter month.
Napoleon was a peat warrior when Le had an
army of enthweastie and devoted Frenchmen to
lead, and only then. His achievententa were
marvellous when he was the first General of the
ltspublic, the First Consul, or the freshly chosen
Emperor of au ardent and aspiring nation. Yet a
careful study of the Italian and Egyptian cam-
paigns, and a comparison of his achievements with
thine of the other Republican generals on the
northern and eastern fondle's, may incline ns to
think that his military skill was much over-rated,
awl that his Mali dazzling successes were due to
the unacknowledged merit of his colleagues, as well
aq to the irresistible impulse of patriotic awl demo-
cratic feeling in the army of heroes which be then
commatled. Some of his imperial successes were
pritrebly due to the terror of the French arms, to
the political jealousies and divisions of his oppo-
nents, to the defects of their old aristocratic army
orgauirction, and finally to a few momentous
aocidenta, as much as to any very great intellectual
superiority of Napoleon himself over the other
military nien of his time. The conduct of his wars
in Spain, in Russia, and in the north of Germany I
during the !ast three or four years of the empire
bas twee. totally disapproved by the criticism of
high and impartial authorities is military science.
Tile invasion of Russia in 1812 was a series of the
matilisit and the grossest blunders in its execution,
as it hail been in its commencement one of the
most unprovoked and gratuitous acts of criminal
aggression in the infatuated conqueror's wild
career. There cannot he a more striking contrast
than that of the invincible native and spirited French
armies which crossed the Alps in 1798, and again
in 1800 the armies of Lodi and Marengo, which
gained for the young Napoleon his renown, and
the huge unwieldy train of heterogeneous, unwilling
forces, ill-assorted, badly organised, tool unpro-
vast, which the mistakes despot of the west, like
tkieia ancient eastern tyrants of barbaric Aaia,
drew after him, with such a fatal imprudence, to a
certain disaster. Never in modern times wan there
an instance of worse political and strategical error:
never were the resources of a vast power more
to ilishly wasted.

In his letters home from the Rasidan head-
quarter., in 1812, the accurate and judicious ob-
server with whose journal we are now supplied
wonders " what Bucssparte will do after all his
military mins of 011111M011 and commission," sad
impress the miscalculations wlech were to cost half
a million of human lies. He also points out, in
the beginning of his narrative, the inherent faults
in the composition and structure o. Napoleon's
motley Inst. Four hundred thousand effective
moldiers of infantry and sixty thousand cavalry
mitered airuulteneourily into active opera-
tions spited Russia, but of these only one
hundred and sixty thousand were French. "Au-
thority visa eeikened by thecommingled service of
troops reed elated by no common system ; discipline
became relaxed ; insubordination produced all its
disorganising consequenoes ; confusion and want
prevailed ; pillage destroyed the resources—for
there were uo magazines provided—and exasperated
the peasantry, who were further infuriated by the
wanton and outrageous desecration of their churches
and sanctuaries." All this was on the march to
Moscow, and before the invader had fought his first
battle. In fact, there was only one great and
general battle fought in the whole campaign—we
moan, of ceurae, that of Borstino, sixty miles from
the Russian capital, on which occasion, though
each side Jost its thirty or forty thousand men
kil;ed awl Wounded, neither side could fairly claim
a decisive victory. The enoneinia amount of force
which Napoleon bad brought into Russia was
of strovol not by the sward of an enemy, not by the
fa-aft of hie servants, bet by the fault of the chief
humid( —by sheer mismanagement and insane per-
instance in tiling to attain the wrong objects by
the wrong means. It is all very well to dignify
tin wretched failure of his generalship with the
attribute of a special visitation of Providence. Did
not the commander of that ittiruense human multi-
tude, when he led them to Moscow in Sep.eniber,
know that the Russiin climate in November was
to, sewen for their return i Had he made any
preptiratu.ll of stores or shelter for their relief,
aloog s,nie live to wren hundred miles of road
Had he not aufferel the country to be laid waste
from .' lensk onwards, and (lid he not, with a
recklessness or want of foresight more pitiable than
that of Caniby .es. in the Libyan muds, insist on
marching back the same way lie had come, instead
of taking the aouth•westerrt route, "through a
feed, and rich country to the Dnieper," as we are
tohl he might have done in his retreat I The truth
is, that Napoleon had lost hie head altogether; he
was mentally and morally incompetent to deal with
the emergency. Vie doubt not but that Welling•
ton, if be Karl been ',laced in charge of 140.0n0
men at Moscow in that month of October, with
an inferior Russian force opposed to him, would
bare brought them at least safely beat. or kept
them safe through the winter, as he kart his British
army at Torras Velras.
The statements and commentary of sir Robert
Willem quire •i.firui the popular estimate of the
higii char ter and abilities of some of thoqe men
Nap, le marshal glory was exalted
Aniengst them to 31.tralial ?iey, and to the Viceroy