The confidence with which a Sovereign is invested, is solid only when it is sanctioned by the suffrages of the people, who clothed him with the supreme magistracy.
It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.
The most terrible of all my battles was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves to be worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible.