On the French side of the Rhine, the exhausted state of the troops and the scant resources at their disposal gave rise to the idea of abandoning the left bank. Yet Napoleon refused to provide the Allies such blatant proof of his weakness and thus kept the army posted along the Rhine. He still believed the sight of the tricolor floating from steeples along the left bank would intimidate the Allies long enough to preserve what Fain refers to as “the protective illusions” of the sanctity of French territory. “The Rhine, which we were going to put between ourselves and the enemy,” rationalizes the distinguished artillery officer Colonel Charles-Pierre-Lubin Griois, “seemed to us an impassable obstacle; and while we deplored what we were abandoning and what we had already lost, France, such as it still remained, appeared to us beautiful and large enough, under a leader like Napoleon, to soothe many sorrows.” Not all shared this optimism, and others regretted Napoleon's decisions: “We ran as far as Moscow,” maintains the former administrator of the Grand Duchy of Berg, Jean-Claude Beugnot, “to draw forth the Cossacks and bring them to the banks of the Seine.” Writing in 1816, French historian and chevalier of the Legion of Honor Beauchamp adds: “Everywhere these same French legions, which had conquered two-thirds of Europe, sought their safety behind the Rhine, behind this river, an insurmountable barrier, if the ruler of France had not wanted to spread his system of enslavement beyond it.”