Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/619

The Career of Napoleon Bonaparte 469 victory before he closed the first season's campaign. The Russians simply retreated and led him far within a hostile and devastated country before they offered battle at Borodino (September 7). Napoleon won the battle, but his army was reduced to something over one hundred thousand men when he entered Moscow a week later. The town had been set on fire by the Russians before his arrival ; he found his position untenable and had to retreat as winter came on. The cold, the want of food, and the harassing attacks of the people along the route made that retreat one of the most signal military tragedies on record. Napoleon regained Poland early in December with scarcely twenty thousand of the four hundred thousand with which he had started less than six months before. 828. Napoleon collects a New Army. Napoleon hastened back to Paris, where he freely misrepresented the true state of affairs, even declaring that the army was in a good condition up to the time that he turned it over to his brother-in-law in December. While the loss of men in the Russian campaign was enormous, just those few had naturally survived who would be most essential in the formation of a new army ; namely, the officers. With their help Napoleon soon had a force of no less than six hundred thousand men with which to return to the attack. This contained one hundred and fifty thousand conscripts who should not have been called into service until 1814, besides older men who had been hitherto exempted. 829. Social Conditions in Prussia before 1806. By the end of February, 1813, the timid Frederick William had been induced by public sentiment in Prussia to break with his oppressor and join Russia. On March 17 he issued a famous address "To my People," in which he called upon them to assist him in the recov- ery of Prussian independence. Up to the defeat of Jena, Prussia was far more backward in its social organization than France had been before 1789. The agri- cultural classes were serfs, who were bound to the land and com- pelled to work a certain part of each week for the lord without remuneration. The population was divided into strict social castes.