Men who touched the people's pulse had no such doubts.

"Ah! those were noble times," wrote Arndt: "the fresh young hope of life and honour sang in all hearts; it echoed along every street; it rolled majestically down every chancel." The sight of Germans thronging from all parts into Silesia to fight for their Prussian champions awakened in him the vision of a United Germany, which took form in the song, "What is the German's Fatherland ?"[286] Against this ever-rising tide of national enthusiasm Napoleon pitted the resources which Gallic devotion still yielded up to his demands.
They were surprisingly great.

In less than half a year, after the loss of half a million of men, a new army nearly as numerous was marshalled under the imperial eagles.

Thirty thousand tried troops were brought from Spain, thereby greatly relieving the pressure on Wellington.
Italy and the garrison towns of the Empire sent forth a vast number.
But the majority were young, untrained troops; and it was remarked that the conscripts born in the years of the Terror, 1793-4, had not the stamina of the earlier levies.

Brave they were, superbly brave; and the Emperor sought by every means to breathe into them his own indomitable spirit.