AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (continued 10)

After the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV, in whom kingly absolutism attained its highest point, appointed no prime minister, but surrounded himself with men who merely executed his will, and whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the renown, glory, and honor of the king. In the choice of these men, Louis displayed judgment and the talents of a ruler. His ministers, especially Colbert, the great promoter of French industry, manufactures, and trades, as well as his generals, Turenne, Condé, Luxemburg, and the engineer, Vauban, as much surpassed, in talent, acquirements, and dexterity, the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries, as Louis XIV himself was preëminent among the princes of his age, in the greatness of his power, in commanding presence, and kingly dignity. He rendered the age of Louis XIV the most illustrious in the French annals, and caused the Court of Versailles (the seat of the royal residence) to be everywhere praised and admired as the model of taste, of refinement, and of a distinguished mode of living. But as he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness, of his own love of pleasure, of his pride, and of his desire for renown and splendor, his reign became the grave of freedom, of morals, of firmness of character, and of manly sentiments. Court favor was the end of every effort, and flattery the surest road to arrive at it; virtue and merit met with little acknowledgment.

It was during the last three decades of the seventeenth century that France stood at the culminating point of her power abroad and of her prosperity at home, so that the flattering chronicles of those days described the age of Louis XIV as the golden age of France. Trade and industry received a prodigious development by the care of Colbert; the woollen and silk manufactories, the stocking and cloth weaving, which flourished in the southern towns, brought prosperity, the maritime force increased, colonies were planted, and the productions of France were carried by trading companies to all quarters of the globe.

The court of France displayed a magnificence that had never before been witnessed. The palace of Versailles, and the gardens which were adorned with statues, fountains, and alleys of trees, were a model of taste for all Europe, fêtes of all kinds, jovial parties, ballets, fireworks, the opera and the theatre, in the service of which the first intellects in France employed their talents, followed upon each other in attractive succession; poets, artists, men of learning, all were eager to do honor to a prince who rewarded with a liberal hand every kind of talent that conduced either to his amusement or to his glory. Sumptuous buildings, as the Hospital of Invalides, costly libraries, magnificent productions of the press, vast establishments for the natural sciences, academies, and similar institutions, exalted the glory and renown of the great Louis. The refined air of society, the polished tone, the easy manners of the nobility and courtiers, subdued Europe more permanently and extensively than the weapons of the army. The French fashions, language, and literature, bore sway from this time in all circles of the higher classes. The consequences of the French Academy by Richelieu were a development of the language, style, and literary composition, that was extremely favorable to the diffusion of the literature. The language, so particularly adapted for social intercourse, for conversation, and for epistolary writing, remained from henceforth the language of diplomacy, of courts, and of the higher classes; and although the literary productions are wanting in strength, elevation, and nature,—​the polish of the form, and the ease and felicity of the style, gave French taste the supremacy in Europe, and strengthened the French people in the agreeable delusion that they were the most civilized of nations.

But however flatterers may sing the praises of the age of Louis XIV, one spot of shame remains ineradicable—​the persecution of the Huguenots. The French king believed that the unity of the Church was inseparable from a perfect monarchy. For this reason he oppressed the Jansenists, a Catholic party, which first contended against the Jesuits, and afterwards against the head of the Church himself; and he compelled the Calvinists, by the most severe persecutions, either to fly, or to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Colbert, who esteemed the Huguenots as active and industrious citizens, prevented for some time these violent measures; but the suggestions of the royal confessor, La Chaise, the zeal for conversion of the affectedly pious Madame Maintenon, who had been first a tutoress of the court, and afterwards Louis’ trusted wife, and the cruelty of Louvois, the minister of war, at length triumphed over the advice of Colbert. A long succession of oppressive proceedings against the Huguenots prepared the way for the great stroke. The number of their churches was restricted, and their worship confined to a few of the principal towns. Louis’ paroxysms of repentance and devotion were always the sources of fresh oppressions to the Calvinistic heretics, by whose conversion he thought to expiate his own crimes. They were gradually excluded from office and dignities; converts were favored; in this way, the ambitious were enticed, the poor were won by money, which flowed from the king’s conversion chest, and from the liberal gifts of the pious illustrious; a wide field was opened to the zeal for proselytism by the enactment that the conversion of children under age was valid. Families were divided, children were torn from their parents and brought up as Catholics. Court and clergy, the heartless and eloquent bishop Bossuet at their head, set all means in motion to establish the ecclesiastical unity of France. When all other means of conversion failed, came the dragonades. At the command of Louvois, the cavalry took possession of the southern provinces, and established their quarters in the dwellings of the Huguenots. The prosperity of the industrious citizens, whose substance was devoured by the dragoons, soon disappeared. The bad treatment by these booted missionaries, who quitted the houses of the apostates to fall in doubled numbers upon those who remained stedfast, operated more effectually than all the enticements of the court or the seductions of the priests. Thousands fled abroad that they might preserve their faith upon a foreign soil. At last came the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October, 1685. The religious worship of the Calvinists was now forbidden, their churches were torn down, their schools closed, their preachers banished from the land; when the emigration increased to a formidable degree, this was forbidden, under punishment of the galleys and forfeiture of goods. But despite all threats and prohibitions, upwards of 500,000 French Calvinists carried their industry, their faith, and their courage to Protestant lands. Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Brandenburg, Holland, and England, offered an asylum to the persecuted. The silk manufacture and stocking-weaving were carried abroad by the fugitive Huguenots. Flatterers extolled the king as the exterminator of heresy, but the courage of the peasants in Cevennes, and the number of Huguenots who contented themselves with private devotion, show how little religious oppression conduced to the desired end. For when the persecution was carried into the distant valleys of the Cevennes, where Waldenses and Calvinists lived, according to ancient custom, in the simplicity of the faith, the oppressors met with an obstinate resistance. Persecution called forth the courage of its victims, oppression urged zeal into fanaticism. Led on by a young mechanic, the Camisards, clad in a linen frock, rushed “with naked breast against the marshals.” A frightful civil war filled the peaceful valleys of Cevennes; fugitive priests, in the gloom of the forest, exhorted the evangelical brethren to a desperate defense, till, at length, the persecutors grew weary. Nearly two millions of the Huguenots remained without rights and without religious worship.

THE LAST DAYS OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY—​THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Louis XV at first possessed the affections of his people to such a degree, that he was named the ‘Much-beloved;’ and when he was attacked by a dangerous illness in Metz, the whole land went into mourning, and his recovery was celebrated by the greatest rejoicings. But this love gradually changed into hatred and contempt when the king gave himself up to the most shameless debaucheries, and surrendered the government of the country, the command of the army, and the decision upon points of law and state policy, to the companions of his orgies and the ministers of his lusts and pleasures; and when mistresses, without morals or decency, ruled the court and the empire. Among these women, none possessed greater or more enduring influence than the Marchioness of Pompadour, who guided the whole policy of France for a period of twenty years, filled the most important offices with her favorites, decided upon peace or war, and disposed of the revenues of the state as she did of her private purse, so that, after a life passed in luxury and splendor, she left millions behind her. She and her creatures encouraged Louis’ excesses and love of pleasure, that he might plunge continually deeper in the pool of vice, and leave to them the government of the state. For the rest, the Pompadour used her position and her influence with a certain dignity, and with tact and discretion; but when the countess Du Barry, a woman from the very dregs of the people, occupied her place, the court lost all authority and respect.

When Louis XV, in consequence of his excesses, was carried off in the midst of his sins by a frightful distemper, the treasury was exhausted, the country in debt, credit gone, and the people oppressed by their burdens.

It was under these melancholy circumstances, that an absolute throne descended to a prince who certainly possessed the best of hearts, but a weak understanding; who was good-natured enough to wish to relieve the condition of the people, but possessed neither strength nor intellect for efficient measures. This prince was Louis XVI. Weak and indulgent, he allowed the frivolity and extravagance of his brothers, the count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII), and the count of Artois (Charles X); and permitted his wife, Marie Antoinette, the highly-accomplished daughter of Maria Theresa, to interfere in matters of state, and to exert a considerable influence upon the court and government. The queen, by her pride and haughty bearing, incurred the dislike of the people, so that they ascribed every unpopular measure to her influence, and put a bad construction upon every liberty she allowed herself in private.

The prevailing want of money, and the disordered state of the revenue, could only be remedied by including the nobility and clergy in the taxation, by large reforms in the whole system of government, like those proposed by Turgot and Malesherbes, and by order and economy in the expenditure. But Louis XVI had neither strength nor resolution to carry out such decisive measures; and as for economy, the extravagant court of Versailles would not listen to it. The Genevese banker, Necker, who undertook the management of the finances after Turgot, was as little in a position as his predecessor to reduce the disorder in the state economy; and when, upon the occasion of a loan, he exposed the financial condition of France in a pamphlet, he drew upon himself the displeasure of the court and the aristocracy to such a degree, that he was obliged to resign his office. This happened at a time when the American war had increased the scarcity of money, and aroused the feeling of liberty and republicanism in France. It was, therefore, a great misfortune for the French monarchy, that just at this critical moment the frivolous and extravagant Calonne undertook the management of the finances. This man departed from the frugal plan of Necker, acceded to the wishes of the queen and the necessities of the princes and courtiers, and deluded the world with high-sounding promises of putting an end to all difficulties. The most splendid festivals were celebrated in Versailles, and the talents of Calonne loudly extolled. But his means, also, were soon exhausted.

The popular favorite Necker, was a second time summoned, in 1788, to the ministry. He first allayed the irritation by repealing resolutions against the parliament, and then made preparations for summoning the Estates. Owing to this, there soon arose a division between him and the parliament and Notables, whom he had again consulted. The latter were of opinion that the new assembly should conform itself, both as to the number of representatives and the mode of procedure, to the Estates of 1614, while Necker wished to allow a double representation to the third Estate, and that they should vote individually, and not as a class; a view that was supported by some of the ablest writers of the nation in a multitude of pamphlets. (Abbè Sieyes: ‘What is the third Estate?’) Necker’s opinion triumphed. An order of the king fixed the number of noble and ecclesiastical members at 300 each, that of the citizens at 600, and appointed the following May as the time of opening. Necker was the hero of the day, but he was not the pilot of the ship, he only ‘drove the wind.’

In the beginning of May 1789, the deputies of the three Estates, and among them some of the ablest and most accomplished men of France, assembled at Versailles. The third Estate, irritated by the neglect of the court at the opening and during the audience, came to a rupture with the two privileged Estates at the first sitting, when the latter required that the Estates should carry on their debates separately, whilst the former insisted upon a general council and individual votes. After a contest of some weeks, the third Estate, which had chosen the astronomer, Bailli, the freedom-inspired representative of Paris, for its President, but which was guided by the superior talents of Sieyes and Mirabeau, declared itself a National Assembly, upon which it was joined by portions of the other Estates. The Assembly at once passed the resolution of allowing the levying of the present taxes only so long as the Estates should remain undissolved. This proceeding disturbed the court, and inspired it with the thought of granting a constitution to the nation, and thus rendering the estates unnecessary. For this purpose, a royal sitting was appointed, and the hall of assembly closed for a few days. Upon the intelligence of this, the deputies proceeded to the empty saloon of the Tennis Court, and raised their hands in a solemn vow not to separate till they had given a new constitution to the nation. When this Court also was closed, the meetings were held in the church of St. Louis. The royal sitting took place on the 23d of June. But neither the speech of the king, nor the sketch of the new constitution, afforded due satisfaction, and they were consequently received with coldness. After the termination of the sitting, Louis dissolved the Assembly. The nobility and clergy obeyed, but the citizen class retained their seats, and when the master of the ceremonies called upon them to obey, Mirabeau exclaimed: ‘Tell your master that we sit here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by the bayonet!’ The weak king did not venture to encounter this resolute resistance by force, but rather advised the nobility and clergy to join the citizens.

The government of the city was made over to a democratic municipality, at the head of which stood Bailli, as mayor. The court, alarmed at the increasing ferment, determined upon retiring to Versailles with a few regiments of German and Swiss troops. In this proceeding, the leaders of the movement believed they saw the purpose of some act of violence, and made use of it accordingly to excite fresh irritation. The intelligence was spread abroad in Paris, that Necker had been suddenly dismissed and banished from the country, and a favorite of the queen placed in his office. This was interpreted as the first step in the contemplated outrage, and proved the signal for a general rise. Crowds of the citizens, wearing the newly-invented national cockade, (blue, white, and red,) paraded through the streets, the alarm-bell was sounded, the work-shops of the gunsmiths plundered; tumult and confusion reigned everywhere. On the 14th of July, after the populace had taken 30,000 stand of arms and some cannon from the Hospital des Invalides, took place the storming of the Bastille, an old castle that served as a state prison. The governor, Delaunay, and seven of the garrison, fell victims to the popular rage; their heads were carried through the streets upon poles; and many men who were hated as aristocrats were put to death. The banished Necker was recalled, and his entrance into the towns and villages of France was celebrated as that of a hero crowned with victory. In this joyous reception of the minister, the people displayed their enthusiasm for liberty and their hatred to the court and the aristocracy. Lafayette, the champion of the liberty of America, was appointed commander of the National Guard, and whilst the king returned to Paris, and exhibited himself to the assembled people from the balcony of the council-house with the cockade in his hat, the count of Artois, and many nobles of the first rank, as Condé, Polignac, left their country in mournful anticipation of coming events.

Since the storming of the Bastille, the laws and magistrates had lost their authority in France, and the power lay in the hands of the populace. The country people no longer paid their tithes, taxes, and feudal dues to the clergy and nobles, but took vengeance for the long oppression they had suffered, by destroying the manorial castles. When intelligence of these proceedings spread abroad, it was proposed in the National Assembly, that the upper classes should prove to the people by their actions, that they were willing to lighten their burdens, and that, with this purpose, they should renounce, of their own free will, all the inherited feudal privileges of the middle ages. This proposal excited a storm of enthusiasm and self-renunciation. None would be behind-hand. Estates, towns, provinces, each strove for the honor of making the greatest sacrifices for the common good. This was the celebrated 4th of August, when, in one feverish and excited session, all tithes, labor-dues, manorial rights, corporate bodies, etc., were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the equality of all citizens of the state before the law and in regard to taxation was decreed. These resolutions, and the necessary laws and arrangements required for their reduction to practice, which were gradually adopted, produced in a short time a complete revolution in all existing conditions. The Church lost her possessions and was subjected to the state; monasteries and religious orders were dissolved, and the clergy paid by the state, the bishoprics newly regulated, and religious freedom established. Priests were required to swear allegiance, like officers of state, to the new constitution; but as the pope forbade it, the greater number refused the oath, which was the occasion of the French clergy being divided into sworn and unsworn priests; the latter lost their offices and were exposed to all kinds of persecutions, but enjoyed the confidence of the faithful among the people. The noble forfeited not only his privileges and the greater part of his income, but he also lost the external distinctions of his rank, by the abolition of all titles, coats of arms, orders, etc. Upon the principle of equality, all Frenchmen were to be addressed as ‘citizens.’ For the purpose of annihilating every remnant of the ancient system, France received a new geographical division into departments and arrondissements; a new system of judicature with jurymen; equality of weights, measures, and standards; and lastly, a constitutional government, in which the privileges of royalty were limited, and the legislative power committed to a single chamber, with a universal right of suffrage.

On the 5th of October, an immense multitude, chiefly of women, proceeded to Versailles to demand from the king relief from the scarcity of bread, and a return of the court to Paris. The king first attempted to pacify them by a conciliatory answer. But a wing of the palace was stormed during the night, and the guard put to the sword; the arrival of Lafayette, with the National Guard, prevented any further mischief. Upon the following day, the king was obliged to consent to proceed to Paris with his family, under the escort of this frightful crew, and to take up his residence in the Tuileries, which had for many years remained unoccupied. Shortly after, the National Assembly also followed, for whom the riding-school in the neighborhood of the palace had been prepared. The power now fell more and more into the hands of the lower class, who were kept in perpetual excitement by journalists and popular leaders, and were goaded to hatred against the court and the “aristocrats.”

On the day of the year in which the Bastille was taken, a grand federative festival was arranged in the Champ de Mars (July 14, 1790). It must have been a moving spectacle, when Talleyrand, at the head of 300 priests, clothed in white, and girded with tri-colored scarfs, performed the consecration of the banner at the altar of the country; when Lafayette, in the name of the National Guard, the president of the National Assembly, and, at length, the king himself, vowed fidelity to the Constitution; when the innumerable multitude raised their hands aloft and repeated after him the oath of citizenship, and the queen herself, carried away by enthusiasm, raised the Dauphin in the air and joined in the acclamations. This was the last day of happiness for the king, whose situation after this grew constantly worse. Necker, no longer equal to the difficulties, left France and retired to Switzerland. Mirabeau, won over by the court, opposed farther encroachments upon the kingly power with the whole of his eloquence, inasmuch as he believed a constitutional monarchy and not a republic to be the best government for France. Unfortunately for the king, this great man died, in his forty-second year, of a sickness brought on by his disorderly life and by over-exertion. A splendid funeral ceremony gave evidence of the influence of the man in whom sank the last strong pillar of the throne. Weak and unselfreliant as Louis XVI was, he now lost all firmness. By his refusal to receive a sworn priest as his confessor, or to declare the emigrants traitors, who were endeavoring from Coblentz to excite the European courts to a crusade against France, he excited a suspicion that he was not honestly a supporter of the constitution he had sworn to maintain, and not altogether ignorant of the efforts of the emigrants. The more this suspicion gained ground with the people, the more perilous became the position of the king. At this crisis, Louis embraced the desperate resolution of secretly flying to the northern frontier of his kingdom. Bouillé, a resolute general in Lorraine, was let into the secret, and promised to support the scheme with his troops. Leaving behind him a letter, in which he protested against all the acts which had been forced from him since October, 1789, the king happily escaped, with his family, from Paris in a large carriage. But the clumsily executed project nevertheless miscarried. Louis was recognized in St. Menehould by the postmaster, Drouet, stopped by the militia at Varennes, and led back to Paris at the command of the National Assembly, who sent three of their members, and among them, Pètion, to receive the royal family. The suspension of the royal authority, which had already been pronounced by the Assembly, remained in force, till Louis proclaimed and swore to observe, the Constitution completed at the end of September.

The attention of the government and the Assembly was particularly directed to the priests, who had refused the oath, and to the emigrants. Both were endeavoring to overthrow the existing order of things: the former by exciting hatred and discontent among the French people; the latter by making military preparations at Coblentz, and endeavoring to stir up foreign powers to an armed invasion of France. The Assembly therefore determined upon seeking out and arresting the unsworn priests, and declaring the emigrants traitors and conspirators, and punishing them by the loss of their estates and incomes. The king put his veto upon both these resolutions, and prevented their execution. This refusal was ascribed to the secret hopes, entertained by the court, of assistance from foreign powers and of the triumph of the emigrants, and thus the temper of the people grew continually more hostile. It was also known that the queen was in correspondence with her brother, the emperor of Austria, and that she looked for support and safety to the emigrant nobility. Neither was it any longer doubtful that war must soon break out, since the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia, after a conference in Pillnitz (August, 1791,) were making preparations, and demanded of the French government not only to make befitting indemnification to the German princes and nobles who had suffered loss by the abolition of tithes and feudal burdens, and to restore the province of Avignon, that had been wrested from the pope, but to arrange the government upon the plan proposed by the king himself in June, 1789. These demands were followed by a declaration of war against Austria and Prussia on the part of the French government, to which the king yielded his consent with tears. For the purpose of securing the capital and the National Assembly against any attack it was resolved to summon 20,000 of the federates from the southern provinces, under pretense of celebrating the festival of the Bastille, and to commit the defense of Paris to them. But Louis refused his consent to this resolution also. Upon this, the Girondist ministers laid down their offices, after Madame Roland had reproached and reprimanded the king in a letter that was soon in the hands of every body. These proceedings increased the irritation to such an extent that it became easy for the republicans to excite a popular insurrection. On the 20th of June, the anniversary of the meeting in the Tennis Court, the terrible mob, armed with pikes, marched from the suburbs, under the conduct of the brewer, Santerre, and the butcher, Legendre, into the Tuileries, to force the king to confirm the decree against the unsworn priests and for the summoning of the National Guard. But here also Louis remained firm. He defied for several hours all threats and dangers, and endured the insolence of the mob, who even placed the red Jacobin cap upon his head and gave him wine to drink, with the courage of a martyr. The rather tardy arrival of Pètion with the National Guard at length freed him from his perilous position.

At midnight on the 10th of August, a fearful mob proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, for the purpose of establishing a new democratic municipality, and then marched to the royal palace, which was defended by 900 Swiss, and the Parisian National Guard under the command of Mandat. The honest Mandat was resolved to check the advancing masses, which were ever assuming a more menacing aspect, by force; his destruction was consequently resolved upon by the democrats. He was commanded to appear at the Hôtel de Ville, and assassinated on his way thither; upon which the National Guard, uncertain what to do, and disgusted by the presence of a number of nobles in the palace, for the most part dispersed. The mob constantly assumed a more threatening aspect; cannon were turned upon the palace, the pikemen pressed forwards upon every entrance, the people loudly demanded the deposition of the king. At this crisis, Louis suffered himself to be persuaded to seek for protection with his family in the hall of the National Assembly, where they passed sixteen hours in a narrow closet. The king had scarcely left the palace, before the tumultuous multitude pressed forward more violently; the Swiss guard maintained a gallant resistance, and defended the entrance. When the report of musketry was heard in the adjoining Assembly, the indignant representatives of the people compelled the intimidated king to give his guard orders to cease firing. By this order, the faithful defenders of monarchy were doomed to destruction. Scarcely had the furious mob observed that the enemy’s fire had ceased, before they stormed the palace, slaughtered those they found in it, and destroyed the furniture. Nearly 5,000 men, and among them, 700 Swiss, fell in the struggle, or died afterwards, the victims of the popular fury. In the mean time, the National Assembly, upon the proposal of Vergniaud, embraced the resolution “to suspend the royal authority, to place the king and his family under control, to give the prince a tutor, and to assemble a National Convention.” The Temple, a strong fortress erected by the Knights Templars, soon enclosed the imprisoned royal family.

After the suspension of the king, a new ministry was formed by the National Assembly, in which, by the side of the Girondist, Roland, and others, the terrible Danton held office as minister of justice. This ministry, and the new Common Council of Paris which had appointed itself, and which, after the 10th of August, had strengthened itself by members who might be depended upon as hesitating at no wickedness, now possessed the whole power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with the ‘suspected’ and ‘aristocrats.’ It was now that the frightful resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hundreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September were commenced. From the 2d to the 7th of September, bands of hired murderers and villains were collected round the prisons. Twelve of them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked upon a list, were put to death by this inhuman crew under a semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3,000 human beings were either put to death singly, or slaughtered in masses, by these wretches, who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their ‘labors.’ Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the friend of the queen; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole to the Temple, and held it before Marie Antoinette’s window. The example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, incriptions, and other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the August and September days, which were the transition period between the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was distinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty and equality under the republican National Convention.

Lafayette, who was serving with the northern army, and who, after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsibility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the king, was now summoned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking for his death, he fled, with some friends who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might escape to America; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to England, and thence to America, where he awaited better times.

The new Assembly, which, under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by universal suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of different dispositions and opinions.

The trial of the king, ‘Louis Capet,’ was one of the first proceedings of the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a wall of the Tuileries, containing secret letters and documents, from which it was apparent that the French court had not only been in alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for overthrowing the Constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and conspiracy against the country and the people. Louis, with the assistance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes, of his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified bearing and defense, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to have the sentence referred to a general assembly of the people, Louis was condemned to death in a stormy meeting, by a small majority of five voices, January 17th, 1793. The party of the Mountain, where the advocate, Maximilian Robespierre, the former marquis St. Just, the frightful Danton, the lame Couthon, and the duke of Orleans, who had assumed the name of Citizen Egalité, were the leaders and chiefs, had left no means unattempted to produce this result by terror; they would, nevertheless, have failed in their purpose, had they not carried a resolution beforehand in the Assembly, that a bare majority should be sufficient for a sentence of death, and not, as had heretofore been the custom, that two thirds of the votes should be necessary. The murder was thus veiled by a show of justice. On the 21st of January, the unfortunate king ascended the scaffold in the square of the Revolution. The drums of the National Guard drowned his last words, and ‘Robespierre’s women’ greeted his bloody head with the shout of ‘Vive la République.’

The Girondists, enraged at the increasing power of the populace in Paris, and the unbridled acts of violence committed by the mob, entertained the project of converting France into a republican union like North America, and by this means, destroying the supremacy of the capital. The Mountain and the Jacobins, who saw that this scheme would weaken the revolutionary power of France, and endanger the future of the democratic republic, commenced a war of life and death with the Girondists (also called Brissotins) upon this point. They reproached them with weakening the power of the people, and destroying the republic at a moment when France was threatened with enemies both within and without; and when all these attacks were ignominiously repulsed by the victorious eloquence of the Girondists, the savage Marat, in his ‘Friend of the People,’ called upon the populace to rise against the moderate and lukewarm, and thus gave occasion to daily riots and tumults, which disturbed the capital and endangered life and property.

The National Convention acquired greater unanimity by the exclusion of the Girondists and the moderates; so that, from this time, it was enabled to develop a frightful power and activity. For the purpose of better superintending its multitudinous affairs, it resolved itself into committees, of which the committee of public safety and that of public security acquired a frightful celebrity by the persecution of every one opposed to the new order of things. A revolutionary tribunal, consisting of twelve jurymen and five judges, to which that man of blood, Fouquier Tinville, occupied the office of public accuser, seconded the activity of these committees by a cruel and summary administration of justice. At the head of the committee of public safety stood three men, whose names became the terror and horror of all just men; the envious and malignant Robespierre, the bloodthirsty Couthon, and the frantic for republican liberty and equality, St. Just. They pursued their bloody object without regard to human life; every thing that ventured to oppose their stormy course was unpityingly hurled down. Thus originated the terrible period of the years ‘93 and ‘94, which displayed itself in three different directions—​within, by a cruel persecution of all citizens who were known as aristocrats or favorers of royality, and by a bloody suppression of insurrections in the south and west; without, by a vigorous defensive war against innumerable enemies.

The former minister, Malasherbes, the members of the Constituent Assembly, Bailli, etc. all who belonged to the old monarchy, and who had not saved themselves by flight, died by the guillotine. Among them was the severely-tried queen, Marie Antoinette, who displayed, during her trial and at her execution, a firmness and strength of soul that was worthy of her education and her birth. Her son died beneath the cruel treatment of a Jacobin; her daughter (the duchess of Angoulême) carried a gloomy spirit and an embittered heart with her to the grave. Louis XVI’s pious sister, Elizabeth, also died on the scaffold; the head of the profligate duke of Orleans, whom even the favor of Danton could not preserve from the envy of Robespierre, had fallen before her own.

The bloody rule of the Mountain party displayed itself in its most frightful excess in the suppression of the revolt against the reign of terror. When the inhabitants of Normandy and Bretagne rose in support of the excluded Girondists, the committee of public safety ordered the district between the Seine, the Loire, and the extreme sea-coast, to be visited with blood and slaughter by the terrible Carrier. This monster ordered, at Nantes, his victims to be drowned by hundreds in the Loire by means of ships with movable bottoms (noyades.) The proceedings of the Jacobins in the cities of the south, Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, were still more barbarous. In the first of these towns Chalier, who had formerly been a priest, and now was president of the Jacobin club, excited the people by scandalous placards to plunder and destroy the ‘aristocrats.’ Irritated at this audacity, the respectable and wealthy citizens of Lyons, who were thus menaced in their lives and property, procured the execution of the demagogue, July 16th, 1793. This deed filled the Parisian terrorists with fury. A republican army appeared before the walls of the town, which, after an obstinate contest, was taken and fearfully punished. Fréron a companion of Marat, Fouché, Couthon, and others, caused the inhabitants to be shot down in crowds, because the guillotine was too tedious in its operations; whole streets were either pulled down or blown into the air with gunpowder. The goods of the rich were divided among the populace; Lyons was to be annihilated, reduced to a nameless common. The republicans raged in a similar way in Marseilles and Toulon. The royalists of Toulon had called upon the English for assistance, and surrendered to them their town and harbor. Confident in this assistance, and in the strength of their walls, the citizens of Toulon bade defiance to their republican enemies. But the army of sans-culottes, in which the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, exhibited the first proofs of his military talents, overcame all obstacles. Toulon was stormed. The English, unable to maintain the town, set fire to the fleet, and left the unfortunate inhabitants to the frightful vengeance of the Convention. Here also the barbarous Frèron ordered all the wealthy citzens to be shot, and their property to be divided among the sans-culottes. The respectable inhabitants fled, and abandoned the city to the mob and the galley-slaves. Tallien behaved in a similar manner in Bourdeaux; and in the north of France, Lebon marched from place to place with a guillotine.

But the fate of La Vendée was the most frightful. This singular country, situated in the west of France, was covered with woods, hedges, and thickets, and intersected by ditches. Here dwelt a contented people, in rural quietude, and in the simplicity of the olden time. The peasants and tenants were attached to their landlords; they loved the king; and clung with reverence to their clergy and their church usages, which had been dear and sacred to them from their youth. When the National Assembly slaughtered or expelled their unsworn priests, when the blood of their king was poured out on the guillotine, when the children of the peasants were called away by a general summons, to the army—​then the enraged people roused themselves to resistance and civil conflict. Under brave leaders, of undistinguished birth, as Charette, Stofflet, Cathelineau, who were joined by a few nobles, Laroche-Jaquelein, D’Elbée, etc., they at first drove back the republican army, conquered Saumur, and threatened Nantes. Upon this the Convention despatched a revolutionary army to La Vendée, under the command of Westermann and the frantic Jacobins, Ronsin and Rossignol. These fell upon the inhabitants like wild beasts, set fire to towns, villages, farms, and woods, attempted to overcome the resistance of the ‘royalists’ by terror and outrage. But the courage of the Vendéan peasants remained unsubdued. It was not until general Kleber marched against La Vendée with the brave troops who had returned to their homes after the surrender of Mayence, that this unfortunate people gradually succumbed to the attacks of their enemies, after the land had become a desert, and thousands of the inhabitants had saturated the soil with their blood. La Vendée, however, was only restored to tranquillity when Hoche, who was equally renowned for his courage and philanthropy, assumed the command of the army, offered peace to those who were weary of the contest, and reduced the refractory to submission. Stofflet and Charette were made prisoners of war, and shot.

The rage and cruelty of the Jacobins at length excited the disgust of the chiefs of the Cordeliers, Danton and Camille Desmoulins. The former, who was rather a voluptuary than a tyrant, and who was capable of kindly feelings, had grown weary of slaughter, and had retired into the country for a few months with a young wife, to enjoy the wealth and happiness that the revolution had brought him; but Camille Desmoulins, in his much read paper, ‘The Old Cordelier,’ applied the passages where the Roman historian, Tacitus, describes the tyranny and cruelty of Tiberius, so appropriately to his own times, that the application to the three chiefs of the committee of safety and their laws against the suspected was not to be mistaken. This enraged the Jacobins; and when, about this time, several friends and adherents of Danton (Fabre d’Eglantine, Chabot, etc.) were guilty of deceit and corruption in connection with the abolition of the East India Company, and others gave offense by their sacrilegious proceedings, the committee of safety made use of the opportunity to destroy the whole party of Danton. For since the Convention had altered the calendar and the names of the months, had made the year commence on the 22d of September, had abolished the observance of Sunday and the festivals, and introduced in their place the decades and sans-culotte feasts, many Dantonists, like Hebert, Chaumette, Momoro, Cloots, and others, had occasioned great scandal by their animosity to priests and Christianity. They desecrated and plundered the churches, ridiculed the mass, vestments and the church utensils, which they carried through the streets in blasphemous processions, raged with the spirit of Vandals against all the monuments of Christianity, and at length carried a resolution through the Convention that the worship of Reason should be introduced in place of the Catholic service of God. A solemn festival, in which Momoro’s pretty wife personated the Goddess of Reason in the church of Nôtre Dame, marked the commencement of this new religion. Robespierre, who plumed himself upon his reputation for virtue, because he was not a participator in the excesses or avarice of Danton and his associates, took offense at these proceedings. He determined to destroy their originators, and in their fall to involve the destruction of Desmoulins and Danton, before whose powerful natures his own spirit, which was filled with envy and ambition, stood abashed. Scarcely, therefore, had Danton resumed his seat in the Convention, before St. Just began the violent struggle by a remarkable proposal, in which he divided the enemies of the republic into three classes: the corrupt, the ultra-revolutionary, and the moderates, and insisted upon their punishment. This proposal resulted in nineteen of the ultra-revolutionaries, and among them Cloots, Momoro, Ronsin, and several members of the Common Council, being led to the guillotine on the 19th of March, 1794. On the 31st of April, the corrupt were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sechelles, etc., were maliciously distinguished as their partisans and involved in their fate. But Danton and Desmoulins, supported by a raging mob that were devoted to them, demanded with vehemence that their accusers should be confronted with them. For three days, Danton’s voice of thunder and the tumult among the populace rendered his condemnation impossible. For the first time, the bloody men of the Revolutionary Tribunal became confused. The Convention, at length, by a law of its own, gave the Tribunal the power of condemning the accused who were endeavoring to subvert the existing order of things by an insurrection, without further hearing; upon which the blood-stained heroes of the 10th of August and the days of September, who during their trial had shown that a lofty spirit might dwell even in the bosom of criminals, were led to the guillotine and beheaded, with a crowd of inferior Hebertists. They died with courage and resolution.

Since the fall of Danton, the committee of safety had ruled with well-nigh unlimited sway, and by repeated executions and arrests had brought the reign of terror to its highest point. But its chiefs had lost the confidence of the people and of the Convention. The friends of Danton were on the watch for the favorable moment of attack, and the number of their enemies was increased, when Robespierre, to put an end to the blasphemous proceedings of the adherents of the worship of Reason, had a resolution passed by the Convention in May, ‘That the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul were truths:’ and rendered himself at once hateful and ridiculous by his pride at the new festival in honor of the Supreme Being in the Tuileries, at which he officiated as high priest. Among his opponents was Tallien, who at a former period had been guilty of excesses in Bourdeaux, but who had been brought to adopt different principles by the fascinating Fontenay Cabarrus. With him were joined Frèron, Fouché, Vadier, the polished rhetorician Barrère, and others. On the 9th Thermidor, a battle for life or death commenced in the Convention. Robespierre and his adherents were not allowed to speak; their voices were drowned in the cries of their enemies, who carried through a stormy meeting the resolution, ‘That the three chiefs of the committee of safety, Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, and their confederate, Henriot, should be denounced, and conveyed as prisoners to the Luxembourg palace.’ They were liberated by the mob on their way; whereupon the drunken Henriot threatened the Convention with the National Guard, whilst the others betook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville. But the National Assembly was beforehand with them by a hasty resolution. A loudly proclaimed sentence of outlawry suddenly dispersed Henriot’s army, whilst the citizens who were opposed to the Jacobins arranged themselves around the Convention. The accused were again secured in the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot crept into a sewer, whence he was dragged forth by hooks. Robespierre attempted to destroy himself by a pistol-shot, but only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw, and was first conveyed, horribly disfigured, amidst the curses and execrations of the people, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and then guillotined, with twenty-one of his adherents. On the two following days, seventy-two Jacobins shared the fate of their leaders.

Robespierre’s overthrow by the ‘Thermidorians’ was the commencement of a return to moderation and order. The assemblies of the people were gradually limited, the power of the Common Council diminished, and the lower classes deprived of their weapons. Frèron, converted from a republican bloodhound into an aristocrat, assembled the young men, who from their clothing were called the ‘gilded youth,’ around him. These, with the heavy stick they usually carried about them, attacked the Jacobins in the streets and in their clubs at every opportunity, and opposed the song of the ‘Awakening of the People’ to the Marseillaise. At length, the club was shut up and the cloister of the Jacobins pulled down. The Convention strengthened itself by the recall of the expelled members and of such Girondists as were still left, and ordered the worst of the Terrorists, Lebon, Carrier, Fouquier, Tinville, etc., to be executed. But when four of the most active members of the committee of safety, (Barrère, Vadier, Collot d’Herbois, and Billaud Varennes) were denounced, the Jacobins collected the last remains of their strength, and drove the people, who were suffering from a scarcity and want of money, to a frightful insurrection. Crowds of grisly wretches surrounded the house of assembly, and demanded, with threatening cries, the liberation of the patriots, bread, and the constitution of 1793. Pichegru, who was just at this moment in Paris, came to the assistance of the distressed convention with soldiers and citizens, and dispersed the crowd. The still more formidable insurrection of the 1st Prairial, 1795, in which the mob surrounded the convention both within and without from seven o’clock in the morning till two at night, for the purpose of enforcing a return to the reign of terror, was also suppressed by the courageous president, Boissy d’Anglas. From this time, the power of the Terrorists was no more. Many Jacobins died by their own hands; others were beheaded, imprisoned, or transported. By so much the stronger became the party of the royalists, who wished to have a king again; and when the new government was shortly after determined upon, by which the executive powder was to be delivered to the Directory of five persons, the legislative power to a council of Ancients and a council of Five Hundred, the republican members of the Convention feared that in the new election they might be thrust aside by the royalists. They therefore made additions to the original charter of the constitution, wherein it was declared that two-thirds of the two legislative councils must be chosen from members of the Convention. The royalists raised objections to this and some other limitations of the freedom of election; and when these were unattended with success, they occasioned the insurrection of the Sections. Hereupon, the Convention made over to the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, the suppression of the insurgent royalists, who were joined by all the enemies of the republic and of the revolution. The victory of the 13th Vendemiaire, (October 5, 1795,) which was fought in the streets of Paris, gave the supremacy to the republicans of the Convention, and the command of the Italian army to Napoleon, who was then twenty-six years of age, and who, a short time before, had married Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnois.

The French army in Savoy and on the frontiers of Italy was in a melancholy condition. The soldiers were in want of every thing. At this crisis, Napoleon appeared as their commander-in-chief, and in a short time contrived so to inspirit the desponding troops and attach them to his person, that under his guidance they cheerfully encountered the greatest dangers. Where the love of glory and the sentiment of honor were not sufficient, there the treasures of wealthy Italy served as a stimulous to valor. In April 1796, Napoleon defeated the octogenarian Austrian general, Beaulieu, at Nilesimo and Montenotte, separated, by this victory, the Austrians from the Sardinians, and so terrified the king, Victor Amadeus, that he consented to a disadvantageous peace, by which he surrendered Savoy and Nice to the French, gave up six fortresses to the general, and submitted to the oppressive condition of allowing the French army to march through his land at any time.

The course of Napoleon’s victories in Upper Italy was equally rapid. After the memorable passage of the bridge of Lodi, he marched into Austrian Milan, subjected the Lombard towns, and so terrified the smaller princes by the success of his arms, that they were only too happy to make peace with the victor at any price. Napoleon extorted large sums of money, and valuable pictures, treasures of art and manuscripts, from the dukes of Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, etc.

Wurmser now took the place of the old Beaulieu. But he also was defeated at Castiglione, and afterwards besieged in Mantua. The army under Alvinzi that was sent to his relief sustained three defeats (at Arcola, Rivoli, La Favorita), by which the whole Austrian force in Italy was destroyed, dispersed, or captured. This compelled the gallant Wurmser to deliver up Mantua to the glorious victor. Bonaparte, respecting the courage of his enemy, permitted a free retreat to the gray-headed marshal, his staff, and a part of the brave garrison. Pope Pius VI, terrified at these rapid successes, hastened to purchase the peace of Tolentino by cessions of territory, sums of money, and works of art. Archduke Charles now assumed the command of the Austrian army in Italy. But he also was compelled to a disastrous retreat, and was pursued by Bonaparte as far as Klagenfurt, with the view of falling upon Vienna. The emperor Francis, anxious for the fate of his capital, allowed himself to be persuaded by female influence to conclude the disadvantageous preliminary peace of Leoben, at the very moment when, by the non-arrival of the expected reinforcements, and the threatening movements of the Tyrolese, Styrians, and Carinthians, the position of the French army was becoming critical. About the time this treaty of peace was concluded, a popular insurrection arose in the rear of the French army, in the territory of the republic of Venice, in consequence of which many Frenchmen were murdered in Verona and its neighborhood, and even the sick and wounded in the hospitals were not spared. This was taken advantage of by Napoleon to destroy the Venetian republic.

The French marched into Venice, carried off the ships and the stores of the arsenal, robbed the churches, galleries, and libraries of their choicest ornaments and most valued treasures, and kept possession of the city till the negotiations with Austria were so far advanced, that the peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797), by which Upper Italy fell into the hands of France under the name of the Cisalpine Republic, was concluded. Austria, who by this peace also surrendered Belgium to the French republic, and consented to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine with Mayence, received the territory of Venice, together with Dalmatio, as a recompense for this loss. The princes, prelates, the nobles, who suffered by this abandonment of the farther Rhineland, were to be indemnified on the right bank of the river, and this as well as all other points relating to Germany, were to be settled at the Congress at Rastadt. Napoleon opened this congress himself, and then returned to Paris, where he was received with acclamation.

The expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and Syria, produced a fresh coalition of the three great European powers, Russia, England, and Austria, against France. Russia had been governed since the year 1796 by Paul, the eldest son of Catherine, a prince with a mind somewhat deranged, who cherished the bitterest hatred against the Revolution; and who, as a great admirer of the Order of Malta, to the Grand Mastership of which he had himself appointed, saw in the capture of that island by Napoleon, cause for war. England feared danger to her foreign possessions from the Egyptian expedition, and scattered money with a liberal hand to raise up fresh enemies against France. Austria was at variance with the directoral government, because the house of the French ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, had been broken open, and the tricolor flag torn down and burnt, without the Austrian government having afforded the required satisfaction. War was waged, at the same time, in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands.

After his disembarkation at Alexandria, the whole of the French fleet at Aboukir, owing to the carelessness of the admiral, was defeated and captured by the English naval hero, Nelson; and Napoleon was in consequence obliged to make arrangements for a longer stay. In July, he marched from Alexandria through the Egyptian desert to Cairo. The distress of the army, unprovided with water or sufficient necessaries, in the burning heat, was very great. In the battle of the Pyramids, July 21st 1798, ‘from the tops of which 4,000 years looked down upon the combatants,’ the Mamalukes, who at that time swayed Egypt under the Turkish government, were defeated; whereupon Bonaparte marched into Cairo, and established a new government, police, and taxation, upon the European pattern, and ordered the curiosities of this wonderful land to be examined, and its monuments and antiquities to be collected and described, by the artists and men of learning who accompanied his army.

A dreadful insurrection broke out in Cairo, October 21st 1798, which could only be suppressed with difficulty by the superiority of European tactics, after nearly 6,000 Mahommedans had been slain. Napoleon made use of the victory to extort money, and then marched with his Turkish troops against Syria. After the conquest of Jaffa, where he ordered 2,000 Arnauts, whom he had a second time taken prisoners, to be shot as perjured, he proceeded to the siege of Jean d’Acre. It was there that the fortune of Napoleon met with its first rebuff. The Turks, provided with artillery by the English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, repelled the assaults of the enemy, despite their wonderful valor. At the same time, a Turkish army threatened the European soldiers in the interior of the country. The former was, indeed, defeated and dispersed by Junot at Nazareth, and at Mount Tabor by Kleber; nevertheless, upon the plague breaking out among his troops, Napoleon found himself compelled to give up Acre and to commence a retreat. The horses were laden with the sick, the soldiers suffered the most dreadful privations; the dangers and the distresses of the war were frightful. Napoleon shared all the fatigues with the meanest of his army; he is even said to have visited a hospital filled with those sick of the plague. He again reached Cairo in June, and in the following month, defeated a Turkish army of three times his number, at Aboukir. A short time after this, he learned the disasters of the French in Italy from some newspapers; and the intelligence produced such an effect upon him, that he determined upon returning to France. He quietly made his preparations for departure with the greatest expedition. After transferring the command of the Egyptian army to Kleber, Napoleon sailed from the harbor of Alexandria with two frigates and a few small transports, and about 500 followers, and, guided by the star of his fortunes, reached the coast of France undiscovered by the English, and landed at Frejus amidst the acclamations of the people.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Napoleon embraced the resolution of overthrowing the directoral government which had lost all authority and consideration. With this purpose, he made himself secure of the officers and troops that were in Paris, and consulted with Sieyes, one of the directors, and his own brother, Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected president of the Five Hundred, on the means of carrying his plan into execution. Lucien transferred the sittings of the council to St. Cloud, for the purpose of bringing the members within the power of the soldiers. There, Napoleon first attempted to win over the members to his plans by persuasion; when he found that he could not succeed in this, but rather, that he was overwhelmed with threats and reproaches, he commanded his grenadiers to clear the room with leveled bayonets. The republicans, who presented a bold front to the danger, were at length compelled to yield to superior force, and sought their safety through the doors and windows. This done a commission of fifty persons was appointed to draw up a fresh constitution, November 9th 1799. Thus ended the violent procedure of the 18th Brumaire, in consequence of which Napoleon Bonaparte took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands.

According to the consular constitution, the power of the state was divided in the following manner:—​1. To the Senate, which consisted of eighty members, belonged the privilege of selecting from the list of names sent in by the departments the members of the legislative power, and the chief officials and judges. 2. The legislative power was divided into the Tribunate, which numbered one hundred members, and whose office it was to examine and debate upon the proposals of the government; and the legislative bodies, who had only to receive or reject these proposals unconditionally. 3. The government consisted of three Consuls, who were elected for ten years. Of these Consuls, the first, Bonaparte, exercised the powers of government, properly so called; whilst the second and third Consuls (Cambacéres and Lebrun) were merely placed at his side as advisers. Bonaparte, as first Consul, surrounded himself with a state council and a ministry, for which he selected the most talented and experienced men. Talleyrand, the dexterous diplomatist, was minister of the exterior; the astute Fouché superintended the police; Berthier held the staff of general.

Bonaparte was at first engaged in reconciling the old with the new, in combining the results of the Revolution with the forms and manners of the monarchical period. But he very soon made known his preference for the ancient system, by the restoration of all the former arrangements and customs.

The reductions in the emigrant lists brought back many royalists to their homes, and the favor shown to them made them courteous and pliant in the service of the new court. Madame de Stael (daughter of Necker) collected, as in the old time, a circle of accomplished and illustrious men in her saloon. The vanity of the French favored Napoleon’s efforts; when he instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor, republicans and royalists grasped eagerly at the new plaything of human weakness.

One of the first cares of the Consul was the restoration of Christian worship in the French churches. After he had abolished the republican festivals (10th August, 21st January), and introduced the observance of the Sabbath, negotiations were opened with the Roman court, which at length led to the conclusion of the Concordat. No less attention did Napoleon devote to the affairs of education; but he particularly patronized the establishments for practical science, as the Polytechnic School in Paris.

Repeated conspiracies against the life of the First Consul, sometimes undertaken by the republicans and sometimes by the royalists, were always followed by fresh restrictions and a more rigorous system of espionage. The most desperate undertaking of this kind was the attempt, by means of the so-called infernal machine,—​a cask filled with gunpowder, bullets, and inflammable materials, to blow up Bonaparte on his way to the opera-house,—​an attempt which he escaped by the rapidity with which his coachman was driving, but which destroyed many houses and killed several people. In consequence of this atrocious deed, a great number of Jacobins were condemned to deportation, though it afterwards turned out that the plot was undertaken by the royalists. Still more dangerous and extensive were the conspiracies against Napoleon, when the office of Consul was conferred upon him for life by the voice of the people, with the privilege of naming his successor, (August 2, 1802). By this means, the Bourbons were cut off from the last hopes of a return, and the emigrants accordingly left no means untried of destroying him. The desperate George Cadoudal, and Pichegru, who were residing in England, allowed themselves to be employed as tools. They conveyed themselves secretly to France, but were discovered and arrested, with about forty confederates. Before their fate was decided, Napoleon allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of a revolting crime. It had been represented to him that the duke d’Enghien, the chivalrous grandson of the prince of Condé, was the soul of all the royalist conspiracies. Accordingly, this young nobleman, who was residing at Ettenheim, a small town of Baden, was seized at Napoleon’s command, by a troop of armed men, conducted with the greatest haste through Strasburg to Paris, condemned to death by a hurried court-martial, and, despite a magnanimous defense, shot in the trenches of Vincennes.

The fate of the conspirators was shortly after decided upon. Pichegru had already died a violent death in prison, whether by his own hand or that of another is uncertain. George Cadoudal, with eleven confederates, ascended the guillotine. General Moreau, who was implicated, retired into voluntary banishment in America.

NAPOLEON, EMPEROR.

The royalist conspiracies were made use of by Bonaparte to establish an hereditary monarchy. At the instigation of his adherents, the making over the hereditary dignity of emperor to Napoleon was proposed to the Tribunat, sanctioned by the Senate, and confirmed by the whole people by the subscription of their names. Whilst the minds of men were still painfully excited by the late bloody executions, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French, and at the end of the year, solemnly anointed by the pope in the church of Nôtre Dame. The crown, however, he placed on his own head, as well as on that of his wife, Josephine, who knelt before him. This magnificent coronation appeared to be the conclusion of the Revolution, since the whole ancient system, for the extinction of which thousands of human lives had been sacrificed, gradually returned. The new emperor surrounded his throne with a brilliant court, in which the former titles, orders, and gradations of rank were revived under different names. He himself certainly retained his old military simplicity, but the members of his family were made princes and princesses; his generals became marshals; the devoted servants and promoters of his plans were connected with the throne as the great officers of the crown, or as senators with large incomes. The establishment of a new feudal nobility, with the old titles of princes, dukes, counts, barons, completed the splendid edifice of a magnificent imperial court.

The great ends attained by the Revolution—​equality before the law, the peasants’ right of property in the soil and other possessions, remained untouched. Industry made great progress, civil arts and trades received a vast impulse; and an unaccustomed prosperity made itself everywhere visible. Magnificent roads, like those over the Alps, canals, bridges, and improvements of all kinds, are, to the present day, eloquent memorials of the restless activity of this remarkable man. Splendid palaces, majestic bridges, and noble streets, arose in Paris, every thing great or magnificent that art had produced was united in the Louvre; the capital of France glittered with a splendor that had never before been witnessed. The university was arranged upon a most magnificent footing, and appointed the supreme court of supervision and control over the whole system of schools and education.

Whilst the attention of all Europe was directed to the western coast of France, where Napoleon was fitting out ships of every kind with the greatest diligence, and assembling a vast camp at Boulogne, with the purpose, as was believed, of effecting a landing on the English coast, he was making preparations, in all silence, for the memorable campaign of 1805. Never were Napoleon’s talents for command or his military genius displayed in a more brilliant light than in the plan of this campaign. Assured of the assistance of most of the princes of southern Germany, Bonaparte crossed the Rhine in the autumn with seven divisions, commanded by his most experienced marshals, Ney, Lannes, Marmont, Soult, Murat, etc, and marched into Swabia; whilst Bernadotte, disregarding Prussia’s neutrality, pressed forward through the Brandenburg Margravate of Anspach-Bayreuth upon the Isar. This violation of his neutral position irritated the king, Frederick William III, to such a degree, that he entered into closer relationship with the allies, and assumed a threatening aspect, without, however, actually declaring war.

After Ney’s successful engagement at Elchingen, the Austrian general, Mack, was shut up in Ulm, and cut off from the main army. Helpless, and despairing of deliverance, the incompetent commander commenced negotiations with the French, which terminated in the disgraceful capitulation of Ulm. By this arrangement, 33,000 Austrians, including thirteen generals, became prisoners of war. Covered with shame, the once-brave warriors marched before Napoleon, laid down their arms before the victor, placed forty banners at his feet, and delivered up sixty cannon with their horses. When too late, it was seen in Vienna that Mack was not equal to his lofty position, and he was deprived of his honor, his dignities, and the advantages of his office, by a court-martial. Napoleon’s joy at this unexampled good fortune was, however, diminished by the cotemporaneous maritime victory of the English at Trafalgar, which annihilated the whole French fleet, but which also cost the life of the great naval hero, Nelson.

The war-party had gained the upper hand in Prussia since the violation of the neutral territory of Bernadotte. The king renewed the bond of perpetual friendship with the sensitive emperor Alexander, in the church of the garrison at Potsdam, over the coffin of Frederick the Great, at night, and then sent Haugwitz with threatening demands to Napoleon. The French emperor, in the meantime, proceeded along the Danube towards the Austrian states, not without many bloody engagements, of which the battles of Dirnstein and Stein against the Russians under Kutusoff and Bagration were of especial importance. If the French found brave and circumspect opponents in the Russians in these encounters, they had the easier game in Austria. Murat took possession of Vienna without the slightest trouble; and the prince of Auersburg, who had orders either to defend the bridge over the Danube, which was fortified and filled with gunpowder, or to blow it into the air, allowed himself to be so completely deceived by the bold cunning of the French general, and by pretended negotiations of peace, that he surrendered it to the enemy uninjured and undefended. The irresolution of the emperor Francis, and the divisions between the Austrians and Russians, facilitated the victory of the French, who, laden with enormous booty, pursued the Austro-Russian army, in the midst of perpetual engagements, into Moravia. In Moravia, the battle of Austerlitz, in which the three emperors were present, was fought on the day of the year in which the emperor was crowned, December 2d, 1805, and in which the winter sun shone upon the most splendid of Napoleon’s victories. The emperor Francis, wishing for the termination of the war, suffered himself to be persuaded to pay a humble visit to Napoleon in the French camp, and then consented to a truce which stipulated for the retreat of the Russians from the Austrian states. Upon this, negotiations were commenced which terminated in the peace of Presburg.

After the battle of Austerlitz, the Prussian ambassador, Haugwitz, did not venture to convey the charge of his court to the victorious emperor; without asking permission in Berlin, he allowed himself to be induced, partly by threats, and partly by the engaging affability of Napoleon, to subscribe an unfavorable contract, by which Prussia exchanged the Franconian principality of Anspach, some lands on the Lower Rhine, and the principality of Nuremburg in Switzerland, for Hanover. It was in vain that the king resisted the exchange, which threatened to involve him in hostilities with England; separated from Austria by the hasty conclusion of the peace of Presburg, nothing was left to the king but to submit to the dictation of the victor.

The constitution of the German empire was already dissolved by the elevation of the Elector of Bavaria and of the Duke of Wirtemberg into independent monarchs. Napoleon, in consequence, entertained the project of entirely removing the south and west of Germany from the influence of Austria, and of uniting them to himself by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine. A prospect of enlarging their territories and increasing their power, and fear of the mighty ruler from whose side victory appeared inseparable, induced a great number of princes and estates of the empire to separate themselves from the German empire and join France. Self-interest was more powerful than patriotism. On the 12th of July, the treaty was signed in Paris, by virtue of which Napoleon, as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, recognized the full sovereignty of the individual members, upon condition of their maintaining a certain contingent of troops ready at the emperor’s disposal. Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and several others, formed the kernel around which the lesser principalities, as Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, Solms, etc., collected themselves, till at length almost all the German confederate states of the second and third rank gave in their adhesion. The Elector arch-chancellor Dalberg, who had been made prince-primate, and who had received Frankfort, together with Hanau and Fulda, as a principality, was chosen Napoleon’s representative in the Confederation of the Rhine.

The wavering conduct of Prussia had filled Napoleon with the deepest anger, and convinced him that the king would be untrustworthy as a friend, and cowardly and innocuous as an enemy. He accordingly flung aside all respect and forbearance, and purposely inflicted many mortifications on the Prussian government. The irritation produced by this was soon aggravated into a complete rupture.

The French troops under Napoleon and his experienced marshals were in the heart of Thuringia and Saxony, the Elector of which had united himself, after some hesitation, to Prussia. The first engagement at Saalfeld, where the gallant prince Louis found his death, went against the Prussians; but the defeat suffered by the army under the command of the old duke of Brunswick, in the great double battle of Jena and Auerstadt, was terrible and fatal. It decided the fate of the countries between the Rhine and the Elbe. The former presumption of the officers and young nobles was suddenly turned into despondency, and the greatest confusion and helplessness took possession of the leaders. Hohenlohe, with 17,000 men, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; the fortresses of Erfurt, Magdeburg, Spondau, Stettin, etc., surrendered within a few days, with such wonderful celerity, that the commandants of many of them were suspected of treachery, so utterly unaccountable did such cowardice and such entire want of self-reliance appear. Blücher alone saved the honor of Prussia by the bloody combat in and around Lubeck, though he could not prevent the horrible storming of this slightly-fortified town; in Colberg, also, Gneisenau and Schill, supported by the brave citizen, Nettlebeck, courageously resisted the superior force of the enemy. Thirteen days after the battle of Jena, Napoleon marched into Berlin, and issued his mandates from thence. The Elector of Hesse, who wished to remain neutral, and who had withdrawn his forces from the contest, was obliged to surrender both land and army to the enemy, and to seek for protection as a fugitive in a foreign land. He took up his residence in Prague. The duke of Brunswick, who had been severely wounded, and who was carried into his capital on a litter after the battle of Jena, was compelled to seek for refuge in Denmark to die in peace. Jena and East Friesland were united to Holland; the Hanse towns as well as Leipsic, were oppressed by the deprivation of all English wares, and by severe military taxes; and treasures of art and science, and the trophies of former victories, were carried away from all quarters. It was only to the Elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought at Jena, that Napoleon showed any favor. He set the Saxon prisoners at liberty, and granted the Elector a favorable peace; upon which the latter, dignified with the title of king, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, like the other Saxon dukes. From this time, Frederick Augustus, to the misfortune of himself and his people, felt himself bound by the ties of gratitude to the French emperor.

The king of Prussia had fled to Königsberg, where he vainly attempted to obtain peace. Napoleon’s demands rose with his fortunes. In his necessity, Frederick William turned to his friend Alexander, who immediately despatched a Russian army under Benningsen and others into East Prussia, to prevent the French passing the Vistula. Upon this, Napoleon issued a proclamation to the Poles, pretendedly in the name of Kosciusko, by which these misused people were summoned to fight for liberty and independence. The Poles willingly made the greatest sacrifices, and strengthened the ranks of the French by their brave soldiers under the command of Dombrowski. Napoleon marched into Warsaw amidst the rejoicings of the people; but the Poles discovered, only too soon, that the foreign potentate was more intent upon the gratification of his own ambition and love of power, than upon the restoration of their empire. Murderous battles were now fought upon the banks of the Vistula, and torrents of blood shed at Pultusk and Morungen. But the great blow was struck in the battle of Preuss-Eylau, February 8, 1807, when the marshal spirit of the French and Russians gave rise to a contest which in loss of men equals any event of the sort in the world’s history. Both parties claimed the victory, and their efforts and exhaustion were so great, that the war suffered an interruption of four months. During this interval, negotiations were again renewed; but much as the king, who was waiting with his family in Memel, might desire the termination of the war, that he might free his subjects from the dreadful exactions of the French, he was too honest to dissever his own cause from that of his ally. But when the Silesian fortresses on the Oder, Glogau, Brieg, Schweidnitz, and Breslau, fell into the hands of the French by the cowardice of their commandants, and even Dantzic was surrendered to the marshal Lefebvre by the gallant governor Kalkreuth, the king lost all confidence in the successful issue. When, after the recommencement of hostilities, the French gained a brilliant victory over the Russians in the battle of Friedland, on the anniversary of the battle of Marengo, and took possession of the field of Königsberg, the allied monarchs, after a personal interview with Bonaparte on the Niemen, thought it prudent to consent to the peace of Tilsit, oppressive as were the conditions.

Portugal, in consequence of her refusal to close her ports against the English, was occupied by a French army under Junot, who assumed the title of Duke of Abrantes, and proclaimed himself regent in the name of the French Emperor, after the departure of the Portugese royal family for Brazil. In pursuance of his favorite object, the destruction of English commerce, Napoleon not only extended his continental system to Portugal and Italy (as far as the latter country was dependent on France), but even formed a plan for the subjugation of Spain; and under pretense of protecting that country against an English invasion, crossed the Pyrenees at the head of 100,000 men. Charles IV, who a short time before in consequence of an insurrection against his contemptible favorite, Godoy, Prince of the Peace, had resigned his crown in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII, no sooner witnessed the entry of the French into Madrid, than he desired to recall his abdication. Under pretense of settling the dispute, Napoleon invited the whole party to meet him at Bayonne, and having made himself master of their persons, compelled the Bourbon family to resign the Spanish crown, and placed his brother Joseph on the throne. The vacant kingdom of Naples was then conferred on Murat, and the grand-duchy of Berg destined for the Crown Prince of Holland. Against the sovereign thus treacherously imposed on them, the whole Spanish nation rose as one man; and Joseph, after an unsuccessful attempt to conciliate his new subjects by granting them a liberal constitution, was compelled to quit Madrid and retire to Burgos.

An English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed in Portugal, and drove the French out of that country; the means of returning to France being secured to Junot and his army by the Convention of Cintra. At the same time, another French army, under Dupont, was surrounded and captured in the south of Spain. The French had already fallen back on the Ebro, when Napoleon (to whom the Emperor Alexander, in a personal interview at Erfurt, had promised assistance in the event of a war with Austria) appeared in Spain at the head of 335,000 men.

After a victorious progress from the Ebro, the French Emperor entered Madrid, and immediately abolished the inquisition, the feudal system, and the Council of Castile (which had recalled its consent to the abdication of Charles IV), and reduced the number of convents to one-third. Having, in conjugation with Soult, compelled the English to evacuate Portugal, Napoleon returned to France to make preparations for a fresh war with Austria. On the 21st February, 1809, the fortress of Saragossa which had been twice heroically defended by the Spanish General Palafox, with the loss of 53,000 men, surrendered to the French; and the cause of Spanish independence seemed utterly ruined; for the brilliant victory of Talavera 27th and 28th of July, obtained by Sir Arthur Wellesley over King Joseph, was neutralized by the defeat of an army recently raised by the Junta of Seville, which was almost annihilated by Soult, at Ocano.

The monks, to whose influence King Joseph attributed the general insurrection of the Spanish nation against the French, were punished by the suppression of all the monastic orders. Whilst the French, although perpetually harrassed by swarms of irregular troops, called Guerillas, were still advancing steadily towards the south, the Junta had retired to Seville, and assembled the Cortes (1810), which drew up and proclaimed in (1812), a new constitution, by which the monarchical power was greatly restricted. The repeated attempts of the French, especially under Massena, to regain a footing in Portugal, were as unsuccessful as their attacks on Cadiz, which was strongly fortified and protected by a combined Spanish and English fleet. In the year 1812, the French force in Spain having been reduced to 168,000 men, by the withdrawal of a large number of the best soldiers and generals for the Russian campaign, the whole population of several provinces were encouraged to take the field, and the Guerillas under Mina, the Curate Merino, Mendizabal, etc., became daily more numerous and daring. The fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were stormed by Lord Wellington, who spared the armies of Marmont and Soult, defeated the former near Salamanca, compelled Joseph to quit Madrid, and then, on the approach of the French, retreated to the Portuguese frontier. Soult having been recalled from Spain by Napoleon, after his disastrous campaign in Russia, the English general compelled King Joseph a second time to abandon his capital, and retire to the Ebro, and in the year 1813 decided the fate of Spain, by a brilliant victory over Jourdan at Vittoria. Joseph escaped being taken prisoner, by a precipitate flight into France. Soult, who had reëntered Spain by command of Napoleon, was compelled to recross the Pyrenees by Lord Wellington, and the war was terminated by the battle of Toulouse, in April, 1814, the Emperor Napoleon having previously abdicated, and Ferdinand VII being released from his imprisonment at Valencay.

Soon after his coronation, Napoleon had conceived the idea of depriving the Pope of his temporal power, and transporting him to Paris, where the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff might be advantageously employed for the promotion of his own ambitious designs. After a succession of annoyances and threats, Napoleon demanded that the Pope should accede to the continental system, close his ports against the English, and conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, at least against the Infidels, by which title he designated the Turks and all the Protestant powers. On the refusal of the Pope to entertain this proposal, the Emperor took possession of Rome, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy four provinces belonging to the States of the Church. These measures were speedily followed by the publication of a decree dated from Schönbrunn, in which the temporal authority of the Pope was declared to be at an end; and in the following year 1810 the rest of the States of the Church were incorporated into the French empire. Pius VII, who had excommunicated the the originators and perpetrators of these acts of violence, was carried off by force to Grenoble, and thence removed to Savona, where he remained three years a prisoner, refusing with exemplary firmness to resign his temporal authority, and establish his residence at Paris. In the summer of 1812, he was removed to Fontainebleau, for the purpose of negotiating a fresh concordat, and returned to Rome after the abdication of Napoleon, in 1814.

After the peace of Tilsit, an attempt was made by the Austrian government to reëstablish its political influence in Europe. With this view the army was reörganized; and when Napoleon, in consequence of this movement, called on the members of the Rhenish Confederacy to hold themselves in readiness, the Austrians resolved to anticipate his attack. A proclamation was accordingly issued by the Emperor’s brothers, the Archdukes Charles and John, as commanders-in-chief of the army destined to act in Bavaria and Italy, calling on the German nation to coöperate with Austria in her struggles for the liberty of their common fatherland; but scarcely any effect was produced by this appeal. The army commanded by the Archduke Charles, which had entered Bavaria, was defeated in a series of engagements, which lasted from the 19th to the 23d of April at Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, by a force composed almost entirely of Germans, and compelled, after sustaining immense loss, to cross the Danube, and retreat towards Bohemia.

On the 13th of May, Vienna was a second time taken by the French; Napoleon, who had advanced by forced marches for the purpose of preventing the relief of Vienna by the archduke Charles, was defeated on the 21st and 22d of May, near the villages of Aspern and Esling. He then formed a junction with the Italian army under Eugene Beauharnais, a second time crossed the Danube, and defeated the archduke Charles in the sanguinary battle of Wagram, on the 5th and 6th of July. The two armies met again at Znaim, in Moravia, and victory had already begun to incline to the side of the French, when hostilities were suspended by the arrival of Prince Lichtenstein, who was empowered by the Emperor to arrange the terms of an armistice. After this battle, and an unsuccessful attempt of the English to effect a diversion by landing on the island of Walcheren, in Holland, the Austrian war was terminated on the 14th of October by the peace of Vienna. By this treaty Austria lost 2000 square miles of territory, with three and a half millions of inhabitants.

In the hope of obtaining an heir to his throne, and of imparting in some sort, a legitimate character to his dynasty, Napoleon divorced himself from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria. On the 20th of March, 1811, the new Empress was delivered of a son, who was immediately created king of Rome. His brother Louis having declared his readiness to abdicate in favor of his son, rather than ruin Holland by enforcing a rigid observance to the continental system, Napoleon annexed the whole of that country to France. Under the same pretext, and in the face of his own repeated declaration that he wished the Rhine to be the boundary of his dominions, the Emperor incorporated into the French empire the maritime provinces of northern Germany, a great part of the kingdom of Westphalia, the Hanse Towns, the grand duchy of Berg, Oldenburg, and East Friesland: as he had already annexed Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the Canton of Vallais in Switzerland. The empire at this time numbered 130 departments, and extended along the coast of western and southern Europe, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Trieste and Corfu. The imperial government now became every day more absolute: the sittings of the legislative body, which had long since been a mere farce, were suspended: the duties of the senate were confined to the appearance of its members on great occasions in the suite of the Emperor, and the passing of acts confirmatory of his decrees for the annexation of fresh territory.

The conviction that the continental system would be ruinous to her commerce, and that Napoleon would never rest until he had destroyed her influence as a first-rate European power, was soon forced on Russia, which had wrested Finland from Sweden in 1808, and extended her dominions to the Pruth, by the peace of Bucharest, concluded in 1812, after a six years’ war with the Turks. The first coolness between Alexander and Napoleon was occasioned by the annexation of Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, a measure which was regarded with suspicion by the Russian Emperor, as tending towards the reëstablishment of Poland as a kingdom. Other causes of offense followed in rapid succession; on the one side, Napoleon, who had already annoyed the Emperor by depriving the duke of Oldenburgh, husband of Alexander’s aunt by the mother’s side, of his dominions, now demanded the rigid enforcement of the continental system by Russia; whilst, on the other, the union of Warsaw, as a province, with Saxony, and the evacuation of the Prussian dominions, were strongly urged on France by the Russian government. The refusal of each party to accede to the demands of the other, at length produced a war, which was commenced in 1812 by Napoleon, who collected an army of 400,000, or, according to some writers, 600,000 men, from almost every country in south-western Europe. To oppose this formidable armament, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. With his accustomed rapidity of movement, Napoleon crossed the Nieman into Lithuania, and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the Russians, who were unwilling to hazard a general engagement until they had formed a junction with the troops from the interior. After defeating the Russians at Smolensk, and Borodino, on the Moskwa, Napoleon, on the 14th of September, entered Moscow, which was entirely abandoned by the inhabitants; and soon after his arrival a fire broke out, occasioned probably by the Russian governor Rostopchin, which raged six days, and destroyed nine-tenths of the city. Notwithstanding this calamity, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins of Moscow, endeavoring to negotiate a peace; but discovering his error when it was too late, he broke up his quarters on the 18th of October, and commenced his retreat with an army now reduced to 104,000 men. The winter had already set in with a severity almost unprecedented at that early season, and the whole of the country between Moscow and Beresina, an extent of 150 German miles, presented the appearance of a desert, the inhabitants of the villages having removed or destroyed all their agricultural produce. At length the army, reduced by famine and the unceasing attacks of the Russians and Cossacks to 30,000 men capable of bearing arms, reached the Beresina, where the passage of the river was forced by Ney and Oudinot, with 8,500 men, in the face of 25,000 Russians. The retreat now became a flight, in consequence of the intensity of the cold, and the abandonment of the army by Napoleon, who had placed himself in a sledge, when all was lost, and proceeded to Paris (arrived 18th December,) where his presence was rendered necessary by the unsettled state of public affairs. General Ney, who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Moskwa, and done good service by the masterly manner in which he had conducted the retreat, was created Prince of the Moskwa. The first step towards the emancipation of Prussia, was the conclusion of a convention of neutrality between the Prussian general Diebitsch and general York, who was sent to cover the retreat of the left wing of the French army under Macdonald. This proceeding on the part of the Prussian general was stigmatized by Napoleon as an act of the grossest treachery, and the chief cause of his subsequent misfortunes.

Frederick William III of Prussia, after issuing from Breslau a manifesto, in which he called on his people to rise and defend their liberties against the encroachments of the French, now concluded an alliance with Russia for the reëstablishment of the Prussian monarchy, and having been subsequently joined by Sweden and England, commenced his preparations for the formation of a national militia in Prussia.

In the month of March, the Prussian grand army under Blucher, marched through Silesia to Dresden, where it awaited the arrival of a Russian force commanded by Kalish. A second Russo-Prussian army was also sent from Berlin to join the two other corps. The allied army, under Wittgenstein, now numbered 85,000 men, and that of the French 120,000, most of whom were raw conscripts.

Towards the end of April, Napoleon reäppeared in Germany, and advanced to Leipzic, where he was compelled to engage the enemy at Grossgörschen, or, as he himself named the battle, at Lützen, on the 2d of May: but notwithstanding the disadvantage under which they labored, in being unprepared for the attack, and the heavy loss which they sustained in the battle, the French were victorious; and the allies retreated by way of Dresden into Lusatia. Sharnhorst died at Prague of the wounds which he had received in the battle. Soon afterwards Napoleon appeared at Dresden, and compelled the wavering king of Saxony to place the resources of his kingdom at the disposal of the French. On the 20th of May Napoleon attacked the allies at Bautzen, forced the passage of the Spree, and completed his victory on the following day, at Wurschen, where he sustained a considerable loss in killed and wounded. As the allies directed their retreat towards Silesia instead of Berlin, in order to effect a junction with the Austrians, the conqueror, who wished to prevent a meeting of the three powers, as well as to gain time for fresh levies, consented to an armistice from 4th of June to 10th of August, in the hope that Austria would eventually join the French. A short time previously to these events, the city of Hamburg, which had been abandoned by the French officials on the approach of a Russian army, under Tetterborn, was retaken by Davoust, and mercilessly pillaged, because the inhabitants were unable to pay a forced contribution of 48,000,000 francs.

The congress of Prague having terminated unsatisfactorily, in consequence of the unreasonable demands of Austria, and the unwillingness of England to become a party to a treaty of peace, war was declared by the Austrian government against Napoleon, whose subsequent overtures were treated with contempt. The allies had made the best use of the breathing time allowed them by the armistice. A subsidy of eleven millions, granted by England, enabled them to equip at least 600,000 men, who formed three divisions, viz, 1. The grand army of Bohemia, under Schwarzenberg, in whose camp were the three allied monarchs and General Moreau. 2. The army of Silesia, under Blücher. 3. The army of the North, under the Crown Prince of Sweden, Charles John Bernadotte. Against this enormous force Napoleon brought into the field about 350,000 men; and notwithstanding his inferiority in point of numbers, commenced hostilities with an attack on the army of Silesia, which retreated beyond the Katzbach. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had marched upon Dresden, and Napoleon was compelled to proceed by forced marches to that city, leaving General Macdonald in Silesia. On the 26th and 27th of August, Napoleon gained his last victory at Dresden, on German ground, amidst torrents of rain. Moreau was mortally wounded in this battle, and died soon afterwards. This advantage gained by Napoleon, was however almost neutralized by the failure of the other divisions of the French army.