charge in the dark. Napoleon was assailed, at | plexity. Such a concession would dishonor him the same moment, by two dragoons. General in the eyes of France and of Europe. It would Corbineau threw himself upon one of the Cos- leave France weakened and defenseless ;-exsacks, while General Gourgaud shot down the posed not only to insult, but to successful invaother. The escort, who were but a few steps sion from the powerful and banded enemies who behind, immediately charged, and rescued the surrounded the republican empire. Napoleon Emperor. Napoleon had lost in the conflict at shut himself up for hours pondering the terrible Brienne five or six thousand men in killed and crisis. Ruin was coming, like an avalanche, wounded. upon him and upon France. The generals of The next day Blucher and Schwartzenberg, the army urged him to submit to the dire neceshaving effected a junction, marched with a hund-sity. With reluctance Napoleon transmitted red and fifty thousand men, to attack Napoleon these inexorable conditions of the Allies to his at Rothierre, nine miles from Brienne. Prince Schwartzenborg sent a confidential officer to Blucher, to inquire respecting the plan of attack. He abruptly replied, "We must march to Paris Napoleon has been in all the capitals of Europe. We must make him descend from a throne, which it would have been well for us all that he had never mounted. We shall have no repose, till we pull him down."

The Emperor had with much difficulty assembled there, forty thousand troops. The French, desperately struggling against such fearful odds, maintained their position during the day. As a gloomy winter's night again darkened the scene, Napoleon retreated to Troyes, leaving six thousand of his valiant band, in every hideous form of mutilation, upon the frozen ground. Alexander and Frederic William, from one of the neighboring heights, witnessed, with unbounded exultation, this triumph of their arms. Blucher, though a desperate fighter, was in his private character one of the most degraded of bacchanals and debauchees. "The day after the battle," says Sir Archibald Alison, "the sovereigns, embassadors, and principal generals supped together, and Blucher striking off, in his eagerness, the necks of the bottles of champagne with his knife, quaffed off copious and repeated libations to the toast, drank with enthusiasm by all present, To Paris.'"

privy council at Paris. All but one voted for accepting them. His brother Joseph wrote to him: "Yield to events. Preserve what may yet be preserved. Save your life, precious to millions of men. There is no dishonor in yielding to numbers and accepting peace. There would be dishonor in abandoning the throne, because you would thus abandon a crowd of men who have devoted themselves to you. Make peace at any price."

Thus urged and overwhelmed, Napoleon, at last, with extreme anguish, gave Caulaincourt permission to sign any treaty which he thought necessary to save the capital. His consent was given in a singularly characteristic manner. Calmly taking from a shelf a volume of the works of Montesquieu, he read aloud the following passage:

"I know nothing more magnanimous, than a resolution which a monarch took, who has reigned in our times, to bury himself under the ruins of his throne, rather than accept conditions unworthy of a king. He had a mind too lofty to descend lower than his fortunes had sunk him. He knew well that courage may strengthen a crown, but infamy never."

In silence he closed the book. Murat still entreated him to yield to the humiliating concessions. He represented that nothing could be more magnanimous than to sacrifice even his glory to the safety of the state, which would fall with him. The Emperor, after a moment's pause,

"Well! be it so. Let Caulaincourt sign whatever is necessary to procure peace. I will bear the shame of it, but I will not dictate my own disgrace."

Napoleon was now in a state of most painful perplexity. His enemies, in bodies vastly outnumbering any forces he could raise, were march-replied: ing upon Paris, from all directions. A movement toward the north only opened an unobstructed highway to his capital, from the east and the south. Tidings of disaster were continually reaching his ears. A conference was still carried on between Napoleon and the Allies in reference to peace. Napoleon wrote to Caulaincourt, to agree to any reasonable terms "which would save the capital and avoid a final battle, which would swallow up the last forces of the kingdom."

The Allies, however, had no desire for peace. They wished only to create the impression that Napoleon was the one who refused to sheathe the sword. Consequently they presented only such terms as Napoleon could not, without dishonor, accept. On receiving, at this time, one of those merciless dispatches, requiring that he should surrender all the territory which France had acquired since his accession to the throne, Napoleon was plunged into an agony of per

But to make peace with the republican Emperor was the last thing in the thoughts of these banded kings. When they found that Napoleon was ready to accede to their cruel terms, they immediately abandoned them for other and still more exorbitant demands. Napoleon had consented to surrender all the territory which France had acquired since his accession to power.

The Allies now demanded that Napoleon should cut down France to the limits it possessed before the Revolution. The proposition was a gross insult. Can we conceive of the United States as being so humbled as even to listen to such a suggestion! Were England to combine the despotisms of Europe in a war against Republican America, and then to offer peace only upon the condition that we would surrender all the territory

which has been annexed to the United States an answer to Caulaincourt, and tell him that I since the Revolution-Florida, Louisiana, Texas, reject the treaty. I would rather incur the risks New Mexico, California-what administration of the most terrible war." This spirit his foes would dare to accede to such terms? And yet de- have stigmatized as insatiable ambition, and the mands so atrocious the Allies pronounced moder- love of carnage. ate and reasonable. Napoleon nobly resolved to perish, rather than yield to such dishonor.

1

councilors of the Emperor were in despair. They
urged him, from absolute necessity, to accede to
any terms which the Allies might extort.

The firmness which Napoleon displayed under
these trying circumstances, soars into sublimity.
To their entreaties that he would yield to dis-
honor, he calmly replied:

row.

Chevalier de Goualt, accompanied by five or six of the inhabitants, with the white cockade of the fallen dynasty upon their breasts, treasonably called upon the Emperor Alexander, and said:

66

We entreat your Majesty, in the name of all the respectable inhabitants of Troyes, to accept with favor the wish which we form, for the re-establishment of the royal house of Bourbon on the throne of France."

But Alexander, apprehensive that the genius of Napoleon might still retrieve his fallen fortunes, cautiously replied: "Gentlemen, I receive you with pleasure. I wish well to your cause, but I fear your proceedings are rather premature. The chances of war are uncertain, and I should be grieved to see brave men like you compromised or sacrificed. We do not come ourselves to give a king to France. We desire to know its wishes, and to leave it to declare itself."

66

But it will never declare itself," M. de Goualt replied, "as long as it is under the knife. Never, so long as Bonaparte shall be in authority in France, will Europe be tranquil."

"No! no! we must think of other things just now. I am on the eve of beating Blucher. He is advancing on the road to Paris. I am about to set off to attack him. I will beat him to-morI will beat him the day after to-morrow. If that movement is attended with the success it deserves, the face of affairs will be entirely changed. Then we shall see what is to be done." Napoleon had formed one of those extraordinary plans which so often, during his career, had changed apparent ruin into the most triumphant success. Leaving ten thousand men at Nogent, to retard the advance of the two hundred thousand Austrians, he hastened, with the remaining thirty thousand troops, by forced marches across the country, to the valley of the Marne. It was his intention to fall suddenly upon the flank of Blucher's self-confident and unsuspecting army. The toil of the wintery march, through miry roads and through storms of sleet and rain, was so exhausting that he had but twenty-five thousand men to form in line of battle, when he en-ations, their cause was adjourned, but only for a countered the enemy. It was early in the morning of the 10th of February, as the sun rose brilliantly over the snow-covered hills, when the French soldiers burst upon the Russians, who were quietly preparing their breakfasts. The victory was most brilliant. Napoleon pierced the centre of the multitudinous foe, then turned upon one wing, and then upon the other, and proudly scattered the fragments of the army before him. But he had no reserves, with which to profit by this extraordinary victory. His weary troops could not pursue the fugitives.

"It is for that very reason," replied Alexander, "that the first thing we must think of is to beat him-to beat him-to beat him."

The royalist deputation retired, encouraged with the thought that, from prudential consider

imperial regime.

few days. At the same time the Marquis of Vitrolles, one of the most devoted of the Bourbon adherents, arrived at the head-quarters of the Allies, with a message from the royalist conspirators in Paris, entreating the monarchs to advance as rapidly as possible to the capital. A baser act of treachery has seldom been recorded. These very men had been rescued from penury and exile by the generosity of Napoleon. He had pardoned their hostility to republican France; had sheltered them from insult and from injury, and, with warm sympathy for their woes, which The next day Blucher, by energetically bring- Napoleon neither caused or could have averted, ing forward reinforcements, succeeded in col-had received them under the protection of the lecting sixty thousand men, and fell with terrible fury upon the little band who were gathered In ten days Napoleon had gained five victories. around Napoleon. A still more sanguinary bat- The inundating wave of invasion was still rolling tle ensued, in which the Emperor was again, and steadily on toward Paris. The activity and enstill more signally triumphant. These brilliant ergy of Napoleon surpassed all which mortal man achievements elated the French soldiers beyond had ever attempted before. In a day and night measure. They felt that nothing could withstand march of thirty hours he hurried back to the banks the genius of the Emperor, and even Napoleon of the Seine. The Austrians, now three hundred began to hope that fortune would again smile thousand strong, were approaching Fontaineupon him. From the field of battle he wrote a bleau. Sixty miles southeast of Paris, at the hurried line to Caulaincourt, who was his pleni-confluence of the Seine and the Yonne, is situpotentiary at Chatillon, where the Allies had opened their pretended negotiation. "I have conquered," he wrote; "your attitude must be the same for peace. But sign nothing without my order, because I alone know my position." While Napoleon was thus cutting up the army of Blucher upon the Marne, a singular scene was transpiring in Troyes. The royalists there, encouraged by Napoleon's apparently hopeless defeat, resolved to make a vigorous movement for the restoration of the Bourbons. A deputation, consisting of the Marquis de Vidranges and the

ated, in a landscape of remarkable beauty, the little town of Montereau.

Here Napoleon, having collected around him forty thousand men, presented a bold front, to arrest the farther progress of the Allies. An awful battle now ensued. Napoleon, in the eagerness of the conflict, as the projectiles from the Austrian batteries plowed the ground around him, and his artillerymen fell dead at his feet, leaped from his horse, and with his own hand directed a gun against the masses of the enemy. As the balls from the hostile batteries tore through the

In the midst of these terrific scenes, Napoleon | of the battle still continuing, he ordered a draalmost daily corresponded with Josephine, whom goon to conduct her to his own quarters, till she he still loved as he loved no one else. On one could be provided with suitable protection. The occasion, when the movements of battle brought dragoon took the lady, fainting with terror, upon him not far from her residence, he turned aside his horse behind him, when another ruffian band from the army, and sought a hurried interview of Cossacks struck him dead from his steed, with his most faithful friend. It was their last and seized again the unhappy victim. She was meeting. At the close of the short and melan- never heard of more. And yet every heart must choly visit, Napoleon took her hand, and gazing know her awful doom. Such is war, involving tenderly upon her, said: in its inevitable career every conceivable crime, and every possible combination of misery.