Espinas, evening :

I have crossed the Guadarrama with a part of the Guard in rather disagreeable weather.

23d, Villacastin:

(To Joseph.) The English appear to be at Valladolid. Put in the Madrid newspapers that 20,000 English are surrounded and lost.

26th, near the Douro, floods, mud, rain:

If the English remained in their positions to-day it is all up with them.

(Sir John Moore, near Valladolid: I am in a hornet's nest, and God knows how I shall get out of it.)

31st, Benavente:

My advance guard is near Astorga. The English are flying as fast as they can, and are abandoning their supplies and baggage.

1809

January 1st, near Astorga, arrival of the courier from Paris.

2d, Astorga:

We have found 800 dead horses along the road and much baggage, with supplies. The Guard is returning to Benavente, and I am coming back closer to the centre of my armies.

6th, Benavente:

(To Joseph.) I thank you for your good wishes for the new year. I have no hope as yet that Europe will be pacified this year. I have so little hope of it that I signed a decree yesterday to raise 100,000 men.

Happiness? Ah! of course! There's little enough question of happiness these days!

7th, Valladolid:

I have left the Duke of Dalmatia with 30,000 men to pursue the English.

8th, Morning parade:

Ah, yes. I know, you all want to get back to Paris, to your bad habits, and your mistresses! Well, I mean to keep you with the colours till you're eighty!

9th. (To Josephine.) Moustache has brought me your letter of the 31st of December. I perceive, dear friend, that you are worried, that you are in a state of black anxiety. Austria will not make war on me. If she does, I have 150,000 men in Germany, and as many on the Rhine,

and 400,000 Germans with whom to reply. Russia will not leave my side. People are mad in Paris; all is going perfectly well.

I shall be in Paris the moment I think it necessary. I warn you to beware of ghosts: one of these fine days, at two o'clock in the morning - But, good-bye.

11th. I have to stay at Valladolid, where dispatches from Paris can reach me in five days. The events of Constantinople, the present situation of Europe, the reorganization of my armies of Italy, of Turkey, and of the Rhine prevent my moving away from here. It was with great reluctance that I turned back at Astorga.

On the parade ground:

(To General Legendre, Dupont's chief of staff.) You have the impudence to appear before me! Your dishonour is written on the face of every brave soldier. Men have blushed for you in the most remote parts of Russia. On the field of battle a man fights, sir, he does not surrender, and if he surrenders he deserves to be shot. A soldier should know how to die. Your surrender was a crime!

15th. (To Joseph.) The condition of Europe compels me to go to Paris for three weeks. I expect to be there on the 21st of January. I shall travel most of the way in the saddle, rapidly. If you think it advisable you can keep my absence secret for a fortnight by saying that I have gone to Saragossa.

24th, Paris:

I arrived here in good health on the 23d at 8 in the morning.

28th. (To Talleyrand.) You are a thief, a coward, a

man without honour, you disbelieve in God, you have betrayed everyone, to you nothing is sacred, you would sell your own father! You suppose, without rhyme or reason, that my Spanish affairs are going wrong. You deserve that I should smash you like a glass, but I despise you too profoundly to put myself to that trouble!

(Talleyrand: What a pity that so great a man should be so ill-bred!)

29th. (To Metternich.) Well! this is something new at Vienna! What does it mean? Has a spider stung you? Who is threatening you? Whom are you aiming at? Do you want to set the world aflame again?

Metternich has almost become a statesman, he lies very

well.

(Austria) wants to get slapped; she shall have it, on both cheeks. If the Emperor Francis attempts any hostile move, he will soon have ceased to reign. That is clear. Before another ten years mine will be the most ancient dynasty of Europe.

February 11th. My memory will not store a single alexandrine verse; but I do not forget one syllable of the regimental returns. I always know where my troops are. I am fond of tragedy; but were all the dramas of the world there, on one side of me, and the regimental returns on the other, I would not so much as glance at the dramas, while every line of my regimental returns would be read with the closest attention.

March 9th. I am leaving my best troops with Joseph, and am starting alone for Vienna with my little conscripts, my name, and my long boots.

14th, Rambouillet:

(To Maximilian Joseph, King of Bavaria.) My Brother: If war should break out, your troops must be employed vigorously. The Prince Royal, however distinguished he may be by his natural gifts, has never conducted military operations, and is therefore not competent to command. I should be depriving myself of the services of your 40,000 men if I had not a firm and able commander at their head. I have selected an old soldier, the Duke of Dantzig, for this duty. At this day the Bavarian army is too large, and the circumstances too serious, for me to speak less than frankly to Your Majesty. After the Prince Royal has won his promotions through six or seven campaigns, he will be fit to command.

23d, Paris:

A French officer has been stopped at Braunau, and his dispatches, though sealed with the arms of France, have been forcibly taken by the Austrians.

24th. All the infantry of the Guard coming from Spain will proceed to Paris by coach.

30th. My intention is to carry my headquarters to Ratisbon and to concentrate my whole army there.

April 10th. Intercepted dispatches addressed to M. de Metternich, and his demand for passports, show clearly enough that Austria is on the point of beginning hostilities, if she has not already done so; if she attacks before the 15th everything must fall back on the Lech.

12th. (To the Prince of Neuchâtel.) The semaphore is just giving me, at 8 P. M., the first half of your dispatch, from which it would appear, according to a letter of M. Otto, that the Austrians have crossed the Inn and declared war. I shall start in two hours.