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generous heart will throb in sympathy with this decision.

"The Emperor," says Caulaincourt, "closed his last instructions to me, with the following words! I wish for peace. I wish for it, without any reservation or after-thought. But Cau

The Duke of Rovigo, who has recorded the above interview, says that the Emperor, on returning to his cabinet, showed no particular indications of displeasure against the legislative body. With that wonderful magnanimity which ever characterized him, he gave them credit for the best intentions. He, however, observed that | laincourt, I will never accede to dishonorable he could not safely allow the existence of this state of things behind him, when he was on the point of proceeding to join the army, where he would find quite enough to engage his attention.

It was the special aim of the Allies, aided by their copartners the royalists of France, to create a division between Napoleon and the French people, and to make the Emperor as odious as possible. Abusive pamphlets were circulated like autumn leaves all over the Empire. The treasury of England and that of all the Allies was at the disposal of any one, who could wage effective warfare against the dreaded republican Emperor. The invading kings, at the head of their locust legions, issued a proclamation, to be spread throughout Europe, full of the meanest and the most glaring falsehoods. They asserted that they were the friends of peace, and Napoleon the advocate for war; that they were struggling for liberty and human rights, Napoleon for tyranny and oppression. They declared that they earnestly desired peace, but that the despot Napoleon would not sheathe the sword. They assured the French people that they waged no war against France, but only against the usurper, who, to gratify his own ambition, was deluging Europe in blood. The atrocious falsehood was believed in England, on the Continent, and in America. Its influence still poisons thousands of minds.

conditions. It is wished that peace shall be based on the independence of all nations; be it so. This is one of those Utopian dreams of which experience will prove the fallacy. My policy is more enlightened than that of those men who were born kings. Those men have never quitted their gilded cages, and have never read history except with their tutors. Tell them -I impress upon them, with all the authority we are entitled to exercise, that peace can be durable only inasmuch as it shall be reasonable and just to all parties. To demand absurd concessions, to impose conditions which can not be acceded to consistently with the dignity and importance of France, is to declare a deadly war against me. I will never consent to leave France less than I found her. Were I to do so, the whole nation, en masse, would be entitled to call me to account. Go, Caulaincourt. You know the difficulties of my position. Heaven grant that you may succeed! Do not spare couriers. Send me intelligence every hour. You know how anxious I shall be.

"Our real enemies," continues Caulaincourt, "they who had vowed our destruction, were England, Austria and Sweden. There was a determined resolution to exterminate Napoleon, and consequently all negotiations proved fruitless. Every succeeding day gave birth to a new conflict. In proportion as we accepted what was offered, new pretensions rose up, and no sooner Colonel Napier, though an officer in the allied was one difficulty smoothed down, than we had army, and marching under the Duke of Welling- | to encounter another. I know not how I muston for the invasion of France, with noble candor admits, that the Allies in this declaration were utterly insincere, that they had no desire for peace, and that their only object was to rouse the hostility of the people of Europe against Napoleon. He says the negotiations of the Allies, with Napoleon, were "a deceit from the beginning." "This fact," he says "was placed beyond a doubt, by Lord Castlereagh's simultaneous proceedings in London.*

Napoleon sent Caulaincourt to the head-quarters of the Allies to make every effort in his power to promote peace. They had consented to a sort of conference, in order to gain time to bring up their reserves. France was exhausted. The Allies had slain so many of the French, in these iniquitous wars, that the fields of France were left untilled, for want of laborers. More than a million of men were now on the march to invade the almost defenseless Empire. It is utterly impossible but that Napoleon must have wished for peace. But nobly he resolved that he would perish, rather than submit to dishonor. Every

For the conclusive proof of this hypocrisy on the part of the Allies, see Napier's Peninsular War, vol. iv. PP.

327, 328.

tered sufficient firmness and forbearance, to remain calm amidst so many outrages. I accordingly wrote to the Emperor, assuring him that these conferences, pompously invested with the title of a congress, served merely to mask the irrevocably fixed determination, not to treat with France; that the time we were thus losing, was employed by the Allied powers, in assembling their forces, for the purpose of invading us on all points at once; that by further temporizing, we should unavoidably augment the disadvantages of our position."

In a private interview with Caulaincourt, as reported by the Duke of Rovigo, Napoleon said, "France must preserve her natural limits. All the powers of Europe, including England, have acknowledged these bases at Frankfort. France, reduced to her old limits, would not possess twothirds of the relative power she possessed twenty years ago. What she has acquired toward the Alps and the Rhine, does not compensate for what Russia, Austria and Prussia have acquired, by the mere act of the partition of Poland. All these powers have aggrandized themselves. To pretend to bring France back to her former state, would be to lower and to degrade her. Neither

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the Emperor, nor the republic if it should spring out anew from this state of agitation, can ever subscribe to such a condition. I have taken my determination, which nothing can change. Can I consent to le e France less powerful than I found her? If, therefore, the Allies insist upon this reduction of France, the Emperor has only one of three choices left: either to fight and conquer; to die honorably in the struggle; or, lastly, to abdicate, if the nation should not support me. The throne has no charms for me. I will never attempt to purchase it at the price of dishonor."* In the midst of these days of disaster, when Napoleon's throne was crumbling beneath him, there were exhibited many noble examples of disinterestedness and fidelity. The illustrious and virtuous Carnot, true to his republican principles, had refused to accept office under the Empire. Napoleon had earnestly, but in vain, * Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, vol. iv. p. 193.

sought his aid. Carnot, retiring from the allurements of the Imperial court, was buried in seclusion and poverty. His pecuniary embarrassments at length became so great, that they reached the cars of the Emperor. Napoleon, though deeming Carnot in error, yet highly appreciating the universally recognized integrity of the man, immediately sent him, with a touching letter, ample funds for the supply of his wants. Years had rolled away; gloom was gathering around the Emperor; foreign armies were crowding upon France; all who advocated the cause of Napoleon, were in danger of ruin. In that hour Carnot came to the rescue, and offered himself to Napoleon, for the defense of the country. Napoleon gratefully accepted the offer, and intrusted him with the command of Antwerp, one of the keys of the empire In the defense of this place, Carnot exhibited all those noble traits of character, which were to be expected of such a man.

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"The offer," said Carnot, in his letter to Napo- | manifested no gratitude whatever toward his leon, of an arm sixty years old is, without English deliverers. He promptly entered into a doubt, but little. But I thought that the exam- treaty hostile to England. Thus did the sovple of a soldier, whose patriotic sentiments are creign," says Alison, "who had regained his known, might have the effect of rallying to your liberty and his crown by the profuse shedding of eagles a number of persons, hesitating as to the English blood, make the first use of his promised part which they should take, and who might pos- freedom, to banish from his dominions the allies sibly think, that the only way to serve their whose swords had liberated him from prison, and country was to abandon it." placed him on the throne." "Ferdinand," says Colonel Napier, "became once more the King of Spain. He had been a rebellious son in the palace, a plotting traitor at Aranjuez, a dastard at Bayonne, an effeminate, superstitious, fawning slave at Valençay, and now, after six years of captivity, he returned to his own country an ungrateful and cruel tyrant. He would have been the most odious and contemptible of princes, if his favorite brother, Don Carlos, had not existed." Such were the results of the English war in Spain. A greater curse one nation never inflicted upon another. What is Spain now? What would she now have been, had the energies of a popular government, under Joseph Bonaparte, been diffused throughout the Peninsula? This king, whom the English drove from Spain, was a sincere, enlightened, conscientious man, devoted to the public welfare.

In many of the departments of France, the populace, uninfluenced by the libels against Napoleon, enthusiastically demanded arms, and entreated that they might be led against the invading foe. The leaders of the Jacobin clubs in Paris, offered their services in rousing 'he frenzy of the lower orders, as in the days of the old revolution, if Napoleon would receive them into his alliance, surrender to their writers and to their orators the press and the tribune, and allow them to sing their revolutionary songs in the street and in the theatres. Napoleon listened seriously to their proposition, hesitated for a moment, a. d then resolutely replied:

"No. I shall find in battle some chance of safety, but none with these wild demagogues. There can be no connection between them and monarchy; none between furious clubs and a regular ministry; between revolutionary tribunals and the tribunal of the law. If I must fall, I will not bequeath France to the revolution from which I rescued her."

The last days of the month of January had now arrived. An army of one million twenty-eight thousand men, from the north, the east, and the south, were on the march for the overthrow of the imperial republic. Such forces the world had never before seen. Napoleon, having lost some five hundred thousand men in the Russian camthree hundred thousand on the plains of Saxony, two hundred and fifty thousand in the Spanish Peninsula, and having nearly a hundred thousand besieged in the fortresses of the Elbe and the Oder, was unable, with his utmost exertions, to bring forward more than two hundred thousand in the field, to meet the enormous armies of the Allies. He could take but seventy thou sand to encounter the multitudinous hosts crowding down upon him from the Rhine.

Gustavus, the deposed king of Sweden, who had always strenuously affirmed that Napoleon was the Beast, described in the Apocalypse, now strangely offered his services to the Emperor.paign, He wished to make himself the rallying point of the old royalist party in Sweden. He would thus greatly embarrass the movements of the treacherous Bernadotte, and stand some chance of regaining his throne. It was a curious case of a legitimate monarch, who had been deposed by the people, applying for aid to Napoleon, in order to overthrow the elected monarch, and to restore him to his hereditary claims. Notwithstanding the strength of the temptation, Napoleon refused, magnanimously

tures.

On Sunday the 24th of January, the Emperor, fused, to listen to his over-after attending mass, received the dignitarics of the empire in the grand saloon of the Tuileries. The Emperor entered the apartment, preceded by the Empress, and leading by the hand his idolized son, a child of extraordinary beauty, not yet three years of age. The child w dressed in the uniform of the National Guara, while luxuriant ringlets of golden hair were clustering over his shoulders. The Emperor was calm, but a deep shade of melancholy overspread his features. The most profound sadness reigned in the assembly. In a ceremony, grave and solemn, the Empress was invested with the regency, and took the requisite oath of office. The Emperor then advancing with his child into the centre of the circle, in tones which thrilled upon every heart, thus addressed them :*

"I have reflected," he said, "that if I received him, my dignity would require me to make exertions in his favor; and as I no longer rule the or, common minds would not have failed to discover, in the interest I might have displayed for him, an impotent hatred against Bernadotte. Besides, Gustavus had been dethroned by the voice of the people, and it was by the voice of the people that I had been elevated. In taking up his cause I should have been guilty of inconsistency in my conduct, and have acted upon discordant principles."

The Duke of Wellington, with a hundred and forty thousand British, Portuguese, and Spanish troops, having driven the French soldiers out of Spain, was now overrunning the southern departments of France. Spain was lost. Napoleon consequently released Ferdinand, and restored him to his throne. The perfidious wretch

It is to be regretted that Lamartine can not record the most simple fact respecting Napoleon without interweaving some hostile comment. In reference to this extraordinary struggle he says: "Seventy thousand troops con

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"Gentlemen, I depart to-night to place myself | your faithful guardianship. To you I confide at the head of the army. On quitting the capital I leave behind, with confidence, my wife and son, upon whom so many hopes repose. I shall depart with a mind freed from a weight of disquietude, when I know that these pledges are under

stituted the only army with which Napoleon had to manœuvre and combat a million of men in the heart of France. Victory itself could do nothing for so small a number. It could only waste them less rapidly than defeat. Did he depend on impossibilities; or was he only desirous of illustrating his last struggle? No one knows what was passing in that soul, maddened for so many years by illusions. The most likely solution is, that he calculated upon some brilliant but passing success, which might serve as a pretext for the Emperor of Austria to negotiate with him. He never thought a father would dishonor his son-in-law, or that kings would dethrone the

conqueror of the revolution. But at all events, he did not

doubt that if conquered or deprived of his throne, the empire would be transmitted to his son."

what, next to France, I hold dearest in the world. Let there be no political divisions. Endeavors will not be wanting to shake your fidelity to your duties. I depend on you to repel all such perfidious instigations. Let the respect for property, the maintenance of order, and above all the love of France, animate every bosom." As Napoleon uttered these words his voice trembled with emotion, and many of his auditors were affected even to tears. At an early hour he withdrew, saying to those near him, "Farewell, gentlemen; we shall perhaps meet again."

At three o'clock in the morning of the 25th of January, Napoleon, after having burned all his private papers, and embraced his wife and his son for the last time, left the Tuileries to join the army. He never saw either wife or child again.

The Allies had now crossed the Rhine, and | gave the most affecting demonstrations of their were sweeping all opposition before them. They gratitude and their love. "The humblest cabins," issued the atrocious proclamation that every says Lamartine, " gave up their little stores, with French peasant who should be taken with arms cordial hospitality, to warm and nourish these in his hands, endeavoring to defend his country, last defenders of the soil of France." Napoleon, should be shot as a brigand; and that every vil- in the midst of a column of troops, marched fre lage and town, which offered any resistance, quently on foot, occasionally entering a peasant's should be burned to the ground. Even Mr. hut, to examine his maps, or to catch a moment's Lockhart exclaims, "This assuredly was a fla- sleep by the fire on the cottage hearth. grant outrage, against the most sacred and inalienable rights of mankind."

About noon on the 29th, with but twenty thousand men, he encountered sixty thousand Russians, commanded by Blucher, formidably posted in the castle and upon the eminences of Brienne. Napoleon gazed for a moment upon these familiar scenes, hallowed by the reminiscences of childhood, and ordered an immediate assault, without allowing his troops a moment to dry their soaked garments. Before that day's sun went down behind the frozen hills, the snow was crimsoned with the blood of ten thousand of the Allies, and Blucher was retreating to effect a junction with Schwartzenberg at Bar-sur-Aube, some few miles distant.

Napoleon drove rapidly in his carriage, about one hundred miles east of Paris, to Vitry and St. Dizier. Here, at the head of a few thousand soldiers, he encountered the leading Cossacks of Blucher's army. He immediately fell upon them, and routed them entirely. Being informed that Blucher had a powerful army near Troyes, about fifty miles south of Vitry, Napoleon marched all the next day, through wild forest roads, and in a drenching rain, to surprise the unsuspecting and self-confident foe The ground was covered with snow, and the wheels of the cannon were with the utmost difficulty dragged through the As Napoleon was slowly returning to his quardeep quagmires. But intense enthusiasm in- ters, after the action, indulging in melancholy spired the soldiers of Napoleon, and the inhabit- thought, a squadron of Russian artillery, hearing ants of the country through which they passed, the footfalls of his feeble escort, made a sudden

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