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system,' to understand the mischiefs its authors did in Europe, and how much that mischief contributed to Bonaparte's fall."*

"Revolution," says Sir Walter Scott, "is like a conflagration. Bonaparte had destroyed the proper scale of government in France, and had assumed an almost unlimited authority over the fairest part of Europe. Over foreign countries, the military renown of France streamed like a comet, inspiring universal dread and distrust; and, while it rendered indispensable similar preparations for resistance, it seemed as if peace had departed from the earth for ever, and that its destinies were hereafter to be disposed of according to the law of brutal force alone."+ Power was given unto him over the FOURTH PART of the earth, or over" continental Europe," one of the four quarters of the globe, to kill with sword and with hunger, and with death and with the beasts, or kingdoms, of the earth. He exercised his power in enforcing the continental system." Power was given unto him to scorch men with fire; and men were scorched with great heat.

Towards the close of 1807, on the invasion of Portugal by the French, the House of Braganza ceased to reign in Europe, and sought a kingdom, of brief duration, beyond the Atlantic. The heaviest exactions were laid on Portugal. The court of Spain, in its horrible corruption, soon became the prey of the artifice and arms of Napoleon; and Ferdinand, the king of a day, on the abdication of his father, Charles IV., resigned his crown into the hands of Napoleon, and became, with his family, an exile from his kingdom. The spirit of loyalty, afterwards ill requited, the power of the priesthood, and the prevalence of

* Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon, pp. 339, 364.
+ Life of Napoleon, vol. vi. p. 116.

superstition, and, as Saragossa testifies, the resolute bravery, in some instances, of the defenders of their country, only served, for a season, to infuriate Napoleon, and to aggravate the miseries of the Spaniards and Portuguese. "Soult poured down his columns on the plains of Burgos,"* (November 1808;) and defeated and dissipated the Spanish armies, headed by Blake, Belvedere, Palafox, and Castanos. In the beginning of December, Napoleon entered Madrid; and the metropolis of proud Spain received a Corsican as its conqueror. The British army retreated before him, and embarked from the Spanish shore; the armies of France held for a brief period the unchallenged supremacy of the Peninsula; and a brother of Napoleon became the king of Spain.

The insurrection of Spain gave hope to Austria, whose monarch, no longer the head of the empire, ill brooked the lot of being virtually a vassal. Napoleon, as, while the former vial was in his hand, he had previously passed from river to river, now, in his eagle flight, flew from kingdom to kingdom. On the 6th April, 1809, Austria declared war. Her exertions were gigantic, and her armies unequalled in any former period of her history, having been computed, including the reserve, at 550,000. On the 9th April, the Generalissimo, the archduke Charles, invaded Bavaria with 180,000 men. On the 20th and 21st, Napoleon defeated two Austrian divisions, at Abensberg and Landshut; the 22d was the day of the celebrated battle of Eckmuhl, in which 20,000 prisoners were left in the hands of Napoleon. "Thus within five days,-the space, and almost the very days of the month, which Bonaparte had assigned for settling the affairs of Germany,—the original aspect of the war was entirely changed; and Austria,

Hist. of Napoleon, vol. ii. p. 48.

which had engaged in it with the proud hope of reviving her original influence in Europe, was now to continue the struggle for the doubtful chance of securing her existence. At no period in his momentous career did the genius of Napoleon appear more completely to prostrate all opposition; at no time did the talents of a single individual exercise such an influence on the fate of the universe. It is no wonder that others, nay that he himself should have annexed to his person the degree of superstitious influence claimed for the CHOSEN INSTRUMENTS OF DESTINY, whose path cannot be crossed, and whose arms cannot be arrested."*

Vienna was besieged. "A shower of bombs first made the inhabitants sensible of the horrors to which they must necessarily be exposed by defensive war."† It speedily capitulated. The great battles of Asperne and Essling, were fought upon the 21st and 22d May. "The carnage was terrible, and the pathways of the villages were literally choked with the dead."+ "The loss of both armies was dreadful, and computed to exceed twenty thousand men on each side, killed and wounded." On the 5th and 6th July was fought the dreadful and decisive battle of Wa agram. A hundred pieces of cannon and a chosen division broke through the Austrian ranks. "The archduke had extended his line over too wide a space, and this old error enabled Napoleon to ruin him by his old device of POURING the full shock of his strength on the centre." "Napoleon himself was ever in the hottest of the action." The slaughter was terrible; the destruction was complete; and "at

Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vi. p. 300.

+Ibid. p. 306.

Hist. of Napoleon, vol. ii. pp. 64, 65.

§ Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vi. p. 327.

Hist. of Napoleon, vol. ii. p. 66.

the close there remained 20,000 prisoners, besides all the artillery and baggage, in the hands of Napoleon."* The power of Austria was again broken.

In the midst of this career of hard-won conquests, Bonaparte, after the defeat of the Austrians, and while the ancient empire lay at his feet, and Vienna, the capital of Germany, was in his hands, issued the following remarkable decree, from the imperial palace of Schoenbrunn :-" Whereas the temporal sovereign of Rome has refused to make war against England, and the interests of the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples ought not to be interrupted by a hostile power; and whereas the donation of Charlemagne, OUR ILLUSTRIOUS PREDECESSOR, of the countries which form the holy see, was for the good of Christianity and not for that of the enemies of our holy religion, we, therefore, decree that the dutchies of Urbino, Ancona, Macrata, and Camarino, be for ever united to the kingdom of Italy."+

"On the 17th of May, Napoleon issued from Vienna his final decree, declaring the temporal sovereignty of the pope to be wholly at an end, incorporating ROME with the French empire, and declaring it to be his second city; settling a pension on the holy father in his spiritual capacity, and appointing a committee of administration for the civil government of Rome."

Italy was wholly in his power; and the pope was a prisoner in his hands. Austria ceded large territories to France, with a population of nearly four millions. "Napoleon obtained the whole coasts of the Adriatic, and deprived Austria of her last seaport." Established in his empire, which was declared

* Hist. of Napoleon, vol. ii. p. 67.

+ Ibid. p. 72. Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vi. p. 366.
Hist. of Napoleon, p. 73.

to be hereditary, Bonaparte made a sacrifice of duty and of honour, if not also of affection, on the shrine of ambition; and, adding the pride of alliance to the gifts of fortune, in hopes of giving an heir to his empire, divorced the plebeian wife of his youth, married a princess of the House of Austria, and, on the birth of a son, proclaimed him king of ROME.

"A population of forty-two millions of people, fitted in various ways to secure the prosperity of a state, and inhabiting, for wealth, riches of soil, and felicity of climate, by far the finest portion of the civilized earth, formed the immediate liege subjects of this magnificent empire. Yet to stop here, were greatly to undervalue the extent of Napoleon's power." Italy, Carniola, and the Illyrian provinces were portions of" his personal empire." "As mediator of the Helvetian republic, the emperor exercised an almost absolute authority in Switzerland. The German confederation of the Rhine, though numbering kings among their league, were at the slightest hint bound to supply him each with his prescribed quota of forces." The king of Naples was one of his generals; and the resistance of the rebels in Spain and Portugal seemed in the speedy prospect of being finally subdued. Thus an EMPIRE of 800,000 square miles, and containing a population of eightyfive millions, in territory one-fifth part, and in number of inhabitants one-half, of united Europe, was either in quiet subjection to Napoleon's sceptre, or on the point, as was supposed,, of becoming so.

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Of the other kingdoms of Europe, that had once been subject to papal domination, "Denmark, so powerful was the voice which France had in her councils, might almost be accounted humbled to one of the federative principalities. Sweden had but a

* Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vii. pp. 119, 120.

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