orders, fired it before the appointed time. A shriek of horror, more appalling than the loudest battle-cry, burst from the dense multitude that crowded to the edge of the chasm when the arch was found to be destroyed the ranks immediately broke, the boldest men threw themselves into the river, and but few of these escaped. Macdonald swam his horse across, and reached the opposite bank in safety; but Poniatowski's steed, having_undertaken the same exploit, reeled back on his rider, and the brave Pole perished in the water. During the assault and retreat, Lauriston, Regnier, and twenty other generals, with fifteen thousand soldiers, were made prisoners, and twenty-three thousand sick and wounded also fell into the hands of the allies. The total loss of the French in the three days-two of battle and one of retreat-was no less than sixty thousand men, while that of the allies was fully forty thousand: a prodi gious sacrifice, but one which was atoned for by the deliverance of Europe from French bondage, and of the world from revolutionary aggression.

The French army continued its retreat for several days with great rapidity; and although its flanks and rear were incessantly harassed by the allied light troops and Cossacks, who cut off an immense number of stragglers, and captured a large number of cannon, no serious obstacle interrupted its progress. On the 23rd of October, the Emperor reached Erfurth with his forces in a state of almost total disorganization; but as the fortified citadels in this vicinity inspired the men with a feeling of security, and especially as the magazines of Erfurth supplied their necessities and relieved the pangs of hunger, which had nearly consumed them on their march, a degree of order was at once restored; and, after a halt of two days, the troops were in a condition to perform a regular retreat. Murat quitted Napoleon at this place, and bent his course to his own dominions. The pretext he assigned for his departure was, the fear of disturbances at Naples; but in fact, he had entered into a secret correspondence with Metternich, and, to secure his crown in the general wreck, did not hesitate to abandon his brother-in-law and benefactor. Napoleon was not deceived as to Murat's motives, but he nevertheless embraced his old companion in arms, and parted from him with a presentiment, which the event justified, that he should never meet him again in this world.

On the 25th, Napoleon resumed his march for the Rhine, at the head of but ninety thousand men; and he left behind him, to depend on their own resources, nearly a hundred and eighty thousand, who were blockaded in the fortresses of the Elbe, the Oder, and the Vistula. These garrisons were composed partly of effective troops, originally posted in the several strongholds for their defence; but the greater proportion consisted of the worn-out veterans of Moscow, and the stragglers of the present campaign, who added nothing to the strength of the regular garrisons, but served only to consume their previously straitened supplies, and to introduce disorganization and disease into their ranks.

While Napoleon, by the rapidity of his movements, was escaping the pursuit of ail large bodies of the allies, a new enemy unexpectedly arose on the line of his retreat. It has already been mentioned that the King of Bavaria seceded from Napoleon's cause, and joined himself to the Grand Alliance on the 8th of October. This step was followed by another of similar moment; the concentration, namely, of the Bavarian forces under Wrede, and their threatening movements on Napoleon's rear. Wrede's

entire corps amounted to fifty-eight thousand combatants, and he crossed the Danube at Donauwerth as early as the 19th, whence he pushed on to Aschaffenburg on the 27th; he there detached ten thousand men to Frankfort, and on the 29th established himself with the remainder of his troops in the forest of Hanau, stationing his men across the great road, and blocking up the retreat of the French toward Mayence.

The forces of Napoleon, when he quitted Erfurth, were, in point of umbers, greatly superior to the Bavarian army; but the men soon fell nto confusion again, and at least ten thousand of them had already strag gled from their ranks and fallen into the hands of the Cossacks. The Emperor, therefore, might have eighty thousand men under his command, but not more than fifty thousand could be depended on as effective troops; so that the two armies were not very unequally matched in actual strength; yet it was to be considered, that this remnant of the French host consisted of the very choicest of Napoleon's veterans, and they, as well as the stragglers that accompanied them, if opposed in their last avenue of retreat, would necessarily fight with the courage and energy of despair. The result of the battle, which took place on the 30th, may be anticipated. Wrede maintained his position with great bravery against the earlier attacks of the French troops; but his men eventually gave way at all points, and fell back behind the Kinzig. The next day, Napoleon ordered an assault on the town of Hanau, which place was carried in a few hours, and evacuated by the Austrian garrison; but when a portion of the French army had passed on toward Frankfort, Wrede rallied his broken divisions, recaptured Hanau, and drove Napoleon's rear-guard in confusion from its

walls.

The loss of the Bavarians, in the two days, amounted to ten thousand men, of whom four thousand were prisoners. Napoleon lost seven thousand; and of these three thousand were wounded, whom he was compelled to abandon in the forest, for want of carriages to bear them away. The French Emperor left Frankfort on the first of November, and his eagles bade A FINAL ADIEU TO THE GERMAN PLAINS-a theatre of his glory, his crimes, and his punishment.

While Napoleon was retiring across the Rhine, the allies closely followed his footsteps, and the forces of Central and Eastern Europe, poured in prodigious strength down the valley of the Maine. On the 4th of November, the advanced guard under Schwartzenberg entered Frankfort; and, on the same day, the allied sovereigns established their head-quarters at Aschaffenberg. On the 5th, the Emperor Alexander made his entry into Frankfort at the head of twenty thousand superb cavalry; and he rested there until preparations could be made for crossing the Rhine, and carrying the war into the heart of France. At the same time, the allied forces on all sides rapidly approached that frontier stream. Schwartzenberg forced the passage of the Nidde, and advanced his head-quarters to Hochst, within two leagues of Mayence; while Blucher, on his right, established himself at Giessen. On the 9th, Giulay received orders to attack Hochheim, a small town fortified with five redoubts, and garrisoned by twelve thousand men. The formidable columns of the allies, however, easily carried the place. This combat was the last of the campaign, so far as the grand armies on either side were concerned; and the respective commanders put their forces into winter-quarters. Those of Napoleon, entirely on the left bank of the Rhine, extended from Cologne on the north

to Strasburg on the south; the greater part being stationed at Mayence, Coblentz, and opposite to the centre of the allies around Frankfort. The grand allied army extended along the right bank of the Rhine from Kehl to Coblentz.

Bernadotte, whose line of advance was more to the north, in the direc tion of Hanover, detached Woronzow with his advanced guard to Cassel, on the 28th of October. Jerome had previously abandoned his capital; the greater part of his army joined the allies, and the few who adhered to his cause followed him to Dusseldorf, and there crossed the Rhine. Winzingerode, now coming up with a corps of Russians, organized the whole kingdom of Westphalia in the interest of the allies; he also destroyed the revolutionary dynasty in the Grand-duchy of Berg, and united the forces of that province to the standards of Germany. He next occupied the Grand-duchy of Oldenberg and East Friedland, and Bulow marched to Munster on his way to Holland, where the people waited only for the approach of the allies, to throw off the French yoke and declare their independence. Bernadotte, on the 6th of November, formed a junction with Benningsen, fixed his head-quarters at Hanover, and reëstablished there the authority of the King of England.

As soon as the battle of Leipsic was decided, Klenau received orders to unite his corps with that of Tolstoy; and their joint forces, amounting to fifty thousand men, commenced the blockade of Dresden, on the 27th of October. St. Cyr, who had been left by Napoleon to defend this city, could scarcely muster more than thirty thousand men; and, as his stock of provisions was barely sufficient for ten days' supply, he resolved on the desperate expedient of a sortie, in order to cut his way to Torgau or Wittenberg. He made this bold attempt on the morning of November 6th, at the head of fifteen thousand of his best troops, but he was speedily driven back into the town by a detachment of three thousand allies; and, seeing then that no hope of relief remained, he entered into a capitulation, in virtue of which he surrendered Dresden, and his troops laid down their arms on condition of being sent to France, engaging at the same time not to serve again until regularly exchanged. On the 12th, the French soldiers began to defile out of the town in six columns, and proceeded on the road to France: the entire force consisted of thirty-two generals, seventeen hundred and ninety-five officers, and thirty-three thousand privates. But Schwartzenberg and the allied sovereigns disapproved the terms of the capitulation; they notified St. Cyr that they should not ratify it, and gave him the option of being reinstated in Dresden, or conducted with all his followers as prisoners of war into Bohemia. He of course accepted the latter proposition, as he was wholly unable to maintain himself in Dresden; but he protested loudly and with good reason against this violation of the compact, which however unwise and absurd on the part of Klenau-for the garrison was in so helpless a condition that St. Cyr could have hoped for nothing better than an unconditional surrenderwas, nevertheless, regularly made and completed by a general having full power in the premises: and the fact that Klenau was so greatly outwitted by the French marshal, furnished the allied sovereigns with no apology for annulling his authorized acts.

The fall of Dresden was soon followed by the surrender of Stettin, Torgau and Dantzic; and these combined conquests placed in the hands of the allies upward of a thousand pieces of cannon, and nearly seventy

thousand prisoners; which latter amount was augmented to eighty thousand by the subsequent capitulation of several minor fortresses. At the close of the campaign, there remained to Napoleon of all his possessions beyond the Rhine, only Hamburg, Magdebourg, and Wittenberg on the Elbe; Custrin and Glogau on the Oder; and the citadels of Erfurth and Wurtzburg.

The fermentation produced in Europe by the deliverance of Germany, soon spread to the Dutch Provinces. The yoke of Napoleon-universally grievous from the enormous pecuniary exactions and the wasting military conscriptions that accompanied it-had been peculiarly oppressive in Holland, where the habits of the people were so wholly commercial. The Hollanders had for nearly twenty years tasted the dregs of humiliation in the cup of the vanquished, being compelled themselves to uphold the system which exterminated their resources, and to purchase the ruin of their country with the blood of their children. A state of feeling had therefore long existed among them that must inevitably have led to a revolt, but for the hopelessness of the attempt: when, however, the battle of Leipsic had given a death-blow to the tyrant in his external relations, nothing could resist the universal effort for freedom in this devoted land. At this period, Napoleon's forces in Holland did not exceed six thousand French soldiers and two regiments of Germans, which latter troops were not greatly to be relied on. When the allies under Bulow, together with a detachment of Russians led by Winzingerode, approached Amsterdam, the garrison of that town withdrew to Utrecht, where all the French forces were soon after concentrated. This withdrawal was the signal for a general revolt. The inhabitants of Amsterdam rose in insurrection, deposed the imperial authorities, hoisted the Orange flag, and organized a provisional government with a view to the reëstablishment of the old order of things. Similar changes took place at Rotterdam, Dortrecht, Delft, Leyden, Haarlem, and the other principal towns; the Orange cockade was everywhere mounted, amid cries of "Orange Boven!" and, after submitting for so many years to foreign domination, a whole people regained their independence without shedding a drop of blood in its achievement. The French troops, finding themselves threatened on all sides, withdrew entirely from the territories of Holland.

Simultaneously with these events, an almost total overthrow of the French domination in Italy, took place. Eugene, after gaining some partial success in that country, was eventually forced back to the line of the Adige; and before the middle of December, Trieste and the greater part of Dalmatia surrendered to the Austrian troops.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE LIBERATION OF SPAIN.

THE winter that followed the campaign of the Salamanca, though not distinguished by any warlike achievements, was a season of extraordinary effort and activity on the part of Wellington. The condition and discipline of the troops had been greatly improved; the Duoro was rendered navigable above its confluence with the Agueda; a pontoon train was formed; carts adapted to the mountain warfare were constructed; and a great number of mules were provided to supply the place of those destroyed in the retreat from Burgos. Large reënforcements, especially in cavalry, came out from England during the winter; and, when spring arrived, the army was prepared to take the field in greater strength, than at any previous period since the commencement of the Peninsular War. It now became a matter of the utmost consequence, that some decisive measures should be undertaken for the more effectual organization of the Spanish army; and at length, symptoms of a favorable change, in that particular, appeared. The fame of Wellington and the services he had rendered to the cause of Peninsular independence, finally conquered the sullen obstinacy of Castilian pride, as well as the secret hostility of democratic jealousy; and the British general was, by a decree of the Cortes, invested with the supreme command of the Spanish forces. The troops of that monarchy were at the time in so inefficient a state, that Mr. Henry Wellesley, the British ambassador at Cadiz, advised his brother not to accept the office, as in his judgment, such acceptance would excite jealousy and create responsibleness, without increasing strength or conferring power. But the patriotic spirit of Wellington, and his clear perception of the truth that the French could never be driven across the Pyrenees, unless by combining the whole power of the Peninsula under one leader, overcame his repugnance at undertaking so onerous and irksome a charge; and he entered upon the duties of his command, with a vigor that at least convinced the Spanish authorities of his energy and zeal in their behalf. He remonstrated in emphatic terms against their mode of discipline; and as it was evident that a strong hand would be requisite to remedy the long-established evils of their system, he insisted that officers should be appointed solely on his individual recommendation, that he alone should possess the absolute power of dismissal, and that the resources of the state, so far as they were applicable to the pay and support of the troops, should be applied in conformity to his directions. As the Cortes hesitated to grant these demands, Wellington repaired in person to Cadiz; and, after remaining there through the month of January, 1818, succeeded in gaining for his plans the entire acquiescence of that body. He also, to a certain extent, remodelled and organized the Spanish troops.

One result of consequence attended Wellington's visit to Cadiz--it brought under his immediate notice the miserable state of the government at that place, ruled as it was by a violent faction, and the prey, alternately, of aristocratic intrigue and democratic fury. He reported the