SECRET TERMS OF NJEL'S MISSION. 119 The position he held at the French Head- chap. quarters could not plainly be other than one of 1 a strange and exceptional kind. His ostensible ^onatThe function was that of an ' Aide-de-camp of the HeTdquar- ' Emperor on mission to the Army of the East,' ters " with a military position which placed him at the top of the Engineer Staff;* but of course the bare fact of his ' mission ' sufficed amply to show that he must be acting in concert with the Em- peror, and therefore wielding great power. He did not disguise from himself that the ' mission ' entrusted to him was perforce overshadowing Bizot, the commander of the French Engineers, whilst also indeed it is plain that his presence obscured the authority of even the Commander- in-Chief, though to Canrobert — a man not self- seeking, but fevered by doubt and anxiety — the shade which thus overcast him may perhaps, after all, have been welcome. He might naturally enough have been glad to find himself much shorn of power, and proportionately disburdened of care. When advising the arrangements recorded on mspian the 2d of February, General Niel, we now see, was preparing a retreat for the French from their engagements of the 1st of January, and bringing things into conformity with his inchoate plan of campaign then already approaching completion. By the middle of February he had not only brought this new plan to what he thought per-
- As shown by 'la situation' of the 15th February. — Niel,
p. 476.
