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THE BATTLE-FIELD OF THE NATIONS.
A Panoramic View of the Seat of War around Sebastopol, including Danubian Provinces, Turkey, Asia Minor, Southern Russia, and the Crimea, from a Survey by order of Louis Napoleon, Emperor of France.
Published by HIGGINS & BRADLEY, 20 Washington Street, Boston.

THE
POWERS OF EUROPE
AND
FALL OF SEBASTOPOL.

BY A BRITISH OFFICER.

ILLUSTRATED FROM SUPERIOR PHOTOGRAPHS.

BOSTON:
HIGGINS AND BRADLEY,

20 Washington Street.

1856.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
HIGGINS & BRADLEY,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.

[PREFACE.]

This work makes no pretensions to absolute originality being partially a compilation, with incidents in the life of the Author, who was an actor in many of the scenes narrated. He has striven to be judicious in selecting, from the most authentic sources, only that which would be interesting, at this crisis, to the general reader.

Some extracts are given entire; in other cases, long passages have been abridged and condensed.

Information from a vast variety of sources has, in many instances, been put together, and presented in a new and more graphic form.

Minute details, as far as practicable, have been avoided; whilst the whole ground has been, more or less, completely surveyed. The Author has sought to make a popular volume, which might be read with pleasure, and be permanently serviceable as a book of reference.

The bloody sieges of Saragossa, Gerona, and Badajos, have been referred to more in detail to afford the opportunity of comparison with that of Sebastopol; while the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo have been described for comparison with those of Alma and Inkermann. The origin and progress of the present war are detailed. The biographies of the principal characters now engaged in the East will be found entertaining; and the Author confidently hopes it may prove a volume of interest and permanent value.

H. F. G.

[CONTENTS.]

[CHAPTER I.]

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Summary survey of Europe—Aristocracy of France—France previous to the Revolution—Revolutionary Symptoms—The Great Powers, 1792–6—William Pitt—Execution of Louis XVI.—The Allies against France—Siege of Toulon—Invasion of Holland—Napoleon—His early youth—Thirteenth Vendemiaire—The Campaign in Italy—Rapid victories of Bonaparte—Expedition to Egypt—Return of Bonaparte—First Consulate—The passage of the Alps—Second Campaign in Italy—Napoleon Emperor—War with England—Alliance between the Great Powers, 1805—Indecision of Prussia—Alexander visits the tomb of Frederick the Great—Battle of Austerlitz—Treaty of Tilsit—Secret understanding respecting Turkey—British orders in Council—Battle of Wagram—Annexation of Finland—Campaign of Moscow—The Grand Alliance, 1813—Battle of Leipsic—Allies enter Paris.

“The fate of the East depends upon yon petty town,” was the exclamation of Bonaparte to Murat, as he pointed towards Acre, which even his military genius was unable to subdue. Repeated and desperate assaults proved that the consequence which he attached to the taking of it was as great as the words expressed. The imagination reverts from the position of the army of Egypt before that oriental city, and rapidly traversing the events of succeeding history, runs down to the position of the army of the successor of Bonaparte, and of his English and Turkish allies, who, on nearly the precise parallel of longitude, are unitedly engaged in besieging one of the first strongholds of Europe.

In recounting some of the great events of the times which have filled the world with their grandeur, and whose present and future place in history overshadows the preceding ages, a rapid resumé of the situation of Europe, just previous to and at the commencement of the great drama, may be useful, and serve to recall facts and events which may to the general reader have been known but forgotten.

One who stands amid the gardens and grounds of Versailles, and contemplates the enormous luxury and expenditure of its builder, while he recalls his vast wars, his policy, and his intrigues, can better understand the declaration of Louis XIV. to his assembled parliament. “The State! I am the State!” And such an observer can also discover the truth of that statement, that it was that builder who laid the foundations of the French Revolution with the stones of Versailles. The keen sagacity of the polite Chesterfield could detect that approaching revolution a quarter of a century before it took place; and his remarkable prediction shows how rapidly the signs of the gathering storm must have accumulated in the years succeeding the Augustan age of France. The energies of the nation had been devoted to the service and pleasure of the monarch; they now began to be directed to their proper end, the examination of their own interests. From the theatre and the pulpit the genius of the French people hurried precipitately into morals and politics, a sudden revolution took place in the minds of all, and the conflict it produced lasted during a whole century.

The exclusive privileges of the aristocracy, who monopolised every official position, and who alone were eligible to rank in the army, choked the development of the great body of the people; and while they consumed the revenues of the State they were in a great measure exempt from taxation. Cradled in the luxury of courts, the aristocracy were sunk in vice and effeminacy. And they looked upon the great body of the people as only a necessary appendage to a government in which they had neither right nor control.

In the most martial nation of Europe the private soldier could not, by the greatest daring or genius, elevate himself, because only the aristocracy could obtain rank. The effects of the opposite system were afterwards seen with Napoleon, who boasted that he conquered Europe with the bivouac; with generals raised from the ranks.

The oppressions of the feudal tenure in France exceeded belief; the people were even obliged to grind corn at the landlord’s mill, press their grapes at his press, and bake their bread at his oven on his own terms.

The fermentation which had long been going on in the public mind; “the revolt against eighteen centuries of oppression” began to develop itself rapidly. Yet the monopolizers of all the national rights continued to dispute for a worn out authority. The court, careless and tranquil in the midst of the struggle, were wasting the property of the people while surrounded by the most frightful disorders. When it was told to the effeminate and dissolute Louis XV. that the nation could not suffer much longer, he characteristically said, “Never mind, if it last my time it is sufficient for me!” Such was the eighteenth century.

It was during the years 1787 and ’88, that the French nation first conceived the idea of passing from theory to practice. The weak and vacillating Louis XVI., the least fitted of all men to guide the destinies of a nation in the throes of political convulsion, had successively tried ministry after ministry, and one expedient after the other; yet the ship of state was swiftly approaching the vortex of the whirlpool in which it had entered.

“Upon what trivial events often depend the most important affairs. The mistake of a captain, who bore away instead of forcing his passage to the place of his destination, has prevented the face of the world from being totally changed,” said Napoleon. “Acre,” continued he, “would otherwise have fallen: I would have flown to Damascus and Aleppo; and in the twinkling of an eye, would have been at the Euphrates. I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies, and would have changed the face of the world.” It was thus in the assembly of the Notables, called by the intelligent, brilliant, and careless Calonne, then minister of state, that a member, complaining of the prodigality of the court, demanded a statement of the expenses. Another member, punning on the word, exclaimed, “It is not statements, but States General that we want.” This single random expression struck every one with astonishment, and seized by the people was immediately acted upon; the States General were called, and the public mind was filled with the wildest fermentation: France and Europe were to be immediately regenerated; visionary schemes without number were formed; and that general unhinging of opinions took place, which is the surest prelude of revolution. That revolution now came, and in its tumults and convulsions the Ancient French Monarchy rapidly approached its extinction. Amid frightful disorders, famine appeared; the elements seemed to partake of the savagery of the times; and the severity of the tempests of summer which destroyed the harvests, was succeeded by a winter, 1788–9, of unparalleled rigor. Soon began that vast emigration of the nobility, which was afterwards succeeded by the attempted flight of the king; while all authority but that of the Sans Culottes seemed abolished. Foreign affairs became daily more menacing; the young Emperor, Francis II. of Austria, was gathering his armies, and soon demanded the reëstablishment of the monarchy on its ancient footing. All classes in France now anxiously desired war; the aristocracy hoped to regain their lost privileges with the assistance of Germany; the democracy hoped, amid the tumult of victorious campaigns, to establish their principles.

At length, on the 20th of April, 1792, oppressed with the solemnity and grandeur of the occasion, the declaration of war against Austria was received by the National Assembly of France in solemn silence. Thus commenced the greatest, the most bloody, and the most interesting war which has agitated mankind since the fall of the Roman Empire. Rising from feeble beginnings, it at length involved the world in its conflagration; rousing the passions of every class, it brought unheard of armies into the field; and it was carried on with a degree of exasperation unknown in modern times. “A revolution in France,” says Napoleon, “is always followed, sooner or later, by a revolution in Europe.” Situated in the centre of modern civilization, it has in every age communicated the impulse of its own changes to the adjoining states Thus, the great changes which had taken place in France had excited all Europe, and spread the utmost alarm in all her monarchies.

Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England were at that period, as now, the great powers of Europe, and they were the principal actors in the desperate struggle which ensued. They were in a situation capable of great exertion; years of repose had fitted them to enter upon a gigantic war. England, although she had lost one empire in the west, had gained another in the east; and the wealth of India began to pour into her bosom. The public funds had risen from 57, at the close of the American War, to 99. Her army consisted of 32,000 men in the British Isles, besides an equal force in the East and West Indies; but these forces were rapidly augmented after the commencement of the war, and before 1796, the regular force amounted to 206,000 men, including 42,000 militia. Yet experience proves that Britain could never collect above 40,000 men upon any one point of the continent of Europe. But her real strength consisted in her great wealth, in the public spirit and energy of her people, and in a fleet of 150 ships of the line, which commanded the seas.

England, like other monarchies, had slumbered on contented and prosperous, and for the most part inglorious, during the eighteenth century. A great writer observed, that while America was doubling her population every twenty-five years, Europe was lumbering on with an increase, which would hardly arrive at the same result in five hundred; and Gibbon lamented that the age of interesting incidents was past, and that the modern historian would never again have to record the moving events, and dismal catastrophes of ancient story. Such were the anticipations of the greatest men on the verge of a period that was to usher in a new Cæsar, and to be illustrated by an Austerlitz and a Trafalgar, a Wellington and a Waterloo; and the human race, mowed down by unparalleled wars, was to spring up again with an elasticity before unknown. William Pitt was the great Prime Minister of England at this time, and modern history cannot exhibit a statesman more fertile in resources, and whose expedients seemed as exhaustless as his great abilities. Fox and Burke, each distinguished by a high order of intellect, filled the British Parliament with their reasoning and eloquence.

The great Austrian empire contained at that time nearly 25,000,000 of inhabitants, with a revenue of 95,000,000 florins, and numbered the richest and most fertile districts of Europe among its provinces. The wealth of Flanders, the riches of Lombardy, and the valor of the Hungarians added to the strength of the Empire. Her armies had acquired immortal renown in the wars of Maria Theresa. At the commencement of the war, her force amounted to 240,000 infantry, 35,000 cavalry, and 100,000 artillery. Her court, the most aristocratic in Europe, was strongly attached to old institutions, and the marriage of Maria Antoinette to Louis XVI. gave the Austrian court a family interest in the affairs which preceded and followed the French Revolution.

The military strength of Prussia, raised to the highest pitch by the genius of Frederic the Great, had rendered her one of the first powers of Europe; her army of 165,000 strong was in the highest state of discipline and equipment, and by a system of organization the whole youth of the kingdom were compelled to serve a limited number of years in the army, so that she had within herself an inexhaustible reserve of men trained to arms. Her cavalry was the finest in Europe.

The majesty and power of Russia was beginning to fill the north with its greatness, and in her struggles and battles from the time of Peter the Great, through her wars with Sweden, with Frederic and with the Turks, she had constantly advanced with gigantic strides towards the Orient and the West. Her immense dominions comprehended nearly the half of Europe and Asia; while she was secure from invasion by her position, and by the severity of her climate. The Empress Catharine, endowed with masculine energy and ambition, had waged a bloody war with Turkey, in which the zeal of a religious crusade was directed by motives of policy and desire for the acquisition of new territory which should pave the way for that future expected conquest of the whole of European Turkey, and which should give Russia the shores of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora as her southern boundary, and should make Constantinople, the seat of her commerce and her power over the Mediterranean and the East, the centre through which she might command the world. The infantry of Russia has long been celebrated for its invincible firmness, and the cavalry, though greatly inferior to its present state of discipline and equipment, was formidable. The artillery, now so splendid, was then only remarkable for its cumbrous carriages and the obstinate valor of its men. Inured to hardship from infancy, the Russian soldier is better able to bear the fatigues of war than any in Europe; he knows no duty so sacred as obedience to his officers. Submissive to his discipline as to his religion, no privation or fatigue makes him forget his obligations. The whole of the energies of the Empire are turned to the army. Commerce, the law, and civil employment are held in no esteem. Immense military schools, in different parts of the Empire, annually send forth the flower of the population to this dazzling career. Precedence depends entirely upon military rank, and the heirs of the greatest families are compelled to enter the army at the lowest grade. Promotion is open equally to all, and the greater part of the officers have risen from inferior stations of society.

The military strength of France, which was destined to oppose and triumph over these immense forces, consisted at the commencement of the struggle of 165,000 infantry, 35,000, cavalry and 10,000 artillery. But her troops had relaxed their discipline during the revolution, and her soldiers had been so accustomed to political discussion, that it had introduced a license unfavorable to discipline. At first they lacked steadiness and organization, but these defects were speedily remedied by the pressure of necessity, and by the talent which emerged from the lower classes of society.

Such was the state of the principal European powers at the commencement of the war. The celebrated 10th of August, 1792, came, and the throne was overturned, the royal family put in captivity, while the massacres of September drenched Paris with blood. The victories of Dumourier rolled back the tide of foreign invasion to the Rhine. War was declared against Sardinia, 15th September, and Savoy and Nice were seized and united to the French Republic.

“The die is thrown, we have rushed into the career; all governments are our enemies, all people are our friends; we must be destroyed or they shall be free,” exclaimed the orator of the convention. Geneva surrendered to the French without a blow, and the Convention declared it would grant its assistance to all people who wished to recover their liberty. Flanders was overrun by the French in a fortnight, and they committed an aggression on the Dutch by opening the Scheldt, and by pursuing the fugitive Austrians into Dutch territory.

While the tide of Austrian and Prussian invasion was rolled back to the Rhine, the great frontier city of Germany was wrested from Austria almost under the eyes of the imperial armies; and although the campaign commenced only in August, under the greatest apparent disadvantage to the French, yet before the close of December all this had been accomplished. The execution of Louis XVI. on the 21st Jan., 1793, completed the destruction of the French monarchy, accelerated the Reign of Terror, and brought the accession of England to the league of the Allied Sovereigns; Chauvelin, the French Ambassador, received orders immediately to quit London; and this was succeeded in a few days by a declaration of war, 1st February, 1793, by France against England, Spain, and Holland. The audacity of the Convention, which thus threw down the gauntlet to nearly all of Europe, excited universal astonishment. The feeling of national honor, in all ages so powerful among the French, was awakened to its highest pitch. Every species of requisition was cheerfully furnished under the pressure of impending calamity; and in the dread of foreign subjugation the loss of fortune and employment was forgotten only one path, that of honor, was open to the brave. The Jacobins, the ruling power in France, were no longer despised but feared by the European powers, and terror prompts more vigorous efforts than contempt. No sooner did the news of the execution of Louis reach St. Petersburg than the Empress Catharine took the most decisive measures, and all Frenchmen who did not renounce the principles of the revolution were ordered to quit her territory; the most intimate relations were established between the courts of London and St. Petersburg; and a treaty between them, which laid the basis of the Grand Alliance, was signed, 25th March, in which they engaged to carry on the war against France, and not to lay down their arms without restitution of all the conquests which France had made from either of them, or such states and allies to whom the benefit of the treaty should extend. Treaties of the same nature were made with Sardinia and Portugal, and thus all Europe was arrayed against France. A congress of the allies assembled at Antwerp, which came to the resolution of totally altering the objects of the war; and it was openly announced there that the object was to provide indemnities and securities for the allied powers by partitioning the frontier territories of France among the invading states. Soon after, when Valenciennes and Condé were taken, the Austrian flag, and not that of the Allies, was hoisted on the walls. The Prussians and Austrians, numbering 100,000, were on the Rhine early in the spring, and the Ring of Prussia crossed in great force. The French army, inferior in numbers and discipline, retreated. Mentz capitulated to the Allies after a long and dreadful siege, and the French continued to retreat in disorder. But the Allies wasted their splendid opportunity. The French retreated to their entrenched camp before Arras, after which there was no place capable of defence on the road to Paris. The Republican authorities took to flight, the utmost consternation prevailed, and a rapid advance of the Allies would have changed the history of Europe. But from this time dissension began among them; and from this period may be dated a series of disasters to them, which went on constantly increasing until the French arms were planted on the Kremlin, and all Europe, from Gibraltar to the North Cape; had yielded to their arms.

The mighty genius of Carnot, who, in the energetic language of Napoleon, “organized victory,” soon appeared at the head of the military department of France. Austere in character, unbending in discipline, and of indefatigable energy, he resembled the great patriots of antiquity more than any other statesman of modern times, and in the midst of peril and disaster he infused his unparalleled vigor into his department, and France became one vast workshop of arms, resounding with the note of military preparation. The roads were covered with conscripts hastening to their destination; and fourteen armies, and 1,200,000 men, were soon under arms. The siege of Dunkirk, undertaken by the English, was raised, and the Austrian and Prussian armies were driven back to the Rhine.

The siege of Toulon, whose inhabitants had revolted from the horrors of the Reign of Terror, was remarkable for the horrible carnage with which it was accompanied, as well as for the appearance of a young officer of artillery, then chief of battalion, Napoleon Bonaparte. Its capture, which was owing to his genius, was accompanied by the destruction of nearly the whole French fleet in its harbor by the retreating English. At eight in the evening a fire-ship was towed into the harbor; soon the flames arose in every quarter, and fifteen ships of the line and eight frigates were consumed. The volume of smoke which filled the sky, the flames which burst as it were out of the sea, the red light which illuminated the most distant mountains, and the awful explosions of the magazines formed, says Napoleon, “a grand and terrible spectacle.” The arms of France, on the frontiers of Flanders and elsewhere, now began to be successful, while the dubious conduct or evident defection of Prussia paralysed all operations on the Rhine; and before the close of 1794 the Republican armies, in a winter campaign, invaded Holland and subdued almost the whole of that rich country without a battle. Amsterdam, which had defied the whole power of Louis XIV., was conquered; these successes were followed by others still more marvellous. On the same day on which General Dandels entered Amsterdam, the left wing of the army made themselves masters of Dordrecht, containing six hundred pieces of cannon, ten thousand muskets, and immense stores of ammunition. The same division passed through Rotterdam and took possession of the Hague, where the States General were assembled; and to complete the wonders of the campaign, a body of cavalry and flying artillery crossed the Zuyder Zee on the ice, and summoned the fleet lying frozen up at the Texel; and the commander, confounded at the hardihood of the enterprise, surrendered his ships to this novel species of assailant; and at the conclusion of the campaign, the Spaniards, defeated, were suing for peace. The Piedmontese were driven over the Alps; the Allies had everywhere crossed the Rhine; Flanders and Holland were subjugated; La Vendée pacificated; and the English fled for refuge to Hanover; 1,700,000 men had combated under the banners of France; and peace was concluded soon after between France, Spain, and Prussia.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 15th of August, 1769. Corsica is essentially Italian, and to this day a state of society prevails which differs from that of any other part of Europe. The wildest and most deadly feuds are common among its principal families. The people are turbulent and excitable. Napoleon was too great a man to derive distinction from any adventitious advantages, and when the Emperor of Austria, after he became his son-in-law, endeavored to trace his connexion with the obscure Dukes of Treviso, he answered that he was the Rudolph of Hapsburg of his family, and that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Montenotte. His mother, a woman of no common beauty, being at the festival of the Assumption on the day of his birth, was seized with her pains during high mass. She was brought home and hastily laid upon a couch covered with tapestry representing the heroes of the Iliad, and there the future conqueror was brought into the world. The winter residence of his father was usually at Ajaccio; but in summer the family retired to a villa near the isle of Sanguinere, once the residence of a relation of his mother’s, situated on a romantic spot near the sea shore. The house is approached by an avenue overhung by the cactus, acacia, and other shrubs, which grow luxuriantly in a southern climate. It has a garden and lawn showing vestiges of neglected beauty, and surrounded by a shrubbery permitted to run to a wilderness. There, enclosed by the cactus, the clematis, and the wild olive, is a singular and isolated granite rock, beneath which the remains of a small summer-house are still visible. This was the favorite retreat of young Napoleon, who early showed a love of solitary meditation, during the period when his school vacations permitted him to return home. And it may be supposed, perhaps, that here the magnificence of his oriental imagination formed those visions of ambition and high resolves, for which the limits of the world were, ere long, felt to be insufficient. At an early age he was sent to the military school at Brienne; his character there underwent a rapid alteration; he became thoughtful, studious, and diligent in the extreme.

On one occasion, while the youths were playing the death of Cæsar in their theatre, the wife of the porter, well known to the boys, presented herself at the door, and being refused admittance made some disturbance; the matter was referred to the young Napoleon, who was the officer in command on the occasion. “Remove that woman who brings here the license of camps!” said the future ruler of the revolution. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the military school at Paris, and at sixteen he received a commission in a regiment of artillery. When the revolution broke out he adhered to the popular side. After the siege of Toulon, Dugommier, the general in command, wrote to the Convention, “Reward and promote that young man, for if you are ungrateful to him he will raise himself alone.” He commanded the artillery in 1794 during the campaign in Italy. Dumbion, in command of the army, who was old, submitted the direction of affairs principally to Bonaparte. His intimacy with the younger Robespierre, and his refusal of a command in La Vendée in the civil insurrection, led to his being deprived of his rank as a general officer, and he was reduced to private life. But his talents being known led to his being called to the command of the forces in Paris, which triumphed over the sections; his decision saved the Convention. The story of his introduction to and marriage of Josephine is too well known to need repetition.

In 1796 Bonaparte took command of the forces destined to operate against Italy. With an army destitute of almost every thing, he, in a short time, overran Piedmont, conquered a peace with Sardinia, passed the Po and crossed the Adda at the Bridge of Lodi. The nervous eloquence of Napoleon, in his address to his soldiers, and the splendor of his success, intoxicated Paris with joy. The first day, they heard that the gates of the Alps were opened; the next, that the Austrians were separated from the Piedmontese army; the third that the Piedmontese army was destroyed and the fortresses surrendered. The rapidity of this success, the number of prisoners, exceeded all that had yet been witnessed. Every one asked, who was this young conqueror whose fame had burst forth so suddenly, and whose proclamations breathed the spirit of ancient glory?

“The 13th of Vendemiaire and the victory of Montenotte,” said Napoleon, “did not induce me to think myself a superior character. It was after the passage of Lodi that the idea shot across my mind that I might become a decisive actor on the political theatre; then arose for the first time the spark of great ambition.”

With pomp and splendor Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Milan, to the sound of military music and the acclamations of an immense concourse of spectators. The rapidity of the French victories in Italy, and the destruction of the Austrian armies, sent to oppose them, crowned Napoleon as the greatest chieftain of his time. The marshes of Arcola, the heights of Montebello, and the plain of Rivoli witnessed his successive glories. But while the arms of Republican France were conquering in Italy, they suffered reverse and defeat under Moreau on the frontiers and the Rhine; and the Archduke Charles drove back the French legions who had dared to penetrate Germany. At the close of the year the death of the great Empress, Catharine of Russia, and the accession of Paul to the throne, changed, in many important respects, the fate of the war.

In the midst of threatened invasion from France, a general panic seized England, and while the public funds had fallen from 99 to 51, a run commenced on the Bank of England, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. This caused those orders in Council in February, 1797—suspending specie payments, which, although only considered temporary at the time, continued a quarter of a century. The defeat of the Spanish fleet at St. Vincent, by Nelson and Collingwood, soon quelled the fear of invasion in England.

The army of Napoleon in Italy opened the campaign of 1797 by attacking, early in March, the Archduke Charles before he had received his reinforcements. Napoleon arrived by rapid marches, with his army in front of the Austrians, who had chosen, on the line of the Julian Alps, the river Tagliamento on which to oppose the French. By a feint, Napoleon deceived the Austrians, crossed the river, charged them with fury, and drove them back with considerable loss. They retreated by the blue and glittering waters of the Isonza, and in twenty days the army of Charles was driven over the Julian Alps, and the French were within sixty leagues of Vienna; pushing forward, they came within sight of its steeples. But unsupported, and with Italy in insurrection behind his back, Napoleon proposed peace to Austria. Delay after delay occurring in the negotiation, Napoleon declared if the ultimatum of the Directory was not accepted in twelve hours, he would commence hostilities. The time having expired, he entered the presence of the Austrian ambassador, and taking up a porcelain vase of great value, and which had been presented by the Empress Catharine to the ambassador, he declared energetically, “The die is cast, the truce is broken, war is declared. But mark my words, before the end of autumn I will break in pieces your monarchy, as I now destroy this porcelain;” and with that he dashed it in pieces on the ground. Bowing, he retired, mounted his carriage, and despatched a courier to the Archduke, to announce that hostilities would commence in twenty-four hours. The Austrian plenipotentiary, thunderstruck, forthwith agreed to the ultimatum, and the celebrated treaty of Campo Formio was signed the next day; and thus terminated the Italian campaign of Napoleon, the most memorable in his military career.

Returning to Paris, Napoleon was soon anxious to resume those schemes of ambition which continually occupied his mind. The expedition for the conquest of Egypt sailed with pomp from Toulon, and after occupying Malta, and narrowly escaping the English fleet under Nelson, the French army landed at Alexandria. Victory after victory soon completed the subjugation of the Land of the Pharaohs, while at the battle of the Nile the French fleet was almost entirely destroyed by Nelson.

Cut off by this disaster from Europe, Napoleon projected that expedition to Syria, which, unsuccessful at Acre, returned to Egypt in time to destroy the Turkish army, which had landed at Aboukir. Reverses in the Alps, the loss of Italy, the retreat of the French to Zurich, and the capture of Corfu by the Russians and English, determined Napoleon to return to France, which he accomplished in a small frigate, which escaped the English cruisers. Arrived in Paris, he found the government in disorder, and without a head, and, while disaster surrounded the country, its armies had been beaten, and its finances were in hopeless confusion.

On the celebrated 18th Brumaire (8th November), Napoleon having command of the troops in Paris, accomplished that sudden revolution which placed him at the head of affairs. His schemes of ambition began now to ripen, and France soon felt in all her departments the energy of his mighty genius. One of his first acts was to propose peace with England. Disregarding the ordinary rules of negotiation, Napoleon addressed a letter personally to George III., proposing peace. This letter was replied to by Lord Grenville, the Prime Minister, who declined the proposition.

Disappointed in his hopes of negotiating peace, Napoleon prepared with renewed vigor for war. The campaign was the most important of his life. Its daring and success are almost unparalleled in history.

Crossing the Alps, the highest chain of mountains in Europe, without roads, his artillery had to be dragged over narrow foot-paths, up the rugged sides of frowning mountains, and on the brink of awful precipices covered with snow; while provisions and stores for a whole army had to be carried by sheep-paths on the backs of men. Arrived at Geneva, having deceived the Austrians as to his intentions, he asked General Marescot, whom he had despatched to survey Mont St. Bernard, “Is the route practicable?” “It is barely possible,” replied the engineer. “Let us press forward then,” said Napoleon. Arrived at the little village of St. Pierre, everything resembling a road ended. An immense and apparently inaccessible mountain reared its head amidst general desolation and eternal frost, while precipices, glaciers, and ravines appeared to forbid access to all living things. Yet, surmounting every obstacle, the passage was accomplished; and a French army of 30,000 men precipitated themselves, apparently from the clouds, on the plains of Italy, and appeared to the thunderstruck Austrians, cutting off their retreat from Genoa, and completely dividing their forces; speedily marching upon Milan, leaving the Austrian army under Melas, behind him, he returned to attack them, and at the battle of Marengo gained the most important of his victories. By the close of 1801 the continental states had all concluded peace with France, leaving her with the most enormous aggrandizements of territory. A short interval of peace occurred with England in 1802, which was broken by a declaration of war in June, 1803, and all the English residents between the ages of eighteen and sixty were detained as hostages. Hanover was seized by the French, and the English retaliated by blockading the Elbe and the Weser.

The war with Great Britain, and a conspiracy to overthrow the authority of the First Consul, which was discovered, served as a ladder for Napoleon to mount from the Consulate to the Imperial Dignity; and on the 3d May, 1804, the senate communicated to Napoleon this address: “We think it of the last importance to the French people to confide the government of the Republic to Napoleon Bonaparte—Hereditary Emperor.”

The Empire was proclaimed at St. Cloud, 18th May, 1804; and Napoleon was crowned by Pope Pius VII., on the 2d December, in the church of Notre Dame. War was declared by Spain against England, after she had unwarrantably attacked and seized four large Spanish frigates filled with cargoes of immense value. The rising hostility of Russia and Sweden at this moment incensed the French government still more against England, to whose influence she attributed their conduct. All appearances foretold the beginning of another general eruption.

On the 11th of April, 1805, a treaty offensive and defensive was formed between Russia and England, the object of which was to put a stop to what they considered the encroachments of the French government, and to form a general league of the states of Europe.

The accession of Austria was finally obtained to the alliance, after great difficulty and delay: the deplorable state of her finances, and the vacillating policy of her government, being (then as now) stumbling-blocks in the way of negotiation. On the 31st of August, Sweden was also included. But notwithstanding all the efforts of England and Russia, it was found impossible to overcome the scruples of Prussia, who inclined towards the French in hopes of obtaining Hanover, promised her by France as a reward for her neutrality. For ten years Prussia had flattered herself that by keeping aloof she would avoid the storm, that she would succeed in turning the desperate strife between France and Austria to her own benefit by enlarging her territory, and augmenting her consideration in the North of Germany; but at once all her prospects vanished, and it became apparent, even to her own ministers, that this vacillating policy was ultimately to be as dangerous as it had already been discreditable. On the 25th of Oct., the Emperor Alexander arrived at Berlin, and employed the whole weight of his great authority, and all the charms of his captivating manners, to induce the King to embrace a more manly and courageous policy; and on the 3rd of November a secret convention was signed between the two monarchs for the regulation of the affairs of Europe, and the erection of a barrier against the ambition of the French Emperor. The conclusion of the Convention was followed by a scene as remarkable as it was romantic. Inspired with a full sense of the dangers of the war, the ardent and chivalrous mind of the Queen conceived the idea of uniting the two sovereigns by a bond more likely to be durable than the mere alliances of cabinets with each other. This was, to bring them together at the tomb of the great Frederick. The Emperor who was desirous of visiting the mausoleum of that illustrious hero, accordingly repaired to the church at Potsdam, where his remains are deposited.

And at midnight the two monarchs proceeded together by torchlight to the hallowed grave. Uncovering when he approached the spot, the Emperor kissed the pall, and taking the hand of the King of Prussia, as it lay on the tomb, they swore an eternal friendship to each other, and bound themselves by the most solemn oaths to maintain their engagements inviolate in the great contest for European independence in which they were engaged.

It would have been well for the Allies, if, when Prussia had thus taken her part, her cabinet had possessed sufficient resolution to have taken the field instead of continuing in her old habit of temporizing, and thus permitting Napoleon to continue without interruption his advance on Vienna. But her long indecision had been her ruin. Her territory had been violated by France, who, while apparently her ally, was reserving for her only the melancholy privilege of being last destroyed.

In the meantime, a combined force of English, Russians, and Swedes, thirty thousand strong, had been landed in Hanover, and the Prussian troops occupying that Electorate had offered no resistance—a sure proof to Napoleon of a secret understanding between the Cabinet of Berlin and that of London.

While she was thus giving daily proofs of her indecision and treachery, the ever-vigilant Bonaparte was pouring his armies through Bavaria into Austria and concentrating his divisions for the sweeping victory which was so soon afterwards destined to scatter to the winds the opposing allies.

We now come to the campaign of Austerlitz; the most remarkable, in a military point of view, which the history of the war afforded.

In the beginning of August the French army was cantoned on the heights of Boulogne; and by the first week of December, Vienna was taken, and the strength of Austria and Russia prostrated.

The allied armies presented a total of 80,000 men, including a division of the imperial guard under the Grand Duke Constantine, brother of the Emperor of Russia.

The forces which Napoleon had to resist this great array hardly amounted to 70,000 combatants.

On the 30th November, 1805, the light troops of the Allies were seen from the French outposts marching across their position towards the right of the army. Napoleon spent the whole of both days on horseback at the advanced posts watching their movements. At length on the morning of the 1st Dec. the intentions of the enemy were clearly manifested, and Napoleon beheld with “inexpressible delight” their whole columns dark, and massy, moving across his position at so short a distance as rendered it apparent a general action was at hand. Carefully avoiding the slightest interruption to their movement, he merely watched with intense anxiety their march, and when it became evident that the resolution to turn the right flank of the French army had been decided upon, he exclaimed, prophetically—“To-morrow, before night-fall, that army is mine.”

At four in the morning the Emperor was on horseback. All was still among the immense multitude concentrated in the French lines. Buried in sleep the soldiers forgot alike their triumphs and the dangers they were about to undergo. Gradually, however, a confused murmur arose from the Russian host, and all the reports from the outposts announced that the advance had already commenced along the whole line.

Gradually the stars which throughout the night had shone clear and bright began to disappear, and the ruddy glow of the east announced the approach of day. At last, the “Sun of Austerlitz” rose in unclouded brilliancy on that field of blood.

The French army occupied an interior position, from whence their columns started like rays from a centre, while the allies were toiling in a wide semicircle round their outer extremity.

His marshals, burning with impatience, stood around Napoleon, awaiting the signal for attack. At last the word was given, and on they rushed to the onslaught.

The results of the conflict in different sections of the battle-field were various, the Russians and French alternately being victorious, till Napoleon, seeing there was not a moment to be lost, ordered Marshal Bessières with the cavalry of the guard to arrest a terrible onslaught of Russian cuirassiers of the guard, two thousand strong, which had already trampled under foot three battalions of the French. Instantly spurring their chargers, the French precipitated themselves upon the enemy. The Russians were broken and driven back over the dead bodies of the square they had destroyed.

Rallying, however, they returned to the charge, and both imperial guards met in full career! The shock was terrible! and the most desperate cavalry action that had taken place during the war ensued. The infantry on both sides advanced to support their comrades. The resolution and vigor of the combatants were equal. Squadron to squadron, company to company, man to man, fought with invincible firmness. At length, however, the stern obstinacy of the Russian yielded to the enthusiastic valor of the French. The cavalry and infantry of the guard gave way, and after losing their artillery and standards, were driven back in confusion almost to the walls of Austerlitz, while from a neighboring eminence the Emperors of Russia and Germany beheld the irretrievable rout of the flower of their army.

This desperate encounter was decisive of the fate of the day. The Russians no longer fought for victory, but for existence. Great numbers sought to save themselves by crossing with their artillery and cavalry a frozen lake adjoining their line of march. The ice was already beginning to yield under the enormous weight, when the shells from the French batteries bursting below the surface, caused it to crack with a loud explosion. A frightful yell arose from the perishing multitude, and above two thousand brave men were swallowed up in the waves. At noon the allies gave way, and commenced their retreat in the direction of Austerlitz.

Those who escaped being made prisoners succeeded before nightfall in reaching Austerlitz, already filled with the wounded, the fugitives and the stragglers from every part of the army.

Thus terminated the battle of Austerlitz.

The loss of the allies was immense. Thirty thousand (30,000) men were killed, wounded, or made prisoners. Of the latter were 19,000 Russians, and 6,000 Austrians, most of whom were wounded. Almost the whole of their baggage fell into the hands of the victors. One hundred and eighty pieces of cannon, four hundred covered wagons, and forty-five standards, were taken, and the disorganization of the combined forces was complete.

Twelve thousand French had been killed and wounded, making the frightful sum total of that dreadful day’s carnage, 42,000 men.

On the 6th of Dec. an armistice was concluded at Austerlitz, and Alexander sent to Berlin the Grand Duke Constantine to ascertain if the Prussian King was prepared to join with him, according to the principles which he had sworn to adhere to at the tomb of the great Frederick, in the vigorous prosecution of the war. But the disaster of Austerlitz had wrought a perfidious change in the policy of the Prussian Cabinet.

An ambassador was sent to Napoleon to congratulate him upon his success, and to propose a treaty. Napoleon broke out into a vehement declamation against the policy of the Prussian Cabinet, and expressed his determination now to turn his whole forces against them; but at last yielding, the treaty was concluded, and a new alliance entered into between Prussia and France, the former receiving as a reward Hanover, with all the other continental dominions of his Britannic Majesty.

During the year 1807, disagreements sprang up between France and Prussia, which resulted at the battle of Jena, (Oct. 14th) in the total discomfiture of the latter, and triumph of Napoleon, who now became master of the whole country from the Rhine to the Vistula. Passing the sanguinary contests of Eylau and Friedland, we come to the treaty of Tilsit, the arrangement of which took place under circumstances eminently calculated to impress the imagination of mankind.

Certain misunderstandings having arisen between England and Russia, and the latter power being somewhat crippled for the moment by numerous defeats, an armistice was proposed by Alexander, and accepted by Napoleon, on the 22d of June, which ended in the treaty of Tilsit.

There was little difficulty in coming to an understanding, for France had nothing to demand of Russia, except that she should close her ports against England! Russia nothing to ask of France but that she should withdraw her armies from Poland, and permit the Emperor to pursue his long cherished projects of conquest in Turkey.

The armistice having been concluded, it was agreed that the two Emperors should meet, to arrange, in a private conference, the destinies of the world.

It took place accordingly on the 25th June. On the river Niemen, which separated the two armies, a raft of great dimensions was constructed. It was moored in the centre of the stream, and on its surface a wooden apartment surmounted by the eagles of France and Russia, was framed with all the magnificence which the time and circumstances would admit.

This was destined for the reception of the Emperors alone; at a little distance was stationed another raft less sumptuously adorned, for their respective suites.

The shore on either side was covered with the Imperial Guard of the two monarchs, drawn up in triple lines. At one o’clock precisely, amid the thunder of artillery, each Emperor stepped into a boat on his own side of the river, accompanied by a few of his principal officers. The splendid suite of each monarch followed in another boat immediately after.

The bark of Napoleon advanced with greater rapidity than that of Alexander. He arrived first at the raft, entered the apartment, and himself opened the door on the opposite side to receive the Czar; while the shouts of the soldiers drowned even the roar of the artillery.

In a few seconds Alexander arrived, and was received by the Conqueror at the door on his own side. Their meeting was friendly, and Alexander expressed his dissatisfaction with his ally, the Government of Great Britain.

“I hate the English,” said he, “as much as you do, and am ready to second you in all your enterprises against them.” “In that case,” replied Napoleon, “everything will be easily arranged, and peace is already made.” And peace was made. A treaty was concluded between France and Russia, also between France and Prussia, by which the latter ceded to Napoleon about half her dominions, and Alexander and Napoleon, deeply impressed with the genius of each other, became, for the time being, intimate friends. By the provisions of this celebrated treaty, Russia was assigned the Empire of the East, while France acquired absolute sway in the Kingdoms of the West, and both united in cordial hostility against Great Britain.

France being the ally of Turkey, Napoleon could do no less than arrange for the evacuation of Moldavia and Wallachia (at that time occupied by Russian troops); but it is supposed there was a secret understanding between the two Emperors, that ultimately, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria were to fall into the possession of Russia, while France was to arrange to her liking, the affairs of Greece and the Spanish Peninsula.

But the sagacity of Napoleon would not permit him to agree to the cession of Constantinople and Roumelia, and rivalry for the possession of that Capitol was one of the principal causes which afterwards brought about the disastrous campaign of Moscow.

As a consequence of the downfall of Prussia, the neutrality of Austria, and the accession to the confederacy of Alexander at Tilsit, Napoleon was emboldened to attempt the carrying out of his long cherished “Continental System” of combining all the Continental States into one great alliance against England, and to compel them to exclude the British Flag and British merchandise from their harbors.

It was at this time that he promulgated the famous Berlin Decree, which declared the British Islands in a state of blockade, and subjected all goods of British produce or manufacture, to confiscation within his dominions, or those of the countries subject to his control, and prohibited all vessels from entering any harbor, which had touched at any British port.

As a retaliatory measure the celebrated Orders in Council were issued by the British Government (on the 11th Nov. 1807), which proclaimed France and all the Continental States in a state of blockade, and declared all vessels good prize, which should be bound for any of their harbors, excepting such as had previously cleared out from or touched at a British harbor.

This was followed on the 17th December, by the Milan Decree, which declared that any vessel, of whatever nation, which shall have submitted to be searched by British cruisers, shall be considered and dealt with as English vessels, and every vessel of whatever nation, coming from or bound to any British harbor, shall be declared good prize.

England, being mistress of the seas, enforced with unfeeling rigor her orders in council, entailing immense losses upon the commerce of neutral States, but more particularly upon America, which ultimately brought about the war between herself and the great Republic; while France, comparatively powerless on the ocean, invoked the aid of privateers and seized upon all British persons and property within her grasp.

Since the defeat of Austria at Austerlitz, in 1805, the Cabinet of Vienna had adhered with cautious prudence to a system of neutrality. Still the Imperial Government had been successfully at work to fill up the ranks of their decimated armies, and to place themselves again in a position of strength.

Napoleon was no sooner informed of these military preparations than he demanded an explanation of their import.

Austria made professions of pacific intentions, but still continued to arm herself; the war in Spain, which Napoleon had at this time on his hands, leading her to suppose that he would not for so slight a cause undertake another contest.

In the meantime, the wily Metternich, Austrian Ambassador at Paris, was endeavoring to maintain apparently amicable relations with the French government, while every effort was made to induce Alexander to join with Austria; but the Czar had pledged his word to Napoleon, and was not inclined to break a personal engagement of such importance.

The French ambassador left Vienna finally, on the 28th Feb., 1809, and in April active hostilities broke out thus kindling again the flames of war.

Warsaw, garrisoned by the French, was taken by the Austrians, at which time occurred an event of significant importance.

In pursuing the Austrians, a courier was taken with despatches from the Russian General Gortschakoff to the Austrian Arch-Duke, congratulating him on the capture of Warsaw, and breathing a wish that he might soon join his armies to the Austrian Eagles.

This letter was immediately forwarded to Napoleon, who remarked, “I see, after all, I must make war upon Alexander.”

The Czar disavowed the letter, and attempted explanations, but a breach was opened which was never again healed.

Austria endeavored to win Prussia to her side after the battle of Aspern (unfavorable to Napoleon), and secret negotiations were carried on. But the Prussian government replied to Austria’s overtures, that they had every disposition to assist her, but could not take part in the contest till the views of Russia in regard to it were known.

In the meantime the struggle continued, and after a great number of contests, in some of which Napoleon’s chances were desperate, finally, on the 5th of July, 1809, was fought the celebrated battle of Wagram, under the walls of Vienna, which resulted in victory to Napoleon, though at so dear a price as almost to equal a defeat. 50,000 men were killed and wounded.

The peace of Vienna followed on the 14th of October, and was of so humiliating a nature that it was received with marked disapprobation by the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and was attended with a most important effect in widening the breach which was already formed between the two Emperors.

The Turkish empire at this time was in a state of decay, and the people, from the inefficiency of the government, and the constantly recurring insurrections, in a state of misery.

But amid the general decay, the matchless situation of Constantinople still attracted a vast concourse of inhabitants, and veiled under a robe of beauty the decline of the Queen of the East.

This celebrated capital, the incomparable excellence of whose situation attracted the eagle eye of Alexander, had long formed the real object of discord between the Courts of Paris and St. Petersburg.

War had been formally declared by Russia against Turkey, in Jan., 1807, in consequence of a dispute about the hospodars, or governors, of Wallachia and Moldavia. Soon after, the conspiracy of the Janizaries broke out against the reforms of the Sultan, assisting materially Russia’s designs.

In the beginning of the year 1810 an Imperial Ukase appeared, annexing Moldavia and Wallachia, which for three years had been occupied by their troops, to the Russian Empire, and declaring the Danube, from the Austrian frontier to the Black Sea, the southern European boundary of their mighty dominion.

A bloody war was the consequence, in which both parties made prodigious efforts, and neither gained decisive success, until the peace of Bucharest was concluded on the 28th of May, 1812.

Russia was as anxious as Turkey for the cessation of hostilities, being desirous of withdrawing her armies from the Danube to engage in the formidable contest which was impending over them with Napoleon.

ANNEXATION OF FINLAND.

Sweden was summoned to join in the alliance against Great Britain, to which the Swedish monarch did not accede. Alexander consequently declared war, and on the 28th of March, 1808, the following Imperial Ukase appeared at St. Petersburg:

“We unite Finland, conquered by our arms, for ever to our Empire, and command its inhabitants forthwith to take the oath of allegiance to our throne.”

The Swedish Monarch, however, not being willing to surrender so important a portion of his dominions, was forced to abdicate; and his successor endeavored to conclude a peace with Russia, and to retain Finland through appeals to Napoleon.

The latter was, however, bound to Alexander by the treaty of Tilsit, and refused to interfere. The Czar, determined to retain his conquest, marched an army across the gulf of Bothnia, on the ice, in March, 1809, and arrived by the middle of that month on the Swedish side, en route for Stockholm.

This had the effect to intimidate the court of Stockholm, who therefore ceded Finland, and peace was concluded Sept. 17, 1809.

On the 13th Dec., 1810, Napoleon formally annexed to the French Empire the Hanse towns and the Duchy of Oldenburg. This measure irritated Alexander, who now grew apprehensive lest some of his ill-gotten gains should be wrested from him, and that the restoration of Poland might next be thought of.

A convention was drawn up at St. Petersburg, and signed by the representatives of France and Russia, by which it was stipulated, that “The kingdom of Poland shall never be reëstablished; and the name of Poland and Poles shall never in future be applied to any of the districts, or inhabitants; and shall be effaced for ever from every public and official act.”

Napoleon, however, refused to ratify it, and thus again exasperated the Czar, who commenced to place Poland in a state of defence, which, in its turn, excited the jealousy of the French Emperor.

Alexander, therefore, published, on the 31st of Dec., 1810, an order, containing a material relaxation of the rigour of the decrees hitherto in force in the Russian Empire against English commerce.

On the 24th Feb., 1812, the Cabinet of Prussia concluded a treaty offensive and defensive with France; and a royal edict appeared prohibiting the introduction of colonial produce, on any pretence, from the Russian into the Prussian territory. Austria being at this time in close alliance with France, another treaty was concluded March 14, 1812, between them, placing a considerable part of her resources at Napoleon’s command.

In consequence of the overbearing demands of Napoleon, the Swedish Government allied itself with Russia on the 5th of April (1812), and with Great Britain on the 12th of July following.

The differences between Alexander and Napoleon had now become so serious, that war was inevitable. But Napoleon knew the foe he had to grapple with, and proposed terms of peace to Great Britain on the 17th of April, hoping to be left to meet the Russians single-handed, and thus humble the overweening pride of the Czar. His proposals were, however, rejected.

Down to the very commencement of hostilities, notes continued to be interchanged between the representatives of the two Emperors, which did little more than recapitulate the mutual grounds of complaint of the two cabinets against each other. Finally, on the 24th of April, Alexander sent to Napoleon his ultimatum, offering an accommodation on condition that France would evacuate Prussia, and come to an arrangement with the king of Sweden which remained without any answer, on the part of the French Government.

Both prepared for the worst, and on the 23d of June, Napoleon arrived on the banks of the Niemen, with his countless hosts, for the invasion of Russia.

The armies at his command, at this time, amounted in the aggregate, to the enormous sum of 1,250,000 men; and the force which entered Russia, during the year 1812, was 647,158 men—187,111 horses, and 1372 cannon.

The regular forces of the Russians amounted, at the close of 1811, to 517,000 men, 70,000 of whom were in garrison, and the remainder dispersed over an immense surface.

To oppose the invasion of the French, the Russians had collected about 200,000 men, and upwards of 800 pieces of cannon. The forces of the French, therefore, exceeded those of the Russians, by nearly 300,000 men; but the former were at an immense distance from their resources, and had no means of recruiting their losses; whereas the latter were in their own country, and supported by the devotion of a fanatical and patriotic people.

The face of the country on the Western frontier of Russia is in general flat, and in many places marshy; vast woods of pine cover the plains, and the rivers flow in some places through steep banks, in others stagnate over extensive swamps, which often present the most serious obstacles to military operations. The villages are few and miserable.

The wants of such a prodigious accumulation of troops speedily exhausted all the means of subsistence which the country afforded, and the stores they could convey with them. Forced requisitions from the peasantry became, therefore, necessary, and so great was the subsequent misery that the richest families in Warsaw were literally in danger of starving, and the interest of money rose to 80 per cent.

Napoleon reached Wilna on the 28th of June, the Russians receding as he advanced, and destroying everything before them. On the 15th of August, the starving army reached the city of Smolensko, which was burned by the Russians, and abandoned on the 18th.

The losses in the meantime by battle, exposure, want, and sickness, were fast decimating the French ranks. The soldiers were seized with disquietude as they contrasted their miserable quarters amid the ruins of Smolensko, with the smiling villages they had abandoned in their native land; but amid the universal gloom, their Emperor was ever present, and by words and deeds of kindness, sustained their drooping spirits.

Leaving Smolensko, Napoleon pressed forward, and on the 5th of September, arrived at Borodino where the Russians had made a stand to oppose their march upon Moscow.

On the 7th, two days subsequently, was fought the bloody battle of Borodino, the most murderous and obstinately contested of which history has preserved a record.

The Russian force was 132,000 men, with 640 pieces of artillery.

The French consisted of 133,000 men, with 590 pieces of cannon.

There were killed 15,000 Russians and 12,000 French, besides upwards of 70,000 wounded on both sides, making a total loss of 100,000 men in this one battle.

The French were, however, victorious, and reached Moscow on the 14th. The Holy City was found to be evacuated, not only by the Russian army, but by the inhabitants, and as the French hosts defiled through the silent streets, it was like entering a city of the dead.

Not a sound was to be heard in its vast circumference! the dwellings of three hundred thousand persons seemed as silent as the wilderness.

Evening came on! With increasing wonder the French troops traversed the central parts of the city, recently so crowded with passengers, but not a living creature was to be seen to explain the universal desolation. Night approached! an unclouded moon illuminated those beautiful palaces, those vast hotels, those deserted streets—all was still!

The officers broke open the doors of some of the principal mansions in search of sleeping quarters. They found every thing in perfect order; the bedrooms were fully furnished as if guests were expected; the drawing-rooms bore the marks of having been recently inhabited; even the work of the ladies was on the tables, the keys in the wardrobes—but still not an inmate was to be seen. By degrees a few of the lowest slaves emerged pale and trembling from the cellars, and showed the way to the sleeping apartments, and laid open every thing which these sumptuous mansions contained; but the only account they could give was that the whole of the inhabitants had fled, and that they alone were left. The persons intrusted with the duty of setting fire to the city, only awaited the retreat of their countrymen to commence the work of destruction. The terrible catastrophe soon commenced. On the night of the 13th a fire broke out in the bourse, and spread to the streets in the vicinity. At midnight, on the 15th, a bright light was seen to illuminate the northern and western parts of the city; fresh fires were then seen breaking out every instant in all directions, and Moscow soon exhibited the spectacle of a sea of flame agitated by the wind. But it was chiefly during the nights of the 18th and 19th that the conflagration attained its greatest violence. At that time the whole city was wrapped in flames, and volumes of fire of various colors ascended to the heavens in many places, diffusing a prodigious light on all sides, and attended by an intolerable heat. These balloons of flame were accompanied in their ascent by a frightful hissing noise, and loud explosions, the result of the vast stores of oil, tar, rosin, spirits, and other combustible materials, with which the greater part of the shops were filled. The wind, naturally high, was raised by the sudden rarefaction of the air to a perfect hurricane. The howling of the tempest drowned even the roar of the conflagration; the whole heavens were filled with the whirl of the burning volumes of smoke, which rose on all sides, and made midnight as bright as day, while even the bravest hearts, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, and the feeling of human impotence in the midst of such elemental strife, sank and trembled in silence. Imagination cannot conceive the horrors into which the remnant of the people who could not abandon their homes were plunged. Bereft of every thing, they wandered amid the ruins eagerly searching for a parent or a child: pillage became universal, and the wrecks of former magnificence were ransacked alike by the licentious soldiery and the suffering multitude.

In addition to the whole French army, numbers flocked in from the country to share in the general license; furniture of the most precious description, splendid jewellery, Indian and Turkish stuffs, stores of wine and brandy, gold and silver plate, rich furs, gorgeous trappings of silk and satin were spread about in promiscuous confusion, and became the prey of the least intoxicated among the multitude. A frightful tumult succeeded to the stillness which had reigned in the city when the troops first entered. The French soldiers, tormented by hunger and thirst, and loosened from all discipline by the horrors which surrounded them, often rushed headlong into the burning edifices to ransack their cellars for wines and spirits, and beneath the ruins great numbers miserably perished, the victims of intemperance and the surrounding fire. Napoleon abandoned the Kremlin on the evening of the 16th. Early on the following morning, casting a melancholy look to the burning city, which now filled half the heavens with its flames, he exclaimed after a long silence, “This sad event is the presage of a long train of disasters.”

Thus vanished the hopes of those indefatigable soldiers who had endured so much, and fought so well. To reach the fabulous city whose domes and minarets were now fallen—had been the dream of their ambition—the goal which once attained, would give rest and food to their weariness and hunger.

Thus Napoleon found himself possessed of a heap of burning ruins without food for his famishing soldiers and horses.

All negotiations with the Russian authorities having failed, a retreat was decided upon, and the Emperor left Moscow on the 19th of October, at the head of 105,000 combatants. The disasters of that retreat are too well known to require recapitulation.

Suffice it to say that the survivors of the French army, who entered Russia 500,000 strong, were but 20,000. The total loss of the campaign, in killed, prisoners, died from cold, fatigue, and famine, was over 450,000. And on the 13th of December, the wretched remnant of the French army passed the bridge of the Niemen. The losses of the Russians were also so great that at the end of the campaign not above 30,000 men could be assembled around the head-quarters of the Emperor Alexander.

On the 10th Dec., early in the morning, a travelling carriage in great haste drove into the Hotel d’Angleterre, at Warsaw. It was a small travelling britschka placed without wheels on a coarse sledge, made of four pieces of rough fir-wood, which had been almost dashed to pieces in entering the gateway. The travellers were ushered into a small dark apartment, with the windows half-shut, and in a corner of which a servant girl strove in vain to light a fire with green damp billets of wood, which, after kindling for a moment, gradually went out, leaving those in the apartment to shiver with cold during three hours of earnest conversation.

The travellers were Napoleon and his friend Caulaincourt, who five days previously had bidden the remnant of his retreating army, in Russia, an affectionate farewell, and started for Paris.

At length, it being announced that the carriage was ready, they mounted the sledge, and were soon lost in the gloom of a Polish winter. Outstripping his couriers in speed, on the 18th Dec., at 11 at night, the Emperor arrived at the Tuileries, before the Imperial government was even aware that he had quitted the army. And early next morning, while the streets of Paris were yet vacant, he was buried in state papers, investigating and arranging the disorganized affairs of the empire.

THE GRAND ALLIANCE.

Napoleon’s power being no longer dreaded, Prussia became disaffected, and on the 28th of February, 1813, entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with Russia, called, the treaty of Kalisch, which was the foundation stone of that grand alliance which finally overthrew the French Emperor. Great efforts were made to induce Saxony to join the league; but she remained permanently attached to the fortunes of Napoleon.

Meanwhile Alexander despatched a confidential agent to Vienna, in order to sound the Imperial Cabinet on the prospect of a European alliance against France, and it was soon after discovered that, notwithstanding Austria’s professed friendship for Napoleon, there was a secret understanding existing between the Cabinets of St. Petersburg and Vienna, as also with the King of Prussia.

The accession of Sweden was received on the 3d of March.

During the month of April a convention took place between Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia, when England, in addition to the immense supplies of arms and military stores which she was furnishing, agreed to advance two millions sterling ($10,000,000) to sustain the operations of the Prince Royal of Sweden in the north of Germany, and a like sum to enable Russia and Prussia to keep up their vast armaments in Saxony.

On the 14th of June another treaty was signed stipulating that England should pay to Prussia, for the six remaining months of the year, about £700,000, in consideration of which, the latter was to keep in the field an army of 80,000 men.

By another treaty, signed the day after, between Russia and Great Britain, it was stipulated that Great Britain should pay to its Emperor, till January, 1814, £1,333,334 in monthly instalments, by which he was to maintain 160,000 men in the field, independent of the garrisons of strong places. On the 27th of July Austria joined the alliance (against their Emperor’s son-in-law), England agreeing to pay her equal to one million sterling, in the event of her taking part in the war; thus completing the formidable alliance of Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden.

While the accession of new and formidable powers to the league was taking place, the energy of Napoleon seemed to rise with the difficulties against which he had to contend, and to acquire an almost supernatural degree of vigor.

His shattered armies were reinforced, and, undiscouraged by the recollection of Moscow, he prepared again to make his power felt against the formidable odds which the energies of five empires were concentrating for his destruction.

Already again in the month of April was he in the field, and in May occupied Dresden, driving his enemies before him.

In August, however, the allies having been strongly reinforced, made their first attack upon that city. Through August and September there were constantly recurring battles, by which the French were so harassed that Napoleon at length resolved to retreat in the direction of Leipsic, and on the 15th of October his army, consisting of 175,000 men and 720 pieces of cannon, occupied that city, and encamped around it. The allies followed with 290,000 men and above 1300 guns. The 18th dawned, and the last hour of the French Empire began to toll. The celebrated battle of Leipsic was fought. The conflict of such masses was terrible, and was so disastrous to the French, that a retreat was resolved upon, which commenced the next morning, the allies entering the city as the French retired across the river.

The battle of Leipsic was, perhaps, the most unfortunate in its results which Napoleon ever experienced; and the subsequent retreat of his army to the Rhine partook, in a measure, of the horrors of that from Moscow.

While the discomfited French were retiring across the Rhine at Mayence, the allied troops followed closely on their footsteps, and Alexander entered Frankfort on the 5th of November. Napoleon had left on the 1st, remaining six days with his army on the opposite shores of the river, and reached Paris on the 9th.

The day after, in the council of state, he unfolded the danger of his situation with manly sincerity, and with nervous eloquence referred to the invasion by Wellington of his southern frontiers, while the allies menaced the north. A levy by conscription was made of 600,000 men, and preparations to resist the invasion were immediately ordered.

On the 1st of Dec. the allied sovereigns published a declaration from Frankfort, offering peace to France on condition that she would confine her limits between the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.

But the negotiation was protracted by Napoleon to gain time, until the impatient allies crossed the Rhine, and Denmark, Naples, and the Rhenish Confederation, joined the alliance.

The allies had now accumulated forces so prodigious, for the invasion of France, that nothing in ancient or modern times had ever approached to their magnitude.

Including 80,000 Austrians, destined to act in the north of Italy, and a hundred and forty thousand British, Portuguese, and Spaniards, who, under the guidance of Wellington, were assailing the south, the whole force of the allies formed a mass of a million and twenty-eight thousand men, which was prepared to act against the French empire.

The French army was so reduced, that the Emperor could not, with the utmost exertion, reckon upon more than 350,000 men to defend the frontiers of his widespread dominions. Of these, 100,000 were blockaded in Hamburg and on the Oder, 50,000 were maintaining a painful defensive against the Austrians in the north of Italy, and 100,000 were struggling against the superior armies of Wellington on the Spanish frontiers. So that the real army which the Emperor had at his disposal to resist the invasion on the Rhine did not exceed 110,000.

On the 31st of Dec., 1813, the united and victorious allies crossed that river. Numerous battles ensued. At length a conference was held, and the allied sovereigns offered to conclude peace, and recognize Napoleon as Emperor of France, on certain conditions, which would have left him an empire greater than that over which his nephew now reigns. This did not, however, satisfy his ambition. The overtures were refused, and on the 30th of March, 1814, after numerous sanguinary engagements, and the storming of the city, the allies entered Paris, which had been forced to capitulate.

On the 11th of April Napoleon signed his abdication at Fontainbleau, and on the 28th of the same month, at eight at night, set sail from Frejus for the island of Elba, on board the English frigate “The Undaunted.”

On the 1st of March, 1815, having escaped from Elba, he again entered France, with a few hundred men, and was everywhere received with acclamation and shouts of joy, which resounding throughout the land, were echoed to the Tuileries, and caused such consternation, that the court became alarmed, and at midnight, on the 19th, Louis XVIII. and the royal family, left Paris, and escaped into Belgium, while at nine o’clock in the evening of the next day Napoleon entered the vacated palace.

The allies became alarmed, and on the 25th of March, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain, concluded a treaty, engaging to unite their forces against Bonaparte, with a secret stipulation that the high contracting parties should not lay down their arms till the complete destruction of Napoleon had been effected. Such, however, was the poverty at this time of the Continental powers, that they were unable to put their armies in motion without pecuniary assistance. And a treaty was entered into at Vienna on the 30th of April, by which England agreed to furnish Austria, Russia, and Prussia, the necessary means for the prosecution of the war, and actually paid to foreign powers during the year above £11,000,000 ($55,000,000).

Napoleon left Paris on the morning of the 12th of June, and joined his army, which had been concentrated near the frontiers of Belgium, on the 13th. The returns on the evening of the 14th, gave 122,400 men under arms, and at day-break on the 15th his army crossed the frontier.

Various conflicts ensued between different portions of his forces, directed to different points, and those of the allies, who, under Wellington, were in occupation of Brussels.

At length, the morning of the 18th dawned upon the battle field of Waterloo, and its evening witnessed the annihilation of the French army, and flight of Napoleon.

On the 17th of July, the victorious allies, headed by Wellington, a second time entered Paris; and on the following day, Louis XVIII. made his public entry into that gay capital, escorted by the national guard.

On the 29th of June, Napoleon had left Malmaison (the home of his lost Josephine) for Rochefort, arriving at that harbor on the 3d of July, from whence he was anxious to embark for America.

But the blockade of English cruisers was so vigilant that there was no possible chance of avoiding them.

NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE

Under these circumstances, he at length adopted the resolution of throwing himself upon the generosity of the British government; and on the 14th of July embarked on board the “Bellerophon,” which set sail immediately for England,—and Napoleon looked for the last time upon the receding shores of that land which had been the home of his greatness.

[CHAPTER II.]

Origin of the War in the Peninsula—Siege of Saragossa—Murderous Character of the War—Success of the French in Portugal—Battle of Rolica—Battle of Vimiero—Convention of Cintra—The French evacuate Portugal—Preparations of Napoleon for another Campaign—He subdues the Country, and enters Madrid—Address to the Spanish People—Napoleon recalled by the War with Austria—Soult and Ney intrusted with the Command of the French Army in Spain—Retreat of Sir John Moore—Battle of Corunna—Death of Sir John Moore—The British Army sail for England.

Before entering into a particular account of the battles in which I was myself an actor, it might not be uninteresting to my readers to take a hasty survey of the war which was now raging in the Peninsula, and the causes which led to British intervention. In doing this, I can, of course, in so small a work, only allude to its principal events, and relate some anecdotes, interesting, as well from their authenticity, as from the patriotism of which they were such bright examples.

Charles IV., a descendant of the Spanish Bourbons, in 1807, occupied the throne of Spain. He was feeble in mind, impotent in action, and extremely dissolute in his habits. Writing to Napoleon, he gives an account of himself which must have filled with contempt the mind of the hard-working emperor for the imbecile king who thus disgraced a throne. “Every day,” says he, “winter as well as summer, I go out to shoot, from morning till noon. I then dine, and return to the chase, which I continue till sunset. Manuel Godoy then gives me a brief account of what is going on, and I go to bed, to recommence the same life on the morrow.” His wife, Louisa, was a shameless profligate. She had selected, from the body-guard of the king, a young soldier, named Godoy, as her principal favorite; and had freely lavished on him both wealth and honors. He was known as the Prince of Peace. A favorite of the king, as well as queen, the realm was, in reality, governed by him. Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, and heir to the throne, hated this favorite. Weak, unprincipled, and ambitious, unwilling to wait until the crown should become his by inheritance, it is said that he concerted a scheme to remove both his parents by poison. He was arrested, and imprisoned. Natural affection was entirely extinct in the bosoms of his parents. Louisa, speaking of her son, said that “he had a mule’s head and a tiger’s heart;” and history informs us that if injustice is done here, it is only to the tiger and mule. Both king and queen did all they could to cover his name with obloquy, and prepare the nation for his execution. But the popular voice was with Ferdinand. The rule of the base-born favorite could not be tolerated by the Spanish hidalgos; and the nation, groaning under the burdens that the vices and misrule of Charles had brought upon them, looked with hope to the youth, whose very abandonment had excited an interest in his favor. From the depths of his prison he wrote to Napoleon, imploring his aid, and requesting an alliance with his family. Charles, too, invoked the assistance “of the hero destined by Providence to save Europe and support thrones.” A secret treaty was concluded between the emperor and Charles, whose object was nominally the conquest of Portugal; and thus French troops were brought to Madrid. A judicial investigation was held on the charge against Ferdinand, which ended in the submission of that prince to his parents. But the intrigues of the two parties still continued. In March, 1808, hatred of Godoy, and contempt of the king, had increased to such a degree, that the populace of Madrid could no longer be controlled. The palace of the Prince of Peace was broken open and sacked. The miserable favorite, allowed scarcely a moment’s warning of the coming storm, had barely time to conceal himself beneath a pile of old mats, in his garret. Here, for thirty-six hours, he lay, shivering with terror and suffering. Unable longer to endure the pangs of thirst, he crept down from his hiding-place, was seen, and dragged out by the mob. A few select troops of the king rushed to his rescue; and, half dead with fright and bruises, he was thrown into prison. The populace, enraged by the loss of their victim, now threatened to attack the palace. Charles, alarmed for his own safety, abdicated in favor of Ferdinand, and that prince was proclaimed king, amid the greatest rejoicings. But Charles wrote to Napoleon that his abdication was a forced one, and again implored his aid. Soon after, determined to advocate his cause in person, he went to Bayonne to meet the emperor, accompanied by Louisa and Godoy, and, with them, his two younger sons. Ferdinand, jealous of his father’s influence with Napoleon, determined to confront him there. His people everywhere declared against this measure. They cut the traces of his carriage; they threw themselves before the horses, imploring him, with prayers and tears, not to desert his people. But Ferdinand went on. The emperor received them all with kindness. In a private interview with him, Charles, Louisa, and Godoy, willingly exchanged their rights to the uneasy crown of Spain for a luxurious home in Italy, where money for the gratification of all their voluptuous desires should be at their command. Ferdinand and his two brothers, Carlos and Francisco, were not so easily persuaded to surrender the crown of their ancestors. But Napoleon’s iron will at length prevailed, and the three brothers remained not unwilling prisoners in the castle of Valencey. The throne of Spain was now vacant. The right to fill it was assumed by the emperor, in virtue of the cession to him, by Charles, of his rights. The council of Castile, the municipality of Madrid, and the governing junta, in obedience to Napoleon’s dictate, declared that their choice had fallen upon Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples. He was already on his way to Bayonne. On the 20th of July he entered Madrid; and, on the 24th, he was proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies.

But, if the rulers of Spain, and a few of her pusillanimous nobles, had agreed to accept a king of Napoleon’s choice, not so decided the great body of the people. They everywhere flew to arms. To acknowledge the authority of the self-constituted government, was to declare one’s self an enemy to the nation. Assassinations at Cadiz and Seville were imitated in every part of Spain. Grenada had its murders; Carthagena rivalled Cadiz in ruthless cruelty; and Valencia reeked with blood. In Gallicia, the people assembled and endeavored to oblige their governor to declare war against France. Prompted by prudence, he advised them to delay. Enraged at this, the ferocious soldiers seized him, and, planting their weapons in the earth, tossed him on their points, and left him to die. In Asturias, two noblemen were selected, and sent to implore the assistance of England. In England, the greatest enthusiasm prevailed. The universal rising of the Spanish nation was regarded as a pledge of their patriotism, and aid and assistance was immediately promised and given. Napoleon, with his usual promptness, poured his troops into Spain. They were successful in many places; but the enemy, always forming in small numbers, if easily defeated, soon appeared in another place. The first permanent stand was made at Saragossa. Palafox had, with some hastily gathered followers, disputed the passage of the Ebro, and, routed by superior force, had fallen back upon this city, whose heroic defence presents acts of daring courage of which the world’s history scarcely furnishes a parallel. It was regularly invested by the French, under Lefebre Desnouttes. The city had no regular defences, but the houses were very strong, being vaulted so as to be nearly fire-proof, and the massy walls of the convents afforded security to the riflemen who filled them. The French troops had at one time nearly gained possession of the town, but, for some unknown reasons, they fell back. This gave confidence to the besieged. They redoubled their exertions. All shared the labor,—women, children, priests and friars, labored for the common cause,—and in twenty-four hours the defences were so strengthened that the place was prepared to stand a siege. But the next morning Palafox imprudently left the city, and offered battle to the French. He was, of course, quickly beaten; but succeeded in escaping, with a few of his troops, into the city. A small hill rises close to the convent of St. Joseph’s, called Monte Torrero. Some stone houses on this hill were strongly fortified, and occupied by twelve hundred men. This place was attacked by Lefebre, and taken by assault, on the 27th of June, 1808. The convents of St. Joseph’s and the Capuchins were next attacked by the French, and, after a long resistance, taken by storm. The command of the besiegers was now transferred to General Verdier. He continued the siege during the whole of July, making several assaults on the gates, from which he was repulsed, with great loss. The Spaniards, having received a reinforcement, made a sortie to retake Monte Torrero; but were defeated, their commander killed, and most of their number left dead. On the 2d of August, the enemy opened a dreadful fire on the town. One of their shells lighted upon the powder magazine, which was in the most secure part of the city, and blew it up, destroying many houses and killing numbers of the besieged. The carnage, during this siege, was truly terrible. Six hundred women and children perished, and above forty thousand men were killed.

It was at this place that the act of female heroism so beautifully celebrated by Byron was performed. An assault had been made upon one of the gates, which was withstood with great courage by the besieged. At the battery of the Portillo, their fire had been so fatal, that but one artillery-man remained able to serve the gun. He seemed to bear a charmed life. Though shot and shell fell thick and fast around him, he still stood unharmed, and rapidly loaded and discharged his gun. At length, worn out by his own exertions, his strength seemed about to fail. There was little time, in a contest like this, to watch for the safety of others; but there was one eye near which not for a moment lost sight of him. Augustina, a girl twenty-two years of age, had followed her daring lover to his post. She would not leave him there alone, although every moment exposed her to share his death. When she saw his strength begin to fail, she seized a cordial, and held it to his lips. In the very act of receiving it, the fatal death-stroke came, and he fell dead at her feet. Not for a moment paused the daring maid. No tear fell for the slain. She lived to do what he had done. Snatching a match from the hand of a dead artillery-man, she fired off the gun, and swore never to quit it alive, during the siege. The soldiers and citizens, who had begun to retire, stimulated by so heroic an example, rushed to the battery a second time, and again opened a tremendous fire upon the enemy. For this daring act, Augustina received a small shield of honor, and had the word “Saragossa” embroidered on the sleeve of her dress, with the pay of an artillery-man. Byron thus commemorates this heroism, in his own transcendent manner:

“The Spanish maid, aroused,

Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar,

And, all unsexed, the anlace hath espoused,

Sung the loud song, and dared the deeds of war.

And she, whom once the semblance of a scar

Appalled, an owlet’s ’larum filled with dread,

Now views the column-scattering bayonet jar,

The falchion flash, and o’er the yet warm dead

Stalks with Minerva’s step, where Mars might quake to tread.

Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,

O! had you known her in the softer hour,—

Marked her black eye, that mocks her coal-black veil,—

Heard her light, lively tones in lady’s bower,—

Seen her long locks, that foil the painter’s power,—

Her fairy form, with more than female grace,—

Scarce would you deem that Saragossa’s tower

Beheld her smile in danger’s Gorgon face,

Thin the closed ranks, and lead in glory’s fearful chase!

Her lover sinks—she sheds no ill-timed tear;

Her chief is slain—she fills his fatal post;

Her fellows flee—she checks their base career;

The foe retires—she heads the sallying host,

Who can appease like her a lover’s ghost?

Who can avenge so well a leader’s fall?

What maid retrieve, when man’s flushed hope is lost?

Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,

Foiled by a woman’s hand, before the battered wall!”

On the 4th of August, the French stormed the city, and penetrated as far as the Corso, or public square. Here a terrible conflict was maintained. Every inch of ground was manfully contested; but the enemy’s cavalry was irresistible, and the besieged began to give way. All appeared lost. The French, thinking the victory gained, began to plunder. Seeing this, the besieged rallied, and attacked them. They succeeded in driving the enemy back to the Corso. They also set fire to the convent of Francisco, and many perished in its conflagration. Night now came, to add its horrors to the scene. The fierce contest still raged on. The lunatic asylum was invaded, and soon the dread cry of “Fire” mingled with the incoherent ravings of its inmates. “Here,” says one writer, “were to be seen grinning maniacs, shouting with hideous joy, and mocking the cries of the wounded; there, others, with seeming delight, were dabbling in the crimson fluid of many a brave heart, which had scarcely ceased to beat. On one side, young and lovely women, dressed in the fantastic rigging of a mind diseased, were bearing away headless trunks and mutilated limbs, which lay scattered around them, while the unearthly cries of the idiot kept up a hideous concert with the shouts of the infuriated combatants. In short, it was a scene of unmingled horror, too fearful for the mind to dwell upon.” After a severe contest and dreadful carnage, the French forced their way into the Corso, in the very centre of the city, and before night were in possession of one-half of it. Lefebre now believed that he had effected his purpose, and required Palafox to surrender, in a note containing only these words: “Headquarters, St. Engrucia,—Capitulation.” Equally laconic the brave Spaniard’s answer was: “Headquarters, Saragossa,—War to the knife’s point.”

The contest which was now carried on stands unparalleled. One side of the Corso was held by the French soldiery; the opposite was in possession of the Arragonese, who erected batteries at the end of the cross-streets, within a few paces of those the French had thrown up. The space between these was covered with the dead. Next day, the powder of the besieged began to fail; but even this dismayed them not. One cry broke from the people, whenever Palafox came among them, “War to the knife!—no capitulation.” The night was coming on, and still the French continued their impetuous onsets. But now the brother of Palafox entered the city with a convoy of arms and ammunition, and a reinforcement of three thousand men. This succor was as unexpected as it was welcome, and raised the desperate courage of the citizens to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. The war was now carried on from street to street, and even from room to room. A priest, by the name of Santiago Suss, displayed the most undaunted bravery, fighting at the head of the besieged, and cheering and consoling the wounded and the dying. At the head of forty chosen men, he succeeded in procuring a supply of powder for the town, and, by united stratagem and courage, effected its entrance, even through the French lines. This murderous contest was continued for eleven successive days and nights,—more, indeed, by night than by day, for it was almost certain death to appear by daylight within reach of houses occupied by the other party. But, concealed by the darkness of the night, they frequently dashed across the street, to attack each other’s batteries; and the battle, commenced there, was often carried into the houses beyond, from room to room, and from floor to floor. As if not enough of suffering had accompanied this memorable siege, a new scourge came to add its horrors to the scene. Pestilence, with all its accumulated terrors, burst upon the doomed city. Numbers of putrescent bodies, in various stages of decomposition, were strewed thickly around the spot where the death-struggle was still going on. The air was impregnated with the pestiferous miasma of festering mortality; and this, too, in a climate like Spain, and in the month of August! This evil must be removed,—but how? Certain death would have been the penalty of any Arragonese who should attempt it. The only remedy was to tie ropes to the French prisoners, and, pushing them forward amid the dead and dying compel them to remove the bodies, and bring them away for interment. Even for this office, as necessary to one party as the other, there was no truce; only the prisoners were better secured, by the compassion of their countrymen, from the fire.

From day to day, this heroic defence was kept up, with unremitting obstinacy. In vain breaches were made and stormed; the besiegers were constantly repulsed. At last Verdier received orders to retire; and the French, after reducing the city almost to ashes, were compelled to abandon their attacks, and retreat.

Meanwhile, all over Spain the contest was continued, and everywhere with the most unsparing cruelty. Her purest and noblest sons often fell victims to private malice. “No one’s life,” says one author, “was worth a week’s purchase.” One anecdote may serve as an example to illustrate the spirit of the times.

It was night. The rays of the full moon shed their beautiful light on the hills of the Sierra Morena. On one of these hills lay a small division of the patriotic army. Its chief was a dark, fierce-looking man, in whose bosom the spirit of human kindness seemed extinct forever. A brigand, who had long dealt in deeds of death, he had placed himself without the pale even of the laws of Spain. But, when the war commenced, he had offered his own services and that of his men against the French, and had been accepted. On this night he sat, wrapped in his huge cloak, beside the decaying watch-fire, seemingly deep in thought. Near him lay a prisoner on the grass, with the knotted cords so firmly bound around his limbs that the black blood seemed every moment ready to burst from its enclosure. He might have groaned aloud in his agony, had not the pride of his nation,—for he, too, was a Spaniard,—and his own deep courage, prevented. His crime was, that, yielding to the promptings of humanity, he had shown kindness to a wounded French officer, and had thus drawn upon himself suspicion of favoring their cause. Short trial was needed, in those days, to doom a man to death; and, with the morning’s dawn, the brave Murillo was informed that he must die.

With closed eyes and a calm countenance, his heart was yet filled with agony, as he remembered his desolated home and his defenceless little ones. Suddenly, a light footstep was heard in the wood adjoining. The sentinel sprang to his feet, and demanded, “Who goes there?” A boy, over whose youthful brow scarce twelve summers could have passed, answered the summons. “I would speak with your chief,” he said. The ruthless man raised his head as the boy spoke this; and, not waiting for an answer, he sprang forward and stood before him. “What is your errand here, boy?” asked the brigand. “I come a suppliant for my father’s life,” he said, pointing to the prisoner on the grass. “He dies with the morrow’s sun,” was the unmoved reply. “Nay, chieftain, spare him, for my mother’s sake, and for her children. Let him live, and, if you must have blood, I will die for him;” and the noble boy threw himself at the feet of the chief, and looked up imploringly in his face. “He is so good!—You smile: you will save his life!” “You speak lightly of life,” said the stern man, “and you know little of death. Are you willing to lose one of your ears, for your father’s sake?” “I am,” said the boy, and he removed his cap, and fixed his eyes on his father’s face. Not a single tear fell, as the severed member, struck off by the chief’s hand, lay at his feet. “You bear it bravely, boy; are you willing to lose the other?” “If it will save my father’s life,” was the unfaltering response. A moment more, and the second one lay beside its fellow, while yet not a groan, or word expressive of suffering, passed the lips of the noble child. “Will you now release my father?” he asked, as he turned to the prostrate man, whose tears, which his own pain had no power to bring forth, fell thick and fast, as he witnessed the bravery of his unoffending son. For a moment it seemed that a feeling of compassion had penetrated the flinty soul of the man of blood. But, if the spark had fallen, it glimmered but a moment on the cold iron of that heart, and then went out forever. “Before I release him, tell me who taught you thus to endure suffering.” “My father,” answered the boy. “Then that father must die; for Spain is not safe while he lives to rear such children.” And before the morning dawned father and son slept their last sleep.

While Lefebre and Verdier were prosecuting the fatal siege of Saragossa, Marshal Bessières was pursuing his victorious course in Castile, compelling one force after another to acknowledge the authority of Joseph. General Duhesme and Marshal Moncey, in Catalonia, met with varied success;—repulsed at Valencia and at Gerona, they yet met with enough good fortune to maintain their reputation as generals. In Andalusia, the French army, under Dupont, met with serious reverses. At Baylen, eighteen thousand men laid down their arms, only stipulating that they should be sent to France. This capitulation, disgraceful in itself to the French, was shamefully broken. Eighty of the officers were murdered, at Lebrixa, in cold blood; armed only with their swords, they kept their assassins some time at bay, and succeeded in retreating into an open space in the town, where they endeavored to defend themselves; but, a fire being opened upon them from the surrounding houses, the last of these unfortunate men were destroyed. The rest of the troops were marched to Cadiz, and many died on the road. Those who survived the march were treated with the greatest indignity, and cast into the hulks, at that port. Two years afterwards, a few hundreds of them escaped, by cutting the cables of their prison-ship, and drifting in a storm upon a lee shore. The remainder were sent to the desert island of Cabrera, without clothing, without provisions, with scarcely any water, and there died by hundreds. It is related that some of them dug several feet into the solid stone with a single knife, in search of water. They had no shelter, nor was there any means of providing it. At the close of the war, when returning peace caused an exchange of prisoners, only a few hundred of all those thousands remained alive. This victory at Baylen greatly encouraged the Spanish troops, whose ardor was beginning to fail, before the conquering career of Bessières, and the disgust and terror occasioned by the murders and excesses of the populace. When the news of the capitulation reached Madrid, Joseph called a council of war, and it was decided that the French should abandon Madrid, and retire behind the Ebro.

But if the French arms had met with a reverse in Spain, it was compensated by their success in Portugal. Junôt, at the head of twenty-five thousand men, marched from Alcantara to Lisbon. At an unfavorable season of the year, and encountering fatigue, and want, and tempests, that daily thinned his ranks, until of his whole force only two thousand remained, he yet entered Lisbon victorious. This city contained three hundred thousand inhabitants, and fourteen thousand regular troops were collected there. A powerful British fleet was at the mouth of the harbor, and its commander, Sir Sidney Smith, offered his powerful aid, in resisting the French; yet such was the terror that Napoleon’s name excited, and such the hatred of their rulers, that the people of Lisbon yielded, almost without a struggle. When Napoleon, in his Moniteur, made the startling announcement that “the house of Braganza had ceased to reign,” the feeble prince-regent, alarmed for his own safety, embarked, with his whole court, and sailed for the Brazils. Junôt himself was created Duke of Abrantes, and made governor-general of the kingdom. He exerted himself to give an efficient government to Portugal; and met with such success, that a strong French interest was created, and steps were actually taken to have Prince Eugene declared King of Portugal. The people themselves, and the literary men, were in favor of this step; but it met with the strongest opposition from the priests, and this was nurtured and fanned into a flame by persons in the pay of the English, whose whole influence was exerted in making Napoleon’s name and nation as odious to the people as possible. Among a people so superstitious as the Portuguese, the monks would, of course, exert great influence; and many were the prodigies which appeared, to prove that their cause was under the protection of Heaven. Among others, was that of an egg, marked by some chemical process, with certain letters, which were interpreted to indicate the coming of Don Sebastian, King of Portugal. This adventurous monarch, years before, earnestly desirous of promoting the interests of his country, and of the Christian religion, had raised a large army, consisting of the flower of his nobility, and the choicest troops of his kingdom, and crossed the Straits into Africa, for the purpose of waging war with the Moorish king. Young, ardent and inexperienced, he violated every dictate of prudence, by marching into the enemy’s country to meet an army compared with which his own was a mere handful. The whole of his army perished, and his own fate was never known. But, as his body was not found among the dead, the peasantry of Portugal, ardently attached to their king, believed that he would some time return, and deliver his country from all their woes. He was supposed to be concealed in a secret island, waiting the destined period, in immortal youth. The prophecy of the egg was, therefore, believed; and people, even of the higher classes, were often seen on the highest points of the hills, looking towards the sea with earnest gaze, for the appearance of the island where their long-lost hero was detained.

The constant efforts of the English and the priests at length had their effect, in arousing the Portuguese peasantry into action; and the news of the insurrection in Spain added new fuel to the flame. The Spaniards in Portugal immediately rose against the French; and their situation would have become dangerous in the extreme, had not the promptness and dexterity of Junôt succeeded in averting the danger for the present. Such was the state of affairs in the Peninsula, when the English troops made their descent into Spain. It has often been said that England was moved by pure patriotism, or by a strong desire to relieve the Spanish nation, in being thus prodigal of her soldiers and treasures; but her hatred to Napoleon, and her determination, at all hazards, to put a stop to his growing power, was, in all probability, the real motive that influenced her to bestow aid upon that people.

The English collected their army of nine thousand in Cork, in June, 1808. Sir Hugh Dalrymple had, nominally the chief command of the army, and Sir Harry Burrard the second; but the really acting officers were, Sir Arthur Wellesley and Sir John Moore. These troops disembarked at the Mondego river on the first of August, and marching along the coast, proceeded to Rolica, where they determined to give battle to the French. Junôt, having left in Lisbon a sufficient force to hold the revolutionary movement in check, placed himself at the head of his army, and advanced to the contest. He was not, however, present at the battle of Rolica. The French troops were under the command of Generals Loison and Laborde. Nearly in the centre of the heights of Rolica stands an old Moorish castle. This, and every favorable post on the high ground, was occupied by detachments of the French army. It was a strong position; but Sir Arthur, anxious to give battle before the two divisions of the French army should effect a junction, decided upon an immediate attack.

It was morning, and a calm and quiet beauty seemed to linger on the scene of the impending conflict. The heights of Rolica, though steep and difficult of access, possess few of the sterner and more imposing features of mountain scenery. The heat of summer had deprived them of much of that brightness of verdure common in a colder climate. Here and there the face of the heights was indented by deep ravines, worn by the winter torrents, the precipitous banks of which were occasionally covered with wood, and below extended groves of the cork-tree and olive; while Obidas, with its ancient walls and fortress, and stupendous aqueduct, rose in the middle distance. In the east Mount Junto reared its lofty summit, while on the west lay the broad Atlantic. And this was the battle-ground that was to witness the first outpouring of that blood which flowed so profusely, on both sides, during the progress of this long and desolating war. Sir Arthur had divided his army into three columns, of which he himself commanded the centre, Colonel Trant the right, while the left, directed against Loison, was under General Ferguson. The centre marched against Laborde, who was posted on the elevated plain. This general, perceiving, at a glance, that his position was an unfavorable one, evaded the danger by falling rapidly back to the heights of Zambugeria, where he could only be approached by narrow paths, leading through deep ravines. A swarm of skirmishers, starting forward, soon plunged into the passes; and, spreading to the right and left, won their way among the rocks and tangled evergreens that overspread the steep ascent, and impeded their progress.

With still greater difficulty the supporting column followed, their formation being disordered in the confined and rugged passes, while the hollows echoed with the continual roar of musketry, and the shouts of the advancing troops were loudly answered by the enemy, while the curling smoke, breaking out from the side of the mountain, marked the progress of the assailants, and showed how stoutly the defence was maintained. The right of the 29th arrived first at the top; and, ere it could form, Col. Lake was killed, and a French company, falling on their flanks, broke through, carrying with them fifty or sixty prisoners. Thus pressed, this regiment fell back, and, re-forming under the hill, again advanced to the charge. At the same time, General Ferguson poured his troops upon the other side of the devoted army. Laborde, seeing it impossible to effect a junction with Loison, or to maintain his present position, fell back,—commencing his retreat by alternate masses, and protecting his movements by vigorous charges of cavalry,—and halted at the Quinta de Bugagleira, where his scattered detachments rejoined him. From this place he marched all night, to gain the position of Montechique, leaving three guns on the field of battle, and the road to Torres Vedras open to the victors. The French lost six hundred men, killed and wounded, among the latter of which was the gallant Laborde himself. Although the English were victors in this strife, the heroic defence of the French served to show them that they had no mean enemy to contend with. The personal enmity to Napoleon, and the violent party prejudices in England, were so great, that the most absurd stories as to the want of order and valor in his troops gained immediate credence there; and many of the English army believed that they had but to show themselves, and the French would fly. The bravery with which their attack was met was, of course, a matter of great surprise, and served as an efficient check to that rashness which this erroneous belief had engendered.

Instead of pursuing this victory, as Wellesley would have done, he was obliged to go to the seashore, to protect the landing of General Anstruthers and his troops. After having effected a junction with this general, he marched to Vimiero, where the French, under Junôt, arrived on the 21st of August. The following brief and vivid sketch of this combat is taken from Alexander’s Life of Wellington:

“Vimiero is a village, pleasantly situated in a gentle and quiet valley, through which flows the small river of Maceria. Beyond, and to the westward and northward of this village, rises a mountain, of which the western point reaches the sea; the eastern is separated by a deep ravine from the height, over which passes the road that leads from Lourinha and the northward to Vimiero. On this mountain were posted the chief part of the infantry, with eight pieces of artillery. General Hill’s brigade was on the right, and Ferguson’s on the left, having one battalion on the heights, separated from them by the mountain. Towards the east and south of the town lay a mill, wholly commanded by the mountain on the west side, and commanding, also, the surrounding ground to the south and east, on which General Fane was posted, with his riflemen, and the 50th regiment, and General Anstruthers’ brigade, with the artillery, which had been ordered to that position during the night.

“About eight o’clock a picket of the enemy’s horse was first seen on the heights, toward Lourinha; and, after pushing forward his scouts, soon appeared in full force, with the evident object of attacking the British.

“Immediately four brigades, from the mountains on the east, moved across the ravine to the heights on the road to Lourinha, with three pieces of cannon. They were formed with their right resting upon these heights, and their left upon a ravine which separates the heights from a range at Maceria. On these heights were the Portuguese troops, and they were supported by General Crawford’s brigade.

“The enemy opened his attack, in strong columns, against the entire body of troops on this height. On the left they advanced, through the fire of the riflemen, close up to the 50th regiment, until they were checked and driven back by that regiment, at the point of the bayonet. The French infantry, in these divisions, was commanded by Laborde, Loison, and Kellerman, and the horse by General Margaron. Their attack was simultaneous, and like that of a man determined to conquer or to perish. Besides the conflict on the heights, the battle raged with equal fury on every part of the field. The possession of the road leading into Vimiero was disputed with persevering resolution, and especially where a strong body had been posted in the church-yard, to prevent the enemy forcing an entrance into the town. Up to this period of the battle the British had received and repulsed the attacks of the enemy, acting altogether on the defensive. But now they were attacked in flank by General Ackland’s brigade, as it advanced to its position on the height to the left, while a brisk cannonade was kept up by the artillery on those heights.

“The brunt of the attack was continued on the brigade of General Fane, but was bravely repulsed at all points. Once, as the French retired in confusion, a regiment of light dragoons pursued them with so little precaution, that they were suddenly set upon by the heavy cavalry of Margaron, and cut to pieces, with their gallant colonel at their head.

“No less desperate was the encounter between Kellerman’s column of reserve and the gallant 43d, in their conflict for the vineyard adjoining the church. The advanced companies were at first driven back, with great slaughter; but, again rallying upon the next ranks, they threw themselves upon the head of a French column in a ravine, and, charging with the bayonet, put them to the rout. At length the vigor of the enemy’s attack ceased. They, pressed on all sides by the British, had lost thirteen cannons and a great number of prisoners; but were still enabled to retire without confusion, owing to the protection of their numerous cavalry. An incident occurred in this battle, so highly characteristic of Highland courage, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. It is very common for the wounded to cheer their more fortunate comrades, as they pass on to the attack. A man named Stewart, the piper of the 71st regiment, was wounded in the thigh, very severely, at an early period of the action, and refused to be removed. He sat upon a bank, playing martial airs, during the remainder of the battle. As a party of his comrades were passing, he addressed them thus: ‘Weel, my brave lads, I can gang na langer wi’ ye a fightin’, but ye shall na want music.’ On his return home, the Highland Society voted him a handsome set of pipes, with a flattering inscription engraved on them.”

The total loss of the French was estimated at three thousand. Soon after the battle, General Kellerman presented himself, with a strong body of cavalry, at the outposts, and demanded an interview with the English general. The result of this interview was the famous convention of Cintra. By it, it was stipulated that Portugal should be delivered up to the British army, and the French should evacuate it, with arms and baggage, but not as prisoners of war; that the French should be transported, by the British, into their own country; that the army should carry with it all its artillery, cavalry, arms, and ammunition, and the soldiers all their private property. It also provided that the Portuguese who had favored the French party should not be punished.

According to the terms of this convention, Junôt, on the 2d of September, yielded the government of the capital. This suspension of military rule was followed by a wild scene of anarchy and confusion. The police disbanded of their own accord, and crime stalked abroad on every side. Lisbon was illuminated with thousands of little lamps, at their departure; and such was the state of the public mind, that Sir John Hope was obliged to make many and severe examples, before he succeeded in restoring order.

On the 13th, the Duke of Abrantes embarked, with his staff; and by the 30th of September only the garrisons of Elvas and Almeida remained in Portugal. This convention was very unpopular in England. The whole voice of the press was against it; and such was the state of feeling, that Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hugh Dalrymple were both recalled, to present themselves before a court of inquiry, instituted for the occasion. After a minute investigation, these generals were declared innocent, but it was judged best to detain them at home.

Having seen Portugal under the control of the English, let us return to the affairs of Spain. Immediately after the battle of Baylen, which induced the retreat of Joseph from Madrid, Ferdinand was again declared king, and the pomp and rejoicings attendant on this event put an end to all business, except that of intrigue. The French were everywhere looked upon by the Spanish as a conquered foe, and they spent their time in the pageant of military triumphs and rejoicings, as though the enemy had already fled. From this dream of fancied security Palafox was at length awakened by the appearance of a French corps, which retook Tudela, and pushed on almost to Saragossa. He appealed to the governing junta for aid and assistance. Much time was lost in intrigue and disputes, but at length the army was organized by appointing La Pena and Llamas to the charge. To supply the place usually occupied by the commander-in-chief, a board of general officers was projected, of which Castanos should be chief; but when some difficulty arose as to who the other members should be, this plan was deferred, with the remark, that “when the enemy was driven across the frontier, Castanos would have leisure to take his seat.” Of the state of the Spanish forces at this time, Napier says, “The idea of a defeat, the possibility of a failure, had never entered their minds. The government, evincing neither apprehension, nor activity, nor foresight, were contented if the people believed the daily falsehoods propagated relative to the enemy; and the people were content to be so deceived. The armies were neglected, even to nakedness; the soldier’s constancy under privations cruelly abused; disunion, cupidity, incapacity, prevailed in the higher orders; patriotic ardor was visibly abating among the lower classes; the rulers were grasping, improvident, and boasting; the enemy powerful, the people insubordinate. Such were the allies whom the British found on their arrival in Spain.” Sir Arthur Wellesley had returned to Ireland, and the chief command was now given to Sir John Moore. This general, with the greatest celerity, marched his troops to the Spanish frontier, by the way of Almeida, having overcome almost insurmountable obstacles, arising from the state of affairs in Spain. Sir David Baird, with a force of ten thousand men, landed at Corunna, and also advanced to the contest; but they soon found that they were to meet an enemy with whom they were little able to cope.

Napoleon, with that energy so often displayed by him, when the greatness of the occasion required its exercise, collected, in an incredibly short space of time, an immense army of two hundred thousand men, most of them veterans who had partaken of the glories of Jena, Austerlitz, and Friedland. These were divided by the emperor into eight parts, called “corps d’armée.” At the head of each of them was placed one of his old and tried generals,—veterans on whom he could rely. The very names of Victor, Bessières, Moncey, Lefebre, Mortier, Ney, St. Cyr, and Junôt, speak volumes for the character of the army.

These troops were excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, by the emperor’s address, as he passed through Paris, promising that he would head them in person, to drive the hideous leopard into the sea. What were the scattered and divided troops of the Spaniards, to contend with such a force? The grand French army reached Vittoria almost without an interruption. Blake was in position at Villarcayo, the Asturians were close at hand, Romana at Bilboa, and the Estremadurans at Burgos. With more valor than discretion, Blake made an attack upon Tornosa. The enemy pretended to retreat. Blake, flushed with his apparent success, pursued them with avidity, when he suddenly came before twenty-five thousand men, under the Duke of Dantzic, and was furiously assailed. Blake, after a gallant defence, was obliged to retreat, in great confusion, upon Bilboa. He rallied, however, and was again in the field in a few days, fought a brave action with Villate, and was this time successful. With the vain-glory of his nation, he next attacked the strong city of Bilboa. Here, Marshal Victor gained a signal success, Blake losing two of his generals, and many of his men. Romana, who had joined Blake, renewed the action, with his veterans. They were made prisoners, but their brave chief escaped to the mountains. Napoleon himself now left Bayonne, and directed his course into Spain. Only one day sufficed for his arrival into Vittoria. At the gates of the city, a large procession, headed by the civil and military chiefs, met him, and wished to escort him to a splendid house prepared for his reception; but they were destined to a disappointment. Napoleon was there, not for pomp or show, but to direct, with his genius, the march of that army which he had raised. Jumping from his horse, he entered the first small inn he observed, and calling for his maps, and a report of the situation of the armies on both sides, proceeded to arrange the plan of his campaign. By daylight the next morning, his forces were in motion. The hastily levied troops of the Condé de Belvidere, himself a youth of only twenty years, were opposed to him. These were routed, with great slaughter,—one whole battalion, composed of the students of Salamanca and Lecon, fell to a man.

The army of the centre, under the command of Castanos, which was composed of fifty thousand men, with forty pieces of cannon, was totally routed at Tudela, by the French, under Lasnes and Ney; and now but one stronghold remained to the Spaniards, between the enemy and Madrid. This was the pass of the Somosierra. Here the Spanish army, under St. Juan, had posted their force. Sixteen pieces of artillery, planted in the neck of the pass, swept the road along the whole ascent, which was exceedingly steep and favorable for the defence. The Spanish troops were disposed in lines, one above another; and when the French came on to the contest, they warmly returned their fire, and stood their ground. As yet, the grand battery had not opened its fire. This was waiting for the approach of the centre, under Napoleon himself. And now Napoleon, seeing that his troops were not advancing, rode slowly into the foot of the pass. The lofty mountain towered above him. Around its top hung a heavy fog, mingled with the curling smoke that was ascending from the mouth of all those cannon, rendering every object indistinct in the distance. Silently he gazed up the mountain. A sudden thought strikes him. His practised eye has discerned, in a moment, what course to pursue. Turning to his brave Polish lancers, he orders them to charge up the causeway, and take the battery. They dashed onward. As they did so, the guns were turned full upon them, and their front ranks were levelled to the earth; but, ere they could reload, the Poles, nothing daunted, sprang over their dying comrades, and before the thick smoke, which enveloped them as a cloud, had dispersed, they rushed, sword in hand, upon the soldiers, and, cutting down the gunners, possessed themselves of the whole Spanish battery. The panic became general. The Spaniards fled, leaving arms, ammunition, and baggage, to the enemy, and the road open to Madrid. Meanwhile, this city was in a state of anarchy seldom equalled. A multitude of peasants had entered the place. The pavements were taken up, the streets barricaded, and the houses pierced. They demanded arms and ammunition. These were supplied them. Then they pretended that sand had been mixed with the powder furnished. The Marquis of Perales, an old and worthy gentleman, was accused of the deed. The mob rushed to his house. They had no regard for age. They seized him by his silvery hair, and, dragging him down the steps, drew him through the streets until life was extinct. For eight days the mob held possession of the city. No man was safe; none dared assume authority, or even offer advice. Murder, and lust, and rapine, and cruelty, stalked fearlessly through the streets. On the morning of the ninth, far away on the hills to the north-west, appeared a large body of cavalry, like a dark cloud overhanging the troubled city. At noon, the resistless emperor sat down before the gates of Madrid, and summoned the city to surrender. Calmness and quiet reigned in the French camp, but Madrid was struggling like a wild beast in the toils. Napoleon had no wish to destroy the capital of his brother’s kingdom, but he was not to be trifled with. At midnight, a second summons was sent. It was answered by an equivocal reply, and responded to by the roar of cannon and the onset of the soldiery. This was an appeal not to be resisted. Madrid was in no state to stand a siege. At noon, two officers, in Spanish uniform, and bearing a flag of truce, were observed approaching the French headquarters. They came to demand a suspension of arms, necessary, they said, to persuade the people to surrender. It was granted, and they returned to the city, with Napoleon’s message. Before six o’clock in the morning, Madrid must surrender, or perish. Dissensions arose, but the voice of prudence prevailed, and the capital yielded. Napoleon was wise; he had no wish to goad a people already incensed to fury. The strictest discipline was maintained, and a soldier of his own guard was shot for having stolen a watch. Shops were reöpened, public amusements recommenced, and all was quiet. In six short weeks every Spanish army was dissipated. From St. Sebastian to the Asturias, from the Asturias to Talavera, from Talavera to the gates of Saragossa, all was submission, and beyond that boundary all was apathy or dread.

An assemblage of the nobles, the clergy, the corporations, and the tribunals, of Madrid, now waited on Napoleon at his headquarters, and presented an address, in which they expressed their desire to have Joseph return among them. Napoleon’s reply was an exposition of what he had done and intended doing for Spain. Could the people but have yielded their prejudices, and submitted to his wise plans, what seas of tears and blood, what degradation and confusion, might have been spared to poor, unhappy Spain!

“I accept,” said he, “the sentiments of the town of Madrid. I regret the misfortunes that have befallen it, and I hold it as a particular good fortune, that I am enabled to spare that city, and save it yet greater misfortunes. I have hastened to take measures to tranquillize all classes of citizens, knowing well that to all people and men uncertainty is intolerable.

“I have preserved the religious orders, but I have restrained the number of monks; no sane person can doubt that they are too numerous. Those who are truly called to this vocation, by the grace of God, will remain in the convents; those who have lightly, or for worldly motives, adopted it, will have their existence secured among the secular ecclesiastics, from the surplus of the convents.

“I have provided for the wants of the most interesting and useful of the clergy, the parish priests.

“I have abolished that tribunal against which Europe and the age alike exclaimed. Priests ought to guide consciences, but they should not exercise any exterior or corporal jurisdiction over men.

“I have taken the satisfaction which was due to myself and to my nation, and the part of vengeance is completed. Ten of the principal criminals bend their heads before her; but for all others there is absolute and entire pardon.

“I have suppressed the rights usurped by the nobles during civil wars, when the kings have been too often obliged to abandon their own rights, to purchase tranquillity and the repose of the people.

“I have suppressed the feudal rights, and every person can now establish inns, mills, ovens, weirs, and fisheries, and give good play to their industry, only observing the laws and customs of the place. The self-love, the riches, and the prosperity, of a small number of men, were more hurtful to your agriculture than the heats of the dog-days.

“As there is but one God, there should be in one estate but one justice; wherefore all the particular jurisdictions have been usurped, and, being contrary to the national rights, I have destroyed them. I have also made known to all persons that which each can have to fear, and that which they may hope for.

“The English armies I will drive from the Peninsula. Saragossa, Valencia, Seville, shall be reduced, either by persuasion or by force of arms.

“There is no obstacle capable of retarding, for any length of time, my will; but that which is above my power is to constitute the Spaniards a nation, under the orders of a king, if they continue to be imbued with divisions, and hatred towards France, such as the English partisans and the enemies of the continent have instilled into them. I cannot establish a nation, a king, and Spanish independence, if that king is not sure of the affection and fidelity of his subjects.

“The Bourbons can never reign again in Europe. The divisions in the royal family were concerted by the English. It was not either King Charles or his favorite, but the Duke of Infantado, the instrument of England, that was upon the point of overturning the throne. The papers recently found in his house prove this. It was the preponderance of England that they wished to establish in Spain. Insensate project! which would have produced a long war without end, and caused torrents of blood to be shed.

“No power influenced by England can exist upon this continent. If any desire it, their desire is folly and sooner or later will ruin them. I shall be obliged to govern Spain; and it will be easy for me to do it, by establishing a viceroy in each province. However, I will not refuse to concede my rights of conquest to the king, and to establish him in Madrid, when the thirty thousand citizens assemble in the churches, and on the holy sacrament take an oath, not with the mouth alone, but with the heart, and without any jesuitical restriction, ‘to be true to the king,—to love and support him.’ Let the priests from the pulpit and in the confessional, the tradesmen in their correspondence and in their discourses, inculcate these sentiments in the people; then I will relinquish my rights of conquest, and I will place the king upon the throne, and I will take a pleasure in showing myself the faithful friend of the Spaniards.

“The present generation may differ in opinions. Too many passions have been excited; but your descendants will bless me, as the regenerator of the nation. They will mark my sojourn among you as memorable days, and from those days they will date the prosperity of Spain. These are my sentiments. Go, consult your fellow-citizens; choose your part, but do it frankly, and exhibit only true colors.”

The ten criminals were the Dukes of Infantado, of Hijah, of Mediniceli, and Ossuna; Marquis Santa Cruz, Counts Fernan, Minez, and Altamira; Prince of Castello Franco, Pedro Cevallos, and the Bishop of St. Ander, were proscribed, body and goods, as traitors to France and Spain.

Napoleon now made dispositions indicating a vast plan of operations. But, vast as his plan of campaign appears, it was not beyond the emperor’s means, for, without taking into consideration his own genius, activity and vigor, there were upon his muster-rolls above three hundred and thirty thousand men and above sixty thousand horse; two hundred pieces of field artillery followed his corps to battle; and as many more remained in reserve. Of this great army, however, only two hundred and fifty thousand men and fifty thousand horses were actually under arms with the different regiments, while above thirty thousand were detached or in garrisons, preserving tranquillity in the rear, and guarding the communications of the active forces. The remainder were in hospitals. Of the whole host, two hundred and thirteen thousand were native Frenchmen, the residue were Poles, Germans and Italians; thirty-five thousand men and five thousand horses were available for fresh enterprise, without taking a single man from the lines of communication.

The fate of the Peninsula hung, at this moment, evidently upon a thread; and the deliverance of that country was due to other causes than the courage, the patriotism, or the constancy, of the Spaniards. The strength and spirit of Spain was broken; the enthusiasm was null, except in a few places, in consequence of the civil wars, and intestinal divisions incited by the monks and British hirelings; and the emperor was, with respect to the Spaniards, perfectly master of operations. He was in the centre of the country; he held the capital, the fortresses, the command of the great lines of communication between the provinces; and on the wide military horizon no cloud interrupted his view, save the city of Saragossa on the one side, and the British army on the other. “Sooner or later,” said the emperor, and with truth, “Saragossa must fall.” The subjugation of Spain seemed inevitable, when, at this instant, the Austrian war broke out, and this master-spirit was suddenly withdrawn. England then put forth all her vast resources, and the genius and vigor of Sir John Moore, aided, most fortunately, by the absence of Napoleon, and the withdrawal of the strength of his army for the subjugation of the Peninsula; and it was delivered from the French, after oceans of blood had been spilt and millions of treasure wasted, to fall into the hands of the not less tyrannical and oppressive English. “But through what changes of fortune, by what unexpected helps, by what unlooked-for events,—under what difficulties, by whose perseverance, and in despite of whose errors,—let posterity judge; for in that judgment,” says Napier, “only will impartiality and justice be found.”

Tidings having reached the emperor that the Austrian army was about to invade France, he recalled a large portion of his army, and appointing his brother Joseph to be his lieutenant-general, he allotted separate provinces to each corps d’armée, and directing the imperial guard to hasten to France, he returned to Valladolid, where he received the addresses of the nobles and deputies of Madrid, and other great towns; and after three days’ delay, he departed himself, with scarcely any escort, but with such astonishing speed as to frustrate the designs which some Spaniards had, in some way, formed against his person.

The general command of the French army in Spain was left with Soult, assisted by Ney. This gallant general, bearing the title of the Duke of Dalmatia, commenced his pursuit of the English army with a vigor that marked his eager desire to finish the campaign in a manner suitable to its brilliant opening. Sir John Moore had arrived in Salamanca by the middle of November, and on the 23d the other divisions of the army had arrived at the stations assigned them. Sir David Baird had already reported himself at Astorga, when Moore received positive information that the French had entered Valladolid in great force. And this place was only three days’ march distant from the British. At a glance, the great mind of Moore comprehended the full difficulty of his critical situation. In the heart of a foreign country, unsupported by the Spanish government, his army wanting the very necessaries of life, he found himself obliged to commence that retreat in winter, over mountains covered with snow, which proved so fatal to the British army, or wait to meet the French troops, flushed with victory, and sustained by an overwhelming force. In vain he appealed to the junta of Salamanca for aid. In vain he endeavored to arouse the spirit of patriotism, which had shone forth so brightly in the first days of the insurrection. Instead of aiding him either to advance or retreat, they endeavored to direct him what course to pursue; and painted, with true Spanish pride and hyperbole, in glowing colors, what their armies had done, and what they could do. His camp was therefore struck, and he retreated through the rocks of Gallicia, closely followed by the pursuing army. Whenever the advance guards of the enemy approached, the British rallied with vigor, and sustained their reputation for bravery; but they displayed a lamentable want of discipline in all other parts of their conduct. The weather was tempestuous; the roads miserable; the commissariat was utterly defective, and the very idea that they were retreating was sufficient to crush the spirits of the soldiery. At Bembibre, although the English well knew that the French were close behind, they broke into the immense wine-vaults of that city. All effort by their officers to control them was utterly useless. Hundreds became so inebriated as to be unable to proceed, and Sir John Moore was obliged to proceed without them. Scarcely had the reserve marched out of the village, when the French cavalry appeared. In a moment the road was filled with the miserable stragglers, who came crowding after the troops, some with shrieks of distress and wild gestures, others with brutal exclamations; while many, overcome with fear, threw away their arms, and those who preserved them were too stupidly intoxicated to fire, and kept reeling to and fro, alike insensible to their danger and disgrace. The enemy’s horsemen, perceiving this, bore at a gallop through the disorderly mob, cutting to the right and left as they passed, and riding so close to the columns that the infantry were forced to halt in order to protect them. At Villa Franca even greater excesses were committed; the magazines were plundered, the bakers driven away from the ovens, the wine-stores forced, the doors of the houses were broken, and the scandalous insubordination of the soldiers was, indeed, a disgrace to the army. Moore endeavored to arrest this disorder, and caused one man, taken in the act of plundering a magazine, to be hanged. He also endeavored to send despatches to Sir David Baird, directing him to Corunna, instead of Vigo; but his messenger became drunk and lost his despatches, and this act cost the lives of more than four hundred men, besides a vast amount of suffering to the rest of the army. An unusual number of women and children had been allowed to accompany the army, and their sufferings were, indeed, dreadful to witness. Clark, in his history of the war, gives a heart-rending account of the horrors of this retreat. “The mountains were now covered with snow; there was neither provision to sustain nature nor shelter from the rain and snow, nor fuel for fire to keep the vital heat from total extinction, nor place where the weary and footsore could rest for a single hour in safety. The soldiers, barefooted, harassed and weakened by their excesses, were dropping to the rear by hundreds; while broken carts, dead animals, and the piteous appearance of women, with children, struggling or falling exhausted in the snow, completed the dreadful picture. It was still attempted to carry forward some of the sick and wounded;—the beasts that drew them failed at every step, and they were left to perish amid the snows.” “I looked around,” says an officer, “when we had hardly gained the highest point of those slippery precipices, and saw the rear of the army winding along the narrow road. I saw their way marked by the wretched people, who lay on all sides, expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold, their bodies reddening in spots the white surface of the ground. A Portuguese bullock-driver, who had served the English from the first day of their arrival, was seen on his knees amid the snow, dying, in the attitude and act of prayer. He had, at least, the consolations of religion, in his dying hour. But the English soldiers gave utterance to far different feelings, in their last moments. Shame and anger mingled with their groans and imprecations on the Spaniards, who had, as they said, betrayed them. Mothers found their babes sometimes frozen in their arms, and helpless infants were seen seeking for nourishment from the empty breasts of their dead mothers. One woman was taken in labor upon the mountain. She lay down at the turning of an angle, rather more sheltered than the rest of the way from the icy sleet which drifted along; there she was found dead, and two babes which she had brought forth struggling in the snow. A blanket was thrown over her, to hide her from sight,—the only burial that could be afforded; and the infants were given in charge to a woman who came up in one of the carts, little likely, as it was, that they could survive such a journey.”

Soult hung close on the rear of this unfortunate army, and pursued them until they reached Corunna, on the 12th of January. As the morning dawned, the weary and unfortunate general, saddened by the dark scenes through which he had passed, sensible that the soldiers were murmuring at their retreat, unsupported by his Spanish allies, and well aware that rumor and envy and misunderstanding would be busy with his name in his own native land, appeared on the heights that overhung the town. With eager and anxious gaze, he turned to the harbor, hoping to perceive there his fleet, which he had ordered to sail from Vigo. But the same moody fortune which had followed him during his whole career pursued him here. The wintry sun looked down upon the foaming ocean, and only the vast expanse of water met his view. The fleet, detained by contrary winds, was nowhere visible; and once more he was obliged to halt with his forces, and take up quarters. The army was posted on a low ridge, and waited for the French to come up. The sadness of the scene was by no means passed. Here, stored in Corunna, was a large quantity of ammunition, sent over from England, and for the want of which both the Spanish and English forces had suffered, and which Spanish idleness and improvidence had suffered to remain here for months, unappropriated. This must now be destroyed, or fall into the possession of the enemy. Three miles from the town were piled four thousand barrels of powder on a hill, and a smaller quantity at some distance from it. On the morning of the 13th, the inferior magazine blew up, with a terrible noise, and shook the houses in the town; but when the train reached the great store, there ensued a crash like the bursting forth of a volcano;—the earth trembled for miles, the rocks were torn from their bases, and the agitated waters rolled the vessels, as in a storm; a vast column of smoke and dust, shooting out fiery sparks from its sides, arose perpendicularly and slowly to a great height, and then a shower of stones and fragments of all kinds, bursting out of it with a roaring sound, killed many persons who remained too near the spot. Stillness, slightly interrupted by the lashing of the waves on the shore, succeeded, and then the business of the day went on. The next scene was a sad one. All the horses of the army were collected together, and, as it was impossible to embark them in face of the enemy, they were ordered to be shot. These poor animals would otherwise have been distributed among the French cavalry, or used as draft-horses.

On the 14th, the transports from Vigo arrived. The dismounted cavalry, the sick and wounded, the best horses, belonging to the officers, which had been saved, and fifty-two pieces of artillery, were embarked during the night, only retaining twelve guns on shore, ready for action. And now the closing scene of this sad drama was rapidly approaching, giving a melancholy but graceful termination to the campaign.

On the night of the 15th, everything was shipped that was destined to be removed, excepting the fighting men. These were intending to embark, as soon as the darkness should permit them to move without being perceived, on the night of the 16th; but in the afternoon the French troops drew up, and offered battle. This the English general would not refuse, and the action soon became general. The battle was advancing, with varied fortune, when Sir John Moore, who was earnestly watching the result of the battle in the village of Elvina, received his death-wound. A spent cannon-ball struck him on his breast. The shock threw him from his horse, with violence; but he rose again, in a sitting posture, his countenance unchanged, and his steadfast eye still fixed on the regiments before him, and betraying no signs of pain. In a few moments, when satisfied that his troops were gaining ground, his countenance brightened, and he suffered himself to be carried to the rear. Then was seen the dreadful nature of his hurt. The shoulder was shattered to pieces; the arm was hanging by a piece of skin; the ribs over the heart were broken and bared of flesh, and the muscles of the breast torn into long strips, which were interlaced by their recoil from the dragging shot. As the soldiers placed him in a blanket, his sword got entangled, and the hilt entered the wound. Captain Hardinge, a staff officer, who was near, attempted to take it off; but the dying man stopped him, saying, “It is as well as it is; I had rather it should go out of the field with me.” And in that manner, so becoming to a soldier, he was borne from the fight by his devoted men, who went up the hill weeping as they went. The blood flowed fast, and the torture of his wound was great; yet, such was the unshaken firmness of his mind, that those about him judged, from the resolution of his countenance, that his hurt was not mortal, and said so to him. He looked steadfastly at the wound for a few moments, and then said, “No,—I feel that to be impossible.” Several times he caused his attendants to turn around, that he might behold the field of battle; and, when the firing indicated the advance of the British, he discovered his satisfaction, and permitted his bearers to proceed. Being brought to his lodgings, the surgeon examined his wound, but there was no hope. The pain increased, and he spoke with great difficulty. Addressing an old friend, he said, “You know that I always wished to die this way.” Again he asked if the enemy were defeated; and being told that they were, observed, “It is a great satisfaction to me that we have beaten the French.” Once, when he spoke of his mother, he became agitated. It was the only time. He inquired after his friends and officers who had survived the battle, and did not even now forget to recommend those whose merit entitled them to promotion. His strength failed fast; and life was almost extinct, when he exclaimed, as if in that dying hour the veil of the future had been lifted, and he had seen the baseness of his posthumous calumniators, “I hope the people of England will be satisfied; I hope my country will do me justice.” In a few minutes afterwards he died, and his corpse, wrapped in a military cloak, was interred by the officers of his staff, in the citadel of Corunna. The guns of the enemy paid his funeral honors, and the valiant Duke of Dalmatia, with a characteristic nobleness, raised a monument to his memory. The following is so beautiful and touching a description of his burial, that we cannot refrain from quoting it, even though it may be familiar to most of our readers. It was written by the Rev. Charles Wolfe, of Dublin.