The Congress of Vienna 45
a world of other states as complete liberty is to the indi-
vidual in a society of other individuals.
The occasion for the Congress of Vienna was as dramatic
as it well could be. Only two years before it opened, Napo-
leon had entered Russia on the expedition which was to
light the flame of national patriotism among the blazing
ruins of Moscow. What kings had been unable to accom-
plish, the aroused people of Europe did at the Battle of the
Nations, which set the seal of defeat on the grand army of
the Empire and drove its once invincible hosts in flight back
across the Rhine, on that perhaps most memorable of all
October days, just a year before our diplomats arrived at
Vienna. The military genius of the great soldier was never
quite so supremely great as it was in the marvellous cam-
paign in which he sought to stave off the inevitable and to
save his capital and his throne. Fighting against vastly
superior numbers, he balked and then defeated them, caus-
ing them to fall back by the rapier-like thrust of his little
army against their line of communications, until finally the
supreme gambler had played his last card and his enemies
had bivouacked in triumph in the streets of Paris. Even
then, in utter disregard of human life, he would have thrown
his brave men on the entrenchments of his own late capital
if it had not been for the defection of Marshal Marmont.
“I am still the man of Wagram and of Austerlitz I” he
exclaimed when he heard that Paris had fallen; and even
with his abdication signed he sprang from his seat and said
to his assembled marshals, who had certainly served him
well on many a hard-fought field: “Gentlemen, let us tear it
up. We can beat them yet.” But they were disillusioned,
discouraged, and inexorable, and so the man of Wagram
became for the moment the man of Elba.