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generally implicated in the misfortunes of Regnier, Bernadotte, and subsequently of Josephine. But his gallantry at Austerlitz and Essling, with twenty and odd wounds, out-balanced his want of flexibility with Napoleon. Ney and Rapp were the only generals, said Napoleon, that preserved the hearts of stout soldiers in the retreat from Moscow. Rapp certainly paid his court at the Tuilleries in 1814, and in 1815 commanded the army of the Rhine for his old master. We shall see, whether the curious interview, in which Napoleon won him over, can excuse the desertion. He became afterwards chamberlain, or some such officer about Louis the Eighteenth's person, and was on duty at St Cloud the very day that the news of Napoleon's death arrived in Paris; the veteran, summoned suddenly before the King, made his appearance in undissembled tears:-" Go, Rapp," said the Monarch, "I honour you for this tribute to your old master."

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These memoirs, seemingly excited by the ultra calumnies against the ExEmperor, which they commence with answering, are sketched by the bold and hurried hand of an old soldier. He represents Napoleon as mild, tender, and scarcely ever inexorable in matters of life and death. He relates many instances of successful interference in such cases, but allows that he was often driven into excesses by the servile adulations of the court. He represents him as open to advice, even to remonstrance, though intolerant of the common-place arguments, which his relations especially sometimes pestered him with.

"Fesch was about to remonstrate with him one day on the war in Spain. He had not uttered two words, when Napoleon, drawing towards the window, asked, 'Do you see that star?'It was broad day.

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No,' replied the archbishop. Well, as long as I alone can perceive it, I follow my plan, and suffer no observations."

The following anecdote, though nothing in itself, may account for the contradictions and contrary reports about the Emperor's apathy of feeling, on which point the author of Child Harold, and the Quarterly Review, are at issue:

"On his return from the Russian campaign, he was deploring with deep emotion, the death of so many gallant soldiers, mowed down, not by the Cossacks, but by cold and hunger. A courtier seeking to put in his word, added, with a pitiful tone

We have indeed suffered a great loss.'

-'Yes,' rejoined Napoleon, Madam Barilli, the singer, is dead.'

He mystified indiscretion, says Rapp, but repulsed neither pleasantry nor frankness.

After some chapters devoted to the character of Napoleon, and to anecdotes concerning him, the Memoirs proceed with the "Third War of Austria," when, all hopes of invading our island being at an end, the French succeeded in shutting up Mack with the remains of his army in Ulm. Segur's account of the surrender is exceedingly interesting; the getting possession of the bridge over the Danube at Vienna is one of the best morceaus of Rapp's books, and shews how effectually Buonaparte was seconded by the dexterity and courage of his generals:

"We were marching on the traces of the enemy's rear-guard. It would have been easy for us to have routed it, but we knew better. The object was to deceive them into an abatement of vigilance: we never pushed them, but, on the contrary, spread about reports of approaching peace. We permitted troops and baggage to escape; a few men were of little importance in comparison with the preservation of the bridges. Once broken, we would have had the whole campaign to fight over again. Austria was assembling fresh forces, Prussia was throwing off the mask; and Russia presented herself prepared for action with all the resources of these two powers. The possession of the bridges was a victory, and one only to be obtained by surprise. We took our measures in consequence. The troops stationed on the route were forbidden to give the least demonstration that might create alarm; no one was permitted to enter Vienna. When everything had been seen, and examined, the Grand Duke took possession of that capital, charging Lannes and Bertrand to make a strong reconnoissance on the river. These two

officers were followed by the Tenth Hussars. They found at the gates of the Faubourg a post of Austrian cavalry. There had been no fighting for three days; there was a kind of suspension of arms on both sides. Lannes and Bertrand address the commandant, enter into conversation with him, attach themselves to his steps, nor leave him for a moment. Arrived at the borders of the river, they determine to follow him farther: the Austrian grows angry: they demand to speak with the officer commanding the troops on the left side of the river. He suffers them to proceed, but without any of their hussars; the Tenth are obliged to take up a position. In the meantime our troops arrived, conducted by the Grand Duke (Murat) and Lannes. The bridge was yet untouched, but the

trains were laid, the cannoneers held the matches the least appearance of endeavouring to pass by force had ruined the enterprize. It was necessary to trick them, and the bonhommie of the Austrians gave us the means. The two marshals alighted, halted the column, and ordered but a very small detachment to advance and establish themselves on the bridge. General Belliard then advanced, walking with his hands behind his back, accompanied by two officers of his staff. Lannes joined him with others; they went, and came, talked, and even ventured into the middle of the Austrians. The commander of the post at first refused to receive them, but he yielded at last, and conversation was established between them. They repeated to him what Bertrand had already said, that the negotiations advanced, that the war was finished. Why,' said the Marshal, 'hold your cannons pointed against us? Haven't we had enough of blood, of combats? Do you wish to attack us, to prolong the evils of war, severer for you than for us. Come, no more provocation; turn your pieces.' Half convinced, half overborne, the commandant obeyed, the artillery was turned on the Austrians, and the arms piled up.

"During these arguments, the small body of the vanguard advanced slowly, masking sappers and artillerymen, who threw the combustible matters into the stream, poured water on the powder, and cut the trains. The Austrian, too ignorant of our language to take much interest in the conversation, soon perceived that the troops gained ground, and endeavoured to make us comprehend that this was wrong, that he would not suffer it. Lannes and Belliard tried to reassure him; they told him, it was but the cold that made the soldiers mark step, in order to warm their feet. The column, however, still approached, it had passed three-fourths of the bridge—the officer lost patience, and ordered his troops to fire. The troop ran to arms-the pieces were pointed the position was terrible; with a little less presence of mind, the bridge was in the air, our soldiers in the waves, and the whole campaign compromised. But the Austrian had to do with men not so easily disconcerted. Marshal Lannes took hold of him on one side, General Belliard seized him on the other they shake him, menace, shout, prevented his being heard. In the meantime Prince d'Aversperg arrives, accompanied by General Bertrand. An officer runs to ac

quaint Murat with the state of things, and to pass the order to the troops to hasten Cheir step. The Marshal advances to Aversperg, complains of the commander of the post, demands that he be replaced, and sent off from the rear-guard, where he might trouble the negotiations. A versperg is deceived. He argues, approves, contradicts,

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and loses time in a vain discussion. troops profit by the time, they arrive, expand, and the bridge is ours," &c.

The Memoirs sketch livelily and rapidly the victories of Austerlitz and Jena, and livelily describe the disgust of the French soldier in Poland :

"Quatre mots constituaient, pour eux, tout l'idiome Polonais: Kleba? Niema; VOTA? SARA:-Bread? There's none. Water? You shall have it. C'était là toute la Pologne."

The dislike and horror of the French at passing the Vistula, amounted, indeed, almost to a presentiment, a prophetic feeling of their sufferings in Russia. Meantime, peace was concluded at Tilsit. Napoleon went to Spain, but was soon compelled to return by the wavering faith of the North. But the fame of Wellington's victories soon followed him-the Invincibles retreated-were mowed down by our forces-and English example wrought as much against Napoleon in the North, as their arms in the South.

"The reports, the disasters of Baylen gave Napoleon fresh doubts on the conduct of Prussia. He charged me to redouble my vigilance. Spare nothing to the Prussians, he wrote me, they must not raise their heads more.'

"The news of the ill success which we met with in the Peninsula, spread itself immediately over Germany: they awakened new hopes, every breast was in fermentation. I forwarded accounts to Napoleon: but he did not like to be reminded of unpleasant occurrences, much less when they foretold a more disastrous future. • The Germans are not Spaniards,' replied he; ⚫ the phlegmatic character of the German has nothing in common with that of the ferocious Catalonians."

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In opposition to the opinion of all his counsellors, military or civilian, Buonaparte entered Russia. We all

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know the consequences. Rapp received four wounds in the battle of the Moskwa, and lay sick when the flames of Moscow began; five or six times he dislodged to escape the flames. gives a lively picture of the scene.The noise, the hurry, the conflagration, the sane even affrighted, and the litters of the wounded generals meeting here and there, as they were dragged in search of a secure spot. Rapp, however, survived, and in the retreat was dispatched by Napoleon to take the command of Dantzic. Here he supported a long siege, but at length surrendered, and was carried prisoner into Russia. He returned to

Rapp. You say so; but your anti-chambers are full of those complaisants, who have always flattered your inclination for

the Tuilleries in 1814, and found, as he says, that the enemy had invaded everything. He meets many of his subalterns in favour, who regard the veteran de haut en bas. Of one of these gentry, he gives an anecdote, curiously descriptive of French life:

"J'en rencontrais un troisième, que ma presence ne mit pas à l'aise. Attaché autrefois à Joséphine, il avait fait preuve d'une prévoyance véritablement exquise: afin d'être en mesure contre les cas inprévus qui pouvaient survenir dans les promenades et les voyages, il s'était muni d'un vase de vermeil, qu'il portait constamment sur lui. Quand la circonstance l'exigeait, il le tirait de sa poche, le présentait, le reprenait, le vidait, l'essuyait, et le serrait avec soin. C'etait avoir l'instinct de la domesticité."

"But all these preux," says Rapp," so eager for money, decoration, and commandments, soon gave sample of their courage. Napoleon appeared, they were eclipsed. They besieged Louis XVIII., the dispenser of favours; they had not a match to burn for Louis XVIII. unfor

tunate."

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Rapp. Without doubt-My duty

Nap. 'Tis too much. But your soldiers would not have obeyed you. I tell you, the peasants of your native Alsace would have stoned you, were you guilty of such a treachery.

Rapp. Allow, sire, that the position is painful; you abdicate, you depart, you engage us to serve the King; you returnAll the force even of old remembrances cannot even deceive us

Nap. How? What would you say? Think you I return without alliance, without agreement? And, besides, my system is changed-no more of wars or conquests -I wish to reign in peace, and bring happiness to my subjects.

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Nap. At what price? And his engagements, has he kept them? Why did he not hang Ferrand for his speech on national properties? It is that it is the insolence of the priests and nobles that has made me leave Elba. I could have arrived with three millions of peasantry, who ran to offer me their services. But I was sure of not finding resistance before Paris. The without me affairs had finished by a terriBourbons are lucky that I have returned; ble revolution. Have you seen the pamphlet of Chateaubriand, which does not even grant me courage on the field of battle? Have you ever seen me amidst the fire? Am I a coward ?

Rapp. I have partaken of the same indignation with all honourable men, at an accusation as unjust as it is base.

Nap. Saw you ever the Duke of Orleans?

Rapp. But once.

Nap. It is he that has tact and conduct. The others are ill-surrounded, ill-counselled. They hate me. They are about to be more furious than ever. They have wherewith. I am arrived without striking a blow. It is now they'll cry out upon my ambition; it is the eternal reproach; they know nothing else to say.

Rapp. They are not alone in charging you with ambition.

Nap. How? Am I ambitious, I? Eston gros comme moi quand on a de l'ambition? Are men fat, like me, when they are ambitious? (and he struck his two hands with violence upon his belly.")

Beyond this argumentum ad stomachum, we cannot quote another line. It is too good, and so staggered poor Rapp, that he took the command of the army of the Rhine from Napoleon, and scarce had joined it, when the news of Waterloo and its consequences shattered his new hopes, and set his army in mutiny against him.

10

1823.

Italian Art of Hoaxing. No. IV.

FROM THE NOVELS OF LASCA.

No. IV.

TENTH AND LAST TALE OF THE THIRD SUPPER.

Of the Hoax of Hoaxes, practised by Lorenzo de Medici upon Master Manente the Physician, and of the many rare and diverting Occurrences which proceeded from it.

THE following Tale possesses, on many accounts, very peculiar merit-first, as exhibiting a picture, or rather a series of pictures, of national manners and customs, not exceeded in liveliness and fidelity by those which are presented to us in that invaluable repository of Oriental portraiture, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, to which it will also strike the reader as bearing no little affinity in the resemblance between its hero, Lorenzo de Medici (commonly called the Magnificent,) and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, a name so familiarly interwoven with all our recollections of childhood, by its frequent occurrence in that delightful store-house of fiction. Secondly, It is no less worthy of notice on account of the new light which it casts on the character of that hero, whom his illustrious English biographer has certainly omitted to represent to us in this view of his features. And lastly, it affords a very wide field for reflection, when it leads us to consider to what an extent, even under the forms of a popular and democratic government, the middling and lower classes of society were held as lawful subjects for the jest and diversion of the great, when so popular a chief as Lorenzo made no scruple of playing his favourite physician a trick, which cost him his liberty and his honour, and exposed his life and reason to the utmost peril, for no cause more just than that he was apt to make too free use of his bottle, especially when he could contrive to do so at a friend's expense. The treatment sustained by the worthy knight of La Mancha, at the hands of the unfeeling grandees of Spain, to whom he had the misfortune of becoming a laughing-stock, bears some analogy, (in that respect at least) to the present story; but I will not conclude these prefatory remarks without repeating, that it seeins impossible to regard the tale as a mere fiction, or otherwise than as a narrative (perhaps highly coloured) of some real occurrences, the account of which was in general circulation at the time when the author composed it, that is, not more than fifty years after the death of the most distinguished personage whose name is mentioned in it.

The distinction of " Lorenzo il Vecchio," or The Elder, by which the hero of the jest is identified, led me once to imagine that another Lorenzo (the brother of Cosmo, surnamed Parens Patriæ,) was here intended; and the epithet "Il Magnifico" assigned to him, would not alone have disproved the supposition, but have only confirmed the truth of an undeniable assertion, made by Sismondi, and somewhat petulantly called in question by Roscoe, that the appellation itself was no other than an honorary mark of distinction, conferred indiscriminately on persons illustrious by birth or office. However, the mention of the "Selve d'Amore," (an undoubted work of the Lorenzo whom we usually distinguish by the name of the Magnificent,) seems to prove that no other than he was the person here meant to be referred to; and the phrase of "Il Vecchio" applied to him, must therefore be taken in contradistinction to a third Lorenzo, (commonly called Lorenzino,) the assassin of the first Duke Alexander.

INTRODUCTION.

Giacinto had arrived at the conclusion of his novel, with which he had not a little rejoiced and enlivened his auditory, when Amarantha, to whom alone now remained the task of paying the expected tribute, thus, sweetly smiling, began "I design, most fair ladies, and gentle sirs, to relate to you an anec dote of mystification, which, albeit not brought to perfection under the guidance of Scheggia, or Zoroastro, or any other of the great masters of the art already noticed, I humbly opine that you will think no less worthy of admiration, nor less artificially contrived and executed, than any which you have VOL. XIV.

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had already recounted to you. It is one which was practised by the Magnifico, Lorenzo the Elder, upon a certain physician, one of the most arrogant and assuming that the world ever witnessed. In the which so many strange accidents intervened, and such various chances were given birth to, that, if you ever in your lives were moved to surprise or laughter, you will now find matter for both, to your hearts' content."

Lorenzo, the elder de' Medici (as it behoves you to know,) was (if ever there was in this world) a man, not only endowed with all manner of virtue and excellence, but a lover and rewarder of virtue in others, and that in the highest degree imaginable. In his days there dwelt at Florence a certain physician, by name Master Manente della Piève, who practised both physic and surgery, but was more of a practitioner than a man of science; one, in truth, of much humour and pleasantry, but so impertinent and assuming, that there was no bearing him. Amongst his other qualifications, he was a great lover of the bottle, a hard drinker, and one who made it his boast that he was a consummate judge of good wine; and frequently, without being invited, would he go of his own accord to dine or sup with the Magnifico, who at length conceived such a dislike of him by reason of his perpetual intrusiveness and impertinence, that he could not endure his sight, and deliberated within himself in what manner he might play such a trick upon him as might effectually prevent him from repeating his usual annoyances. It happened that, one after noon among others, the aforesaid Master Manente, having been drinking at the tavern, called Delle Bertucce, (which was his favourite haunt,) had inade himself so intoxicated, that he could scarcely stand; and mine host, when it came to shutting-up time, caused him to be carried on boys' shoulders out into the street, and laid along on one of the benches in St Martin's market-place, where he fell so sound asleep that a discharge of cannon would not have awakened him. By some chance Lorenzo was made acquainted with this accident, and, thinking it a most favourable opportunity for the accomplishment of his project, he pretended to pay no attention to the person who was his informant, but feigning a desire to go to sleep, (it being already far advanced towards midnight, and he at all times a little sleeper, making it his constant labit to stay up till about that hour,)

caused two of his most faithful grooms to be sent for to his chamber, and gave them instructions how they were to proceed; who, accordingly, well hooded and disguised, sallied forth from the palace, and went (by Lorenzo's commission) to the place of St Martin, where they found the sleeper still snoring most musically, whom they first placed on his legs, then muffled him, and, laying him like a wallet across their shoulders, took him away with them.

The poor physician, finding himself thus treated, full surely imagined that he was in the hands of some of his own companions, and so quietly suffered himself to be ushered, by a back door of the palace of the Medici, into the presence of the Magnifico, who was alone, waiting with incredible impatience the return of his messengers, and who now directed them to carry their load into a remote upper apartment, where, having deposited him on a feather-bed, they stripped him to his shirt, (he knowing no more of the matter than if he had been a dead man,) and, taking away with them all his habiliments, left him securely locked up in his new lodgings.

Lorenzo's next concern was to send for the buffoon Monaco-a personage remarkably well skilled in counterfeiting voices-whom, having first made him exchange his own clothes for those of the physician, and given him the necessary directions, he dispatched, just as the bells were ringing for matins, to Master Manente's house in the street de' Fossi. It was in the month of September, and the physician's family (consisting of a wife, an infant son, and a servant-maid,) were residing at his country-house in the Mugello, while he himself remained at Florence, but was never to be found at home except at night when he returned to sleep, making it his constant practice to dine either at a tavern, with his boon companions, or else at his friends' houses; insomuch, that Monaco, having found the house key in the owner's pocket, easily let himself in, and, in great glee at the thought

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