Napoleon being asked, whilst at St. Helena, who the persons were that employed the contrivers of the infernal machine, said they were employed by the count D***, and sent over by Pitt in English ships, and furnished with English money. Although,' added he, 'your **** did not actually suborn them, they knew what they were going to execute, and furnished them with the means.' He did not believe that Louis XVIII. was privy to it.

This conspiracy enabled Buonaparte to overthrow the last remnant of Jacobins, to establish the law declaring an attempt on his life treason, thus assuming the rank of a king; and to appoint himself first consul for life.

Without a competitor on the land, he aspired to the dominion of the sea. But England was still irresistible in war. His subtle policy conceived her destruction therefore by peace. The fall of Egypt before the gallantry of the British troops removed the last source of contention; and on the 27th of March, 1802, after a five months' negociation, the short-lived peace of Amiens was signed; England retaining none of her conquests but Ceylon and Trinidad. At the close of the year the expedition against the blacks of St. Domingo sailed from France. For this wanton aggression against the rights and liberties of a people who had achieved their own deliverance, and against a chief who had exhibited every great quality that ought to insure the respect and admiration of mankind, the first consul could never offer the shadow of a reason. We are not surprised that he should have felt his unavailing regrets in his exile: the measure he had meted to the unfortunate and unoffending Toussaint was measured to him again. The dangerous peace of Amiens, which if dexterously managed might have been fatal to England, the perfidy of the French ruler precipitately terminated. It was soon found that the system of Buonaparte was substantially aggression-conquest in peace, if he could accomplish it by the blackest perfidy-conquest in war, if he must use the sword. His first act was the seizure of Switzerland, and the assumption of its sovereignty, under the title of Grand Mediator of

During this short interval of peace Buonaparte advanced several steps in the way of preparation to the throne. As grand pacificator, the French people, grateful for the repose they had received at his hands, invested him with the chief magistracy for life, with the power of presenting his colleagues, and indeed of securing their election. It was also decreed that the first consul might name his successor, that he should have the power of pardoning in all cases, of making war and peace, and presenting to the senate the subjects on which they were permitted to deliberate, of suspending the functions of juries, of proclaiming departments out of the protection of the law, of determining what persons arrested in extraordinary cases were to be brought before the tribunals, and of dissolving the legislative body and the tribunate.

The first consul, further considering his authority incomplete whilst any power was left in the state that did not immediately emanate from himself, and ever anxious to aggrandise the army, now determined upon the formation of a military order of nobility, under the designation of the Legion of Honor. To this the legislature agreed, and that it should be composed of fifteen cohorts, and a council of administration. Each cohort was to consist of seven grand officers, twenty commandants, thirty subordinate officers, and 350 legionaries. The first consul was always to be chief of the legion, and of the council of administration, and the members were to be appointed for life. The pay of each grand officer was to be 5000 francs, and of each legionary 250. All military men who had received arms of honor were members, as well as those citizens who had rendered eminent services to the state in the late war, or who had caused the government to be respected. Joseph Buonaparte, the brother of the first consul, was elected grand master of this new order; and, the more fully to rivet the interest of the government, the members of the grand council of the legion of honor were appointed members of the senate. In fact, to depress the authority of the legislative body, founded, though imperfectly, on the principle of representation; and to exalt the senate, who depended chiefly on the choice and nomination of the first consul, were the principal objects of Napoleon, by which political liberty was in a great measure annihilated.

This acquisition of the consulship for life, and the terms obtained by the concordat with the pope, had filled the minds of the people at large

with sensations of pride and gratitude. A new pontiff had been invested with the purple as head of the Romish church, on the 13th of March, 1800: Chiaramonti, the pope elect, took the name of Pius VII., and owed his promotion in a great measure to the influence which the first consul had exercised in the conclave. It seemed that he was inclined to take the conduct of one of his predecessors, Benedict XIV., as the model for his own. He sent cardinal Gonsalvi into France, to negociate a concordat upon bases a little less ultramontaine than those of the famous concordat agreed to by Francis I. and pope Leo X.

On the 15th of July, 1801, a convention was signed by Joseph Buonaparte, brother of the consul, and the two representatives of the holy see, cardinal Gonsalvi and Monsignor Spina archbishop of Corinth. This treaty, which had been kept secret by both parties, caused the reopening of the churches, and was made public in Paris at the same time as the treaty of Amiens, being solemnly promulgated on Easter day, by sound of trumpets and several discharges of artillery. The pomp of such a religious ceremony in a city where nothing of the kind had been witnessed for many years, and the brilliant procession, in which the Pope's legate figured with the First Consul, collected innumerable spectators, who could not conceal the pleasure they felt in this partial restoration of the religion of their fathers.

Buonaparte considered the concordat thus extorted from the pope as a master stroke of policy. We confess we view it in a very different light. Our religious prejudices have no influence on our judgment of this measure: we view it now simply as a political device, and, in this character, it seems to us no proof of the sagacity of Buonaparte. It helps to confirm us in an impression which other parts of his history give us, that he did not understand the peculiar character of his age, and the peculiar and original policy which it demanded. He always used common-place means of power, although the unprecedented times in which he lived required a system which should combine untried resources, and touch new springs of action. Be. cause old governments had found a convenient prop in religion, Napoleon imagined that it was a necessary appendage and support of his sway, and resolved to restore it. But at this moment there were no foundations in France for a religious establishment, which could give strength and a character of sacredness to the supreme power. There was comparatively no faith, no devout feeling, and still more no superstition, to supply the place of these. The time for the reaction of the religious principle had not yet arrived; and a more likely means of retarding it could hardly have been devised than the nursing care extended to the church by Buonaparte, the recent mussulman, the known despiser of the ancient faith, who had no worship at heart but the worship of himself.

'Had the Pope never existed before, he should have been made for the occasion,' was the speech of this political charlatan: as if religious opinion and feeling were things to be manufactured

by a consular decree. He congratulated himself on the terms which he exacted from the pope and which had never been conceded to the mos powerful monarchs, forgetting that his apparen success was the defeat of his plans; for just a far as he severed the church from the supreme pontiff, and placed himself conspicuously at is head, he destroyed the only connexion which could give it influence. Just so far as its power over opinion and conscience ceased it became a coarse instrument of state, contemned by the people, and serving only to demonstrate the aspiring views of its master. Accordingly the French bishops in general refused to hold ther dignities under this new head, preferred exile the sacrifice of the rights of the church, and left behind them a hearty abhorrence of the concordat among the more zealous members of ther communion. Happy would it have been for Napoleon had he left the pope and the church t themselves. By occasionally recognising and employing, and then insulting and degrading the Roman pontiff, he exasperated a large part of Christendom, fastened on himself the brand of impiety, and awakened a religious hatred which contributed its full measure to his fall.

As another means employed by Buonaparte, for giving strength and honor to his government, we may name the grandeur of his public works, which he began in his consulate and cotinued after his accession to the imperial dignity, These dazzled France, and still impress travelles with admiration. Could we separate these from his history, and did no other indication of his cha racter survive, we should undoubtedly honor him with the title of a beneficent sovereign; but, connected as they are, they do little or nothing to change our conceptions of him as an all-grasping usurper. Paris was the chief object of these labors; and surely we cannot wonder that he who aimed at universal dominion should strive to improve and adorn the metropolis of his empire. It is the practice of despots to be lavish of expense on the royal residence and the seat of govern ment. Buonaparte had a special motive too for conciliating the vanity of the great city; for Paris is France, as has often been observed. Previous to his ascending the imperial throne, to display the rancor of his hatred to England, he vapored about invasion. He therefore marched the whole of his disposable force to the western coast and constructed flotillas for their embarkation. If he was in earnest with this project he betrayed the weakness of an idiot; and if he jested he paid dearly for his joke. Our people and our rulers were neither to be conquered nor alarmed.

Napoleon at the head of the government, and commanding in person the army of France, had now reached the moment when the crown hung within his grasp; the fruit, to use his early phrase, was ripe, and he plucked it with a bold hand. But one crime more was to prepare the way for perfect despotism. It was of the blackest atrocity, unparalleled by even the tyrant's plea, and less like an act of human policy or passion than a gloomy pledge to that tempter that was yet to exact the full penalty of his bond. It was intended as a means of removing what he felt to

be obstructions to his power and ambition,-by striking terror into the hearts of kings, and especially of awing into complete submission the remaining branches of the house of Bourbon. We refer to the murder of the duke d'Enghien. There were times when Buonaparte disclaimed the origination of this atrocious crime. But it bears internal marks of its author; the boldness, decision, and overpowering rapidity of the horrible transaction, point unerringly to the soul where it was conceived. We believe that one great recommendation of this murder was, that it would strike amazement and terror into France, and Europe, and show that he was prepared to shed any blood and to sweep before him any obstructions in his way to absolute power. Certain it is, that the open murder of the duke d'Enghien, and the justly suspected assassinations of Pichegru and Wright, did create a dread such as had not been felt before; and while, on previous occasions, some faint breathings of liberty were to be heard in the legislative bodies, only one voice, that of Carnot, was raised against investing Buonaparte with the imperial crown, and laying France an unprotected victim at his feet. The circumstances of this foul blot on the page of humanity will be found in detail in our article D'ENGHIEN: they are briefly these: The duke d'Enghien, the last descendant of the line of Condé, was seized in the neutral territory of Baden, was dragged to Paris, brought before a military commission at midnight without counsel, witness, or friend, condemned on a fictitious charge of conspiracy, and at six in the morning shot, and thrown into a hole in the fosse of the castle of Vincennes which had been dug for him before his trial.

Napoleon's hands were now, as he termed it, washed in the blood of the Bourbons; and they were but the fitter to grasp the sceptre that was to be dipped in the blood of universal Europe. On the 2nd of December he was crowned by pope Pius VII., himself laying the crown on his own brow and that of the empress, in haughty indication that its rights and maintenance existed in his own hands. On the 11th of April, 1805, he was crowned king of Italy at Milan. The assassination of the emperor Paul of Russia annihilated for a time all his prospects of empire in the east. But he did not despair of winning over Alexander to his schemes. His temporary success we all remember. Alexander, however, opened his eyes at a critical juncture, and saved his own throne while he contributed his glorious share in ridding Europe of a universal enemy.

The system adopted by the French emperor, soon after his elevation, was felt to be a declara tion of war against mankind. In 1905 a coalition was formed by England, Austria, and Russia. They demanded of France the independence of Holland and Switzerland, the evacuation of Hanover and the north of Germany, the restoration of Piedmont to the king of Sardinia, and the withdrawing of the French armies from Italy. Those terms were haughtily answered by a decree calling out a conscription of 80,000 men, and the instant movement of the army from the camps of the Channel against Austria. The troops marched thirty miles a day,

while the enemy had calculated their advance at ten. The campaign was thus a surprise, the most decisive in the memory of man. The Austrian van of 20,000 men was surrounded and forced to lay down its arms at Ulm. Vienna, the reward of the victory, was entered in triumph by Napoleon on the 13th of November. Austria concentrated her last force with the Russians on the plains of Moravia. The allies and the French were equal in number, each about 75,000 men. Nothing shows more clearly the utter surprize of the Austrian government, by the promptitude of Napoleon, than the fact that the whole native force in this combat for existence was but 25,000. He attacked the allies at Austerlitz on the 2d of December, the anniversary of his coronation, broke through their line which had rashly attempted to outflank him, slew or took prisoners 20,000 men, and laid Austria at his mercy. The treaty of Presburg deprived her of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, which were given to Bavaria, and of Venice which was united to the kingdom of Italy. The electors of Wirtemberg and Bavaria were made kings. Such was the first evidence of the imperial sword of Napoleon. An empire prostrated in a six months campaign and by a single battle.

The following characteristic extracts are taken from the history of this period.

As Napoleon was passing through a crowd of prisoners, an Austrian colonel expressed his astonishment to see the emperor of the French wet, covered with dirt, and as much or more fatigued than the meanest drummer in his army. An aide-de-camp present having explained to him what the Austrian officer had said, the emperor ordered this answer to be made: Your master wished to make me recollect that I was a soldier: I hope he will allow that the throne and the imperial purple have not made me forget my first profession.'

The evening before the surrender of Ulm Napoleon addressed the following proclamation to his army :

'Soldiers! a month ago we were encamped on the shore of the ocean opposite to England; but an impious league compelled us to fly towards the Rhine. It is but a fortnight since we passed that river; and the Alps of Wirtemberg, the Necker, the Danube, and the Lech, those celebrated barriers, have not retarded our march a day, an hour, or an instant. Indignation against a prince whom we have twice seated on his throne, when it depended entirely on our pleasure to hurl him from it, supplied us with wings. The enemy's army, deceived by our manœuvres, and the rapidity of our movements, is completely turned. It now fights only for its safety. It would gladly embrace an opportunity of escaping, and returning home; but it is now too late the fortifications erected at a great expense along the Iller, expecting we should advance through the avenues of the Black Forest, are become useless, since we advanced by the plains of Bavaria. Soldiers! but for the army which is now in front of you, we should have been in London; we should have avenged ourselves for six centuries of insults, and restored the freedom of the seas. But bear in mind to-morrow

that you are fighting against the allies of England, that you have to avenge yourselves of a perjured prince, whose own letters breathed nothing but peace, at the moment he was marching his army against our ally, who thought us cowardly enough to suppose we should tamely witness his passing of the Inn, his entrance into Munich, and his aggression upon the elector of Bavaria. He thought we were occupied elsewhere; let him for the third and last time learn, that we know how to be present in every place where the country has enemies to combat. Soldiers! to-morrow will be a hundred times more celebrated than the day of Marengo. I have placed the enemy in the same position. It is necessary that not a man of the enemy's army should escape; that government which has violated all its engagements shall first learn its catastrophe by your arrival under the walls of Vienna, when its conscience may tell it that it has betrayed both its solemn promises of peace and the first of the duties bequeathed by its ancestors, with the power of forming the rampart of Europe against the irruptions of the Cossacks. Soldiers! you have been engaged in the affairs of Wertingen and Gunsburgh. I am satisfied with your conduct. Every corps in the army will emulate you; and I shall be able to say to my people, Your emperor and your army have done their duty; perform yours; and the 200,000 conscripts whom I have summoned will hasten by forced marches to reinforce our second line.

'NAPOLEON, EMPEROR.'

On the night preceding the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon went on foot and incog. and visited all the posts, but was almost immediately recognised by the soldiers, who placed lighted straw upon long poles, and 80,000 men joined in saluting the emperor with acclamations; some to celebrate the anniversary of his coronation, others saying, that the army would to-morrow offer its bouquette to the emperor. One of the oldest grenadiers went up to him, and said, 'Sire, you need not expose yourself: I promise you, in the name of the grenadiers, that you shall have only to fight with your eyes, and that we will bring you to-morrow the colors and artillery of the Russian army, to celebrate the anniversary of your coronation.' The emperor said, on his return to his guard house, a miserable straw cabin without a roof, which the grenadiers had made for him-This is the finest evening of my life; but I regret to think I shall lose a good number of these brave fellows. I feel, by the pain it gives me, that they are indeed my children, and I often reproached myself for this sentiment, for I fear it will terminate in rendering me unfit to

carry on a war.'

On the return of a feverish peace, and when the sword was sheathed, Napoleon saw the fruit of victory, and felt that the true conquest was begun. No campaign, since that in which Caesar decided the mastery of the Roman world, was ever followed by results so wide. The confederation of the Rhine was formed, and the title of emperor of Germany finally extinguished.

In the pride of conquest Napoleon took upon himself almost the name of an earthly provi

dence. By a stroke of his pen he alienated and distributed kingdoms. He rapidly developed his determination to bend all Europe to the supre macy of France, by surrounding her borders with a circle of dependent kingdoms. As the commencement of this system of imperial ramparts, Holland was given to his brother Louis. Other individuals of his blood were fixed in remoter sovereignties; Naples was given to Joseph; Lucca to his sister Eliza; Guastella to his sister Pauline; the grand duchy of Berg to Murat, his sister Ca roline's husband; his stepson Eugene Beauhar nois was appointed viceroy of Italy, and mar ried to the daughter of the king of Bavaria; Eugene's sister was married to the hereditary prince of Baden.

Among all the extraordinary workings of Napoleon's power, this sudden exaltation of nameless individuals to pre-eminence struck Europe with the strongest surprise. With this rage for king making, he aspired to resemble as nearly as pos sible the monarchs and courts around him. His policy in both may very justly be questioned. The true course for Napoleon seems to us to have been indicated, not only by the state of Europe, but by the means which France in the beginning of her revolution had found most effectual. He should have identified himself with some great interests, opinions, or institution, by which he might have bound to himself a large party in every nation. He should have continued to make at least a specious cause against old establishments. To contrast himself most strikingly and advantageously with former governments, should have been the key of his policy. He should have placed himself at the head of a new order of things, which should have worn the face of an improvement of the social state. Nor did the subversion of republican forms prevent his adoption of this course, or of some other which would have secured to him the sympathy of multitudes. He might still have drawn some broad lines between his own administration, and that of other states, tending to throw the old dynasties into the shade. He might have distinguished himself by the simplicity of his establishments, and exaggerated the relief which he gave to his people, by saving them the burdens of a wasteful and luxurious court. He chose, however, to be a king in all the vulgar pomp and parade of the title, without ancestry to render it venerable, without blood to render it legitimate; and as to his conferring this dignity upon his relatives, and placing them over countries to which they were foreigners, the inconsistency was as great as the vanity was contemptible. He thus spread a jealousy of his power, whilst he rendered it insecure; for as none of the princes of his creation, however well disposed, were allowed to identify themselves with their subjects, and to take root in the public heart, but were compelled to act openly and without disguise as satellites and prefects of the French emperor, they gained no hold on those subjects, and could bring no strength to their master in the hour of peril.

Two things are strikingly evident in the early stage of Napoleon's career: that he was resolved upon the attainment of universal empire, and that his sole dependence in securing his object

was brute force, applied by his own skill and dexterity. It is too palpable to be denied that he thought himself more than a match for the moral instincts and sentiments of our nature; that he thought himself able to cover the most atrocious deeds by the splendor of his name, and even to extort applause for crimes, by the brilliancy of his success.

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To his favorite and insane projects he saw but one barrier opposed, and to the destruction of it he was resolved to bend all his energies. He had found the strength of England pressing against him as his war system extended, and acknowledged in words, and more expressive actions, that while she remained to rally the broken fortunes of Europe all his victories were in vain. But her ruin would be more than the removal of his most formidable enemy. England held the gate to the high road of the western and eastern worlds. With my armies and your fleets we must decide the kingdom of the earth,' was his language to the English government in peace. England and France cannot survive together,' was his more sincere language on the declaration of hostilities. But he had found direct attack impossible. He had twice threatened England with invasion; and the threat had only recoiled in shame upon the utterer; to conquer her by peace became once more his policy, but to urge her to pacification she must be first stript of the hope of restoring Europe. Russia, the only untouched power of the continent, alone stood in the way, and her humiliation was resolved on. But Prussia, that lay like the fortress of the north of Germany in the flank of the march, must not be left behind to take advantage of the chances of this colossal warfare. It was attacked and overpowered in a single assault. The whole stately fabric of the science and fortunes of the great Frederick came to the ground in a moment under the fire of the French cannon; and the battle of Jena on the 13th of October, 1806, with a deeper vengeance than that of Austerlitz, drove the king to take refuge among strangers, and turned his kingdom into a garrison of Napoleon. With an adroitness peculiarly his own the French emperor contrived to throw the whole blame of the war upon his victim. The fable of the wolf and the lamb became in this instance a reality. The king of Prussia, well knowing the character of the man who was disturbing every government in Europe, did all he could to conciliate the tyrant, concerning whose intentions he entertained reasonable apprehensions, while at the same time he prepared himself for hostilities should they be forced upon him. The latter necessity soon arrived, and Prussia, with more dignity than prudence, called upon the plunderer to renounce the kingdoms of Holland and Italy, and to withdraw his troops from Germany.

Napoleon, we are told, could not finish reading the document that conveyed these demands, but threw it down with contempt. Alluding to the king of Prussia, he exclaimed, 'Does he think himself in Champagne? Does he want to give us a new edition of his manifesto? What! does he pretend to mark out a route for our march back? Really I pity Prussia. I feel for VOL. XV.

William. He is not aware what rhapsodies he is made to write. This is too ridiculous. Berthier, they wish to give us a rendezvous of honor for the 8th; a beauteous queen will be witness to the combat. Come, let us march on, and show our courtesy. We will not halt till we enter Saxony.' Then, turning immediately to his secretary, he hastily dictated this proclamation :

'Soldiers! The order for your return to France was issued. You were already within a few days' march of your homes: triumphal fêtes awaited you, and the preparations for your reception had commenced in the capital; but, while we thus too confidently resigned ourselves to security, new plots were hatching, under the mask of friendship and alliance. Cries of war have been raised at Berlin, and for two months we have been provoked with a degree of audacity that calls for vengeance. The same faction, the same headlong spirit, which, under favor of our internal dissensions, led the Prussians fourteen years ago to the plains of Champagne, still prevails in their councils. If they no longer wish to burn and destroy Paris, they now boast their intention to plant their colors in Stuttgard, the capital of one of our allies. They would oblige Saxony, by a disgraceful transaction, to renounce her independence, by ranking her in the list of their provinces. They seek, in fine, to tear your laurels from your brows. They expect us to evacuate Germany at the sight of their army. What madness! Let them learn that it would be a thousand times easier to destroy the great capital, than to sully the honor of the great people and their allies. In their former attempt the plans of our enemies were frustrated. They found in the plains of Champagne only shame, defeat, and death; but the lessons of experience are forgotten, and there are men in whom the feelings of hatred and jealousy never become extinct. Soldiers! there is not one of you who would wish to return to France by any other path than that of honor. We ought not to return except beneath triumphal arches. What! have we braved the inclemency of the seasons, the ocean, and the desert; have we subdued Europe, often united against us; have we extended our glory from east to west, only to return now like deserters; and are we to abandon our allies, and then to be told, that the French eagle has fled in dismay before the Prussians? But they have already arrived at our advanced posts: let us then march upon them, since forbearance will not check their infatuation. Let the Prussian army experience the fate it shared fourteen years ago. Let us teach them that if it be easy to obtain an increase of territory and power, with the friendship of the great people, their enmity, provoked by the neglect of prudence and reason, is more terrible than the storms of the ocean.'

The day after he entered the Prussian capital the conqueror addressed his soldiers in the following proclamation:

'Soldiers! You have fulfilled my expectations, and justified the confidence of the French people. You have endured privation and fatigue, with courage equal to the intrepidity and presence of mind which you evinced on the field of battle.

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