with an army from Upper Italy into Naples, on account of a pretended breach of neutrality, occasioned by the landing of the English and Russians. But Ferdinand IV. took refuge in Sicily with his family; and that island being protected by the English fleet, formed merely a nominal appendage to the crown of Joseph Bonaparte. Prince Eugene Beauharnois, son of the empress Josephine by her first husband, was named viceroy of Italy; Talleyrand received the nominal title of prince of Benevento; Bernadotte was proclaimed prince of Ponte Corvo; and Louis, the second brother of the emperor, was proclaimed hereditary and constitu tional king 01 Holland. With the same disregard of political justice, the constitution of the German empire, which had lasted for above a thousand years, was overthrown on the 12th of July, 1806, to make way for the Rhenish confederation, of which the emperor Napoleon was named pro

tector.

Prussia, at this period still trembling for her own safety, was once more excited by England and Russia to resistance; upon which Napoleon transported his immense army across the continent, and in less than one month he arrived at Berlin, having gained the ever-memorable battle of Jena, in which 250,000 men were engaged in the work of mutual destruction. More than twenty thousand Prussians were killed and wounded, and forty thousand taken prisoners, with three hundred pieces of cannon. Prince Ferdinand died of his wounds. A panic seized the garrison, and all the principal towns of Prussia, west of the Oder, surrendered to the French soon after the battle, and on the 25th of October, Napoleon entered the capitol. Bonaparte next promulgated the celebrated Berlin decree, or "continental system," by which the British islands were declared in a state of blockade; all articles of British manufacture were interdicted; and all vessels touching at England, or any English colony, excluded from every harbour under the control of France. Beyond the Vistula, the war between France and Russia was opened on the 24th of December, 1806, by the fight of Czarnowo, in which the French carried the Russian redoubts upon the left bank of the Ukra. On the succeeding morning Davoust drove field-marshal Kameuskji out of his position; and on the day following the marshal renounced the command-in-chief, in which he was succeeded by Bennigsen. This general suddenly transported the theatre of war into Eastern Prussia, where the Russians, an the 23d of January, 1807, attacked the advanced posts of the prince of Ponte Corvo, who engaged them on the 25th, at Mohrungen, and by his manœuvres covered the flank of the French army until a junction was formed. After continual fighting from the 1st to the 7th of February, the battle of Eylau took place. The slaughter was dreadful; both parties claimed the victory, and both were glad to pause while they recruited their respective armies. The next operation of consequence, was the seige and bombardment of Dantzic, by Lefebvre: and General Kalkreuth was compelled to capitulate on the 24th of May, after Marshal Lannes had defeated a body of Russians who had landed at Weichselmunde with the view of raising the siege. At last, after a series of skirmishes between the different divisions of the hostile armies, the decisive victory of the French over the Russians at Friedland, on the 14th of June, 1807, led to the peace of Tilsit; which was concluded on the 9th of July, between France and Prussia, by Talleyrand and Count Kalkreuth, after an interview between the three monarchs upon the Niemen, and subsequently at Tilsit. In this peace Prussia was shorn of territories containing upwards of one half of the former population of that kingdom; and from the various districts which fell into the conqueror's hands were formed two new states—the kingdoms of Westphalia, and the dukedom of Warsaw. The former was given to Jerome Bonaparte, and the king of Saxony was flattered with the title of duke of Warsaw. Upon the intercession of Russia, the dukes of Mecklenburgh

Schwerin, Oldenburgh, and Coburg, were reinstated, and France and Russia exchanged reciprocal guarantees of their possessions, and of those of the other powers included in this peace.

Never had the fortune of man been more brilliant; the whole world was struck with astonishment at victories so rapid, and seemed to bow itself before so colossal a power. But his ambition was boundless; no sovereign could be more absolute; he regarded other men as ciphers destined to increase the amount of that unity which centered in himself. He talked of the glory of France; but he re-established the imposts, the abuses, and prodigality of the ancient monarchy. The aids and monopo lies reappeared under the name of united duties. The press was kept under by a censorship; juries were perverted; prefects and other petty despots assumed the administration of justice; the emperor nominated all the public functionaries, and all were inviolable; the council of state, a dependent and removeable body, was the sole arbiter of their responsibility. The election of the deputies was ridiculous in this pretended representative government, the laws of which were the dicta of the emperor, under the name of decrees or senatorial edicts. Individual liberty no longer existed; a police, that was a true political inquisition, suspected even silence itself; accused the thoughts of men, and extended over Europe a net of iron. All this time, too, the conscription, a dreadful tax upon human life, was levied with unsparing activity; and the French youth were surrendered to his will by the senate as a sort of annual contribution. The affairs of Spain now began to occupy the attention 0f Napoleon; one of his first objects, however, was to destroy the English influence in Portugal. A French army, in concert with a Spanish one, marched against that kingdom, the partition of which had been concerted between France and Spain, on the 27th of October, 1807, the northern part being given to the house of Parma, the southern part to Godoy, prince of peace, and the middle, on the conclusion of peace, to the house of Braganza. Tuscany was to be given to France, and the king of Spain to be declared protector of the three states, erected out of Portugal; the Spanish monarch was also to assume, after the maritime peace should be concluded, the title of emperor of both Americas. In conformity with this treaty, Tuscany was given up to Napoleon in 1807, and afterwards incorporated with France; and Marshal Junot, duke of Braganza, entered Lisbon on the 30th of November, after the royal family had embarked with their treasures, and a few of the principal nobility, in a British fleet, for the Brazils. But, in 1808, the Spanish nobility, tired of the government of the prince of peace, formed a plot to raise Ferdinand VII. to the throne, and free their country from foreign influence. It required no great effort to induce Charles to resign in favour of his son; but this was an arrangement to which Napoleon would not consent: and both father and son now became pensioners of the French conqueror, who invested his brother Joseph, at that time king of Naples, with the sovereignty of Spain and India. The people now rose to vindicate their rights, and that struggle commenced in which patriotic Spaniards were so warmly and successfully supported by the British under Wellington, during the long and ardu ous military operations which in England are known as the "Peninsular war." The war in Spain appeared to give Austria a new and favour able opportunity for attempting the re-establishment of her former in fluence in Germany. The emperor Francis accordingly declared war against France, and sent his armies into Bavaria, Italy, and the dukedom o Warsaw. But the rapid measures of Napoleon battled Austrian calculations; and, collecting a large army, he defeated the archduke Louis so severely at Eckmuhl and Ratisbon, on the 22d and 23d of April, that he was compelled to cross the Danube. Vienna was thus opened to the con,querors, and Napoleon took possession of that capital. The archduke

Charles was, however, undismayed; he attacked the French in their position at Aspern, on the 21st of May, and the battle continuing through the next day, Napoleon was compelled to retreat into the isle of Loban, where his army was placed in a situation of great jeopardy, the flood having carried away the bridge that connected the island in the middle of the river with the right bank of the Danube; and two months elapsed before he was able to repair the disasters of the battle, and again transport his army across the river. Then followed the great battle of Wagram, which was fought on the 5th and 6th of July; and in this desperate conflict the loss of the Austrians was so great, that they immediately sought an armistice of the French emperor, which led to the peace of Vienna, signed on the 14th of October, 1809. By this peace Austria was obliged to resign territories containing three millions of subjects. Saltzburg, Berchtolsgaden, &c., were given to Bavaria; all western and part of eastern Gallicia,with the town of Cracow, were united to the dukedom of Warsaw; and other provinces, with part of the kingdom of Italy, were destined to form the new state of the Illyrian provinces; while Austria was absolutely cut off from all communication with the sea, by the loss of her ports on the Adriatic. The Tyrolese, who had been transferred to the king of Bavaria by the treaty of Presburg, finding that their ancient immunities and privileges had been violated, and that they were crushed by severe taxation, seized the opportunity of the Austrian war to raise the standard of revolt; and in their early operations they expelled the Bavarians from the principal towns. A French army entered the country and laid it waste with fire and sword; but the Tyrolese, animated by a heroic peasant named Hofer, expelled the invaders once more, and secured a brief interval of tranquillity. The results of the battle of Wagram, however, gave the French and Bavarian forces an opportunity of overwhelming them; they penetrated their mountain fastnesses, desolated the land, executed the leading patriots as rebels, and the land was again subjected to the tyranny of Maximilian Joseph, the puppet of Napoleon. Several efforts were simultaneously made in Germany to shake off the French yoke; but after the overthrow of the Austrians there were no longer any hopes for them, and the emperor of the French exercised an almost unlimited power over the northern part of continental Europe. During Napoleon's residence at Vienna, he abolished the temporal power of the pope, and united the remaining territories of the states of the church with France, to which he had previously united Piedmont, Liguria, Tuscany, and Parma, besides Savoy and Nice. A pension was assigned to his holiness, and the city of Rome declared an imperial and free city. The pope was conducted to Fontainebleau, where Napoleon concluded a second concordat with him, in which, though the pope did not resume his temporal jurisdiction, he obtained the right to keep ambassadors at foreign courts, to receive ambassadors, and to appoint to certain bishoprics. One of the consequences of the peace of Vienna was the dissolution of the marriage between Napoleon and Josephine, which took place in December, 1809; and his second marriage with the archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Austria, in April, 1810. When Napoleon declared the papal territory a province of France, and Rome a city of the empire, he determined that the heir-apparent of France should bear the title of king of Rome, and that the emperor of France should be crowned in Rome within the first three years of his government. The firmness with which he was opposed in Spain, the perseverance of Great Britain in maintaining the orders in council, to counteract the decrees of Berlin and Milan, and the daily increasing prospect of an approaching war in the North, where longer submission to the arbitrary mandates of Napoleon was refused, did not augur favourably for the future stability of his vast power. The British also carried on an important commerce with Russia, through

Gottenburg and the ports of the Baltic, of which complaint was made to the courts of Stockholm and Petersburg. The commercial policy of Russia in 1810 and 1811, and its disapprobation of the treatment of the duke of Oldenburg (a near relation to the emperor Alexander), had excited the distrust of Napoleon; and he spoke the language of offended confidence in remonstrating with "his brother the emperor." At length Russia and Sweden made common cause with Great Britain in opposing Napoleon's darling" continental system;" while the latter arrayed under his banners the military strength of western and southern Europe, and, trusting to the vast number of his victorious legions, he crossed the Niemen, and directed his march to the capital of Lithuania. As the French advanced the Russians retired, wasting the country in their retreat. Napoleon then with his main body marched upon Moscow, while a large division of his forces menaced the road to St. Petersburg. But the main force of the invaders advanced to Smolensko, which was justly regarded as the bulwark of Moscow. This strongly fortified position was taken by storm on the 17th of August, after a brief but bloody struggle, the Russian general, Barclay de Tolly, firing the town on his retreat. But Moscow was not to be abandoned without another effort. Kutusoff, who now assumed the command of the Russians, fixed upon a position near the village of Borodino, and there firmly awaited the invading host. Nearly seventy thousand men fell in this furious and sanguinary conflict; and as the French were joined by new reinforcements after the battle, Napoleon entered Moscow, and took up his residence in the Kremlin, the ancient palace of the czars. The citizens, however, under the direction, or with the sanction, of the governor, Rostopchin, not only determined to abandon their beloved metropolis, but to consign it to the flames; and scarcely had the French troops congratulated themselves on having secured winter-quarters in that cold and inhospitable region, ere the conflagration burst forth in every direction, and notwithstanding every device was tried to subdue the flames, they ceased not until more than three-fourths of the city was a mass of smoking embers. In this unexpected and embarassing position, Napoleon gave orders for a retreat. All the horrors that the imagination can conceive were now felt by the hap less fugitives, who so lately were the boasted conquerors of southern Europe. The winter had set in unusually early, and brave as the French soldiers were, the climate of Russia was an enemy too powerful for them to contend with. Thousands upon thousands perished with cold and hunger, and an immense number fell beneath the swords of their relentless pursuers, who, maddened by the recollection that their hearths and homes had been polluted by these invaders, and that their ancient city lay smouldering in the dust, heeded not their cries for mercy. But why should we repeat the tale of horrors? Suffice it to say, that the wreck of this mighty army retreated through Prussia and Poland, into Saxony, while Napoleon hastened to Paris with all the speed that post-horses could effect.

Napoleon appealed to the senate for men, money, and other munitions of war, and his appeal was promptly responded to. Notwithstanding his recent reverses, he felt that he still possessed the confidence of the French nation; and a large conscription was ordered to supply the losses of the late campaign; as soon, therefore, as the new levies were organized, he hastened to the north; and, to the astonishment of all Europe, the army under his command was numerically superior to those of his adversaries. The public voice in Prussia loudly demanded war with France, and the Prussian monarch took courage to assert his independence and enter into alliance with Alexander. The armies of these newly-united powers sustained a considerable loss at Lutzen on the 2d of May, and at Bautzen on the 21st and 22d, in engagements with the French; but neither battle was

decisive; and Napoleon, alarmed by the magnitude of his losses, and the obstinacy of his enemies, consented to an armistice. During the truce the British government encouraged the allies by large subsidies; but what was of most consequence, the emperor of Austria, who had never cordially consented to an alliance with his son-in-law, now abandoned his cause, and took an active part in the confederation against him. Napoleon established his head-quarters at Dresden, and commenced a series of operations against his several foes, which at first were successful; but the tide of fortune turned; different divisions of his army were successively defeated, and he collected his scattered forces for one tremendous effort, which was to decide the fate of Europe. Retiring to Leipsic, he there made a stand, and under the walls of that ancient city he sustained a terrible defeat, Oct. 18, the Saxon troops in his service having deserted in a body to the allies during the engagement. Compelled to evacuate Leipsic, he retreated upon the Rhine, followed by the allied troops, and after a severe struggle at Hanau, Oct. 30, in which the Bavarians, under the command of General Wrede, took a decisive part against the French, they were defeated, and multitudes were made prisoners. Bernadotte undertook the task of expelling the French from Saxony. The sovereign governments in the kingdom of Westphalia, the grand dukedom of Frankfort and Berg, and the countries of the princes of Isenburg and Vonder-Leyen, were now overturned; the elector of Hesse-Cassel, the duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, and the duke of Oldenburg, returned to their own country; the Hanoverians again acknowledged their old government, and the Russian administration was re-introduced into the provinces between the Rhine and the Elbe. Considerable masses of troops, partly volunteers, and partly drafted from the Prussian militia, followed the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians across the Rhine. The flame of independence spread to Holland, and the hereditary claims of the house o Orange were acknowledged.

A. D. 1814.—While the allies were thus effecting the humiliation of Napoleon, Wellington advanced slowly towards Bayonne. As he advanced, the old partisans of the Bourbons began to revive, the exiled family was proclaimed, and the white flag floated on the walls of Bordeaux. Napoleon had the advantage over Blucher at Brienne on the 29th of January, but was forced to retreat at La Rochière, where the allies had concentrated their forces. He now retired between the Loire and the Marne, with the view of covering Paris; and it was not without difficulty that Blucher succeeded in penetrating the French line. But the order of march was still "forward! forward!" On the 31st of March, 1814, the allied troops entered Paris, and Alexander declared, in the name of the allied sovereigns, that they would not negotiate with Napoleon Bonaparte, nor with any of his family; that they acknowledged the right of France only to the territory embraced within its ancient limits under its kings; and, finally, that they would acknowledge and guaranty the government which the French nation should adopt. They therefore invited the senate to establish a provisory government for the administration of the country and the preparation of a constitution. Accordingly, the senate assembled, April 1, under the able presidency of Talleyrand, (a man ever skilful in taking advantage of circumstances), whom, with four other members, they charged with the provisory government. On the next day it declared that Napoleon and his family had forfeited the throne of France. The legislative body ratified this decree, and the recall of Louis XVIII. to the throne of France was soon after made known. Meanwhile, April 11, Napoleon had resigned the crown conditionally in favour of his son, at Fontainebleau; and a treaty was concluded the same day, ceding to him the island of Elba.

Wearied with continual war, France hailed the return of peace with ac