And thus it was till he reached Borodino, a position which the Russians had strongly fortified; and on which, with the hope of arresting him ere he should penetrate to Moscow, they had resolved to give battle. Never was contest more fierce than that which ensued; never was victor less rewarded for his achievements. The French remained masters of the field; they entered Moscow in triumph, and finding it well supplied with all things necessary for the maintenance of life, they hoped to spend the winter there in tranquillity, but they were mistaken. That very night fires broke out in a thousand different quarters at the same instant; and long before dawn the whole city was in a blaze.

Deprived by such means of shelter for his troops, and cut off from communication with his rear, Buonaparte endeavoured to open a negotiation with Alexander. His overtures were totally disregarded; while clouds of enemies showing themselves on every hand, taught him to feel that his last hope of safety lay in retreat. On the 21st of October he commenced that movement, which, in point of suffering to those engaged, is without a parallel in history. Men and horses perished of cold and hunger by thousands. Such as survived, became so demoralized and intimidated, that whole battalions would flee from the war-whoop of a band of Cossacks; while the whole line of their route was marked by white mounds, the graves of those who had sunk down and died under the snow. Buonaparte, seeing that the army was totally ruined, suddenly quitted it. He has been much censured for this step, in my opinion unjustly; for valuable as it ought to have been, and doubtless was, in his eyes, there were other considerations to be attended to even more important than a regard to the feelings of the men who composed it. Buonaparte hurried back to Paris, that he might enrol and orga

nize fresh levies wherewith to meet the storm, of the approach of which he could not entertain a doubt; and gigantic were his efforts both in the council and in the field. The spring of 1813 saw him again leading hundreds of thousands of the youth of France through Germany; and the summer brought them into fierce and doubtful collision with their enemies on the fields of Lutzen and Bautzen.

I left the earl of Wellington (for to that rank in the peerage he was now advanced) in winter-quarters along the Tormes. The summer of 1813 was somewhat advanced ere he opened the next campaign; but when military operations did begin, they were of the most extraordinary nature. Without a halt, the British army marched from the borders of Portugal to the Ebro, and from the Ebro to the field of Vittoria. There marshal Jourdan, who now commanded under Joseph, received battle. His defeat was total, and the wreck of his forces, destitute of artillery, stores, and organization, fled, without once attempting to rally, beyond the Bidassoa. It was to no purpose that Soult, one of the ablest marshals of France, placed himself at their head. They followed him, it is true, into the valleys of the Pyrenées, and made some desperate efforts to roll back the tide of war, but these efforts entirely failed. St. Sebastian was carried by assault; Pampeluna submitted; and Wellington carried his veterans across the Bidassoa, and entered the south of France. Nor were the successes of next spring lessconspicuous. Bayonne was invested, after a fierce battle of four days' continuance. At Orthes, Soult was worsted; Bourdeaux opened its gates, and Toulouse witnessed as gallant a conflict as had occurred throughout the war. But scarcely was that dearbought victory won, when intelligence reached both armies, which caused an immediate suspension of

arms.

Buonaparte, after the most gigantic efforts, had been defeated at the great battle of Leipsic, and driven back, disputing every inch of ground, upon France. Up to the very gates of Paris, and even beyond them, he had maintained the same daring attitude, now striving to negotiate, now appealing to his sword, and never without effect. Nevertheless, that Providence, whose mercies he had so often abused, and in whose hands he was but an instrument, had forsaken him; and before nations, of late his slaves, but now banded against him, he fell. For as Russia moved on, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, all the states which had felt the weight of his iron heel, rose up against the tyrant; and, the people of France falling off from him, he stood at last, as it were, alone, like some huge lion run to bay by a pack of ordinary fox-hounds.

Such was the state of his affairs, a weakened and disheartened army alone remaining to him, when the senate met in Paris, now threatened with a bombardment, and declared that he had justly forfeited the throne. Some voices were raised in favour of his son, whom, in 1811, the young empress had borne to him; and one or two there were, who even now spoke of a republic. But the majority, either from a conviction of the truth, or from a desire to conciliate the con querors, exclaimed, that France could never enjoy repose, except under the ancient family. When these things were told to Buonaparte, he fell into a paroxysm of rage, and talked of marching across the Loire, and there maintaining the war; but none of his generals would support him. He was compelled, therefore, to sign a deed of abdication; and set off, under an escort, to take possession of the island of Elba, which the allies, permitting him still to retain the title of emperor, assigned as his future place of

residence.

Among the illustrations relating to the foregoing portion of the history of George the Third, are copies of some well-known pictures, painted to commemorate historical events of considerable interest. To the narrative of the destructive riots by which London was disgraced in 1780, is appended a representation of the sacking of the houses in Broad-street, where the operations of a ferocious mob were checked by the exertions of a London volunteer corps, called the Artillery Company. Into Chapter X. is introduced a view of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, as fitted up and occupied during the imposing ceremony of the installation of knights of the Bath, in the time of George the Third. The account of that good king's public appearance in St. Paul's Cathedral, to return thanks for his recovery from a grievous affliction, is illustrated by an engraving of the interior of the sacred edifice, as it appeared on that occasion, done from an engraving executed at the time, and calculated to convey a vivid idea of the interesting spectacle. These subjects are succeeded by a scene in which is introduced the drawing-room costume of the period; by a portrait of the king; and, finally, by a copy of De Loutherbourg's picture, representing the battle of the Nile, at the moment when the French admiral's ship blew up.

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CHAPTER IX.

WAR WITH AMERICA.

BUONAPARTE RETURNS FROM ELBA.-CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO.-DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. -DEATH OF GEORGE THE THIRD. GEORGE THE FOURTH. PROGRESS OF LIBERAL MEASURES. MARRIAGE AND DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS RESISTED BY THE DUKE OF YORK. CATO-STREET CONSPIRACY.- DEATH OF THE DUKE OF YORK.-OF LORD LIVERPOOL.-MR. CANNING PRIME MINISTER.

[A.D. 1814 to A. D. 1827.]

GREAT were the rejoicings both at home and abroad, in consequence of this happy termination to a war, which, for twenty years, had devastated the Continent, and caused the best blood of Britain to be shed, both by sea and land. Not yet, however, could England congratulate herself with being at peace with all the world. The United States of America had unfortunately drawn the sword at a moment when there was every disposition in London to conciliate; and the hostilities begun at that unhappy moment, still continued. But a war with America, at least for some time to come, can scarcely be productive of any events which will demand, in the page of English history, a very prominent place; and therefore, when I state that there had been some fighting on the frontiers of Canada, and that one or two actions between single ships had ended unfortunately for the British flag, I shall have said all that the nature of the subject seems to require. In like manner, the operations of the British fleets and armies, now that the state of Europe left them free to act more vigorously on the other side of the Atlantic, were not very memorable. In the north, the imbecility of sir George Prevost brought something like a stain upon laurels which had