The Girondists, enraged at the increasing power of the populace in Paris, and the unbridled acts of violence committed by the mob, entertained the project of converting France into a republican union like North America, and by this means, destroying the supremacy of the capital. The Mountain and the Jacobins, who saw that this scheme would weaken the revolutionary power of France, and endanger the future of the democratic republic, commenced a war of life and death with the Girondists (also called Brissotins) upon this point. They reproached them with weakening the power of the people, and destroying the republic at a moment when France was threatened with enemies both within and without; and when all these attacks were ignominiously repulsed by the victorious eloquence of the Girondists, the savage Marat, in his ‘Friend of the People,’ called upon the populace to rise against the moderate and lukewarm, and thus gave occasion to daily riots and tumults, which disturbed the capital and endangered life and property.The National Convention acquired greater unanimity by the exclusion of the Girondists and the moderates; so that, from this time, it was enabled to develop a frightful power and activity. For the purpose of better superintending its multitudinous affairs, it resolved itself into committees, of which the committee of public safety and that of public security acquired a frightful celebrity by the persecution of every one opposed to the new order of things. A revolutionary tribunal, consisting of twelve jurymen and five judges, to which that man of blood, Fouquier Tinville, occupied the office of public accuser, seconded the activity of these committees by a cruel and summary administration of justice. At the head of the committee of public safety stood three men, whose names became the terror and horror of all just men; the envious and malignant Robespierre, the bloodthirsty Couthon, and the frantic for republican liberty and equality,St.Just. They pursued their bloody object without regard to human life; every thing that ventured to oppose their stormy course was unpityingly hurled down. Thus originated the terrible period of the years ‘93 and ‘94, which displayed itself in three different directions—within, by a cruel persecution of all citizens who were known as aristocrats or favorers of royality, and by a bloody suppression of insurrections in the south and west; without, by a vigorous defensive war against innumerable enemies.The former minister, Malasherbes, the members of the Constituent Assembly, Bailli, etc. all who belonged to the old monarchy, and who had not saved themselves by flight, died by the guillotine. Among them was the severely-tried queen, Marie Antoinette, who displayed, during her trial and at her execution, a firmness and strength of soul that was worthy of her education and her birth. Her son died beneath the cruel treatment of a Jacobin; her daughter (the duchess of Angoulême) carried a gloomy spirit and an embittered heart with her to the grave. LouisXVI’spious sister, Elizabeth, also died on the scaffold; the head of the profligate duke of Orleans, whom even the favor of Danton could not preserve from the envy of Robespierre, had fallen before her own.The bloody rule of the Mountain party displayed itself in its most frightful excess in the suppression of the revolt against the reign of terror. When the inhabitants of Normandy and Bretagne rose in support of the excluded Girondists, the committee of public safety ordered the district between the Seine, the Loire, and the extreme sea-coast, to be visited with blood and slaughter by the terrible Carrier. This monster ordered, at Nantes, his victims to be drowned by hundreds in the Loire by means of ships with movable bottoms (noyades.) The proceedings of the Jacobins in the cities of the south, Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, were still more barbarous. In the first of these towns Chalier, who had formerly been a priest, and now was president of the Jacobin club, excited the people by scandalous placards to plunder and destroy the ‘aristocrats.’ Irritated at this audacity, the respectable and wealthy citizens of Lyons, who were thus menaced in their lives and property, procured the execution of the demagogue, July 16th, 1793. This deed filled the Parisian terrorists with fury. A republican army appeared before the walls of the town, which, after an obstinate contest, was taken and fearfully punished. Fréron a companion of Marat, Fouché, Couthon, and others, caused the inhabitants to be shot down in crowds, because the guillotine was too tedious in its operations; whole streets were either pulled down or blown into the air with gunpowder. The goods of the rich were divided among the populace; Lyons was to be annihilated, reduced to a nameless common. The republicans raged in a similar way in Marseilles and Toulon. The royalists of Toulon had called upon the English for assistance, and surrendered to them their town and harbor. Confident in this assistance, and in the strength of their walls, the citizens of Toulon bade defiance to their republican enemies. But the army of sans-culottes, in which the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, exhibited the first proofs of his military talents, overcame all obstacles. Toulon was stormed. The English, unable to maintain the town, set fire to the fleet, and left the unfortunate inhabitants to the frightful vengeance of the Convention. Here also the barbarous Frèron ordered all the wealthy citzens to be shot, and their property to be divided among the sans-culottes. The respectable inhabitants fled, and abandoned the city to the mob and the galley-slaves. Tallien behaved in a similar manner in Bourdeaux; and in the north of France, Lebon marched from place to place with a guillotine.But the fate of La Vendée was the most frightful. This singular country, situated in the west of France, was covered with woods, hedges, and thickets, and intersected by ditches. Here dwelt a contented people, in rural quietude, and in the simplicity of the olden time. The peasants and tenants were attached to their landlords; they loved the king; and clung with reverence to their clergy and their church usages, which had been dear and sacred to them from their youth. When the National Assembly slaughtered or expelled their unsworn priests, when the blood of their king was poured out on the guillotine, when the children of the peasants were called away by a general summons, to the army—then the enraged people roused themselves to resistance and civil conflict. Under brave leaders, of undistinguished birth, as Charette, Stofflet, Cathelineau, who were joined by a few nobles, Laroche-Jaquelein, D’Elbée, etc., they at first drove back the republican army, conquered Saumur, and threatened Nantes. Upon this the Convention despatched a revolutionary army to La Vendée, under the command of Westermann and the frantic Jacobins, Ronsin and Rossignol. These fell upon the inhabitants like wild beasts, set fire to towns, villages, farms, and woods, attempted to overcome the resistance of the ‘royalists’ by terror and outrage. But the courage of the Vendéan peasants remained unsubdued. It was not until general Kleber marched against La Vendée with the brave troops who had returned to their homes after the surrender of Mayence, that this unfortunate people gradually succumbed to the attacks of their enemies, after the land had become a desert, and thousands of the inhabitants had saturated the soil with their blood. La Vendée, however, was only restored to tranquillity when Hoche, who was equally renowned for his courage and philanthropy, assumed the command of the army, offered peace to those who were weary of the contest, and reduced the refractory to submission. Stofflet and Charette were made prisoners of war, and shot.The rage and cruelty of the Jacobins at length excited the disgust of the chiefs of the Cordeliers, Danton and Camille Desmoulins. The former, who was rather a voluptuary than a tyrant, and who was capable of kindly feelings, had grown weary of slaughter, and had retired into the country for a few months with a young wife, to enjoy the wealth and happiness that the revolution had brought him; but Camille Desmoulins, in his much read paper, ‘The Old Cordelier,’ applied the passages where the Roman historian, Tacitus, describes the tyranny and cruelty of Tiberius, so appropriately to his own times, that the application to the three chiefs of the committee of safety and their laws against the suspected was not to be mistaken. This enraged the Jacobins; and when, about this time, several friends and adherents of Danton (Fabre d’Eglantine, Chabot, etc.) were guilty of deceit and corruption in connection with the abolition of the East India Company, and others gave offense by their sacrilegious proceedings, the committee of safety made use of the opportunity to destroy the whole party of Danton. For since the Convention had altered the calendar and the names of the months, had made the year commence on the22dof September, had abolished the observance of Sunday and the festivals, and introduced in their place the decades and sans-culotte feasts, many Dantonists, like Hebert, Chaumette, Momoro, Cloots, and others, had occasioned great scandal by their animosity to priests and Christianity. They desecrated and plundered the churches, ridiculed the mass, vestments and the church utensils, which they carried through the streets in blasphemous processions, raged with the spirit of Vandals against all the monuments of Christianity, and at length carried a resolution through the Convention that the worship of Reason should be introduced in place of the Catholic service of God. A solemn festival, in which Momoro’s pretty wife personated the Goddess of Reason in the church of Nôtre Dame, marked the commencement of this new religion. Robespierre, who plumed himself upon his reputation for virtue, because he was not a participator in the excesses or avarice of Danton and his associates, took offense at these proceedings. He determined to destroy their originators, and in their fall to involve the destruction of Desmoulins and Danton, before whose powerful natures his own spirit, which was filled with envy and ambition, stood abashed. Scarcely, therefore, had Danton resumed his seat in the Convention, beforeSt.Just began the violent struggle by a remarkable proposal, in which he divided the enemies of the republic into three classes: the corrupt, the ultra-revolutionary, and the moderates, and insisted upon their punishment. This proposal resulted in nineteen of the ultra-revolutionaries, and among them Cloots, Momoro, Ronsin, and several members of the Common Council, being led to the guillotine on the 19th of March, 1794. On the 31st of April, the corrupt were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sechelles, etc., were maliciously distinguished as their partisans and involved in their fate. But Danton and Desmoulins, supported by a raging mob that were devoted to them, demanded with vehemence that their accusers should be confronted with them. For three days, Danton’s voice of thunder and the tumult among the populace rendered his condemnation impossible. For the first time, the bloody men of the Revolutionary Tribunal became confused. The Convention, at length, by a law of its own, gave the Tribunal the power of condemning the accused who were endeavoring to subvert the existing order of things by an insurrection, without further hearing; upon which the blood-stained heroes of the 10th of August and the days of September, who during their trial had shown that a lofty spirit might dwell even in the bosom of criminals, were led to the guillotine and beheaded, with a crowd of inferior Hebertists. They died with courage and resolution.Since the fall of Danton, the committee of safety had ruled with well-nigh unlimited sway, and by repeated executions and arrests had brought the reign of terror to its highest point. But its chiefs had lost the confidence of the people and of the Convention. The friends of Danton were on the watch for the favorable moment of attack, and the number of their enemies was increased, when Robespierre, to put an end to the blasphemous proceedings of the adherents of the worship of Reason, had a resolution passed by the Convention in May, ‘That the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul were truths:’ and rendered himself at once hateful and ridiculous by his pride at the new festival in honor of the Supreme Being in the Tuileries, at which he officiated as high priest. Among his opponents was Tallien, who at a former period had been guilty of excesses in Bourdeaux, but who had been brought to adopt different principles by the fascinating Fontenay Cabarrus. With him were joined Frèron, Fouché, Vadier, the polished rhetorician Barrère, and others. On the 9th Thermidor, a battle for life or death commenced in the Convention. Robespierre and his adherents were not allowed to speak; their voices were drowned in the cries of their enemies, who carried through a stormy meeting the resolution, ‘That the three chiefs of the committee of safety, Robespierre,St.Just, Couthon, and their confederate, Henriot, should be denounced, and conveyed as prisoners to the Luxembourg palace.’ They were liberated by the mob on their way; whereupon the drunken Henriot threatened the Convention with the National Guard, whilst the others betook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville. But the National Assembly was beforehand with them by a hasty resolution. A loudly proclaimed sentence of outlawry suddenly dispersed Henriot’s army, whilst the citizens who were opposed to the Jacobins arranged themselves around the Convention. The accused were again secured in the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot crept into a sewer, whence he was dragged forth by hooks. Robespierre attempted to destroy himself by a pistol-shot, but only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw, and was first conveyed, horribly disfigured, amidst the curses and execrations of the people, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and then guillotined, with twenty-one of his adherents. On the two following days, seventy-two Jacobins shared the fate of their leaders.Robespierre’s overthrow by the ‘Thermidorians’ was the commencement of a return to moderation and order. The assemblies of the people were gradually limited, the power of the Common Council diminished, and the lower classes deprived of their weapons. Frèron, converted from a republican bloodhound into an aristocrat, assembled the young men, who from their clothing were called the ‘gilded youth,’ around him. These, with the heavy stick they usually carried about them, attacked the Jacobins in the streets and in their clubs at every opportunity, and opposed the song of the ‘Awakening of the People’ to the Marseillaise. At length, the club was shut up and the cloister of the Jacobins pulled down. The Convention strengthened itself by the recall of the expelled members and of such Girondists as were still left, and ordered the worst of the Terrorists, Lebon, Carrier, Fouquier, Tinville, etc., to be executed. But when four of the most active members of the committee of safety, (Barrère, Vadier, Collot d’Herbois, and Billaud Varennes) were denounced, the Jacobins collected the last remains of their strength, and drove the people, who were suffering from a scarcity and want of money, to a frightful insurrection. Crowds of grisly wretches surrounded the house of assembly, and demanded, with threatening cries, the liberation of the patriots, bread, and the constitution of 1793. Pichegru, who was just at this moment in Paris, came to the assistance of the distressed convention with soldiers and citizens, and dispersed the crowd. The still more formidable insurrection of the 1st Prairial, 1795, in which the mob surrounded the convention both within and without from seven o’clock in the morning till two at night, for the purpose of enforcing a return to the reign of terror, was also suppressed by the courageous president, Boissy d’Anglas. From this time, the power of the Terrorists was no more. Many Jacobins died by their own hands; others were beheaded, imprisoned, or transported. By so much the stronger became the party of the royalists, who wished to have a king again; and when the new government was shortly after determined upon, by which the executive powder was to be delivered to the Directory of five persons, the legislative power to a council of Ancients and a council of Five Hundred, the republican members of the Convention feared that in the new election they might be thrust aside by the royalists. They therefore made additions to the original charter of the constitution, wherein it was declared that two-thirds of the two legislative councils must be chosen from members of the Convention. The royalists raised objections to this and some other limitations of the freedom of election; and when these were unattended with success, they occasioned the insurrection of the Sections. Hereupon, the Convention made over to the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, the suppression of the insurgent royalists, who were joined by all the enemies of the republic and of the revolution. The victory of the 13th Vendemiaire, (October 5, 1795,) which was fought in the streets of Paris, gave the supremacy to the republicans of the Convention, and the command of the Italian army to Napoleon, who was then twenty-six years of age, and who, a short time before, had married Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnois.The French army in Savoy and on the frontiers of Italy was in a melancholy condition. The soldiers were in want of every thing. At this crisis, Napoleon appeared as their commander-in-chief, and in a short time contrived so to inspirit the desponding troops and attach them to his person, that under his guidance they cheerfully encountered the greatest dangers. Where the love of glory and the sentiment of honor were not sufficient, there the treasures of wealthy Italy served as a stimulous to valor. In April 1796, Napoleon defeated the octogenarian Austrian general, Beaulieu, at Nilesimo and Montenotte, separated, by this victory, the Austrians from the Sardinians, and so terrified the king, Victor Amadeus, that he consented to a disadvantageous peace, by which he surrendered Savoy and Nice to the French, gave up six fortresses to the general, and submitted to the oppressive condition of allowing the French army to march through his land at any time.The course of Napoleon’s victories in Upper Italy was equally rapid. After the memorable passage of the bridge of Lodi, he marched into Austrian Milan, subjected the Lombard towns, and so terrified the smaller princes by the success of his arms, that they were only too happy to make peace with the victor at any price. Napoleon extorted large sums of money, and valuable pictures, treasures of art and manuscripts, from the dukes of Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, etc.Wurmser now took the place of the old Beaulieu. But he also was defeated at Castiglione, and afterwards besieged in Mantua. The army under Alvinzi that was sent to his relief sustained three defeats (at Arcola, Rivoli, La Favorita), by which the whole Austrian force in Italy was destroyed, dispersed, or captured. This compelled the gallant Wurmser to deliver up Mantua to the glorious victor. Bonaparte, respecting the courage of his enemy, permitted a free retreat to the gray-headed marshal, his staff, and a part of the brave garrison. Pope PiusVI, terrified at these rapid successes, hastened to purchase the peace of Tolentino by cessions of territory, sums of money, and works of art. Archduke Charles now assumed the command of the Austrian army in Italy. But he also was compelled to a disastrous retreat, and was pursued by Bonaparte as far as Klagenfurt, with the view of falling upon Vienna. The emperor Francis, anxious for the fate of his capital, allowed himself to be persuaded by female influence to conclude the disadvantageous preliminary peace of Leoben, at the very moment when, by the non-arrival of the expected reinforcements, and the threatening movements of the Tyrolese, Styrians, and Carinthians, the position of the French army was becoming critical. About the time this treaty of peace was concluded, a popular insurrection arose in the rear of the French army, in the territory of the republic of Venice, in consequence of which many Frenchmen were murdered in Verona and its neighborhood, and even the sick and wounded in the hospitals were not spared. This was taken advantage of by Napoleon to destroy the Venetian republic.The French marched into Venice, carried off the ships and the stores of the arsenal, robbed the churches, galleries, and libraries of their choicest ornaments and most valued treasures, and kept possession of the city till the negotiations with Austria were so far advanced, that the peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797), by which Upper Italy fell into the hands of France under the name of the Cisalpine Republic, was concluded. Austria, who by this peace also surrendered Belgium to the French republic, and consented to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine with Mayence, received the territory of Venice, together with Dalmatio, as a recompense for this loss. The princes, prelates, the nobles, who suffered by this abandonment of the farther Rhineland, were to be indemnified on the right bank of the river, and this as well as all other points relating to Germany, were to be settled at the Congress at Rastadt. Napoleon opened this congress himself, and then returned to Paris, where he was received with acclamation.The expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and Syria, produced a fresh coalition of the three great European powers, Russia, England, and Austria, against France. Russia had been governed since the year 1796 by Paul, the eldest son of Catherine, a prince with a mind somewhat deranged, who cherished the bitterest hatred against the Revolution; and who, as a great admirer of the Order of Malta, to the Grand Mastership of which he had himself appointed, saw in the capture of that island by Napoleon, cause for war. England feared danger to her foreign possessions from the Egyptian expedition, and scattered money with a liberal hand to raise up fresh enemies against France. Austria was at variance with the directoral government, because the house of the French ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, had been broken open, and the tricolor flag torn down and burnt, without the Austrian government having afforded the required satisfaction. War was waged, at the same time, in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands.After his disembarkation at Alexandria, the whole of the French fleet at Aboukir, owing to the carelessness of the admiral, was defeated and captured by the English naval hero, Nelson; and Napoleon was in consequence obliged to make arrangements for a longer stay. In July, he marched from Alexandria through the Egyptian desert to Cairo. The distress of the army, unprovided with water or sufficient necessaries, in the burning heat, was very great. In the battle of the Pyramids, July 21st 1798, ‘from the tops of which 4,000 years looked down upon the combatants,’ the Mamalukes, who at that time swayed Egypt under the Turkish government, were defeated; whereupon Bonaparte marched into Cairo, and established a new government, police, and taxation, upon the European pattern, and ordered the curiosities of this wonderful land to be examined, and its monuments and antiquities to be collected and described, by the artists and men of learning who accompanied his army.A dreadful insurrection broke out in Cairo, October 21st 1798, which could only be suppressed with difficulty by the superiority of European tactics, after nearly 6,000 Mahommedans had been slain. Napoleon made use of the victory to extort money, and then marched with his Turkish troops against Syria. After the conquest of Jaffa, where he ordered 2,000 Arnauts, whom he had a second time taken prisoners, to be shot as perjured, he proceeded to the siege of Jean d’Acre. It was there that the fortune of Napoleon met with its first rebuff. The Turks, provided with artillery by the English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, repelled the assaults of the enemy, despite their wonderful valor. At the same time, a Turkish army threatened the European soldiers in the interior of the country. The former was, indeed, defeated and dispersed by Junot at Nazareth, and at Mount Tabor by Kleber; nevertheless, upon the plague breaking out among his troops, Napoleon found himself compelled to give up Acre and to commence a retreat. The horses were laden with the sick, the soldiers suffered the most dreadful privations; the dangers and the distresses of the war were frightful. Napoleon shared all the fatigues with the meanest of his army; he is even said to have visited a hospital filled with those sick of the plague. He again reached Cairo in June, and in the following month, defeated a Turkish army of three times his number, at Aboukir. A short time after this, he learned the disasters of the French in Italy from some newspapers; and the intelligence produced such an effect upon him, that he determined upon returning to France. He quietly made his preparations for departure with the greatest expedition. After transferring the command of the Egyptian army to Kleber, Napoleon sailed from the harbor of Alexandria with two frigates and a few small transports, and about 500 followers, and, guided by the star of his fortunes, reached the coast of France undiscovered by the English, and landed at Frejus amidst the acclamations of the people.Upon his arrival in Paris, Napoleon embraced the resolution of overthrowing the directoral government which had lost all authority and consideration. With this purpose, he made himself secure of the officers and troops that were in Paris, and consulted with Sieyes, one of the directors, and his own brother, Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected president of the Five Hundred, on the means of carrying his plan into execution. Lucien transferred the sittings of the council toSt.Cloud, for the purpose of bringing the members within the power of the soldiers. There, Napoleon first attempted to win over the members to his plans by persuasion; when he found that he could not succeed in this, but rather, that he was overwhelmed with threats and reproaches, he commanded his grenadiers to clear the room with leveled bayonets. The republicans, who presented a bold front to the danger, were at length compelled to yield to superior force, and sought their safety through the doors and windows. This done a commission of fifty persons was appointed to draw up a fresh constitution, November 9th 1799. Thus ended the violent procedure of the 18th Brumaire, in consequence of which Napoleon Bonaparte took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands.According to the consular constitution, the power of the state was divided in the following manner:—1. To the Senate, which consisted of eighty members, belonged the privilege of selecting from the list of names sent in by the departments the members of the legislative power, and the chief officials and judges. 2. The legislative power was divided into the Tribunate, which numbered one hundred members, and whose office it was to examine and debate upon the proposals of the government; and the legislative bodies, who had only to receive or reject these proposals unconditionally. 3. The government consisted of three Consuls, who were elected for ten years. Of these Consuls, the first, Bonaparte, exercised the powers of government, properly so called; whilst the second and third Consuls (Cambacéres and Lebrun) were merely placed at his side as advisers. Bonaparte, as first Consul, surrounded himself with a state council and a ministry, for which he selected the most talented and experienced men. Talleyrand, the dexterous diplomatist, was minister of the exterior; the astute Fouché superintended the police; Berthier held the staff of general.Bonaparte was at first engaged in reconciling the old with the new, in combining the results of the Revolution with the forms and manners of the monarchical period. But he very soon made known his preference for the ancient system, by the restoration of all the former arrangements and customs.The reductions in the emigrant lists brought back many royalists to their homes, and the favor shown to them made them courteous and pliant in the service of the new court. Madame de Stael (daughter of Necker) collected, as in the old time, a circle of accomplished and illustrious men in her saloon. The vanity of the French favored Napoleon’s efforts; when he instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor, republicans and royalists grasped eagerly at the new plaything of human weakness.One of the first cares of the Consul was the restoration of Christian worship in the French churches. After he had abolished the republican festivals (10th August, 21st January), and introduced the observance of the Sabbath, negotiations were opened with the Roman court, which at length led to the conclusion of the Concordat. No less attention did Napoleon devote to the affairs of education; but he particularly patronized the establishments for practical science, as the Polytechnic School in Paris.Repeated conspiracies against the life of the First Consul, sometimes undertaken by the republicans and sometimes by the royalists, were always followed by fresh restrictions and a more rigorous system of espionage. The most desperate undertaking of this kind was the attempt, by means of the so-called infernal machine,—a cask filled with gunpowder, bullets, and inflammable materials, to blow up Bonaparte on his way to the opera-house,—an attempt which he escaped by the rapidity with which his coachman was driving, but which destroyed many houses and killed several people. In consequence of this atrocious deed, a great number of Jacobins were condemned to deportation, though it afterwards turned out that the plot was undertaken by the royalists. Still more dangerous and extensive were the conspiracies against Napoleon, when the office of Consul was conferred upon him for life by the voice of the people, with the privilege of naming his successor, (August 2, 1802). By this means, the Bourbons were cut off from the last hopes of a return, and the emigrants accordingly left no means untried of destroying him. The desperate George Cadoudal, and Pichegru, who were residing in England, allowed themselves to be employed as tools. They conveyed themselves secretly to France, but were discovered and arrested, with about forty confederates. Before their fate was decided, Napoleon allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of a revolting crime. It had been represented to him that the duke d’Enghien, the chivalrous grandson of the prince of Condé, was the soul of all the royalist conspiracies. Accordingly, this young nobleman, who was residing at Ettenheim, a small town of Baden, was seized at Napoleon’s command, by a troop of armed men, conducted with the greatest haste through Strasburg to Paris, condemned to death by a hurried court-martial, and, despite a magnanimous defense, shot in the trenches of Vincennes.The fate of the conspirators was shortly after decided upon. Pichegru had already died a violent death in prison, whether by his own hand or that of another is uncertain. George Cadoudal, with eleven confederates, ascended the guillotine. General Moreau, who was implicated, retired into voluntary banishment in America.NAPOLEON, EMPEROR.The royalist conspiracies were made use of by Bonaparte to establish an hereditary monarchy. At the instigation of his adherents, the making over the hereditary dignity of emperor to Napoleon was proposed to the Tribunat, sanctioned by the Senate, and confirmed by the whole people by the subscription of their names. Whilst the minds of men were still painfully excited by the late bloody executions, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French, and at the end of the year, solemnly anointed by the pope in the church of Nôtre Dame. The crown, however, he placed on his own head, as well as on that of his wife, Josephine, who knelt before him. This magnificent coronation appeared to be the conclusion of the Revolution, since the whole ancient system, for the extinction of which thousands of human lives had been sacrificed, gradually returned. The new emperor surrounded his throne with a brilliant court, in which the former titles, orders, and gradations of rank were revived under different names. He himself certainly retained his old military simplicity, but the members of his family were made princes and princesses; his generals became marshals; the devoted servants and promoters of his plans were connected with the throne as the great officers of the crown, or as senators with large incomes. The establishment of a new feudal nobility, with the old titles of princes, dukes, counts, barons, completed the splendid edifice of a magnificent imperial court.The great ends attained by the Revolution—equality before the law, the peasants’ right of property in the soil and other possessions, remained untouched. Industry made great progress, civil arts and trades received a vast impulse; and an unaccustomed prosperity made itself everywhere visible. Magnificent roads, like those over the Alps, canals, bridges, and improvements of all kinds, are, to the present day, eloquent memorials of the restless activity of this remarkable man. Splendid palaces, majestic bridges, and noble streets, arose in Paris, every thing great or magnificent that art had produced was united in the Louvre; the capital of France glittered with a splendor that had never before been witnessed. The university was arranged upon a most magnificent footing, and appointed the supreme court of supervision and control over the whole system of schools and education.Whilst the attention of all Europe was directed to the western coast of France, where Napoleon was fitting out ships of every kind with the greatest diligence, and assembling a vast camp at Boulogne, with the purpose, as was believed, of effecting a landing on the English coast, he was making preparations, in all silence, for the memorable campaign of 1805. Never were Napoleon’s talents for command or his military genius displayed in a more brilliant light than in the plan of this campaign. Assured of the assistance of most of the princes of southern Germany, Bonaparte crossed the Rhine in the autumn with seven divisions, commanded by his most experienced marshals, Ney, Lannes, Marmont, Soult, Murat, etc, and marched into Swabia; whilst Bernadotte, disregarding Prussia’s neutrality, pressed forward through the Brandenburg Margravate of Anspach-Bayreuth upon the Isar. This violation of his neutral position irritated the king, Frederick WilliamIII, to such a degree, that he entered into closer relationship with the allies, and assumed a threatening aspect, without, however, actually declaring war.After Ney’s successful engagement at Elchingen, the Austrian general, Mack, was shut up in Ulm, and cut off from the main army. Helpless, and despairing of deliverance, the incompetent commander commenced negotiations with the French, which terminated in the disgraceful capitulation of Ulm. By this arrangement, 33,000 Austrians, including thirteen generals, became prisoners of war. Covered with shame, the once-brave warriors marched before Napoleon, laid down their arms before the victor, placed forty banners at his feet, and delivered up sixty cannon with their horses. When too late, it was seen in Vienna that Mack was not equal to his lofty position, and he was deprived of his honor, his dignities, and the advantages of his office, by a court-martial. Napoleon’s joy at this unexampled good fortune was, however, diminished by the cotemporaneous maritime victory of the English at Trafalgar, which annihilated the whole French fleet, but which also cost the life of the great naval hero, Nelson.The war-party had gained the upper hand in Prussia since the violation of the neutral territory of Bernadotte. The king renewed the bond of perpetual friendship with the sensitive emperor Alexander, in the church of the garrison at Potsdam, over the coffin of Frederick the Great, at night, and then sent Haugwitz with threatening demands to Napoleon. The French emperor, in the meantime, proceeded along the Danube towards the Austrian states, not without many bloody engagements, of which the battles of Dirnstein and Stein against the Russians under Kutusoff and Bagration were of especial importance. If the French found brave and circumspect opponents in the Russians in these encounters, they had the easier game in Austria. Murat took possession of Vienna without the slightest trouble; and the prince of Auersburg, who had orders either to defend the bridge over the Danube, which was fortified and filled with gunpowder, or to blow it into the air, allowed himself to be so completely deceived by the bold cunning of the French general, and by pretended negotiations of peace, that he surrendered it to the enemy uninjured and undefended. The irresolution of the emperor Francis, and the divisions between the Austrians and Russians, facilitated the victory of the French, who, laden with enormous booty, pursued the Austro-Russian army, in the midst of perpetual engagements, into Moravia. In Moravia, the battle of Austerlitz, in which the three emperors were present, was fought on the day of the year in which the emperor was crowned, December2d, 1805, and in which the winter sun shone upon the most splendid of Napoleon’s victories. The emperor Francis, wishing for the termination of the war, suffered himself to be persuaded to pay a humble visit to Napoleon in the French camp, and then consented to a truce which stipulated for the retreat of the Russians from the Austrian states. Upon this, negotiations were commenced which terminated in the peace of Presburg.After the battle of Austerlitz, the Prussian ambassador, Haugwitz, did not venture to convey the charge of his court to the victorious emperor; without asking permission in Berlin, he allowed himself to be induced, partly by threats, and partly by the engaging affability of Napoleon, to subscribe an unfavorable contract, by which Prussia exchanged the Franconian principality of Anspach, some lands on the Lower Rhine, and the principality of Nuremburg in Switzerland, for Hanover. It was in vain that the king resisted the exchange, which threatened to involve him in hostilities with England; separated from Austria by the hasty conclusion of the peace of Presburg, nothing was left to the king but to submit to the dictation of the victor.The constitution of the German empire was already dissolved by the elevation of the Elector of Bavaria and of the Duke of Wirtemberg into independent monarchs. Napoleon, in consequence, entertained the project of entirely removing the south and west of Germany from the influence of Austria, and of uniting them to himself by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine. A prospect of enlarging their territories and increasing their power, and fear of the mighty ruler from whose side victory appeared inseparable, induced a great number of princes and estates of the empire to separate themselves from the German empire and join France. Self-interest was more powerful than patriotism. On the 12th of July, the treaty was signed in Paris, by virtue of which Napoleon, as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, recognized the full sovereignty of the individual members, upon condition of their maintaining a certain contingent of troops ready at the emperor’s disposal. Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and several others, formed the kernel around which the lesser principalities, as Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, Solms, etc., collected themselves, till at length almost all the German confederate states of the second and third rank gave in their adhesion. The Elector arch-chancellor Dalberg, who had been made prince-primate, and who had received Frankfort, together with Hanau and Fulda, as a principality, was chosen Napoleon’s representative in the Confederation of the Rhine.The wavering conduct of Prussia had filled Napoleon with the deepest anger, and convinced him that the king would be untrustworthy as a friend, and cowardly and innocuous as an enemy. He accordingly flung aside all respect and forbearance, and purposely inflicted many mortifications on the Prussian government. The irritation produced by this was soon aggravated into a complete rupture.The French troops under Napoleon and his experienced marshals were in the heart of Thuringia and Saxony, the Elector of which had united himself, after some hesitation, to Prussia. The first engagement at Saalfeld, where the gallant prince Louis found his death, went against the Prussians; but the defeat suffered by the army under the command of the old duke of Brunswick, in the great double battle of Jena and Auerstadt, was terrible and fatal. It decided the fate of the countries between the Rhine and the Elbe. The former presumption of the officers and young nobles was suddenly turned into despondency, and the greatest confusion and helplessness took possession of the leaders. Hohenlohe, with 17,000 men, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; the fortresses of Erfurt, Magdeburg, Spondau, Stettin, etc., surrendered within a few days, with such wonderful celerity, that the commandants of many of them were suspected of treachery, so utterly unaccountable did such cowardice and such entire want of self-reliance appear. Blücher alone saved the honor of Prussia by the bloody combat in and around Lubeck, though he could not prevent the horrible storming of this slightly-fortified town; in Colberg, also, Gneisenau and Schill, supported by the brave citizen, Nettlebeck, courageously resisted the superior force of the enemy. Thirteen days after the battle of Jena, Napoleon marched into Berlin, and issued his mandates from thence. The Elector of Hesse, who wished to remain neutral, and who had withdrawn his forces from the contest, was obliged to surrender both land and army to the enemy, and to seek for protection as a fugitive in a foreign land. He took up his residence in Prague. The duke of Brunswick, who had been severely wounded, and who was carried into his capital on a litter after the battle of Jena, was compelled to seek for refuge in Denmark to die in peace. Jena and East Friesland were united to Holland; the Hanse towns as well as Leipsic, were oppressed by the deprivation of all English wares, and by severe military taxes; and treasures of art and science, and the trophies of former victories, were carried away from all quarters. It was only to the Elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought at Jena, that Napoleon showed any favor. He set the Saxon prisoners at liberty, and granted the Elector a favorable peace; upon which the latter, dignified with the title of king, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, like the other Saxon dukes. From this time, Frederick Augustus, to the misfortune of himself and his people, felt himself bound by the ties of gratitude to the French emperor.The king of Prussia had fled to Königsberg, where he vainly attempted to obtain peace. Napoleon’s demands rose with his fortunes. In his necessity, Frederick William turned to his friend Alexander, who immediately despatched a Russian army under Benningsen and others into East Prussia, to prevent the French passing the Vistula. Upon this, Napoleon issued a proclamation to the Poles, pretendedly in the name of Kosciusko, by which these misused people were summoned to fight for liberty and independence. The Poles willingly made the greatest sacrifices, and strengthened the ranks of the French by their brave soldiers under the command of Dombrowski. Napoleon marched into Warsaw amidst the rejoicings of the people; but the Poles discovered, only too soon, that the foreign potentate was more intent upon the gratification of his own ambition and love of power, than upon the restoration of their empire. Murderous battles were now fought upon the banks of the Vistula, and torrents of blood shed at Pultusk and Morungen. But the great blow was struck in the battle of Preuss-Eylau, February 8, 1807, when the marshal spirit of the French and Russians gave rise to a contest which in loss of men equals any event of the sort in the world’s history. Both parties claimed the victory, and their efforts and exhaustion were so great, that the war suffered an interruption of four months. During this interval, negotiations were again renewed; but much as the king, who was waiting with his family in Memel, might desire the termination of the war, that he might free his subjects from the dreadful exactions of the French, he was too honest to dissever his own cause from that of his ally. But when the Silesian fortresses on the Oder, Glogau, Brieg, Schweidnitz, and Breslau, fell into the hands of the French by the cowardice of their commandants, and even Dantzic was surrendered to the marshal Lefebvre by the gallant governor Kalkreuth, the king lost all confidence in the successful issue. When, after the recommencement of hostilities, the French gained a brilliant victory over the Russians in the battle of Friedland, on the anniversary of the battle of Marengo, and took possession of the field of Königsberg, the allied monarchs, after a personal interview with Bonaparte on the Niemen, thought it prudent to consent to the peace of Tilsit, oppressive as were the conditions.Portugal, in consequence of her refusal to close her ports against the English, was occupied by a French army under Junot, who assumed the title of Duke of Abrantes, and proclaimed himself regent in the name of the French Emperor, after the departure of the Portugese royal family for Brazil. In pursuance of his favorite object, the destruction of English commerce, Napoleon not only extended his continental system to Portugal and Italy (as far as the latter country was dependent on France), but even formed a plan for the subjugation of Spain; and under pretense of protecting that country against an English invasion, crossed the Pyrenees at the head of 100,000 men. CharlesIV, who a short time before in consequence of an insurrection against his contemptible favorite, Godoy, Prince of the Peace, had resigned his crown in favor of his son, FerdinandVII, no sooner witnessed the entry of the French into Madrid, than he desired to recall his abdication. Under pretense of settling the dispute, Napoleon invited the whole party to meet him at Bayonne, and having made himself master of their persons, compelled the Bourbon family to resign the Spanish crown, and placed his brother Joseph on the throne. The vacant kingdom of Naples was then conferred on Murat, and the grand-duchy of Berg destined for the Crown Prince of Holland. Against the sovereign thus treacherously imposed on them, the whole Spanish nation rose as one man; and Joseph, after an unsuccessful attempt to conciliate his new subjects by granting them a liberal constitution, was compelled to quit Madrid and retire to Burgos.An English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed in Portugal, and drove the French out of that country; the means of returning to France being secured to Junot and his army by the Convention of Cintra. At the same time, another French army, under Dupont, was surrounded and captured in the south of Spain. The French had already fallen back on the Ebro, when Napoleon (to whom the Emperor Alexander, in a personal interview at Erfurt, had promised assistance in the event of a war with Austria) appeared in Spain at the head of 335,000 men.After a victorious progress from the Ebro, the French Emperor entered Madrid, and immediately abolished the inquisition, the feudal system, and the Council of Castile (which had recalled its consent to the abdication of CharlesIV), and reduced the number of convents to one-third. Having, in conjugation with Soult, compelled the English to evacuate Portugal, Napoleon returned to France to make preparations for a fresh war with Austria. On the 21st February, 1809, the fortress of Saragossa which had been twice heroically defended by the Spanish General Palafox, with the loss of 53,000 men, surrendered to the French; and the cause of Spanish independence seemed utterly ruined; for the brilliant victory of Talavera 27th and 28th of July, obtained by Sir Arthur Wellesley over King Joseph, was neutralized by the defeat of an army recently raised by the Junta of Seville, which was almost annihilated by Soult, at Ocano.The monks, to whose influence King Joseph attributed the general insurrection of the Spanish nation against the French, were punished by the suppression of all the monastic orders. Whilst the French, although perpetually harrassed by swarms of irregular troops, called Guerillas, were still advancing steadily towards the south, the Junta had retired to Seville, and assembled the Cortes (1810), which drew up and proclaimed in (1812), a new constitution, by which the monarchical power was greatly restricted. The repeated attempts of the French, especially under Massena, to regain a footing in Portugal, were as unsuccessful as their attacks on Cadiz, which was strongly fortified and protected by a combined Spanish and English fleet. In the year 1812, the French force in Spain having been reduced to 168,000 men, by the withdrawal of a large number of the best soldiers and generals for the Russian campaign, the whole population of several provinces were encouraged to take the field, and the Guerillas under Mina, the Curate Merino, Mendizabal, etc., became daily more numerous and daring. The fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were stormed by Lord Wellington, who spared the armies of Marmont and Soult, defeated the former near Salamanca, compelled Joseph to quit Madrid, and then, on the approach of the French, retreated to the Portuguese frontier. Soult having been recalled from Spain by Napoleon, after his disastrous campaign in Russia, the English general compelled King Joseph a second time to abandon his capital, and retire to the Ebro, and in the year 1813 decided the fate of Spain, by a brilliant victory over Jourdan at Vittoria. Joseph escaped being taken prisoner, by a precipitate flight into France. Soult, who had reëntered Spain by command of Napoleon, was compelled to recross the Pyrenees by Lord Wellington, and the war was terminated by the battle of Toulouse, in April, 1814, the Emperor Napoleon having previously abdicated, and FerdinandVIIbeing released from his imprisonment at Valencay.Soon after his coronation, Napoleon had conceived the idea of depriving the Pope of his temporal power, and transporting him to Paris, where the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff might be advantageously employed for the promotion of his own ambitious designs. After a succession of annoyances and threats, Napoleon demanded that the Pope should accede to the continental system, close his ports against the English, and conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, at least against the Infidels, by which title he designated the Turks and all the Protestant powers. On the refusal of the Pope to entertain this proposal, the Emperor took possession of Rome, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy four provinces belonging to the States of the Church. These measures were speedily followed by the publication of a decree dated from Schönbrunn, in whichthe temporal authority of the Pope was declared to be at an end; and in the following year 1810 the rest of the States of the Church were incorporated into the French empire. PiusVII, who had excommunicated the the originators and perpetrators of these acts of violence, was carried off by force to Grenoble, and thence removed to Savona, where he remained three years a prisoner, refusing with exemplary firmness to resign his temporal authority, and establish his residence at Paris. In the summer of 1812, he was removed to Fontainebleau, for the purpose of negotiating a fresh concordat, and returned to Rome after the abdication of Napoleon, in 1814.After the peace of Tilsit, an attempt was made by the Austrian government to reëstablish its political influence in Europe. With this view the army was reörganized; and when Napoleon, in consequence of this movement, called on the members of the Rhenish Confederacy to hold themselves in readiness, the Austrians resolved to anticipate his attack. A proclamation was accordingly issued by the Emperor’s brothers, the Archdukes Charles and John, as commanders-in-chief of the army destined to act in Bavaria and Italy, calling on the German nation to coöperate with Austria in her struggles for the liberty of their common fatherland; but scarcely any effect was produced by this appeal. The army commanded by the Archduke Charles, which had entered Bavaria, was defeated in a series of engagements, which lasted from the 19th to the23dof April at Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, by a force composed almost entirely of Germans, and compelled, after sustaining immense loss, to cross the Danube, and retreat towards Bohemia.On the 13th of May, Vienna was a second time taken by the French; Napoleon, who had advanced by forced marches for the purpose of preventing the relief of Vienna by the archduke Charles, was defeated on the 21st and22dof May, near the villages of Aspern and Esling. He then formed a junction with the Italian army under Eugene Beauharnais, a second time crossed the Danube, and defeated the archduke Charles in the sanguinary battle of Wagram, on the 5th and 6th of July. The two armies met again at Znaim, in Moravia, and victory had already begun to incline to the side of the French, when hostilities were suspended by the arrival of Prince Lichtenstein, who was empowered by the Emperor to arrange the terms of an armistice. After this battle, and an unsuccessful attempt of the English to effect a diversion by landing on the island of Walcheren, in Holland, the Austrian war was terminated on the 14th of October by the peace of Vienna. By this treaty Austria lost 2000 square miles of territory, with three and a half millions of inhabitants.In the hope of obtaining an heir to his throne, and of imparting in some sort, a legitimate character to his dynasty, Napoleon divorced himself from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria. On the 20th of March, 1811, the new Empress was delivered of a son, who was immediately created king of Rome. His brother Louis having declared his readiness to abdicate in favor of his son, rather than ruin Holland by enforcing a rigid observance to the continental system, Napoleon annexed the whole of that country to France. Under the same pretext, and in the face of his own repeated declaration that he wished the Rhine to be the boundary of his dominions, the Emperor incorporated into the French empire the maritime provinces of northern Germany, a great part of the kingdom of Westphalia, the Hanse Towns, the grand duchy of Berg, Oldenburg, and East Friesland: as he had already annexed Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the Canton of Vallais in Switzerland. The empire at this time numbered 130 departments, and extended along the coast of western and southern Europe, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Trieste and Corfu. The imperial government now became every day more absolute: the sittings of the legislative body, which had long since been a mere farce, were suspended: the duties of the senate were confined to the appearance of its members on great occasions in the suite of the Emperor, and the passing of acts confirmatory of his decrees for the annexation of fresh territory.The conviction that the continental system would be ruinous to her commerce, and that Napoleon would never rest until he had destroyed her influence as a first-rate European power, was soon forced on Russia, which had wrested Finland from Sweden in 1808, and extended her dominions to the Pruth, by the peace of Bucharest, concluded in 1812, after a six years’ war with the Turks. The first coolness between Alexander and Napoleon was occasioned by the annexation of Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, a measure which was regarded with suspicion by the Russian Emperor, as tending towards the reëstablishment of Poland as a kingdom. Other causes of offense followed in rapid succession; on the one side, Napoleon, who had already annoyed the Emperor by depriving the duke of Oldenburgh, husband of Alexander’s aunt by the mother’s side, of his dominions, now demanded the rigid enforcement of the continental system by Russia; whilst, on the other, the union of Warsaw, as a province, with Saxony, and the evacuation of the Prussian dominions, were strongly urged on France by the Russian government. The refusal of each party to accede to the demands of the other, at length produced a war, which was commenced in 1812 by Napoleon, who collected an army of 400,000, or, according to some writers, 600,000 men, from almost every country in south-western Europe. To oppose this formidable armament, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. With his accustomed rapidity of movement, Napoleon crossed the Nieman into Lithuania, and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the Russians, who were unwilling to hazard a general engagement until they had formed a junction with the troops from the interior. After defeating the Russians at Smolensk, and Borodino, on the Moskwa, Napoleon, on the 14th of September, entered Moscow, which was entirely abandoned by the inhabitants; and soon after his arrival a fire broke out, occasioned probably by the Russian governor Rostopchin, which raged six days, and destroyed nine-tenths of the city. Notwithstanding this calamity, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins of Moscow, endeavoring to negotiate a peace; but discovering his error when it was too late, he broke up his quarters on the 18th of October, and commenced his retreat with an army now reduced to 104,000 men. The winter had already set in with a severity almost unprecedented at that early season, and the whole of the country between Moscow and Beresina, an extent of 150 German miles, presented the appearance of a desert, the inhabitants of the villages having removed or destroyed all their agricultural produce. At length the army, reduced by famine and the unceasing attacks of the Russians and Cossacks to 30,000 men capable of bearing arms, reached the Beresina, where the passage of the river was forced by Ney and Oudinot, with 8,500 men, in the face of 25,000 Russians. The retreat now became a flight, in consequence of the intensity of the cold, and the abandonment of the army by Napoleon, who had placed himself in a sledge, when all was lost, and proceeded to Paris (arrived 18th December,) where his presence was rendered necessary by the unsettled state of public affairs. General Ney, who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Moskwa, and done good service by the masterly manner in which he had conducted the retreat, was created Prince of the Moskwa. The first step towards the emancipation of Prussia, was the conclusion of a convention of neutrality between the Prussian general Diebitsch and general York, who was sent to cover the retreat of the left wing of the French army under Macdonald. This proceeding on the part of the Prussian general was stigmatized by Napoleon as an act of the grossest treachery, and the chief cause of his subsequent misfortunes.Frederick WilliamIIIof Prussia, after issuing from Breslau a manifesto, in which he called on his people to rise and defend their liberties against the encroachments of the French, now concluded an alliance with Russia for the reëstablishment of the Prussian monarchy, and having been subsequently joined by Sweden and England, commenced his preparations for the formation of a national militia in Prussia.In the month of March, the Prussian grand army under Blucher, marched through Silesia to Dresden, where it awaited the arrival of a Russian force commanded by Kalish. A second Russo-Prussian army was also sent from Berlin to join the two other corps. The allied army, under Wittgenstein, now numbered 85,000 men, and that of the French 120,000, most of whom were raw conscripts.Towards the end of April, Napoleon reäppeared in Germany, and advanced to Leipzic, where he was compelled to engage the enemy at Grossgörschen, or, as he himself named the battle, at Lützen, on the2dof May: but notwithstanding the disadvantage under which they labored, in being unprepared for the attack, and the heavy loss which they sustained in the battle, the French were victorious; and the allies retreated by way of Dresden into Lusatia. Sharnhorst died at Prague of the wounds which he had received in the battle. Soon afterwards Napoleon appeared at Dresden, and compelled the wavering king of Saxony to place the resources of his kingdom at the disposal of the French. On the 20th of May Napoleon attacked the allies at Bautzen, forced the passage of the Spree, and completed his victory on the following day, at Wurschen, where he sustained a considerable loss in killed and wounded. As the allies directed their retreat towards Silesia instead of Berlin, in order to effect a junction with the Austrians, the conqueror, who wished to prevent a meeting of the three powers, as well as to gain time for fresh levies, consented to an armistice from 4th of June to 10th of August, in the hope that Austria would eventually join the French. A short time previously to these events, the city of Hamburg, which had been abandoned by the French officials on the approach of a Russian army, under Tetterborn, was retaken by Davoust, and mercilessly pillaged, because the inhabitants were unable to pay a forced contribution of 48,000,000 francs.The congress of Prague having terminated unsatisfactorily, in consequence of the unreasonable demands of Austria, and the unwillingness of England to become a party to a treaty of peace, war was declared by the Austrian government against Napoleon, whose subsequent overtures were treated with contempt. The allies had made the best use of the breathing time allowed them by the armistice. A subsidy of eleven millions, granted by England, enabled them to equip at least 600,000 men, who formed three divisions, viz, 1. The grand army of Bohemia, under Schwarzenberg, in whose camp were the three allied monarchs and General Moreau. 2. The army of Silesia, under Blücher. 3. The army of the North, under the Crown Prince of Sweden, Charles John Bernadotte. Against this enormous force Napoleon brought into the field about 350,000 men; and notwithstanding his inferiority in point of numbers, commenced hostilities with an attack on the army of Silesia, which retreated beyond the Katzbach. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had marched upon Dresden, and Napoleon was compelled to proceed by forced marches to that city, leaving General Macdonald in Silesia. On the 26th and 27th of August, Napoleon gained his last victory at Dresden, on German ground, amidst torrents of rain. Moreau was mortally wounded in this battle, and died soon afterwards. This advantage gained by Napoleon, was however almost neutralized by the failure of the other divisions of the French army.The Silesian and northern armies having crossed the Elbe where Bertrand was defeated by York, near Wartemberg, in order to effect, if possible, a junction with the army of Bohemia in Napoleon’s rear, the French Emperor quitted Dresden, and drew together all his forces at Leipzic, where the great ‘battle of the nations’ was fought on the 16th, 17th, and 18th October. Towards the end of this battle, the Saxons and Würtembergers went over to the allies. On the first day Napoleon engaged the main body of the allies, under Schwarzenberg, on the plain southwards of Leipzic, near Wachau, but without any decisive result; whilst at the same time Blücher defeated Marmont, on the northern part of the city, near Möckern. On the 17th there was no general engagement, Napoleon having communicated to the Emperor of Austria his willingness to purchase peace, by the relinquishment of his sovereignty over Warsaw, Illyria, and the Rhineland, and to withdraw his troops to the other side of the Rhine, as soon as an armistice was concluded. Meanwhile, however, a reinforcement of more than 100,000 men had joined the allied army, which now numbered 300,000, whilst the French had scarcely 130,000. Under these circumstances the battle was renewed on the 18th of October. After losing more than 30,000 men (including Prince Poniatowsky, a nephew of the last King of Poland, who was drowned in the Elster), the defeated army, which still numbered 100,000 men, commenced its retreat, and fought its way to the Rhine, where 70,000 men crossed the river at Mainz. During this retreat, the French were attacked on the Unstrut by York, and at Hanau by the Bavarians, under Wrede, and were incessantly harassed by bands of Cossacks. The immediate consequences of this victory were—1. The breaking up of the Rhenish confederacy. 2. The dissolution of the kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchies of Frankfort and Berg. 3. The surrender of all the French garrisons as prisoners of war, with the exception of the garrison of Hamburg, which held out, under Davoust, until the 26th of May, 1814. 4. The re-conquest, by Bülow, of Holland, where the people, who had been more forward than any other nation in their resistance to the continental system, proclaimed the Prince of Orange sovereign of the Netherlands. 5. Denmark, on account of its alliance with Napoleon, was invaded by the crown prince of Sweden, and compelled, after a short winter campaign, to cede Norway to Sweden in exchange for Swedish Pomerania and Rügen. 6. Illyria and the Tyrol were restored to Austria after a long and bloody struggle. In the south, Murat, King of Naples, the Emperor’s brother-in-law, formed an alliance with the Austrians for the expulsion of the French from Italy, the Emperor of Austria undertaking to guarantee to him the undisturbed possession of his dominions. On the other hand, Switzerland, too feeble as yet to throw off the French yoke, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon, who deemed this the best mode of protecting his weakest frontier.Wellington, being now prepared to enter France from Spain, and the allied army from the Rhine, Napoleon, who had rejected the offers of peace made to him by the allies, demanded a fresh conscription of 300,000 men, and prorogued the legislative assembly, which had ventured to present him an address describing, in strong language, the misery and exhaustion of France. At the commencement of the year 1814 the allies entered France, the grand army of Schwarzenberg traversing a portion of neutral Switzerland, and crossing the frontier at Basle, whilst the force under the command of Blücher crossed the Rhine, on new year’s eve, at Mannheim, Caub, and Coblenz. In the hope of preventing a junction, Napoleon attacked Blücher near Brienne, and forced him to retreat; but, in spite of this check, the united armies attacked the French at la Rothière, and drove them across the Aube. The two corps then separated, the grand army under Schwarzenberg proceeding along the banks of the Seine, and the army of Silisia along the Main, in the direction of Paris. No sooner was Napoleon aware of this separation, than he several times attacked the army of Silesia, and compelled it to retire northwards, and then defeated the grand army at Montereau. A congress was now held at Chatillon, but without any result except the temporary suspension of hostilities. In order to prevent Napoleon from following the grand army, Blücher continued his march on Paris, and defeated the French near Laon. Then Napoleon attacked the grand army at Arcis-sur-Aube, and being compelled to retire before a superior force, conceived the desperate design of leaving the road to Paris open, attacking the enemy in the rear from Lorraine, and drawing together all the garrisons of the eastern fortresses for a final struggle. With equal courage the allies continued their march towards the capital, and after defeating Marshals Marmont and Mortier, at la Fère Champenoise, and storming the heights of Montmartre, entered Paris, in consequence of a capitulation, on the 31st of March, with the Emperor Alexander, King Frederick William, and Prince Schwarzenberg, at their head. No sooner had the capital fallen, than the senate was persuaded by Talleyrand to declarethe throne forfeited by Napoleon and his family, and the nation absolved from its oath of allegiance.Napoleon, who had reached Paris a few hours too late, signed his abdication on the 11th of April, at Fontainebleau, renouncing for himself and heirs all claims to the throne of France, Italy, or any other country; the allies, on their side, engaging to confer on him the sovereignty of the island of Elba, with a pension of two millions of francs, to grant to his wife the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, with succession to her son and his desendants, and to provide for his relations.On the very day of Napoleon’s landing at Elba (14th of May), LouisXVIIIentered Paris, replaced the constitution hastily drawn up by the provisional government by another formed on the English model, with two chambers, one of peers and one of deputies, and concluded with the allies the peace of Paris, by which it was settled that the boundaries of France should be the same as they were before the Revolution, with the exception of some unimportant extensions towards the east and north-east.For the definitive settlement of European affairs, especially as regarded Germany, a Congress was held at Vienna (1st of November, 1814–9th of June, 1815), which was attended by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and Würtemberg, and several other princes, statesmen, and generals.A spirit of disaffection had already begun to manifest itself in France, in consequence of the mal-administration of the government, and the insolence of those classes which had enjoyed peculiar privileges before the Revolution. Encouraged by the reports which he received of the prevalence of discontent, especially among the soldiers, and the difficulties in which the Congress of Vienna was involved by the Polish and Saxon questions, Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed with 2000 men at Cannes on the 1st of March 1815, and being joined by all the troops sent to oppose his progress, and by Marshal Ney, entered Paris on the 20th, amidst the acclamations of the people, and immediately established his head quarters at the Tuileries. Meanwhile LouisXVIIIhad fled to Ghent.Napoleon, by a proclamation dated from Lyons, had already summoned the electoral colleges of the empire to hold an extraordinary meeting (Champ de Mai) in Paris, for the improvement of the constitution; but the popularity obtained by this apparent concession to the wishes of the people, was in a great measure lost in consequence of these ameliorations being eventually decreed by the emperor himself, without the intervention of a representative body. Notwithstanding repeated attempts on the part of Napoleon to reöpen negotiations with the emperors of Austria and Russia, the Congress of Vienna proclaimed him an outlawed traitor on the 13th of March, renewed their alliance for the restoration of LouisXVIII, and engaged to raise a force, which eventually amounted to 900,000 men. On the other hand, Napoleon was unable to complete the number which he had intended to bring into the field (560,000 men).Napoleon now determined to commence hostilities by attacking simultaneously the allied troops (English, Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, etc.), which were dispersed through Belgium under the command of Wellington, and the Prussians under Blücher; and thus preventing a junction of the two armies. The Prussian army, which had not yet had time to concentrate itself, was defeated at Ligny; whilst Ney meanwhile marched northwards as far as Quatrebras, for the purpose of preventing the advance of Wellington to relieve the Prussians. Here an indecisive battle was fought, in which Duke William of Brunswick lost his life. Instead of falling back on Namur, as Napoleon had expected, the Prussians now endeavored to effect a junction with Wellington by Wavre. Having dispatched Marshal Grouchy to intercept Blücher, Napoleon attacked Wellington on the 18th of June, at Waterloo, where the English, after bravely fighting throughout the day, were beginning to waver towards evening, when Blücher who had left Thielemann to oppose Grouchy at Wavre, appeared on the field, and, in conjunction with Wellington, completely routed the French army, which fled in disorder, pursued by the Prussians. After a succession of victorious skirmishes, Blücher arrived, on the22dof June, at Paris, where Napoleon had a second time abdicated, in favor of his son. Napoleon then fled to Rochefort, with the intention of embarking for America; but finding the harbor beset by English cruisers, he surrendered himself to Capt. Maitland, of the Bellerophon, and was conveyed a prisoner toSt.Helena, where he died, after nearly six years’ suffering, on the 5th of May, 1821.Before his return to Paris, LouisXVIIIhad issued a proclamation from Cambray, granting a free pardon to all who had taken part in the Revolution, with the exception of its chief authors, and constituted a liberal administration under Talleyrand; which, however, was speedily overthrown by the court party, headed by the king’s brother, the Compte d’ Artois. An act was then passed by the ultra-royalist majority in the chambers, excluding from the amnesty, and condemning to perpetual banishment, all who had taken part in the murder of LouisXVI.Ney was arraigned before the chamber of peers, found guilty of high treason and shot. LouisXVIIIhaving been persuaded to dissolve the chambers, some projects of law, of a more liberal character, respecting elections, liberty of the press and person, etc., were carried through the new chambers by the Duc de Richelieu, who also obtained at the congress of Aix la Chapelle, 1818, the withdrawal of the army of occupation, and a remission of some portion of the debt still due from France to the allies. In return for these concessions LouisXVIIIjoined the holy alliance.The ultra-royalists now exerted themselves to obliterate every trace of the Revolution, and reëstablish the privileged classes in all their former splendor; a plan which they pursued with great zeal and success under CharlesX.But the indignation of the people was at length excited by the pertinacity with which they endeavored to increase the influence of the priesthood, and by their granting an indemnification to the extent of 1,000,000,000 of francs to the emigrants, whose estates had been confiscated by the revolutionary government.The ministry persuaded the king to sign the fatal Ordonnances of 25th of July, by which the liberty of the press was suspended, the recently elected chamber dissolved, the number of deputies diminished, and the mode of election altered. This open violation of the constitution produced the Revolution of July, 1830.Some of the royal troops having joined the revolutionists, and the remainder been driven out of the city after three days’ hard fighting (27th—29th of July), CharlesXabdicated at Rambouillet on the2dof August, in favor of his grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux. Several unsuccessful attempts had already been made to proclaim a republic: and on the 30th of July the peers and deputies who happened to be resident at Paris, had met and nominated as regent the Duke of Orleans (descendant of a brother of LouisXIV), by whose representations Charles was induced to quit the kingdom, and seek an asylum in Scotland. On the 7th of August, the Duke of Orleans was proclaimed hereditary “King of the French,” by the chambers, and on the 9th swore fidelity to the charter of 1830, in which the sovereignty of the people was fully recognized. The national guard was reëstablished and placed under the command of Lafayette.The first care of Louis Philippe was to obtain the recognition of his title by foreign powers; an object which was effected without much difficulty, as he founded his claim on hislegitimateright to the throne (the elder branch of the Bourbons having abdicated) rather than the choice of the people. But this disavowal of the principle on which he had been chosen king of the French, however satisfactory to foreign cabinets, was exceedingly distasteful to the people, and the cause of serious disturbances. His ministers, who were repeatedly changed, were engaged in a perpetual contest with the Republicans on the one side, and the adherents of the ancient dynasty (Legitimists or Carlists) on the other.TheCarlistsor Legitimists, who considered HenryVthe Duke of Bordeaux the rightful sovereign of France, had many adherents, especially in la Vendée, where the Duchesse de Berri, who personally exerted herself on behalf of her son, was arrested and banished the country. On the other hand, theRepublicans, endeavored to effect the overthrow of the ministry, if not of the throne itself, by means of societies, trades-unions, conspiracies, and émeutes in Paris, Lyons, and other cities. Several attempts were also made to assassinate the king (Fieschi’s infernal machine, Alibaud, Meunier, Hubert, Darmès, Henry). The appearance of Louis Napoleon, a son of the ex-king of Holland, at Strasburg, in 1837, and at Boulogne in 1840, produced no important results. In order to preservepeace with foreign powers, Louis Philippe adopted a system of non-intervention, which he was compelled to violate on several occasions by the clamors of the opposition party.
The Girondists, enraged at the increasing power of the populace in Paris, and the unbridled acts of violence committed by the mob, entertained the project of converting France into a republican union like North America, and by this means, destroying the supremacy of the capital. The Mountain and the Jacobins, who saw that this scheme would weaken the revolutionary power of France, and endanger the future of the democratic republic, commenced a war of life and death with the Girondists (also called Brissotins) upon this point. They reproached them with weakening the power of the people, and destroying the republic at a moment when France was threatened with enemies both within and without; and when all these attacks were ignominiously repulsed by the victorious eloquence of the Girondists, the savage Marat, in his ‘Friend of the People,’ called upon the populace to rise against the moderate and lukewarm, and thus gave occasion to daily riots and tumults, which disturbed the capital and endangered life and property.
The National Convention acquired greater unanimity by the exclusion of the Girondists and the moderates; so that, from this time, it was enabled to develop a frightful power and activity. For the purpose of better superintending its multitudinous affairs, it resolved itself into committees, of which the committee of public safety and that of public security acquired a frightful celebrity by the persecution of every one opposed to the new order of things. A revolutionary tribunal, consisting of twelve jurymen and five judges, to which that man of blood, Fouquier Tinville, occupied the office of public accuser, seconded the activity of these committees by a cruel and summary administration of justice. At the head of the committee of public safety stood three men, whose names became the terror and horror of all just men; the envious and malignant Robespierre, the bloodthirsty Couthon, and the frantic for republican liberty and equality,St.Just. They pursued their bloody object without regard to human life; every thing that ventured to oppose their stormy course was unpityingly hurled down. Thus originated the terrible period of the years ‘93 and ‘94, which displayed itself in three different directions—within, by a cruel persecution of all citizens who were known as aristocrats or favorers of royality, and by a bloody suppression of insurrections in the south and west; without, by a vigorous defensive war against innumerable enemies.
The former minister, Malasherbes, the members of the Constituent Assembly, Bailli, etc. all who belonged to the old monarchy, and who had not saved themselves by flight, died by the guillotine. Among them was the severely-tried queen, Marie Antoinette, who displayed, during her trial and at her execution, a firmness and strength of soul that was worthy of her education and her birth. Her son died beneath the cruel treatment of a Jacobin; her daughter (the duchess of Angoulême) carried a gloomy spirit and an embittered heart with her to the grave. LouisXVI’spious sister, Elizabeth, also died on the scaffold; the head of the profligate duke of Orleans, whom even the favor of Danton could not preserve from the envy of Robespierre, had fallen before her own.
The bloody rule of the Mountain party displayed itself in its most frightful excess in the suppression of the revolt against the reign of terror. When the inhabitants of Normandy and Bretagne rose in support of the excluded Girondists, the committee of public safety ordered the district between the Seine, the Loire, and the extreme sea-coast, to be visited with blood and slaughter by the terrible Carrier. This monster ordered, at Nantes, his victims to be drowned by hundreds in the Loire by means of ships with movable bottoms (noyades.) The proceedings of the Jacobins in the cities of the south, Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, were still more barbarous. In the first of these towns Chalier, who had formerly been a priest, and now was president of the Jacobin club, excited the people by scandalous placards to plunder and destroy the ‘aristocrats.’ Irritated at this audacity, the respectable and wealthy citizens of Lyons, who were thus menaced in their lives and property, procured the execution of the demagogue, July 16th, 1793. This deed filled the Parisian terrorists with fury. A republican army appeared before the walls of the town, which, after an obstinate contest, was taken and fearfully punished. Fréron a companion of Marat, Fouché, Couthon, and others, caused the inhabitants to be shot down in crowds, because the guillotine was too tedious in its operations; whole streets were either pulled down or blown into the air with gunpowder. The goods of the rich were divided among the populace; Lyons was to be annihilated, reduced to a nameless common. The republicans raged in a similar way in Marseilles and Toulon. The royalists of Toulon had called upon the English for assistance, and surrendered to them their town and harbor. Confident in this assistance, and in the strength of their walls, the citizens of Toulon bade defiance to their republican enemies. But the army of sans-culottes, in which the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, exhibited the first proofs of his military talents, overcame all obstacles. Toulon was stormed. The English, unable to maintain the town, set fire to the fleet, and left the unfortunate inhabitants to the frightful vengeance of the Convention. Here also the barbarous Frèron ordered all the wealthy citzens to be shot, and their property to be divided among the sans-culottes. The respectable inhabitants fled, and abandoned the city to the mob and the galley-slaves. Tallien behaved in a similar manner in Bourdeaux; and in the north of France, Lebon marched from place to place with a guillotine.
But the fate of La Vendée was the most frightful. This singular country, situated in the west of France, was covered with woods, hedges, and thickets, and intersected by ditches. Here dwelt a contented people, in rural quietude, and in the simplicity of the olden time. The peasants and tenants were attached to their landlords; they loved the king; and clung with reverence to their clergy and their church usages, which had been dear and sacred to them from their youth. When the National Assembly slaughtered or expelled their unsworn priests, when the blood of their king was poured out on the guillotine, when the children of the peasants were called away by a general summons, to the army—then the enraged people roused themselves to resistance and civil conflict. Under brave leaders, of undistinguished birth, as Charette, Stofflet, Cathelineau, who were joined by a few nobles, Laroche-Jaquelein, D’Elbée, etc., they at first drove back the republican army, conquered Saumur, and threatened Nantes. Upon this the Convention despatched a revolutionary army to La Vendée, under the command of Westermann and the frantic Jacobins, Ronsin and Rossignol. These fell upon the inhabitants like wild beasts, set fire to towns, villages, farms, and woods, attempted to overcome the resistance of the ‘royalists’ by terror and outrage. But the courage of the Vendéan peasants remained unsubdued. It was not until general Kleber marched against La Vendée with the brave troops who had returned to their homes after the surrender of Mayence, that this unfortunate people gradually succumbed to the attacks of their enemies, after the land had become a desert, and thousands of the inhabitants had saturated the soil with their blood. La Vendée, however, was only restored to tranquillity when Hoche, who was equally renowned for his courage and philanthropy, assumed the command of the army, offered peace to those who were weary of the contest, and reduced the refractory to submission. Stofflet and Charette were made prisoners of war, and shot.
The rage and cruelty of the Jacobins at length excited the disgust of the chiefs of the Cordeliers, Danton and Camille Desmoulins. The former, who was rather a voluptuary than a tyrant, and who was capable of kindly feelings, had grown weary of slaughter, and had retired into the country for a few months with a young wife, to enjoy the wealth and happiness that the revolution had brought him; but Camille Desmoulins, in his much read paper, ‘The Old Cordelier,’ applied the passages where the Roman historian, Tacitus, describes the tyranny and cruelty of Tiberius, so appropriately to his own times, that the application to the three chiefs of the committee of safety and their laws against the suspected was not to be mistaken. This enraged the Jacobins; and when, about this time, several friends and adherents of Danton (Fabre d’Eglantine, Chabot, etc.) were guilty of deceit and corruption in connection with the abolition of the East India Company, and others gave offense by their sacrilegious proceedings, the committee of safety made use of the opportunity to destroy the whole party of Danton. For since the Convention had altered the calendar and the names of the months, had made the year commence on the22dof September, had abolished the observance of Sunday and the festivals, and introduced in their place the decades and sans-culotte feasts, many Dantonists, like Hebert, Chaumette, Momoro, Cloots, and others, had occasioned great scandal by their animosity to priests and Christianity. They desecrated and plundered the churches, ridiculed the mass, vestments and the church utensils, which they carried through the streets in blasphemous processions, raged with the spirit of Vandals against all the monuments of Christianity, and at length carried a resolution through the Convention that the worship of Reason should be introduced in place of the Catholic service of God. A solemn festival, in which Momoro’s pretty wife personated the Goddess of Reason in the church of Nôtre Dame, marked the commencement of this new religion. Robespierre, who plumed himself upon his reputation for virtue, because he was not a participator in the excesses or avarice of Danton and his associates, took offense at these proceedings. He determined to destroy their originators, and in their fall to involve the destruction of Desmoulins and Danton, before whose powerful natures his own spirit, which was filled with envy and ambition, stood abashed. Scarcely, therefore, had Danton resumed his seat in the Convention, beforeSt.Just began the violent struggle by a remarkable proposal, in which he divided the enemies of the republic into three classes: the corrupt, the ultra-revolutionary, and the moderates, and insisted upon their punishment. This proposal resulted in nineteen of the ultra-revolutionaries, and among them Cloots, Momoro, Ronsin, and several members of the Common Council, being led to the guillotine on the 19th of March, 1794. On the 31st of April, the corrupt were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sechelles, etc., were maliciously distinguished as their partisans and involved in their fate. But Danton and Desmoulins, supported by a raging mob that were devoted to them, demanded with vehemence that their accusers should be confronted with them. For three days, Danton’s voice of thunder and the tumult among the populace rendered his condemnation impossible. For the first time, the bloody men of the Revolutionary Tribunal became confused. The Convention, at length, by a law of its own, gave the Tribunal the power of condemning the accused who were endeavoring to subvert the existing order of things by an insurrection, without further hearing; upon which the blood-stained heroes of the 10th of August and the days of September, who during their trial had shown that a lofty spirit might dwell even in the bosom of criminals, were led to the guillotine and beheaded, with a crowd of inferior Hebertists. They died with courage and resolution.
Since the fall of Danton, the committee of safety had ruled with well-nigh unlimited sway, and by repeated executions and arrests had brought the reign of terror to its highest point. But its chiefs had lost the confidence of the people and of the Convention. The friends of Danton were on the watch for the favorable moment of attack, and the number of their enemies was increased, when Robespierre, to put an end to the blasphemous proceedings of the adherents of the worship of Reason, had a resolution passed by the Convention in May, ‘That the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul were truths:’ and rendered himself at once hateful and ridiculous by his pride at the new festival in honor of the Supreme Being in the Tuileries, at which he officiated as high priest. Among his opponents was Tallien, who at a former period had been guilty of excesses in Bourdeaux, but who had been brought to adopt different principles by the fascinating Fontenay Cabarrus. With him were joined Frèron, Fouché, Vadier, the polished rhetorician Barrère, and others. On the 9th Thermidor, a battle for life or death commenced in the Convention. Robespierre and his adherents were not allowed to speak; their voices were drowned in the cries of their enemies, who carried through a stormy meeting the resolution, ‘That the three chiefs of the committee of safety, Robespierre,St.Just, Couthon, and their confederate, Henriot, should be denounced, and conveyed as prisoners to the Luxembourg palace.’ They were liberated by the mob on their way; whereupon the drunken Henriot threatened the Convention with the National Guard, whilst the others betook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville. But the National Assembly was beforehand with them by a hasty resolution. A loudly proclaimed sentence of outlawry suddenly dispersed Henriot’s army, whilst the citizens who were opposed to the Jacobins arranged themselves around the Convention. The accused were again secured in the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot crept into a sewer, whence he was dragged forth by hooks. Robespierre attempted to destroy himself by a pistol-shot, but only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw, and was first conveyed, horribly disfigured, amidst the curses and execrations of the people, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and then guillotined, with twenty-one of his adherents. On the two following days, seventy-two Jacobins shared the fate of their leaders.
Robespierre’s overthrow by the ‘Thermidorians’ was the commencement of a return to moderation and order. The assemblies of the people were gradually limited, the power of the Common Council diminished, and the lower classes deprived of their weapons. Frèron, converted from a republican bloodhound into an aristocrat, assembled the young men, who from their clothing were called the ‘gilded youth,’ around him. These, with the heavy stick they usually carried about them, attacked the Jacobins in the streets and in their clubs at every opportunity, and opposed the song of the ‘Awakening of the People’ to the Marseillaise. At length, the club was shut up and the cloister of the Jacobins pulled down. The Convention strengthened itself by the recall of the expelled members and of such Girondists as were still left, and ordered the worst of the Terrorists, Lebon, Carrier, Fouquier, Tinville, etc., to be executed. But when four of the most active members of the committee of safety, (Barrère, Vadier, Collot d’Herbois, and Billaud Varennes) were denounced, the Jacobins collected the last remains of their strength, and drove the people, who were suffering from a scarcity and want of money, to a frightful insurrection. Crowds of grisly wretches surrounded the house of assembly, and demanded, with threatening cries, the liberation of the patriots, bread, and the constitution of 1793. Pichegru, who was just at this moment in Paris, came to the assistance of the distressed convention with soldiers and citizens, and dispersed the crowd. The still more formidable insurrection of the 1st Prairial, 1795, in which the mob surrounded the convention both within and without from seven o’clock in the morning till two at night, for the purpose of enforcing a return to the reign of terror, was also suppressed by the courageous president, Boissy d’Anglas. From this time, the power of the Terrorists was no more. Many Jacobins died by their own hands; others were beheaded, imprisoned, or transported. By so much the stronger became the party of the royalists, who wished to have a king again; and when the new government was shortly after determined upon, by which the executive powder was to be delivered to the Directory of five persons, the legislative power to a council of Ancients and a council of Five Hundred, the republican members of the Convention feared that in the new election they might be thrust aside by the royalists. They therefore made additions to the original charter of the constitution, wherein it was declared that two-thirds of the two legislative councils must be chosen from members of the Convention. The royalists raised objections to this and some other limitations of the freedom of election; and when these were unattended with success, they occasioned the insurrection of the Sections. Hereupon, the Convention made over to the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, the suppression of the insurgent royalists, who were joined by all the enemies of the republic and of the revolution. The victory of the 13th Vendemiaire, (October 5, 1795,) which was fought in the streets of Paris, gave the supremacy to the republicans of the Convention, and the command of the Italian army to Napoleon, who was then twenty-six years of age, and who, a short time before, had married Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnois.
The French army in Savoy and on the frontiers of Italy was in a melancholy condition. The soldiers were in want of every thing. At this crisis, Napoleon appeared as their commander-in-chief, and in a short time contrived so to inspirit the desponding troops and attach them to his person, that under his guidance they cheerfully encountered the greatest dangers. Where the love of glory and the sentiment of honor were not sufficient, there the treasures of wealthy Italy served as a stimulous to valor. In April 1796, Napoleon defeated the octogenarian Austrian general, Beaulieu, at Nilesimo and Montenotte, separated, by this victory, the Austrians from the Sardinians, and so terrified the king, Victor Amadeus, that he consented to a disadvantageous peace, by which he surrendered Savoy and Nice to the French, gave up six fortresses to the general, and submitted to the oppressive condition of allowing the French army to march through his land at any time.
The course of Napoleon’s victories in Upper Italy was equally rapid. After the memorable passage of the bridge of Lodi, he marched into Austrian Milan, subjected the Lombard towns, and so terrified the smaller princes by the success of his arms, that they were only too happy to make peace with the victor at any price. Napoleon extorted large sums of money, and valuable pictures, treasures of art and manuscripts, from the dukes of Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, etc.
Wurmser now took the place of the old Beaulieu. But he also was defeated at Castiglione, and afterwards besieged in Mantua. The army under Alvinzi that was sent to his relief sustained three defeats (at Arcola, Rivoli, La Favorita), by which the whole Austrian force in Italy was destroyed, dispersed, or captured. This compelled the gallant Wurmser to deliver up Mantua to the glorious victor. Bonaparte, respecting the courage of his enemy, permitted a free retreat to the gray-headed marshal, his staff, and a part of the brave garrison. Pope PiusVI, terrified at these rapid successes, hastened to purchase the peace of Tolentino by cessions of territory, sums of money, and works of art. Archduke Charles now assumed the command of the Austrian army in Italy. But he also was compelled to a disastrous retreat, and was pursued by Bonaparte as far as Klagenfurt, with the view of falling upon Vienna. The emperor Francis, anxious for the fate of his capital, allowed himself to be persuaded by female influence to conclude the disadvantageous preliminary peace of Leoben, at the very moment when, by the non-arrival of the expected reinforcements, and the threatening movements of the Tyrolese, Styrians, and Carinthians, the position of the French army was becoming critical. About the time this treaty of peace was concluded, a popular insurrection arose in the rear of the French army, in the territory of the republic of Venice, in consequence of which many Frenchmen were murdered in Verona and its neighborhood, and even the sick and wounded in the hospitals were not spared. This was taken advantage of by Napoleon to destroy the Venetian republic.
The French marched into Venice, carried off the ships and the stores of the arsenal, robbed the churches, galleries, and libraries of their choicest ornaments and most valued treasures, and kept possession of the city till the negotiations with Austria were so far advanced, that the peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797), by which Upper Italy fell into the hands of France under the name of the Cisalpine Republic, was concluded. Austria, who by this peace also surrendered Belgium to the French republic, and consented to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine with Mayence, received the territory of Venice, together with Dalmatio, as a recompense for this loss. The princes, prelates, the nobles, who suffered by this abandonment of the farther Rhineland, were to be indemnified on the right bank of the river, and this as well as all other points relating to Germany, were to be settled at the Congress at Rastadt. Napoleon opened this congress himself, and then returned to Paris, where he was received with acclamation.
The expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and Syria, produced a fresh coalition of the three great European powers, Russia, England, and Austria, against France. Russia had been governed since the year 1796 by Paul, the eldest son of Catherine, a prince with a mind somewhat deranged, who cherished the bitterest hatred against the Revolution; and who, as a great admirer of the Order of Malta, to the Grand Mastership of which he had himself appointed, saw in the capture of that island by Napoleon, cause for war. England feared danger to her foreign possessions from the Egyptian expedition, and scattered money with a liberal hand to raise up fresh enemies against France. Austria was at variance with the directoral government, because the house of the French ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, had been broken open, and the tricolor flag torn down and burnt, without the Austrian government having afforded the required satisfaction. War was waged, at the same time, in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands.
After his disembarkation at Alexandria, the whole of the French fleet at Aboukir, owing to the carelessness of the admiral, was defeated and captured by the English naval hero, Nelson; and Napoleon was in consequence obliged to make arrangements for a longer stay. In July, he marched from Alexandria through the Egyptian desert to Cairo. The distress of the army, unprovided with water or sufficient necessaries, in the burning heat, was very great. In the battle of the Pyramids, July 21st 1798, ‘from the tops of which 4,000 years looked down upon the combatants,’ the Mamalukes, who at that time swayed Egypt under the Turkish government, were defeated; whereupon Bonaparte marched into Cairo, and established a new government, police, and taxation, upon the European pattern, and ordered the curiosities of this wonderful land to be examined, and its monuments and antiquities to be collected and described, by the artists and men of learning who accompanied his army.
A dreadful insurrection broke out in Cairo, October 21st 1798, which could only be suppressed with difficulty by the superiority of European tactics, after nearly 6,000 Mahommedans had been slain. Napoleon made use of the victory to extort money, and then marched with his Turkish troops against Syria. After the conquest of Jaffa, where he ordered 2,000 Arnauts, whom he had a second time taken prisoners, to be shot as perjured, he proceeded to the siege of Jean d’Acre. It was there that the fortune of Napoleon met with its first rebuff. The Turks, provided with artillery by the English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, repelled the assaults of the enemy, despite their wonderful valor. At the same time, a Turkish army threatened the European soldiers in the interior of the country. The former was, indeed, defeated and dispersed by Junot at Nazareth, and at Mount Tabor by Kleber; nevertheless, upon the plague breaking out among his troops, Napoleon found himself compelled to give up Acre and to commence a retreat. The horses were laden with the sick, the soldiers suffered the most dreadful privations; the dangers and the distresses of the war were frightful. Napoleon shared all the fatigues with the meanest of his army; he is even said to have visited a hospital filled with those sick of the plague. He again reached Cairo in June, and in the following month, defeated a Turkish army of three times his number, at Aboukir. A short time after this, he learned the disasters of the French in Italy from some newspapers; and the intelligence produced such an effect upon him, that he determined upon returning to France. He quietly made his preparations for departure with the greatest expedition. After transferring the command of the Egyptian army to Kleber, Napoleon sailed from the harbor of Alexandria with two frigates and a few small transports, and about 500 followers, and, guided by the star of his fortunes, reached the coast of France undiscovered by the English, and landed at Frejus amidst the acclamations of the people.
Upon his arrival in Paris, Napoleon embraced the resolution of overthrowing the directoral government which had lost all authority and consideration. With this purpose, he made himself secure of the officers and troops that were in Paris, and consulted with Sieyes, one of the directors, and his own brother, Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected president of the Five Hundred, on the means of carrying his plan into execution. Lucien transferred the sittings of the council toSt.Cloud, for the purpose of bringing the members within the power of the soldiers. There, Napoleon first attempted to win over the members to his plans by persuasion; when he found that he could not succeed in this, but rather, that he was overwhelmed with threats and reproaches, he commanded his grenadiers to clear the room with leveled bayonets. The republicans, who presented a bold front to the danger, were at length compelled to yield to superior force, and sought their safety through the doors and windows. This done a commission of fifty persons was appointed to draw up a fresh constitution, November 9th 1799. Thus ended the violent procedure of the 18th Brumaire, in consequence of which Napoleon Bonaparte took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands.
According to the consular constitution, the power of the state was divided in the following manner:—1. To the Senate, which consisted of eighty members, belonged the privilege of selecting from the list of names sent in by the departments the members of the legislative power, and the chief officials and judges. 2. The legislative power was divided into the Tribunate, which numbered one hundred members, and whose office it was to examine and debate upon the proposals of the government; and the legislative bodies, who had only to receive or reject these proposals unconditionally. 3. The government consisted of three Consuls, who were elected for ten years. Of these Consuls, the first, Bonaparte, exercised the powers of government, properly so called; whilst the second and third Consuls (Cambacéres and Lebrun) were merely placed at his side as advisers. Bonaparte, as first Consul, surrounded himself with a state council and a ministry, for which he selected the most talented and experienced men. Talleyrand, the dexterous diplomatist, was minister of the exterior; the astute Fouché superintended the police; Berthier held the staff of general.
Bonaparte was at first engaged in reconciling the old with the new, in combining the results of the Revolution with the forms and manners of the monarchical period. But he very soon made known his preference for the ancient system, by the restoration of all the former arrangements and customs.
The reductions in the emigrant lists brought back many royalists to their homes, and the favor shown to them made them courteous and pliant in the service of the new court. Madame de Stael (daughter of Necker) collected, as in the old time, a circle of accomplished and illustrious men in her saloon. The vanity of the French favored Napoleon’s efforts; when he instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor, republicans and royalists grasped eagerly at the new plaything of human weakness.
One of the first cares of the Consul was the restoration of Christian worship in the French churches. After he had abolished the republican festivals (10th August, 21st January), and introduced the observance of the Sabbath, negotiations were opened with the Roman court, which at length led to the conclusion of the Concordat. No less attention did Napoleon devote to the affairs of education; but he particularly patronized the establishments for practical science, as the Polytechnic School in Paris.
Repeated conspiracies against the life of the First Consul, sometimes undertaken by the republicans and sometimes by the royalists, were always followed by fresh restrictions and a more rigorous system of espionage. The most desperate undertaking of this kind was the attempt, by means of the so-called infernal machine,—a cask filled with gunpowder, bullets, and inflammable materials, to blow up Bonaparte on his way to the opera-house,—an attempt which he escaped by the rapidity with which his coachman was driving, but which destroyed many houses and killed several people. In consequence of this atrocious deed, a great number of Jacobins were condemned to deportation, though it afterwards turned out that the plot was undertaken by the royalists. Still more dangerous and extensive were the conspiracies against Napoleon, when the office of Consul was conferred upon him for life by the voice of the people, with the privilege of naming his successor, (August 2, 1802). By this means, the Bourbons were cut off from the last hopes of a return, and the emigrants accordingly left no means untried of destroying him. The desperate George Cadoudal, and Pichegru, who were residing in England, allowed themselves to be employed as tools. They conveyed themselves secretly to France, but were discovered and arrested, with about forty confederates. Before their fate was decided, Napoleon allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of a revolting crime. It had been represented to him that the duke d’Enghien, the chivalrous grandson of the prince of Condé, was the soul of all the royalist conspiracies. Accordingly, this young nobleman, who was residing at Ettenheim, a small town of Baden, was seized at Napoleon’s command, by a troop of armed men, conducted with the greatest haste through Strasburg to Paris, condemned to death by a hurried court-martial, and, despite a magnanimous defense, shot in the trenches of Vincennes.
The fate of the conspirators was shortly after decided upon. Pichegru had already died a violent death in prison, whether by his own hand or that of another is uncertain. George Cadoudal, with eleven confederates, ascended the guillotine. General Moreau, who was implicated, retired into voluntary banishment in America.
NAPOLEON, EMPEROR.
The royalist conspiracies were made use of by Bonaparte to establish an hereditary monarchy. At the instigation of his adherents, the making over the hereditary dignity of emperor to Napoleon was proposed to the Tribunat, sanctioned by the Senate, and confirmed by the whole people by the subscription of their names. Whilst the minds of men were still painfully excited by the late bloody executions, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French, and at the end of the year, solemnly anointed by the pope in the church of Nôtre Dame. The crown, however, he placed on his own head, as well as on that of his wife, Josephine, who knelt before him. This magnificent coronation appeared to be the conclusion of the Revolution, since the whole ancient system, for the extinction of which thousands of human lives had been sacrificed, gradually returned. The new emperor surrounded his throne with a brilliant court, in which the former titles, orders, and gradations of rank were revived under different names. He himself certainly retained his old military simplicity, but the members of his family were made princes and princesses; his generals became marshals; the devoted servants and promoters of his plans were connected with the throne as the great officers of the crown, or as senators with large incomes. The establishment of a new feudal nobility, with the old titles of princes, dukes, counts, barons, completed the splendid edifice of a magnificent imperial court.
The great ends attained by the Revolution—equality before the law, the peasants’ right of property in the soil and other possessions, remained untouched. Industry made great progress, civil arts and trades received a vast impulse; and an unaccustomed prosperity made itself everywhere visible. Magnificent roads, like those over the Alps, canals, bridges, and improvements of all kinds, are, to the present day, eloquent memorials of the restless activity of this remarkable man. Splendid palaces, majestic bridges, and noble streets, arose in Paris, every thing great or magnificent that art had produced was united in the Louvre; the capital of France glittered with a splendor that had never before been witnessed. The university was arranged upon a most magnificent footing, and appointed the supreme court of supervision and control over the whole system of schools and education.
Whilst the attention of all Europe was directed to the western coast of France, where Napoleon was fitting out ships of every kind with the greatest diligence, and assembling a vast camp at Boulogne, with the purpose, as was believed, of effecting a landing on the English coast, he was making preparations, in all silence, for the memorable campaign of 1805. Never were Napoleon’s talents for command or his military genius displayed in a more brilliant light than in the plan of this campaign. Assured of the assistance of most of the princes of southern Germany, Bonaparte crossed the Rhine in the autumn with seven divisions, commanded by his most experienced marshals, Ney, Lannes, Marmont, Soult, Murat, etc, and marched into Swabia; whilst Bernadotte, disregarding Prussia’s neutrality, pressed forward through the Brandenburg Margravate of Anspach-Bayreuth upon the Isar. This violation of his neutral position irritated the king, Frederick WilliamIII, to such a degree, that he entered into closer relationship with the allies, and assumed a threatening aspect, without, however, actually declaring war.
After Ney’s successful engagement at Elchingen, the Austrian general, Mack, was shut up in Ulm, and cut off from the main army. Helpless, and despairing of deliverance, the incompetent commander commenced negotiations with the French, which terminated in the disgraceful capitulation of Ulm. By this arrangement, 33,000 Austrians, including thirteen generals, became prisoners of war. Covered with shame, the once-brave warriors marched before Napoleon, laid down their arms before the victor, placed forty banners at his feet, and delivered up sixty cannon with their horses. When too late, it was seen in Vienna that Mack was not equal to his lofty position, and he was deprived of his honor, his dignities, and the advantages of his office, by a court-martial. Napoleon’s joy at this unexampled good fortune was, however, diminished by the cotemporaneous maritime victory of the English at Trafalgar, which annihilated the whole French fleet, but which also cost the life of the great naval hero, Nelson.
The war-party had gained the upper hand in Prussia since the violation of the neutral territory of Bernadotte. The king renewed the bond of perpetual friendship with the sensitive emperor Alexander, in the church of the garrison at Potsdam, over the coffin of Frederick the Great, at night, and then sent Haugwitz with threatening demands to Napoleon. The French emperor, in the meantime, proceeded along the Danube towards the Austrian states, not without many bloody engagements, of which the battles of Dirnstein and Stein against the Russians under Kutusoff and Bagration were of especial importance. If the French found brave and circumspect opponents in the Russians in these encounters, they had the easier game in Austria. Murat took possession of Vienna without the slightest trouble; and the prince of Auersburg, who had orders either to defend the bridge over the Danube, which was fortified and filled with gunpowder, or to blow it into the air, allowed himself to be so completely deceived by the bold cunning of the French general, and by pretended negotiations of peace, that he surrendered it to the enemy uninjured and undefended. The irresolution of the emperor Francis, and the divisions between the Austrians and Russians, facilitated the victory of the French, who, laden with enormous booty, pursued the Austro-Russian army, in the midst of perpetual engagements, into Moravia. In Moravia, the battle of Austerlitz, in which the three emperors were present, was fought on the day of the year in which the emperor was crowned, December2d, 1805, and in which the winter sun shone upon the most splendid of Napoleon’s victories. The emperor Francis, wishing for the termination of the war, suffered himself to be persuaded to pay a humble visit to Napoleon in the French camp, and then consented to a truce which stipulated for the retreat of the Russians from the Austrian states. Upon this, negotiations were commenced which terminated in the peace of Presburg.
After the battle of Austerlitz, the Prussian ambassador, Haugwitz, did not venture to convey the charge of his court to the victorious emperor; without asking permission in Berlin, he allowed himself to be induced, partly by threats, and partly by the engaging affability of Napoleon, to subscribe an unfavorable contract, by which Prussia exchanged the Franconian principality of Anspach, some lands on the Lower Rhine, and the principality of Nuremburg in Switzerland, for Hanover. It was in vain that the king resisted the exchange, which threatened to involve him in hostilities with England; separated from Austria by the hasty conclusion of the peace of Presburg, nothing was left to the king but to submit to the dictation of the victor.
The constitution of the German empire was already dissolved by the elevation of the Elector of Bavaria and of the Duke of Wirtemberg into independent monarchs. Napoleon, in consequence, entertained the project of entirely removing the south and west of Germany from the influence of Austria, and of uniting them to himself by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine. A prospect of enlarging their territories and increasing their power, and fear of the mighty ruler from whose side victory appeared inseparable, induced a great number of princes and estates of the empire to separate themselves from the German empire and join France. Self-interest was more powerful than patriotism. On the 12th of July, the treaty was signed in Paris, by virtue of which Napoleon, as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, recognized the full sovereignty of the individual members, upon condition of their maintaining a certain contingent of troops ready at the emperor’s disposal. Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and several others, formed the kernel around which the lesser principalities, as Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, Solms, etc., collected themselves, till at length almost all the German confederate states of the second and third rank gave in their adhesion. The Elector arch-chancellor Dalberg, who had been made prince-primate, and who had received Frankfort, together with Hanau and Fulda, as a principality, was chosen Napoleon’s representative in the Confederation of the Rhine.
The wavering conduct of Prussia had filled Napoleon with the deepest anger, and convinced him that the king would be untrustworthy as a friend, and cowardly and innocuous as an enemy. He accordingly flung aside all respect and forbearance, and purposely inflicted many mortifications on the Prussian government. The irritation produced by this was soon aggravated into a complete rupture.
The French troops under Napoleon and his experienced marshals were in the heart of Thuringia and Saxony, the Elector of which had united himself, after some hesitation, to Prussia. The first engagement at Saalfeld, where the gallant prince Louis found his death, went against the Prussians; but the defeat suffered by the army under the command of the old duke of Brunswick, in the great double battle of Jena and Auerstadt, was terrible and fatal. It decided the fate of the countries between the Rhine and the Elbe. The former presumption of the officers and young nobles was suddenly turned into despondency, and the greatest confusion and helplessness took possession of the leaders. Hohenlohe, with 17,000 men, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; the fortresses of Erfurt, Magdeburg, Spondau, Stettin, etc., surrendered within a few days, with such wonderful celerity, that the commandants of many of them were suspected of treachery, so utterly unaccountable did such cowardice and such entire want of self-reliance appear. Blücher alone saved the honor of Prussia by the bloody combat in and around Lubeck, though he could not prevent the horrible storming of this slightly-fortified town; in Colberg, also, Gneisenau and Schill, supported by the brave citizen, Nettlebeck, courageously resisted the superior force of the enemy. Thirteen days after the battle of Jena, Napoleon marched into Berlin, and issued his mandates from thence. The Elector of Hesse, who wished to remain neutral, and who had withdrawn his forces from the contest, was obliged to surrender both land and army to the enemy, and to seek for protection as a fugitive in a foreign land. He took up his residence in Prague. The duke of Brunswick, who had been severely wounded, and who was carried into his capital on a litter after the battle of Jena, was compelled to seek for refuge in Denmark to die in peace. Jena and East Friesland were united to Holland; the Hanse towns as well as Leipsic, were oppressed by the deprivation of all English wares, and by severe military taxes; and treasures of art and science, and the trophies of former victories, were carried away from all quarters. It was only to the Elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought at Jena, that Napoleon showed any favor. He set the Saxon prisoners at liberty, and granted the Elector a favorable peace; upon which the latter, dignified with the title of king, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, like the other Saxon dukes. From this time, Frederick Augustus, to the misfortune of himself and his people, felt himself bound by the ties of gratitude to the French emperor.
The king of Prussia had fled to Königsberg, where he vainly attempted to obtain peace. Napoleon’s demands rose with his fortunes. In his necessity, Frederick William turned to his friend Alexander, who immediately despatched a Russian army under Benningsen and others into East Prussia, to prevent the French passing the Vistula. Upon this, Napoleon issued a proclamation to the Poles, pretendedly in the name of Kosciusko, by which these misused people were summoned to fight for liberty and independence. The Poles willingly made the greatest sacrifices, and strengthened the ranks of the French by their brave soldiers under the command of Dombrowski. Napoleon marched into Warsaw amidst the rejoicings of the people; but the Poles discovered, only too soon, that the foreign potentate was more intent upon the gratification of his own ambition and love of power, than upon the restoration of their empire. Murderous battles were now fought upon the banks of the Vistula, and torrents of blood shed at Pultusk and Morungen. But the great blow was struck in the battle of Preuss-Eylau, February 8, 1807, when the marshal spirit of the French and Russians gave rise to a contest which in loss of men equals any event of the sort in the world’s history. Both parties claimed the victory, and their efforts and exhaustion were so great, that the war suffered an interruption of four months. During this interval, negotiations were again renewed; but much as the king, who was waiting with his family in Memel, might desire the termination of the war, that he might free his subjects from the dreadful exactions of the French, he was too honest to dissever his own cause from that of his ally. But when the Silesian fortresses on the Oder, Glogau, Brieg, Schweidnitz, and Breslau, fell into the hands of the French by the cowardice of their commandants, and even Dantzic was surrendered to the marshal Lefebvre by the gallant governor Kalkreuth, the king lost all confidence in the successful issue. When, after the recommencement of hostilities, the French gained a brilliant victory over the Russians in the battle of Friedland, on the anniversary of the battle of Marengo, and took possession of the field of Königsberg, the allied monarchs, after a personal interview with Bonaparte on the Niemen, thought it prudent to consent to the peace of Tilsit, oppressive as were the conditions.
Portugal, in consequence of her refusal to close her ports against the English, was occupied by a French army under Junot, who assumed the title of Duke of Abrantes, and proclaimed himself regent in the name of the French Emperor, after the departure of the Portugese royal family for Brazil. In pursuance of his favorite object, the destruction of English commerce, Napoleon not only extended his continental system to Portugal and Italy (as far as the latter country was dependent on France), but even formed a plan for the subjugation of Spain; and under pretense of protecting that country against an English invasion, crossed the Pyrenees at the head of 100,000 men. CharlesIV, who a short time before in consequence of an insurrection against his contemptible favorite, Godoy, Prince of the Peace, had resigned his crown in favor of his son, FerdinandVII, no sooner witnessed the entry of the French into Madrid, than he desired to recall his abdication. Under pretense of settling the dispute, Napoleon invited the whole party to meet him at Bayonne, and having made himself master of their persons, compelled the Bourbon family to resign the Spanish crown, and placed his brother Joseph on the throne. The vacant kingdom of Naples was then conferred on Murat, and the grand-duchy of Berg destined for the Crown Prince of Holland. Against the sovereign thus treacherously imposed on them, the whole Spanish nation rose as one man; and Joseph, after an unsuccessful attempt to conciliate his new subjects by granting them a liberal constitution, was compelled to quit Madrid and retire to Burgos.
An English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed in Portugal, and drove the French out of that country; the means of returning to France being secured to Junot and his army by the Convention of Cintra. At the same time, another French army, under Dupont, was surrounded and captured in the south of Spain. The French had already fallen back on the Ebro, when Napoleon (to whom the Emperor Alexander, in a personal interview at Erfurt, had promised assistance in the event of a war with Austria) appeared in Spain at the head of 335,000 men.
After a victorious progress from the Ebro, the French Emperor entered Madrid, and immediately abolished the inquisition, the feudal system, and the Council of Castile (which had recalled its consent to the abdication of CharlesIV), and reduced the number of convents to one-third. Having, in conjugation with Soult, compelled the English to evacuate Portugal, Napoleon returned to France to make preparations for a fresh war with Austria. On the 21st February, 1809, the fortress of Saragossa which had been twice heroically defended by the Spanish General Palafox, with the loss of 53,000 men, surrendered to the French; and the cause of Spanish independence seemed utterly ruined; for the brilliant victory of Talavera 27th and 28th of July, obtained by Sir Arthur Wellesley over King Joseph, was neutralized by the defeat of an army recently raised by the Junta of Seville, which was almost annihilated by Soult, at Ocano.
The monks, to whose influence King Joseph attributed the general insurrection of the Spanish nation against the French, were punished by the suppression of all the monastic orders. Whilst the French, although perpetually harrassed by swarms of irregular troops, called Guerillas, were still advancing steadily towards the south, the Junta had retired to Seville, and assembled the Cortes (1810), which drew up and proclaimed in (1812), a new constitution, by which the monarchical power was greatly restricted. The repeated attempts of the French, especially under Massena, to regain a footing in Portugal, were as unsuccessful as their attacks on Cadiz, which was strongly fortified and protected by a combined Spanish and English fleet. In the year 1812, the French force in Spain having been reduced to 168,000 men, by the withdrawal of a large number of the best soldiers and generals for the Russian campaign, the whole population of several provinces were encouraged to take the field, and the Guerillas under Mina, the Curate Merino, Mendizabal, etc., became daily more numerous and daring. The fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were stormed by Lord Wellington, who spared the armies of Marmont and Soult, defeated the former near Salamanca, compelled Joseph to quit Madrid, and then, on the approach of the French, retreated to the Portuguese frontier. Soult having been recalled from Spain by Napoleon, after his disastrous campaign in Russia, the English general compelled King Joseph a second time to abandon his capital, and retire to the Ebro, and in the year 1813 decided the fate of Spain, by a brilliant victory over Jourdan at Vittoria. Joseph escaped being taken prisoner, by a precipitate flight into France. Soult, who had reëntered Spain by command of Napoleon, was compelled to recross the Pyrenees by Lord Wellington, and the war was terminated by the battle of Toulouse, in April, 1814, the Emperor Napoleon having previously abdicated, and FerdinandVIIbeing released from his imprisonment at Valencay.
Soon after his coronation, Napoleon had conceived the idea of depriving the Pope of his temporal power, and transporting him to Paris, where the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff might be advantageously employed for the promotion of his own ambitious designs. After a succession of annoyances and threats, Napoleon demanded that the Pope should accede to the continental system, close his ports against the English, and conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, at least against the Infidels, by which title he designated the Turks and all the Protestant powers. On the refusal of the Pope to entertain this proposal, the Emperor took possession of Rome, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy four provinces belonging to the States of the Church. These measures were speedily followed by the publication of a decree dated from Schönbrunn, in whichthe temporal authority of the Pope was declared to be at an end; and in the following year 1810 the rest of the States of the Church were incorporated into the French empire. PiusVII, who had excommunicated the the originators and perpetrators of these acts of violence, was carried off by force to Grenoble, and thence removed to Savona, where he remained three years a prisoner, refusing with exemplary firmness to resign his temporal authority, and establish his residence at Paris. In the summer of 1812, he was removed to Fontainebleau, for the purpose of negotiating a fresh concordat, and returned to Rome after the abdication of Napoleon, in 1814.
After the peace of Tilsit, an attempt was made by the Austrian government to reëstablish its political influence in Europe. With this view the army was reörganized; and when Napoleon, in consequence of this movement, called on the members of the Rhenish Confederacy to hold themselves in readiness, the Austrians resolved to anticipate his attack. A proclamation was accordingly issued by the Emperor’s brothers, the Archdukes Charles and John, as commanders-in-chief of the army destined to act in Bavaria and Italy, calling on the German nation to coöperate with Austria in her struggles for the liberty of their common fatherland; but scarcely any effect was produced by this appeal. The army commanded by the Archduke Charles, which had entered Bavaria, was defeated in a series of engagements, which lasted from the 19th to the23dof April at Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, by a force composed almost entirely of Germans, and compelled, after sustaining immense loss, to cross the Danube, and retreat towards Bohemia.
On the 13th of May, Vienna was a second time taken by the French; Napoleon, who had advanced by forced marches for the purpose of preventing the relief of Vienna by the archduke Charles, was defeated on the 21st and22dof May, near the villages of Aspern and Esling. He then formed a junction with the Italian army under Eugene Beauharnais, a second time crossed the Danube, and defeated the archduke Charles in the sanguinary battle of Wagram, on the 5th and 6th of July. The two armies met again at Znaim, in Moravia, and victory had already begun to incline to the side of the French, when hostilities were suspended by the arrival of Prince Lichtenstein, who was empowered by the Emperor to arrange the terms of an armistice. After this battle, and an unsuccessful attempt of the English to effect a diversion by landing on the island of Walcheren, in Holland, the Austrian war was terminated on the 14th of October by the peace of Vienna. By this treaty Austria lost 2000 square miles of territory, with three and a half millions of inhabitants.
In the hope of obtaining an heir to his throne, and of imparting in some sort, a legitimate character to his dynasty, Napoleon divorced himself from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria. On the 20th of March, 1811, the new Empress was delivered of a son, who was immediately created king of Rome. His brother Louis having declared his readiness to abdicate in favor of his son, rather than ruin Holland by enforcing a rigid observance to the continental system, Napoleon annexed the whole of that country to France. Under the same pretext, and in the face of his own repeated declaration that he wished the Rhine to be the boundary of his dominions, the Emperor incorporated into the French empire the maritime provinces of northern Germany, a great part of the kingdom of Westphalia, the Hanse Towns, the grand duchy of Berg, Oldenburg, and East Friesland: as he had already annexed Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the Canton of Vallais in Switzerland. The empire at this time numbered 130 departments, and extended along the coast of western and southern Europe, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Trieste and Corfu. The imperial government now became every day more absolute: the sittings of the legislative body, which had long since been a mere farce, were suspended: the duties of the senate were confined to the appearance of its members on great occasions in the suite of the Emperor, and the passing of acts confirmatory of his decrees for the annexation of fresh territory.
The conviction that the continental system would be ruinous to her commerce, and that Napoleon would never rest until he had destroyed her influence as a first-rate European power, was soon forced on Russia, which had wrested Finland from Sweden in 1808, and extended her dominions to the Pruth, by the peace of Bucharest, concluded in 1812, after a six years’ war with the Turks. The first coolness between Alexander and Napoleon was occasioned by the annexation of Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, a measure which was regarded with suspicion by the Russian Emperor, as tending towards the reëstablishment of Poland as a kingdom. Other causes of offense followed in rapid succession; on the one side, Napoleon, who had already annoyed the Emperor by depriving the duke of Oldenburgh, husband of Alexander’s aunt by the mother’s side, of his dominions, now demanded the rigid enforcement of the continental system by Russia; whilst, on the other, the union of Warsaw, as a province, with Saxony, and the evacuation of the Prussian dominions, were strongly urged on France by the Russian government. The refusal of each party to accede to the demands of the other, at length produced a war, which was commenced in 1812 by Napoleon, who collected an army of 400,000, or, according to some writers, 600,000 men, from almost every country in south-western Europe. To oppose this formidable armament, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. With his accustomed rapidity of movement, Napoleon crossed the Nieman into Lithuania, and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the Russians, who were unwilling to hazard a general engagement until they had formed a junction with the troops from the interior. After defeating the Russians at Smolensk, and Borodino, on the Moskwa, Napoleon, on the 14th of September, entered Moscow, which was entirely abandoned by the inhabitants; and soon after his arrival a fire broke out, occasioned probably by the Russian governor Rostopchin, which raged six days, and destroyed nine-tenths of the city. Notwithstanding this calamity, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins of Moscow, endeavoring to negotiate a peace; but discovering his error when it was too late, he broke up his quarters on the 18th of October, and commenced his retreat with an army now reduced to 104,000 men. The winter had already set in with a severity almost unprecedented at that early season, and the whole of the country between Moscow and Beresina, an extent of 150 German miles, presented the appearance of a desert, the inhabitants of the villages having removed or destroyed all their agricultural produce. At length the army, reduced by famine and the unceasing attacks of the Russians and Cossacks to 30,000 men capable of bearing arms, reached the Beresina, where the passage of the river was forced by Ney and Oudinot, with 8,500 men, in the face of 25,000 Russians. The retreat now became a flight, in consequence of the intensity of the cold, and the abandonment of the army by Napoleon, who had placed himself in a sledge, when all was lost, and proceeded to Paris (arrived 18th December,) where his presence was rendered necessary by the unsettled state of public affairs. General Ney, who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Moskwa, and done good service by the masterly manner in which he had conducted the retreat, was created Prince of the Moskwa. The first step towards the emancipation of Prussia, was the conclusion of a convention of neutrality between the Prussian general Diebitsch and general York, who was sent to cover the retreat of the left wing of the French army under Macdonald. This proceeding on the part of the Prussian general was stigmatized by Napoleon as an act of the grossest treachery, and the chief cause of his subsequent misfortunes.
Frederick WilliamIIIof Prussia, after issuing from Breslau a manifesto, in which he called on his people to rise and defend their liberties against the encroachments of the French, now concluded an alliance with Russia for the reëstablishment of the Prussian monarchy, and having been subsequently joined by Sweden and England, commenced his preparations for the formation of a national militia in Prussia.
In the month of March, the Prussian grand army under Blucher, marched through Silesia to Dresden, where it awaited the arrival of a Russian force commanded by Kalish. A second Russo-Prussian army was also sent from Berlin to join the two other corps. The allied army, under Wittgenstein, now numbered 85,000 men, and that of the French 120,000, most of whom were raw conscripts.
Towards the end of April, Napoleon reäppeared in Germany, and advanced to Leipzic, where he was compelled to engage the enemy at Grossgörschen, or, as he himself named the battle, at Lützen, on the2dof May: but notwithstanding the disadvantage under which they labored, in being unprepared for the attack, and the heavy loss which they sustained in the battle, the French were victorious; and the allies retreated by way of Dresden into Lusatia. Sharnhorst died at Prague of the wounds which he had received in the battle. Soon afterwards Napoleon appeared at Dresden, and compelled the wavering king of Saxony to place the resources of his kingdom at the disposal of the French. On the 20th of May Napoleon attacked the allies at Bautzen, forced the passage of the Spree, and completed his victory on the following day, at Wurschen, where he sustained a considerable loss in killed and wounded. As the allies directed their retreat towards Silesia instead of Berlin, in order to effect a junction with the Austrians, the conqueror, who wished to prevent a meeting of the three powers, as well as to gain time for fresh levies, consented to an armistice from 4th of June to 10th of August, in the hope that Austria would eventually join the French. A short time previously to these events, the city of Hamburg, which had been abandoned by the French officials on the approach of a Russian army, under Tetterborn, was retaken by Davoust, and mercilessly pillaged, because the inhabitants were unable to pay a forced contribution of 48,000,000 francs.
The congress of Prague having terminated unsatisfactorily, in consequence of the unreasonable demands of Austria, and the unwillingness of England to become a party to a treaty of peace, war was declared by the Austrian government against Napoleon, whose subsequent overtures were treated with contempt. The allies had made the best use of the breathing time allowed them by the armistice. A subsidy of eleven millions, granted by England, enabled them to equip at least 600,000 men, who formed three divisions, viz, 1. The grand army of Bohemia, under Schwarzenberg, in whose camp were the three allied monarchs and General Moreau. 2. The army of Silesia, under Blücher. 3. The army of the North, under the Crown Prince of Sweden, Charles John Bernadotte. Against this enormous force Napoleon brought into the field about 350,000 men; and notwithstanding his inferiority in point of numbers, commenced hostilities with an attack on the army of Silesia, which retreated beyond the Katzbach. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had marched upon Dresden, and Napoleon was compelled to proceed by forced marches to that city, leaving General Macdonald in Silesia. On the 26th and 27th of August, Napoleon gained his last victory at Dresden, on German ground, amidst torrents of rain. Moreau was mortally wounded in this battle, and died soon afterwards. This advantage gained by Napoleon, was however almost neutralized by the failure of the other divisions of the French army.
The Silesian and northern armies having crossed the Elbe where Bertrand was defeated by York, near Wartemberg, in order to effect, if possible, a junction with the army of Bohemia in Napoleon’s rear, the French Emperor quitted Dresden, and drew together all his forces at Leipzic, where the great ‘battle of the nations’ was fought on the 16th, 17th, and 18th October. Towards the end of this battle, the Saxons and Würtembergers went over to the allies. On the first day Napoleon engaged the main body of the allies, under Schwarzenberg, on the plain southwards of Leipzic, near Wachau, but without any decisive result; whilst at the same time Blücher defeated Marmont, on the northern part of the city, near Möckern. On the 17th there was no general engagement, Napoleon having communicated to the Emperor of Austria his willingness to purchase peace, by the relinquishment of his sovereignty over Warsaw, Illyria, and the Rhineland, and to withdraw his troops to the other side of the Rhine, as soon as an armistice was concluded. Meanwhile, however, a reinforcement of more than 100,000 men had joined the allied army, which now numbered 300,000, whilst the French had scarcely 130,000. Under these circumstances the battle was renewed on the 18th of October. After losing more than 30,000 men (including Prince Poniatowsky, a nephew of the last King of Poland, who was drowned in the Elster), the defeated army, which still numbered 100,000 men, commenced its retreat, and fought its way to the Rhine, where 70,000 men crossed the river at Mainz. During this retreat, the French were attacked on the Unstrut by York, and at Hanau by the Bavarians, under Wrede, and were incessantly harassed by bands of Cossacks. The immediate consequences of this victory were—1. The breaking up of the Rhenish confederacy. 2. The dissolution of the kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchies of Frankfort and Berg. 3. The surrender of all the French garrisons as prisoners of war, with the exception of the garrison of Hamburg, which held out, under Davoust, until the 26th of May, 1814. 4. The re-conquest, by Bülow, of Holland, where the people, who had been more forward than any other nation in their resistance to the continental system, proclaimed the Prince of Orange sovereign of the Netherlands. 5. Denmark, on account of its alliance with Napoleon, was invaded by the crown prince of Sweden, and compelled, after a short winter campaign, to cede Norway to Sweden in exchange for Swedish Pomerania and Rügen. 6. Illyria and the Tyrol were restored to Austria after a long and bloody struggle. In the south, Murat, King of Naples, the Emperor’s brother-in-law, formed an alliance with the Austrians for the expulsion of the French from Italy, the Emperor of Austria undertaking to guarantee to him the undisturbed possession of his dominions. On the other hand, Switzerland, too feeble as yet to throw off the French yoke, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon, who deemed this the best mode of protecting his weakest frontier.
Wellington, being now prepared to enter France from Spain, and the allied army from the Rhine, Napoleon, who had rejected the offers of peace made to him by the allies, demanded a fresh conscription of 300,000 men, and prorogued the legislative assembly, which had ventured to present him an address describing, in strong language, the misery and exhaustion of France. At the commencement of the year 1814 the allies entered France, the grand army of Schwarzenberg traversing a portion of neutral Switzerland, and crossing the frontier at Basle, whilst the force under the command of Blücher crossed the Rhine, on new year’s eve, at Mannheim, Caub, and Coblenz. In the hope of preventing a junction, Napoleon attacked Blücher near Brienne, and forced him to retreat; but, in spite of this check, the united armies attacked the French at la Rothière, and drove them across the Aube. The two corps then separated, the grand army under Schwarzenberg proceeding along the banks of the Seine, and the army of Silisia along the Main, in the direction of Paris. No sooner was Napoleon aware of this separation, than he several times attacked the army of Silesia, and compelled it to retire northwards, and then defeated the grand army at Montereau. A congress was now held at Chatillon, but without any result except the temporary suspension of hostilities. In order to prevent Napoleon from following the grand army, Blücher continued his march on Paris, and defeated the French near Laon. Then Napoleon attacked the grand army at Arcis-sur-Aube, and being compelled to retire before a superior force, conceived the desperate design of leaving the road to Paris open, attacking the enemy in the rear from Lorraine, and drawing together all the garrisons of the eastern fortresses for a final struggle. With equal courage the allies continued their march towards the capital, and after defeating Marshals Marmont and Mortier, at la Fère Champenoise, and storming the heights of Montmartre, entered Paris, in consequence of a capitulation, on the 31st of March, with the Emperor Alexander, King Frederick William, and Prince Schwarzenberg, at their head. No sooner had the capital fallen, than the senate was persuaded by Talleyrand to declarethe throne forfeited by Napoleon and his family, and the nation absolved from its oath of allegiance.
Napoleon, who had reached Paris a few hours too late, signed his abdication on the 11th of April, at Fontainebleau, renouncing for himself and heirs all claims to the throne of France, Italy, or any other country; the allies, on their side, engaging to confer on him the sovereignty of the island of Elba, with a pension of two millions of francs, to grant to his wife the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, with succession to her son and his desendants, and to provide for his relations.
On the very day of Napoleon’s landing at Elba (14th of May), LouisXVIIIentered Paris, replaced the constitution hastily drawn up by the provisional government by another formed on the English model, with two chambers, one of peers and one of deputies, and concluded with the allies the peace of Paris, by which it was settled that the boundaries of France should be the same as they were before the Revolution, with the exception of some unimportant extensions towards the east and north-east.
For the definitive settlement of European affairs, especially as regarded Germany, a Congress was held at Vienna (1st of November, 1814–9th of June, 1815), which was attended by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and Würtemberg, and several other princes, statesmen, and generals.
A spirit of disaffection had already begun to manifest itself in France, in consequence of the mal-administration of the government, and the insolence of those classes which had enjoyed peculiar privileges before the Revolution. Encouraged by the reports which he received of the prevalence of discontent, especially among the soldiers, and the difficulties in which the Congress of Vienna was involved by the Polish and Saxon questions, Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed with 2000 men at Cannes on the 1st of March 1815, and being joined by all the troops sent to oppose his progress, and by Marshal Ney, entered Paris on the 20th, amidst the acclamations of the people, and immediately established his head quarters at the Tuileries. Meanwhile LouisXVIIIhad fled to Ghent.
Napoleon, by a proclamation dated from Lyons, had already summoned the electoral colleges of the empire to hold an extraordinary meeting (Champ de Mai) in Paris, for the improvement of the constitution; but the popularity obtained by this apparent concession to the wishes of the people, was in a great measure lost in consequence of these ameliorations being eventually decreed by the emperor himself, without the intervention of a representative body. Notwithstanding repeated attempts on the part of Napoleon to reöpen negotiations with the emperors of Austria and Russia, the Congress of Vienna proclaimed him an outlawed traitor on the 13th of March, renewed their alliance for the restoration of LouisXVIII, and engaged to raise a force, which eventually amounted to 900,000 men. On the other hand, Napoleon was unable to complete the number which he had intended to bring into the field (560,000 men).
Napoleon now determined to commence hostilities by attacking simultaneously the allied troops (English, Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, etc.), which were dispersed through Belgium under the command of Wellington, and the Prussians under Blücher; and thus preventing a junction of the two armies. The Prussian army, which had not yet had time to concentrate itself, was defeated at Ligny; whilst Ney meanwhile marched northwards as far as Quatrebras, for the purpose of preventing the advance of Wellington to relieve the Prussians. Here an indecisive battle was fought, in which Duke William of Brunswick lost his life. Instead of falling back on Namur, as Napoleon had expected, the Prussians now endeavored to effect a junction with Wellington by Wavre. Having dispatched Marshal Grouchy to intercept Blücher, Napoleon attacked Wellington on the 18th of June, at Waterloo, where the English, after bravely fighting throughout the day, were beginning to waver towards evening, when Blücher who had left Thielemann to oppose Grouchy at Wavre, appeared on the field, and, in conjunction with Wellington, completely routed the French army, which fled in disorder, pursued by the Prussians. After a succession of victorious skirmishes, Blücher arrived, on the22dof June, at Paris, where Napoleon had a second time abdicated, in favor of his son. Napoleon then fled to Rochefort, with the intention of embarking for America; but finding the harbor beset by English cruisers, he surrendered himself to Capt. Maitland, of the Bellerophon, and was conveyed a prisoner toSt.Helena, where he died, after nearly six years’ suffering, on the 5th of May, 1821.
Before his return to Paris, LouisXVIIIhad issued a proclamation from Cambray, granting a free pardon to all who had taken part in the Revolution, with the exception of its chief authors, and constituted a liberal administration under Talleyrand; which, however, was speedily overthrown by the court party, headed by the king’s brother, the Compte d’ Artois. An act was then passed by the ultra-royalist majority in the chambers, excluding from the amnesty, and condemning to perpetual banishment, all who had taken part in the murder of LouisXVI.
Ney was arraigned before the chamber of peers, found guilty of high treason and shot. LouisXVIIIhaving been persuaded to dissolve the chambers, some projects of law, of a more liberal character, respecting elections, liberty of the press and person, etc., were carried through the new chambers by the Duc de Richelieu, who also obtained at the congress of Aix la Chapelle, 1818, the withdrawal of the army of occupation, and a remission of some portion of the debt still due from France to the allies. In return for these concessions LouisXVIIIjoined the holy alliance.
The ultra-royalists now exerted themselves to obliterate every trace of the Revolution, and reëstablish the privileged classes in all their former splendor; a plan which they pursued with great zeal and success under CharlesX.But the indignation of the people was at length excited by the pertinacity with which they endeavored to increase the influence of the priesthood, and by their granting an indemnification to the extent of 1,000,000,000 of francs to the emigrants, whose estates had been confiscated by the revolutionary government.
The ministry persuaded the king to sign the fatal Ordonnances of 25th of July, by which the liberty of the press was suspended, the recently elected chamber dissolved, the number of deputies diminished, and the mode of election altered. This open violation of the constitution produced the Revolution of July, 1830.
Some of the royal troops having joined the revolutionists, and the remainder been driven out of the city after three days’ hard fighting (27th—29th of July), CharlesXabdicated at Rambouillet on the2dof August, in favor of his grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux. Several unsuccessful attempts had already been made to proclaim a republic: and on the 30th of July the peers and deputies who happened to be resident at Paris, had met and nominated as regent the Duke of Orleans (descendant of a brother of LouisXIV), by whose representations Charles was induced to quit the kingdom, and seek an asylum in Scotland. On the 7th of August, the Duke of Orleans was proclaimed hereditary “King of the French,” by the chambers, and on the 9th swore fidelity to the charter of 1830, in which the sovereignty of the people was fully recognized. The national guard was reëstablished and placed under the command of Lafayette.
The first care of Louis Philippe was to obtain the recognition of his title by foreign powers; an object which was effected without much difficulty, as he founded his claim on hislegitimateright to the throne (the elder branch of the Bourbons having abdicated) rather than the choice of the people. But this disavowal of the principle on which he had been chosen king of the French, however satisfactory to foreign cabinets, was exceedingly distasteful to the people, and the cause of serious disturbances. His ministers, who were repeatedly changed, were engaged in a perpetual contest with the Republicans on the one side, and the adherents of the ancient dynasty (Legitimists or Carlists) on the other.
TheCarlistsor Legitimists, who considered HenryVthe Duke of Bordeaux the rightful sovereign of France, had many adherents, especially in la Vendée, where the Duchesse de Berri, who personally exerted herself on behalf of her son, was arrested and banished the country. On the other hand, theRepublicans, endeavored to effect the overthrow of the ministry, if not of the throne itself, by means of societies, trades-unions, conspiracies, and émeutes in Paris, Lyons, and other cities. Several attempts were also made to assassinate the king (Fieschi’s infernal machine, Alibaud, Meunier, Hubert, Darmès, Henry). The appearance of Louis Napoleon, a son of the ex-king of Holland, at Strasburg, in 1837, and at Boulogne in 1840, produced no important results. In order to preservepeace with foreign powers, Louis Philippe adopted a system of non-intervention, which he was compelled to violate on several occasions by the clamors of the opposition party.