text:  The same cause appeared at a subsequent period in the campaigns of Napoleon: his armies were innumerable his force irresistible as long as he headed the forced confederacy of western Europe and he invaded Russia with five hundred thousand men; but when the disaster of Moscow and the resurrection of Germany brought the Russians into France the boasted strength of the empire disappeared its allies passed over to the other side and the mighty conqueror was reduced to a painful defensive with fifty thousand men on the plains of Champagne