tain in their turn; and some royalists rising in the south organised themselves into companies of assassins. The guillotine devoured those who had fed it; vengeance continued the reign of terror, and yet the festival of Marat's apotheosis continued to be observed. In the midst of this confusion the powder magazine at Grenelle was blown up.

The Jacobins in 1795 made some further struggles for power: the Thermidorians opposed to them the golden youth of Freron, an armed association of all those, who had to avenge some victim of the system of terror, and who sung the ' awakening of the people.' On the 12th of Germinal an assemblage of the people, excited to violence by the famine, was dispersed, and seventeen Mountain men were arrested; Billaud and Collot were transported to Guiana. The remainder of the Mountain, however, obtained some advantage on the 1st of Prairial, by getting possession of the hall of the Convention, where the deputy Feraud, who had been taken for Freron, was assassinated. Already had the terrible Faubourg advanced in a column. The Thermidorian committees were conquerors at last without striking a blow; the 31st of May was cruelly avenged; and six Mountain men, doomed to death, put an end to their own lives. A peace was then concluded with the Vendéans, who formed the hope of an approaching restoration. The Convention, who were enacting a new constitution, decreed, that two-thirds of its members should of right enter into the new legislative body. This measure, rejected by the electors of Paris, was the pretext for an insurrection. The sections, weary of the Convention, and a few Vendéans marched against it on the 13th of Vendemiaire in the year 3; it called the Jacobins to its assistance, when young Buonaparte saved it at the head of some troops. The Convention also triumphed without. Prussia and Spain requested peace; Hoche retook the lines; Jourdan recovered, at Watignies and at Fleurus, that Flanders which a decree re-united to France. Holland conquered by Pichegru in his famous campaign on the ice, where some hussars took some vessels, was formed into the Batavian republic. But Pitt and England as well as Austria, remained the enemies of France. It is said that Barrére being interrogated upon the severe measures pursued by the famous committee, replied, 'It repulsed the enemy, would you have done as much? This justification is definite, certainly, but it is fearful.

SECT. VIII. BUONAPARTE'S ELEVATION. The most enlightened civilians of the Convention, among whom was the learned and virtuous Daunou, modelled the representative system after that of the United States; two elective councils, one of the Five hundred and the other of the ancients, were to be re-elected every year by thirds. The executive power was confided to five directors, elected by the councils, and renewed by a fifth: the directory found, on their succession to an anarchical despotism, 30,000,000 of assignats without value, some distrusts and citations distracting the people, a civil war and a foreign war. It became necessary for

them to find employment for a multitude of persons, to whom insurrection had become a kind of profession, in which they had regularly received high wages. They endeavoured to turn their attention to the mass of the people, who wished for repose, and to keep that middle course so slippery in France, which, as it inclines sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, has been called la bascule. The mandats softened a little the shock, that the repayment of the assignats occasioned. The royalist massacres in the south ceased by degrees: and La Vendée, where so many thousands of the French had been buried, was pacified by the moderation and activity of Huche, a young hero, who knew how to negociate as well as to conquer. The administration was organised according to the principles of liberty; and the republic was no more a vain word. The metric system equalised the weights and measures. The fine idea of central schools, the focuses of instruction, free and worthy of the age, was executed, while in its external affairs the directory followed the bold policy of the Convention; and bearing at least the promise of liberty to the vanquished, it undertook the emancipation of Europe from absolute power and the feudal system. In Germany Moreau triumphed by retiring, and rendered himself illustrious by a retreat, interspersed with victories. If Corsica was again taken by the English, an expedition, conducted by Humbert, intimidated that power in Ireland. Buonaparte now at the age of twenty-six, in his brilliant campaign in Italy, took the Milanese from the Austrians, and overturned the ancient and glorious aristocracy of Venice. Marching directly towards terrified Vienna, he only stopped to sign the fundamental articles of the treaty, which declared, at Campo-Formio, the superiority of France over her enemies; and founded in Italy two provisional republics.

The remembrance of the conventional despotism had occasioned a restraint of the executive power, that was accompanied with excessive distrust. It was feeble and poor: instead of displaying that royal magnificence which the French admire, while they are paying for it, it lived upon nothing, and met, with a few light taxes, the expenses of numerous armies. Foreigners spent more money in France, to corrupt and divide it, than it had to subsist upon. The liberty of the press too was now more entire than it had ever been. The journals of the opposite parties declaimed against the government at their pleasure; and blame or ridicule was poured upon its acts, or its members. 'In France people love the power which dazzles, and which has a lofty bearing; a republic is too citizen-like for them.' The royalist party, organised by the numerous agents of the Bourbons, conspired at Clichy, and endeavoured to make a monk of some general. To the simple-hearted and credulous Vendéans succeeded the Chouans; nocturnal insurgents, who infested the high roads. The Anarchists made an attempt, at the camp of Grenelle, to raise the Mountain party again; while the new election brought into the councils a majority of royalists, who concealed, in some measure, their design of overturning the directory

Two of the directors themselves (Carnot was one) were in this plot. The three others had their choice, either to commit the crime of violating the constitution, or to suffer it to fall. They violated it in order to defend it. Supported by the army of Italy, from whence they had sent for Augereau, and by that of Hoche, they seized, in military style, upon the legislative body, and fifty-one representatives, the two directors, and some journalists were condemned to transportation on the 18th of Fructidor. Merlin and Francis de Neufchateau replaced the proscribed directors.

General Buonaparte, who had rendered himself popular by his victories, received at Paris that homage, which must have excited his ambition, and which now brought it into action. It was already evident that he was aiming to play the part of Caesar, when he made the directory adopt the project of an expedition as adventurous as the crusades; the army of Italy was embarked at Toulon. In Europe the loftiness of the republican plenipotentiaries had embroiled France, a second time, with all her neighbours; the gold of England had united Russia and Austria in a coalition (1798); Suwaroff was marching upon Italy, and the directory had sent Massena into Switzerland, to humble the aristocratic despotism of Bern by protecting the democracy of the Pays de Vaud, when the news reached them, that the French fleet had been destroyed at Aboukir, while the army was victorious by land. Nelson returned to Naples to enjoy his triumph, and hang the ablest men of the country at the instigation of the queen. A detachment of Frenchmen quickly succeeded in chastising Rome and Naples, and founded (1799) the Roman republic. Italy, however, was soon retaken from Moreau, and Joubert's army was reduced to great feebleness. The Austro-Russians and the army of the emigrants already were on their march towards France. But the fortune of the day was again changed: Massena routed the allied army at Zurich. Italy was reconquered, and new and flattering accounts reached France of the expedition to Egypt. Bruno, in the mean time, had beaten the English and the Russians in Holland, where he re-established the Batavian republic.

France triumphed, but some intriguing persons were preparing a revolution by sowing the seeds of trouble in the nation and the public councils; the latter of which opposed or perverted all the measures of the directory. The persecution and transporting of the priests excited discontent, as also did the reduction of twothirds of the debt. Speculators, who had enriched themselves by stock-jobbing; the royalists, who wished to get into favor with the monarchy, expecting its restoration; the contractors, who had introduced licentiousness, and corruption, into the expenses of the unfortunate soldiers; generals and governors, who had acted as judges in foreign countries, all cried out that France had need of a stronger government; that is, one that might ennoble and decorate them. The systematic Sieyes had at this time been called to the directory; on the 30th of Prairial, year 7, the councils had introduced three members; and

while the momentary confusion increased, a man was wanted to grasp the falling reins of power. Buonaparte, informed of this state of things, did not hesitate to leave the army in Egypt; where he also left Kleber, the just,' in a desperate situation; but the opportunity was a fine one for him. His disembarkation surprised every body: he was received with great pomp, although his conduct in returning was, in the estimation of cool and reflecting men, that of a coward and a rebel. Sieyes now took from the republican, Bernadotte, the post of minister of war. A conspiracy was pretended; the councils were called together at St. Cloud, and Buonaparte put himself at the head of the directory's guard in order to overturn it. He gained over the ancients by promising to make them senators; but the resistance of the Five-hundred disconcerted him for a moment: he grew pale and hesitated in the sight of the danger he had created for himself, and which the president Lucien, his brother, alone succeeded in turning aside by presence of mind. They resumed their courage for him: the grenadiers, with bayonets fixed, rushed in upon the national representatives and dispersed them. On the 18th of Brumaire (10th of November, 1799), Buonaparte became a usurper and Sieyes a dupe.

Buonaparte now digested a constitution which was intended to deliver the power to a consul (that is to say, himself), assisted, for form's sake, by two under-consuls; and a mute legislative assembly passed the laws, under which a tribunate alone had the right of speaking. A public body, called the conservative senate, was paid to approve of all that was done. • What shows,' say her own historians, how they make a jest of every thing in France, is, that they still preserved the name of a republic.' Buonaparte, who had already discovered the way of fascinating the nation by his enterprising disposition, his superior talents, his prodigious fire, and his skilful charlatanism, met with more opposition in the army, where the republican spirit was still preserved. He left that of Egypt to the English and the Turks; only some feeble remains of it returned to France. A little while after he sent to St. Domingo, in order to repress the independence of the negroes, 40,000 of the old soldiers of the republic. The burning sky of the tropics killed numbers of them; for Hayti knew how to defend the liberty of which she now shows herself worthy. The only trophy ever gained by France in this ruinous expedition was the black chief Toussaint Louverture, whom Buonaparte suffered to perish miserably in a strong fortress, where he was immured.

Six months had hardly passed away since Buonaparte became consul when he unexpect edly passed the St. Bernard, to fall upon the Austrians, and gained the battle of Marengo, where the virtuous Desaix met his death in giving him victory. During this time Moreau, commanding the army of the Rhine, triumphed at Hohenlinden, and threatened Vienna. The peace concluded at Luneville further aggrandised France. Italy and Switzerland placed themselves under her protection; Piedmont became French territory; when Spain, and England herself,'

signed the peace of Amiens, March 22nd, 1802. Though a peace of but eighteen months, this gave welcome repose to France and to the rest of Europe. Soon after several republicans were arrested, under the accusation of having wished to assassinate the first consul; and the royalists made no scruple of attempting his life by an explosion, which might have destroyed a multitude of citizens. Buonaparte gained a party by this danger; he strengthened his guard and increased his power; while the formidable police, and his vile minister Fouché, gave him an account of the actions and thoughts of all France. He even procured a more powerful police still; and made for himself some zealous friends among all classes of the people, by granting the pope' a concordat, which re-established the Catholic clergy. An act still more politic and just followed this: he put an end to the proscription of the emigrants, and opened the country to them giving them possession of such part of their property as had not been sold. A concert of sincere praises now arose to him; the senate had agreed to continue the consulship during ten years, but this true and all powerful dictator now procured a popular vote, which declared him consul for life. It was at this time (1803) that he proved his respect for legitimacy, by demanding of the Bourbons a cession of their right to the throne.

Soon after he avenged their refusal, while he disgraced himself indelibly, by the seizure of the young Bourbon Condé, the duke d'Enghien, whom he caused to be shot (see our article ENGHIEN). Pichegru, and Cadoudal, who wished to restore the Bourbons, and Moreau, who impatiently submitted to the yoke of a man who was his equal, were said at this time to be implicated in a conspiracy against Buonaparte; and, though the punishment of the two former excited little interest, the latter, surrounded with republican glory, was considered, as it were, the represen tative of his brethren in arms, who discovered with bitter regret that they had shed their blood only to raise a dictator to power.

The sympathy for Moreau threatened a dangerous ferment; but the camp at Boulogne, which was made to resound with a threatened descent upon England, created a diversion: Moreau was forgotten. Buonaparte had the policy of astonishing the people by numerous changes of sights, and keeping the French continually at bay. He immediately obtained the decree of the imperial crown from the Tribunate, in which Carnot signalised himself by his resistance, as the polytechnic school also did; and these were the last sighs of expiring Liberty: the senate bowed itself, notwithstanding the opposition of the patriotic Lambrechts and the virtuous Gregoire, the friend of the blacks. Napoleon demanded the adherence of the public functionaries, and of the army; an empty formality, to which the people expressed little eagerness to add theirs. The pope now proceeded to Paris to crown the emperor, and to sanction that which the royalists must have considered as a usurpation. Most of them, however, applauded, no more expecting to find a monk in Buonaparte; they saluted him king, when Napoleon substi

tuted the eagle for the tri-colored flag; and passing to Milan, to make a kingdom of the republic of Italy, assumed the iron crown of the ancient kings of Lombardy, and made a dowry for his sister out of one of its principalities: he was already, also, preparing thrones to establish his brothers.

England influenced Russia, after the emperor Paul, the admirer of Buonaparte, had been assassinated by the grandees of his court. A league was formed with Austria and Sweden. Napoleon had the address, however, to detach Prussia from by promising Hanover to the king. The camp at Boulogne was now suddenly raised; an Austrian army as suddenly capitulated at Ulm; and two emperors, Alexander and Francis, were beaten at Austerlitz. The emperor of Germany was now compelled to submit to the terms of his conqueror. Joseph Buonaparte was sent to Naples with the title of king, while Louis was placed, as king, in Holland, and Prussia lost her Rhenish provinces. The confederation of the Rhine was confirmed to Napoleon, in order to supply him with soldiers. Prussia, at this period, still trembling for her own safety, was once more excited by England and Russia to resistance; upon which, Napoleon transports his immense army across the continent, and in less than one month arrives at Berlin, having gained the battle of Jena. In that city he launched his famous interdict against the English trade; and, shortly after, the Russian army was crushed at Eylau and at Friedland: finally, the peace of Tilsit confirms Napoleon in the highest degree of power which he could reach; Prussia, punished for her temporising policy, is occupied by the military: Jerome Buonaparte is installed king of Westphalia, and Poland forms the hope of raising herself from the ashes of her freedom, under the auspices of the great emperor. Never had the fortune of a man been more brilliant; the whole world was struck with astonishment at the recital of victories so rapid, and seemed to bow itself before so colossal a power. But the ambition of Napoleon did not permit him to stop here; Europe was the devoted prey of his ambition, and every freeman was his enemy. No sovereign could be more absolute; he regarded other men as insignificant cyphers, destined to increase the amount of that unity which centred in himself; their wealth, their thoughts, their life-all was nothing. He wished to fill the pages of history with the account of his time, and he has succeeded; there was no further anxiety about France.

It has been often said, that Buonaparte recompensed France for the loss of liberty and repose by the illusions of his glory; but nothing can make up for the want of liberty. It is true, that, always ready to suffer herself to be seduced by the false glory of conquest, France appeared to offer her shoulders to the yoke; but it is not less a crime, on that account, to have enslaved her. We shall see Napoleon soon after laboring to bring back the ancient order of things, by abolishing all the customs and effacing all the images of liberty. The tribunate, which existed only in name, and which had been honored with the discussion of the civil law, Napoleon closed;

ne made a monopoly of public education, in which youth were taught the glories of the emperor, as children are taught their catechism. Some of the priests declared from the pulpit, that he had a divine mission. He created a military nobility, something like that which existed before the time of Henry IV.; and his generals, adorned with ribands, endowed with pensions, and enriched with the spoils of an enemy's country, respected him as their chief. They were no longer those poor leaders, who led the French on foot to the defence of their country; the times of the patriots Jourdan and Perignon had passed away; Hoche, Desaix, Marceau, Dugomier, and Kleber were dead: yet the army could still reckon in the list of its worthies such men as Lecourbe, Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, Lefebvre, Dejeau, Desolles, and Lannes, who preserved their dignity, and were not cowed by their new master. Some of the old Jacobins, strangely decorated with feudal titles, and some emigrants installed in the antechambers, rivalled one another in submission, and in prostrating themselves around him. He re-established the imposts, the abuses and prodigalities of the ancient monarchy. The aids and monopolies re-appeared under the name of united duties. The press was kept under by a merciless censorship; juries were perverted; prefects and other petty subaltern despots assumed the place of free administrations of justice; the emperor nominated all the public functionaries, and all, even down to the field-keepers, were inviolable: the council of state, a dependent and removable body, was the sole arbiter of their responsibility. The election of the deputies was a ridiculous thing in this pretended representative government, the laws of which were the dicta of the emperor, under the name of decrees, or senatorial edicts. Individual liberty no longer existed; and while the 14th of July was often celebrated, many bastiles were occupied throughout France in the service of this arbitrary despot. A police, that was a true political inquisition, suspected even silence itself; accused even the thoughts of men, and extended over Europe a net of iron. All this time too the conscription, a dreadful tax upon human life, was levied with unsparing activity; and the French youth were surrendered to his will by the senate as a sort of annual contribution. It is said that Napoleon held the human race in sovereign contempt; he had, indeed, good reason to do so!

Portugal was now in the emperor's possession, and Spain placed herself at his feet: the army of the latter fine country he transported into the north to fight the battles of his future ambition. Discord prevailed at this time among the Bourbons at Madrid, who chose Napoleon arbitrator, and he made them prisoners, in order to raise his brother Joseph to the throne; Murat, his brotherin-law, being transferred to Naples. The emperor went to Erfurt to meet Alexander of Russia, and they agreed to shut up the Continent of Europe against the English who had blockaded it. The Spaniards, however, rose against the conquerors of Europe, and for several years Spain became the grave of the French. Both NapoJeon and France well knew what the most

stupid nation could achieve, when directed by enlightened men, and roused to a pitch of fanaticism by the priests; and yet to this unjust aggression Spain owes the dawn of liberty she has seen; and Europe her deliverance from his iron grasp. Suddenly Napoleon was once more (A. D. 1809), obliged to transport his powerful army to Vienna; where, after having beaten Austria at Essling and at Wagram, he demanded Maria Louisa in marriage. To accomplish this adulterous alliance Josephine Beauharnais was divorced; and an arch-duchess espouses a man whom the nobility of Germany looked upon as an upstart. Half-a-dozen kings were present at the marriage; and Napoleon, a year after, was presented with a son, whom he decorated, from his cradle, with the title of king of Rome.

The French departments now (1811), extended from Rome to Hamburg: all Europe bowed to Napoleon but it could not contain him. He undertook to chastise Russia, which had just broken the blockade; and the English, whose attempt upon Belgium had been repulsed by the national guards, effected a coalition between Russia and Sweden, which had just elected Bernadotte her crown prince. Napoleon now urges the whole of Europe upon Russia: 400,000 men, who might have crowned him on the way emperor of Constantinople, arrived in time to witness the heroic and ever to be lamented burning of Moscow. Nature at length subdued the pride of a man who never started at impossibilities; and, while an unusual severity of cold annihilated his superb army, he who had dated his decrees from the Kremlin returned alone to Paris to put himself into a terrible and ridiculous passion against the liberal sentiments of the people. During his absence (1812) the conspiracy of Mallet had failed of effecting a change in the government. The senate, however, furnished men, money, and horses, and Napoleon went to Saxony to subdue the Prussians and Austrians who had declared against him. There Moreau fell, with the reproach of having fought against his country, but with the satisfaction of knowing, at the same time, that he was defending the cause of Europe and civilisation. The emperor, however, could not stand out against the defection of all his allies, and even of the kings whom he himself had made. Still, however, he might have concluded a glorious peace; but he would yield nothing, and therefore lost all. His campaign in France evinced the energy, the constancy, and the superiority of his genius; there, struggling with a handful of men against immense forces, he gave a sufficient answer to those who would pretend that he never conquered but with vast armies at his command. But France, enslaved and gagged, had forsaken him; the mutes of the legislative body had found their tongues; a cry of liberty resounded in Germany; the kings seemed to approve it, and accepted the assistance of those liberal notions which at this day they fear and disavow.

The English and Portuguese, united with the whole Spanish people, had driven into the south of France the few forces that opposed them, and the battle of Toulouse left the glory uncer

tain between the success of numbers and the resistance of the vanquished. Bourdeaux was betrayed to the English by its mayor; while Paris, defended by its inhabitants, a few invalids, and the young pupils of that school, all the thoughts and labors of which were consecrated to the good of their country, opened its gates to a foreign force. The people now (1814) learned that he who had been emperor but the night before, was the next day to retire to a little island in the Mediterranean: and some persons, in white robes, proclaimed the Bourbons, who were advancing with a promise of the abolition of the conscription and the united duties. Led on by M. de Talleyrand, ever skilful in taking advantage of circumstances, the senators formed a plan of a constitution, nearly the same as that which exists in the charter, and recalled Louis XVIII., on condition that he would continue to them their situations. They then signed the projected deposition of Napoleon. The allied monarchs approved it; France was reduced to its ancient limits; the remainder of the fleet, which had been almost annihilated at Trafalgar in 1805, and by the fireships at Rochefort, was delivered up, as well as part of the artillery.

If,' says the able French writer whom we have permitted chiefly to tell this tale of France, 'we have judged Napoleon with rigor, we render homage to his great actions. At a time when his will, in conjunction with his genius, directed him to that which was good, he deepened the port of Cherbourg, and formed the roads of mount Cenis and the Simplon; he despoiled Rome and Nismes, to embellish Paris. His continental system and his prohibitions, which were good as far as they were reprisals, gave to French industry that activity which peace has redoubled. But he depopulated the country parts, and already covered France with military fiefs. There is an author, a declared supporter of feudalism, who admires Napoleon, because,' as he says, he alone could and would have established it. Certain it is that he destroyed the revolution by its own power; while he was to be pitied for his predilection for nobility and the splendor and etiquette of courts; one cause, perhaps, of his own fall.'

with regard to the people, and the charter was founded on that constitution, and on the despotic decrees of Napoleon. Had Buonaparte been bribed to smooth the way for the restoration of royalty, he could not more faithfully have fulfilled his mission. The Bourbons found the communes, the national guard, trial by jury, the departinent, the elections even, and an enormous budget in the hands of the executive authority; they found a hierarchy of irresponsible officers, rising in various degrees around this centre, from which every thing emanated, and to which all tended. It has been disputed, whether or not a counter-revolution had taken place: the fact is, Napoleon had already in part formed a counterrevolution; take away the right of general taxation, and the equality of men in the eye of the law, and it is completed. Louis re-established, with the representative system, a part of the revolution; to restore it entirely, it was necessary to put in the place of the imperial institutions, which govern France, the liberal institutions that she hopes to behold.

Wearied with the imperial yoke, and with continual war, France hailed the approach of peace with acclamations of joy and hope. The declaration of St. Ouen, which included in it several of the fundamental principles of the revolution, re-assured all hearts. France, and even Europe are indebted to Louis XVIII. for having set a useful example, by assisting in the re-establishment of the representative system. The senators, in conjunction with some others, formed a chamber of peers. At the same time was convened the legislative body of the empire, which formed the chamber of deputies; and Louis, who had declared his determination to adopt a liberal constitution, granted the charter, which, notwithstanding some omissions and imperfections, contains sufficient guarantees for liberty, were they well executed; but here lies the difficulty. The imperial institutions still existed, and these alone had any real effect. The charter promised, but it organised nothing; the constitution of the year 8 remained in force

Little alteration in fact was made at this time: the ministers contented themselves with displaying the charter, and, without fulfilling its conditions, cavilled about its meaning. There was need of economy, but prodigality was the order of the day. The parties which had not been dissolved, but only depressed by Napoleon, raised themselves again. The most ridiculous claims were urged with insatiable eagerness; the satellites of despotism, in order to reinstate themselves, openly displayed their treason; and prefects, who had executed the conscription in a way similar to the treatment of negroes, dreamed only of serving the legitimacy in the same manner. The possessors of national property were disturbed alternately by hopes or by fears; the army, discontented at having lost its political ascendancy, had already begun to move. sudden in the spring of 1815 it was reported that Napoleon, having escaped the unsuspicious commissioners of the allies, had landed at Cannes with a few soldiers, which in Grenoble were taken for a regiment; that he was entering Lyons, and would soon be at Paris with an army. Every thing was thrown into confusion; the king and the princes again swore fidelity to the charter; they confided the security of it to the citizens and the army, and protested their love for liberty. Napoleon also promised liberty; he was again placed on the throne, and the Bourbons fled to Ghent.

On a

France now knew not what law to obey, but order was restored. A chamber of representatives was convoked; and an assembly of the French electors announced under the name of champ-de-mai. Napoleon obliged, in these circumstances to have something to do with liberty, offered for the provisional acceptance of the people, the additional act, in imitation of the charter. The congress of Vienna, however, where the kings had divided among themselves the nations, to whom they owed their deliverance, still continued. One of the king's ministers, Talleyrand, still accredited there, stirred up the coalition against the usurper of Europe. The army and the national guards hastened to the