family; the Austrians occupied Lyons; the Belgian army had joined the remnant of that of Blucher, which reappeared on Napoleon's rear. Defection now entered his own family, and Murat had just followed, in Italy, the example of Bernadotte, by joining the coalition. The grand officers of the empire still served him, but languidly, and he only found ardor and fidelity in his sub6 altern generals and indefatigable soldiers. Napoleon had again marched on Blucher, who had escaped from him thrice on the left of the Marne, by a sudden frost which hardened the muddy ways among which the Prussians had involved themselves, and were in danger of perishing; on the Aisne, through the defection of Soissons, which opened a passage to them at a moment when they had no other way of escape; at Craoune, by fault of the Duke of Ragusa, who prevented a decisive battle by suffering himself to be surprised by night. After so many fatalities, which frustrated the surest plans, Napoleon, ill sustained by his generals, surrounded by the coalition, conceived the bold design of transporting himself to Saint Dezier, and closing on the enemy the egress 7 from France. This daring march, so full of genius, startled for a moment the confederate generals, from whom it cut off all retreat; but, excited by secret encouragements, without being anxious for their rear, they advanced on Paris.

This great city, the only capital of Europe which had not been the theatre of war, suddenly saw all the troops of Europe enter its plains, and was on the point of undergoing the common humiliation. It was left to itself. The Empress, appointed regent a few months before, had just left it to repair to Blois. Napoleon was at a distance. There was not that despair and that movement of liberty which drive a people to resistance; war was no longer

made on nations, but on governments, and the Emperor had centered all the public interest in himself, and placed all his means of defense in mechanical troops. The exhaustion was great; a feeling of pride-of very just pride-alone made the approach of the stranger painful, and oppressed every Frenchman's heart at seeing his native land trodden by armies so long vanquished. But 8 this sentiment was not sufficiently strong to raise the masses of the population against the enemy; and the measures of the royalist party, at the head of which the Prince of Benevento placed himself, called the allied troops to the capital. An action took place, however, on the 30th of March, under the walls of Paris; but on the 31st the gates were opened to the confederate forces, who entered in pursuance of a capitulation. The senate consummated the great imperial defection by forsaking its old master; it was influenced by M. de Talleyrand, who for some time had been out of favor with Napoleon. This voluntary actor in every crisis of power had just declared against him. With no attachment to party, of a profound political indifference, he foresaw from a distance with wonderful sagacity the fall of a government; withdrew from it opportunely; and, when the precise moment for assailing it had arrived, joined in the attack with all his talents, his influence, his name, and his authority, which he had taken care to preserve. In favor of the Revolution, under the constituent assembly; of the directory, on the 18th Fructidor; for the consulate, on the 18th Brumaire; for the empire, in 1804, he was for the restoration of the royal family in 1814; he seemed grand master of the ceremonies for the party in power, and, for the last thirty years, it was he who had dismissed and installed the successive governments. The senate, 9 influenced by him, appointed a provisional government,

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and declared Napoleon deposed from his throne, the hereditary rights of his family abolished, the people and army freed from their oath of fidelity. It proclaimed him tyrant, whose despotism it had facilitated by its adulation. Meantime, Napoleon, urged by those about him to succor the capital, had abandoned his march on Saint Dezier, and hastened to Paris at the head of fifty thousand men, in the hope of preventing the entry of the enemy. On his arrival (1st of April) he heard of the capitulation of the preceding day, and fell back on Fontainebleau, where he learned the defection of the senate, and his deposition. Then, finding that all gave way around him in his ill-fortune-the people, the senate, generals, and courtiers-he decided on abdicating in favor of his son. He sent the Duke of Vicenza, the Prince de la Moskowa, and the Duke of Tarento as plenipotentiaries to the confederates; on their way they were to take with them the Duke of Ragusa, who covered Fontainebleau with a corps.

Napoleon, with his fifty thousand men, and strong military position, could yet oblige the coalition to admit the claim of his son. But the Duke of Ragusa forsook his post, treated with the enemy, and left Fontainebleau exposed. Napoleon was then obliged to submit to the conditions of the allied powers; their pretensions increased with their power. At Prague they ceded to him the empire, with the Alps and the Rhine for limits; after the invasion of France, they offered him at Chatillon the possessions of the old monarchy only; later, they refused to treat with him except in favor of his son; but now, determined on destroying all that remained of the Revolution with respect to Europe, its conquest and dynasty, they compelled Napoleon to abdicate absolutely. On the 11th of April, 1814, he renounced for himself

and children the thrones of France and Italy, and received in exchange for his vast sovereignty, the limits of which had extended from Cadiz to the Baltic Sea, the little Island of Elba. On the 20th, after an affecting farewell to his old soldiers, he departed for his new principality.

Thus fell this man, who alone, for fourteen years, had 11 filled the world. His enterprising and organizing genius, his power of life and will, his love of glory, and the immense disposable force which the Revolution placed in his hands, have made him the most gigantic being of modern times. That which would have rendered the destiny of another extraordinary, scarcely counts in his. Rising from an obscure to the highest rank, from a simple artillery officer becoming the chief of the greatest of nations, he dared to conceive the idea of universal monarchy, and for a moment realized it. After having obtained the empire by his victories, he wished to subdue Europe by means of France, and reduce England by means of Europe, and he established the military system against the continent; the blockade against Great Britain. This design succeeded for some years; from Lisbon to Moscow he subjected people and potentates to his word of command as general, and to the vast sequestration which he prescribed. But in this way he failed in dis- 12 charging his restorative mission of the 18th Brumaire. By exercising, on his own account, the power he had received, by attacking the liberty of the people by despotic institutions, the independence of states by war, he excited against himself the opinions and interests of the human race; he provoked universal hostility. The nation forsook him, and, after having been long victorious, after having planted his standard on every capital, after having during ten years augmented his power, and gained a

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kingdom with every battle, a single reverse combined the world against him, proving by his fall how impossible in our days is despotism.

Yet Napoleon, amid all the disastrous results of his system, gave a prodigious impulse to the continent; his armies carried with them the ideas and customs of the more advanced civilization of France. European societies were shaken on their old foundations; nations were mingled by frequent intercourse; bridges thrown across boundary rivers; high roads made over the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenees, brought territories nearer to each other; and Napoleon effected for the material condition of states what the Revolution had done for the minds of men. The blockade completed the impulse of conquest; it improved continental industry, enabling it to take the place of that of England, and replace colonial commerce 14 by the produce of manufactures. Thus Napoleon, by agitating nations, contributed to their civilization. His despotism rendered him counter-revolutionary with respect to France; but his spirit of conquest made him a regenerator with respect to Europe, of which many nations, in torpor till he came, will live henceforth with the life he gave them. But in this Napoleon obeyed the dictates of his nature. The child of war-war was his tendency, his pleasure; domination his object--he wanted to master the world, and circumstances placed it in his hand, in order that he might make use of it.

15 Napoleon has presented in France what Cromwell presented for a moment in England; the government of the army, which always establishes itself when a revolution is contended against; it then gradually changes, and from being civil, as it was at first, becomes military. In Great Britain, internal war not being complicated with foreign war, on account of the geographical situation of