You are the worthy defenders of the honor of my crown, and the glory of the French people. So long as you continue to be animated by the spirit which you now display, nothing can oppose you. I know not how to distinguish any particular corps. As the result of our campaign, one of the first powers in Europe, which lately proposed to us a dishonorable capitulation, has been overthrown. The forests and defiles of Franconia, the rivers Saale and the Elbe, which our fathers would not have crossed in seven years, we have traversed in seven days; in that short interval we have had four engagements and one great battle. Our entrance into Potsdam and Berlin had been preceded by the fame of our victories. We have made 60,000 prisoners, taken sixty-five standards, among which are the colors of the king of Prussia's guards, 600 pieces of cannon, and three fortresses. Among the prisoners there are upwards of twenty generals. But, notwithstanding all this, more than half our troops regret their not having fired a single shot. All the provinces of the Prussian monarchy, as far as the Oder, are in our power. Soldiers! the Russians boast of coming to meet us, but we will advance to meet them; we will save them half their march they will meet another Austerlitz in the midst of Prussia. A nation who can so soon forget our generous treatment of her after that battle, in which the emperor, his court, and the wrecks of his army, owed their safety only to the capitulation we granted them, is a nation that cannot successfully contend with us. We will not again be the dupes of a treacherous peace. We will not lay down our arms till we compel the English, those eternal enemies of France, to renounce their plan of disturbing the continent, and relinquish the tyranny which they maintain on the seas.' The way was now cleared for the march of Napoleon to the north, and the declaration was now issued by which the ruin of England was proclaimed as the grand object of the war. The Berlin decrees commanded an abjuration of all intercourse with her by the continent; the measure was impotent; it was baffled by the vigorous commerce of the British empire; it was hated and evaded by all the commercial powers that were still undegraded by the actual presence of the French bayonets; and it was violated even in the recesses of Napoleon's palace. But even its partial operation laid a load of misery to the account of his crimes against mankind. The first Russian war began. Napoleon advanced into Poland. The Russians, under Benningsen, retreated before his superiority of force. The dreadful severities of a northern winter could not impede the fierce ambition that had sworn to separate Russia from Europe, and drive back the empire to its fountain head in the desert. Three desperate encounters, that of Pultusk fought in November 1806, with partial discomfiture to the French; Eylau, fought in February of the following year, a drawn battle; and Friedland, fought in June, with great loss to the Russians, produced the treaty of Tilsit, which publicly stipulated for the seizure of Finland, and privately for that of Constantinople. The conditions claimed by France were, the revival of the armed neutrality, the seizure of Spain, and the shutting of the Russian ports against English commerce, an exclusion which was followed by Austria and Prussia. Napoleon might now be considered at the zenith of his glory. Apparently he had cemented a personal friendship with the emperor Alexander. They lived at Tilsit in habits of the closest intimacy; and it is Napoleon who says, 'we were two young men of quality, who, in their common pleasures, had no secret from each other.' Could ambition have known when to pause, this was the time. The north and east of Europe were his own; millions regarded him with admiration bordering on that awe which is felt when contemplating a being of superior nature; his few enemies were ready to enter into terms of amity could they have been assured of his good faith and sincerity. And he was the idol of France, not only on account of his victories in the field, but because his government and internal policy, though despotic, were of a kind to impress his subjects with a powerful conviction of his capacity to govern. The code Napoleon, which was given to France under his auspices, entitles him to an honorable renown. In this almost solitary instance he showed that he understood something of true glory, and we prize it the more on this account. We look on the conqueror, the usurper, the sporter of kingdoms, the insatiable despot, with disgust, and see in all these characters an essential vulgarity of mind. But, when we regard him as a fountain of justice to a vast empire, we recognise in him a resemblance to the just and benignant deity, and cheerfully award to him the praise of bestowing on a nation one of the greatest gifts, and of the most important means of improvement and happiness which it is permitted to man to confer. It was, however, the misery of Buonaparte, a curse brought on him by his crimes, that he could touch nothing without leaving upon it the polluting mark of despotism. His usurpation took from him the power of legislating with magnanimity, where his own interest was concerned. He could provide for the administration of justice between man and man, but not between the citizen and the ruler. Political offences, the very class which ought to be submitted to a jury, were denied that mode of trial. Juries might decide on other criminal questions; but they were not to be permitted to interpose between the despot and the ill-fated subjects who might fall under his suspicion. These were arraigned before special tribunals, invested with a half military character, the ready ministers of nefarious prosecutions, and only intended to cloak by legal forms the murderous purpose of the tyrant. The conscription was, however, amid all the ameliorating influences of the civil code, the most terrible engine of despotism; and it was ultimately the destruction of the hand that wielded it. It comprehended nearly the whole population,-all capable of bearing arms, with the exception of the ecclesiastics. It enlisted the youths of the kingdom at the age of twenty and upwards. The rigor of its conditions was extreme. No distinction was made between the married man, whose absence might be the ruin of his family, and the single member of a numerous lineage, who could be easily spared. The son of the widow, the child of the decrepid and helpless, had no right to claim an exemption. Three sons might be carried off in three successive years from the same desolated parents; there was no allowance made for having already supplied a recruit. Those unable to serve were mulcted in a charge proportioned to the quota of taxes which they or their parents contributed to the state, and which might vary from fifty to 1200 francs. Substitutes might indeed be offered, but then it was both difficult and expensive to procure them, as the law required that such substitutes should not only have the usual personal qualifications for a military life, but should be domesticated within the same district as their principal, or come within the conscription of the year. Suitable persons were sure to know their own value, and had learned so well to profit by it that they were not to be bribed to serve without excessive bounties. The substitutes had also the practice of deserting upon the road, and thus cheating the principal, who remained answerable for them till they joined their colors. On the whole, the difficulty of obtaining exemption by substitution was so great, that very many young men, well educated, and of respectable families, were torn from all their more propitious prospects, to live the life, discharge the duties, and die the death of common soldiers in a marching regiment. But perhaps the most terrible part of the fate was, that it was determined for life. Whatever may be said in favor of such a system for the purpose of maintaining a war purely defensive, applied as it was by Buonaparte to the conduct of distant offensive uses, no otherwise necessary than for the satisfaction of his own ambition, it clearly involves the charge of having drained the very life-blood of the people for purposes in which they had no comparative interest. With such mighty resources Napoleon was resolved to commence a new era in his violent and desolating career. He had proved the strength of France over the north and east of Europe with the consuming rapidity of a stream from a volcano; but he was now to encounter another species of resistance. He had warred with kings,he had now to war with the people. Pursuing the cruel and illusory scheme of destroying England by the destruction of commerce, a measure which embitterred even the military slavery of the continent, he had succeeded to the extent of a public exclusion of British trade in the immense line of coast from the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay. But Spain and Portugal, connected with England by those old ties of habit which are stronger than treaties, and even by those necessities which neither king nor nation can control, still carried on an intercourse too valuable to be broken up by a paper blockade. It was now, therefore, decreed that Spain and Portugal should become provinces of France. As if with the predestined design of showing to the world the baseness of which ambition might be made, the progress of Napoleon to this seizure was marked with the true character of the man. Hitherto he had conquered by the natural weapon of a soldier, or, if art had mixed with these, it was scarcely of a more degraded kind than that which belongs to the lax morality of war. But his art now sunk below stratagem, it was falsehood, meaness, systematic perfidy, and this baseness was if possible deepened by its want of all that could be termed necessity. The Spanish throne was filled by a man of weak intellect; the Spanish cabinet by a compound of fools and traitors. Both would have been a voluntary prey. Neither could have required that serpentine winding, that long convolution of loathsome and abhorrent subtlety, by which they were entangled and undone. This was Napoleon himself. The project and the policy were exclusively his own. His habitual agents, shorn of their honors as they have been since by the common indignation of mankind, have yet exonerated themselves from all share in a transaction by which Napoleon established his title to the first rank of treachery. It was in one of the actions of the Spanish war that the memorable event occurred which ought to have made him the execration of the army as well as of the world. On the 29th of November Napoleon was at Bozeguillas; on the 30th, at day-break, the duke of Belluno, marshal Victor, arrived near the strong position of Somo Sierra, defended by 13,000 men under general San Juan. The Puerto, or narrow neck of land forming the pass, was intersected by a trench fortified with sixteen pieces of cannon. While a part of the French advanced on the direct road to this position, other columns gained the heights on the left. The Somo Sierra forms a part of the chain called Carpetanos, which traverses the great road from Castile. The enemy's tirailleurs covered the heights on the right and left. Whilst the French infantry were making the most painful efforts to ascend these, sustaining with their wonted firmness the double fire of the Spanish musketry and artillery, Napoleon arrived at the head of the cavalry of his guard, which were preceded by the Polish lancers. The emperor stopped near the foot of the mountain, and attentively examined the enemy's position, the fire from which seemed to redouble; many balls fell near him, or passed over his head. As the French infantry did not appear to make any sensible progress, the emperor confided to the Polish lancers the service of charging the enemy's battery upon the summit of the mountain. Conducted by their chief, count Krasinski, these brave men advanced four a-breast, the narrow causeway not admitting more. For a moment the fire of the battery and that of the Spanish tirailleurs arrested their progress; but, rallied by count Krasinski and colonel Dautancourt, they soon returned with other squadrons, assisted by the French infantry, when, notwithstanding the fire upon their flanks, and the shower of grape shot, the defeat of the enemy was the work only of a few minutes the artillery was seized, and the men sabred, dispersed, or taken. The regiment that had performed this brilliant charge was from that moment justly associated with the flower of the old French imperial guard. The advantages of an action thus memorable were decisive. The Spanish corps were totally dispersed. They lost ten stands of colors, all their artillery and baggage, thirty caissons, the regimental chests, a great number killed, wounded, and prisoners, including several colonels, and other superior officers. The Polish lancers had fifty-seven men killed and wounded, besides several officers. From a subsequent account it appears that colonel Piré, who was first sent upon this service with the Poles, having reconnoitred the position, countermanded the advance of the Poles, and sent an officer to inform the emperor that the undertaking was impossible. Upon this information Napoleon, irritated, striking the pommel of his saddle, exclaimed, Impossible! Why, there is nothing impossible to my Poles.' General Wattier, who was present, endeavoured to calm him; but he still continued to articulate, Impossible! I know of no such word. What! my guard checked by the Spaniards, by armed peasants?' At this moment the balls began to whistle about him, when, by a natural instinct, several officers came forward to persuade him to withdraw. Among these Napoleon observing major Philip Segur, he said, 'Go, Segur, take the Poles, and make them take the Spaniards, or let the Spaniards take them.'. Piré having informed the chef d'escadron Kozietulski of what the emperor had said, this officer replied, Come then along with me, and see if the devil himself, made of fire as he is, would undertake this business.' He was right: 13,000 Spaniards were placed, as it were, in an amphitheatre, in such a way that no one battalion was masked by another; they could only join in columns. From this point the Poles would have to sustain 40,000 discharges of musketry; and as many of cannon, every minute. However, the order was positive. Commandant,' said Segur, let us go; it is the emperor's wish the honor will be ours: Poles, advance. Vive l' empereur.' The squadron then rushed forward; when, out of upwards of eighty men, scarcely twenty remained unhurt. Four officers out of seven were killed on the spot; the Polish commandant and two others were wounded. Major Segur, some paces in advance, was struck by several balls, and found himself standing alone with lieutenant Rudowski, a fine tall man, and of great promise. The bodies of the Polish lancers choked up the passage;, this squadron was an nihilated. As the means of showing him to the whole civilised world, in his undisguised and genuine character, the war with Spain was fraught with the most important and beneficial consequences. With a miserable consciousness of his guilt, he said in his exile, 'That wretched war, it was my ruin. It divided my forces, it multiplied the necessity of my efforts, it injured my character for morality.' It was in this injury that the retributive blow was dealt. It stamped him with indelible personal baseness before the world; it showed the utter futility of looking for honor in his nature, or relying on any pledge for his word but his chains. If he could have looked forward but a few years, he would have seen that in the very hour of his keenest triumph at Bayonne, with the dynasty of Spain bound hand and foot before him, he was building his dungeon, and, in that dungeon, digging his grave. His military discomfitures, in the early campaigns of the Spanish war, compelled him to another desperate struggle for Germany. The Austrian empire, mutilated and insulted, longed for revenge, and the opportunity was taken in the absence of Napoleon in the Peninsula. Bat his star was not yet to sink. With characteristic rapidity he flew to the hostile frontier, fought the great battles of Eckmuhl, Asparne, and Wagram, and again took possession of the capi tal, reducing Austria to solicit the peace of Schoenbrun, in October 1809, by which they gave up 45,000 square miles of territory, and a population of nearly 4,000,000. A scarcely less remarkable event was the arrest of pope Pius VII., and the annexation of his states to France, by the entrance of the French into Rome, February 2d, and the decree of the 17th of May. Two days after the ratification of the treaty of Vienna Napoleon was in danger of assassina tion, during the review of the troops upon the parade of Schoenbrun. A young man of an interesting figure, and of a placid appearance, who had concealed himself among the spectators, suddenly rushed upon the emperor, attempting to strike him with a poniard. The prince of Neufchatel arrested his arm, and general Rapp immediately seized the assassin. Napoleon was sufficiently master of himself to preserve an unalterable countenance, and continued to order the evolutions, as if the incident that occurred had been of no importance. This young man was conducted to the guard-house and searched: nothing was found upon him but a common knife, four Frederics-d'or, and the portrait of a female. To all the questions put to him by general Savary, he only answered, that he would speak to the emperor. Informed of his obstinate silence, Napoleon sent for the culprit into his closet-Whence came you,' said he, and how long have you been at Vienna ?'—' I am a native of Erfurt, and I have been at Vienna two months. What would you have of me? You want a peace, and you say you can prove it is indispensable. Do you think I could listen to a man without a public character, on any mis sion? If you had I should have stabbed you. - What harm have I done you?'-'You have oppressed my country and the whole world; if you do not make peace your death will be necessary to the happiness of humanity in killing you I should have performed the finest ac tion that a man of honor could undertake. But I admire your talents, and as I reckoned upon your reason, I wished, before I struck the blow, to have convinced you. Have you been led to this determination by religion? No; my father, a Lutheran minister, is ignorant of my project, which I have not communicated to any one. I have consulted no person whatever. am alone, and for two years past I have meditated your conversion, or your death.'-' Were you at Erfurt when I was there last year?"—'I saw you there three times.'- Why did you not kill me then? You suffered my country to respire: I thought peace was certain, and es and teemed you as a great man.'-' Do you know Schneider or Schill?' No.'- Are you an illuminé, a free-mason?'.- - No.'- You know the history of Brutus?'-'There were two Romans of this name; the last died in the cause of liberty. Have you any knowledge of the conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru?' I heard of it from the public papers.' What do you think of those men?'-They labored for themselves, and were afraid to die.'—A portrait has been found upon you; whom does it represent? My best friend, the adopted daughter of my virtuous father.' What! have you a heart susceptible of these tender emotions, and are you not unwilling to afflict and ruin those you love in becoming an assassin? I have listened to a voice much stronger that that of my own tenderness. But in assassinating me in the midst of my army, could you think of escaping? In reality, I am astonished that I continue to exist.'—' If I pardon you, what use will you make of your liberty? My project has failed, and you will now be upon your guard. I shall return peaceably to my family.' Napoleon then called M. Corvissart, his first physician, and asked him if he did not perceive some signs of insanity in this young man? After having carefully examined him, he replied, he could not discern any symptoms of unusual emotion in him. " This unfortunate man remained under the care of two gens d'armes two days; he walked about quietly, and frequently kneeled down to pray. At his dinner time they brought him a tableknife. He took it; but looking at it some time, a gendarme would have taken it from him. 'Don't be afraid,' said he; I shall do myself no more harm than you would.' On the following day he heard the cannon fire, and asked the cause. It is peace,' said they.—' Peace!' said be; do not deceive me.' He was assured nothing was more true. He then gave himself up to transports of joy, and tears fell from his eyes. He fell upon his knees, and prayed fervently; and rising up he said, I shall die with more tranquillity.' When he was called upon to undergo the sentence, he said to the officer, 'Sir, I have only one favor to ask; that is, not to be bound.' It was granted; he walked freely, and died with calmness. This attempt at assassination, upon which the French journals of the time observed a profound silence, has been variously related: the present details were communicated by an eye-witness; but the attempt is said to have powerfully contributed to accelerate the peace with Austria, and hasten the return of Napoleon to France. Napoleon departed from Schoenbrun on the 27th of October; on that day he rose at five in the morning, and, sending for general Rapp, they walked out to the great road, to see the imperial guard pass along on its way to France. Napoleon again spoke of the young German who had attempted to assassinate him; he thought it a thing unparalleled, and told the general to enquire how he died. It appears that the prisoner had been executed in the morning of the 27th; that he had taken no food since the 24th, but constantly refused it, saying he had strength enough Though Napoleon escaped the knife of the assassin, the time hastened which was to close his career of power and evil. His triumphs were already turning into his misfortunes. The successful seizure of the Spanish royal family had been followed by the most ruinous of his wars. His conquest of Austria was followed by an event which, while it gave a new dye to his personal baseness, probably gave the most fatal impulse to his fall. The giddy policy, pernaps the empty ambition, of a lofty alliance, prompted him to demand a daughter of Austria in marriage. His choice was fixed on Marie Louise, the eldest daughter of Francis II. Very great obstacles seemed to oppose this union, especially as it was one of the conditions dictated by the conqueror; it was repulsive to the conveniences, the opinion, and the hereditary pride of the house of Austria: however, the emperor of the French undertook to smooth the difficulties that existed on his side, and the Austrian monarch consented to the sacrifice demanded. It was in vain that a legitimate union, sanctioned by time, and consecrated by the solemnity of a coronation, had associated the fate of Josephine with that of Napoleon. Neither the virtues of this lady, whom he had placed by his side, nor the gratitude that he owed to the first promoter of his fortune, could arrest the ambition of the French emperor. He pretended to be in want of an heir, though he had already proposed his brothers as his successors. A Senatus Consulte of the 16th of December, 1809, declared the dissolution of his marriage with Josephine. The church also yielded in its turn. The nullity of the marriage, as to any spiritual obligation, was likewise pronounced by the officialty of Paris. The victim too of this determination, whose grief should have saved her from the humiliation of figuring in this business, could not be excused: she was compelled to come forward and declare, that having no more hope of giving children to her husband, which would be consistent with his politics, she resigned herself to the greatest sacrifice that she could possibly be called on to make.' It is cheering to our common scorn of ingratitude, the basest of the vices, to trace its punishment. This marriage was among the immediate causes of Napoleon's ruin. It deprived him of the counsel of an intelligent and disinterested friend, who had often restrained the violence of his impetuous nature. It disgusted all the principled classes of France; it gave the agitators an easy opportunity of throwing suspicion on his policy, and quoting the old evils of an Austrian alliance; it finally awoke the determination of Russia to resist at all hazards. The combination of France with Austria menaced the czar with utter overthrow. The next step,' said Alexander, on the announcement of the marriage, will be to drive me back to my forests." A more solemn and fearful result of this con tempt of human obligation may have been the work of that invisible justice which suffers the long course of guilt only to make its punishment more decisive. Napoleon now touched the limit of all his glories. The supremacy that looked down full orbed on the broken and prostrate nations of the continent was on the verge of eclipse; and within a period almost too brief for the contemplation of history, yet full of events that may be felt in every future age, it was finally overshadowed. One year of haughty and unshaken domination was still interposed between Napoleon and the first approach of his undorg. Determined on the subversion of the Russ an empire he summoned the vassal kings to Dresden, and gave Germany his parting menace against a breach of allegiance in a circle of crowned slaves. He could not restrain this ungenerous exultation: Come,' he wrote to Talma, at Dresden you shall play to a pit full of kings. The emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, a crowd of electors and potentates, surrounded the dispenser of thrones. Eleven sovereign princes attended his commands. All history offers no example of an assemblage so superb and so humiliated, so hopeless of restoration, yet so swiftly and nobly restored. What but the arm of providence could have scattered, with the suddenness of the fall of a billow, the power of the French empire? Past and gone as it is, even its memory is appalling. Its actual limits were scarcely defined by a me drawn from the Baltic round the shores of the continent, along the Pyrennees, and from the Pyrennees round Italy, to the dominions of the pope; Naples alone excepted as under the nominal scvereignty of Murat. But the actual empire also comprehended Switzerland, the confederation of the Rhine, and a crowd of minor princedoms; thus constituting a dominion of 800,000 square miles, and 85,000,000 of people; the fifth of Europe in territory, the half in population, and in site, fertility, and military means, immeasurably overmatching all that remained. The actual population of France, and the provinces united to its territory, was 42,000,000 in the centre of Europe. As the origin of this stupendous dominion had been conquest, it was still ruled by the sword. The prime mover of the great machine was an army, unexampled in numbers, still more unexampled in equipment, discipline, and habits of war, and deriving yet higher distinction from the fame and talent of its leaders, and above all of him who was the master soul of all, Napoleon When he meditated his attack on Russia he had under his command the overwhelming multitude of 300,000 soldiers, in the highest state of preparation for war, and he declared himself forced to assume the dictatorship of the world.' To Fouché, who had ventured to remonstrate against the Russian war, his sullen answer was, My destiny is not yet accomplished, there must be one universal European code, one court of appeal, the same money, the same weights and measures, the same laws, must have currency through Europe. I must make one nation out of all the European states, and Paris must be the capital of the world." Truly a steruer strength than that of man was now upon him. He must advance, and his next step is from a precipice. Napoleon at the head of these armies amounting to 470,000 men assailed Russia on a frontier of 600 miles. The Russian troops, commanded by Barclay de Tally, were 260,000: the narrative of this campaign is imperishable. It displays in the noblest light the gallantry of the Russian troops and the patriotism of the emperor and his people. The burning of Moscow was a sacrifice to which history has no rival. But it was ordained that this capital in flames should be the funeral pile of Napoleon's empire. The retreat through the wilderness inflicted the last horrors upon the invading army: what the sword could not reach, the storm in its rage extinguished. "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera;' yet not by so direct and miraculous an interposition, as to justify the proud boast of the advocates of this great scourge of humanity, that he could be conquered by heaven alone. It was not the setting in of the frost earlier than usual that baffled the calculation of Napoleon; for it was later in its commencement than in several former years; but it was his inexplicable delay in refusing to depart from the scene of desolation, his lingering at the Kremlin, vainly expecting overtures from Alexander, that was the proximate cause of the total annihilation of his fine army: add to which their attempt to carry away the cumbrous spoils of Moscow, and the multitude of stragglers that were attached to the march on this account, and which retarded the progress of the fugitives, till the sleet and the snow, and the cold of the desert, stiffened them on its plains. The detail is appalling beyond the power of the imagination to conceive. Napoleon once declared that the most impressive scene he had ever witnessed was when he saw 70,000 troops struggling in the conflict of death: what must have been the spectacle of as many thousands perishing in detail,-perishing before his eyes by a lingering maddening torture! Napoleon's death blow was now given. The campaign of the following year was only a despairing effort to recover Germany. The great battle in Leipsic, in 1813, crushed iovasion for ever and drove the French behind the Rhine. The following extract detailing what occurred in an interview between Buonaparte and the abbe de Pradt at Warsaw, where he was a fugitive rapidly flying from the pursuing Russians, is extremely interesting. When Napoleon arrived at Warsaw on the 10th of December, instead of proceeding to the palace, he put up at the hotel D'Angleterre, whence M. Caulincourt was despatched to summon the appearance of the abbé de Pradt, the ambassador to Poland. Arrived at the house, the first question was, Where is the emperor?' -At the hotel D'Angleterre : he expects you!" Where are you going?'-To Paris!'- and where is the army?—It is gone,' said he, turning up his eyes to heaven. But what of the victory of the Berezina, and the six thousand prisoners we made? That is all gone by *** Some hundreds of men had escaped. We had something else to do than to guard them.' Then taking him by the arm, I said, 'It is time that all the faithful servants of the emperor should unite |