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rally grave, and does not trouble himself with petty distinctions, but attacks serious abuses. He is far more solicitous to maintain his own rights than to invade those of others. An Englishman is at once haughty and humble, independent and submissive. What folly, then, to dream of giving the same institutions to two such different people! Moreover, I should like to ask who is to protect the French Chambers against a prince who has at his disposal an army of four hun dred thousand men, whom the geographical situation of the country renders it always necessary should be kept on foot?"-P. 75.

Our author, it appears, married the daughter of M. Otto, who, it will be remembered, negotiated the preliminaries of the treaty of Amiens, and by this connexion he came into the possession of much information relating to those parts of Napoleon's foreign diplomacy, in which M. Otto took a share. We particularly call attention to the private instructions with which that able negotiator was furnished on his proceeding to England, ostensibly as agent for the prisoners of war, but in reality to sound the English Government on the subject of peace-and if necessary to act as minister, should he find a good opportunity. Chapter II. contains these instructions, and gives a strange picture of Bonaparte's sensitiveness to the attacks of the English newspapers. The great little man was so much discomposed by these troublesome gentry of the press (whose cato'-nine-tails has made even stronger men than Bonaparte wince !) that he actually ordered M. Otto to return; and had not the judicious diplomatist succeeded in soothing his irritated master, the peace might never have taken place.-P. 30.

This, indeed, seems to have been a never-ending source of annoyance to Napoleon, even in the midst of the gravest discussions respecting the terms of the peace.

"He found still greater fault with the manner in which he was abused in the English papers and in Parliament, declaring that the peace had brought about no change in the language of either. And he went so far as to declare publicly to the English ambassador, that if these attacks were not put a stop to, he would cross the Channel with four hundred thousand men, and demand satisfaction at the point of the bayonet!"-P. 36.

Nothing certainly could be more unworthy of a statesman than the

whole of Bonaparte's behaviour on these occasions. At a later period, that is to say, after his fortunes began to wane, and when he was glad to obtain the mediation of Austria in his attempts to make terms with England, instead of acting with dignity and reserve, he seems to have given way most absurdly to his temper. following rap he gets over the knuckles from M. Metternich (one of the most sagacious statesmen in Europe) for his folly on this occasion, is one of the neatest things in this amusing book.

The

trivial concession, that he was desirous of "While Napoleon was pretending, by this peace, he published, in the journals of Paris, the most virulent articles against the English Government, in reply to the attacks launched against him by the London newspapers. M. Metternich complained warmly to the French ambassador of the injury which these articles would do to the negotiations on foot for bringing about the peace.

"The language held by the English journals,' judiciously observed Metternich, 'ought In Eng

to form no rule for those of Paris.

land, where the press is free by the constitution, and where even the Government are exposed to its attacks, it is out of the question making the Ministry responsible for the opinions which the papers are in the habit of expressing as to the proceedings of foreign cabinets. In France, on the contrary, nothing appears without the authority of Government, or rather, every thing relating to politics which does appear is composed under its orders. While Napoleon, therefore, ought to despise the calumnies of the English papers, it is not to be supposed that the English Government can look upon those of Paris with the same indifference, being fully authorized to look in them for the sentiments of the Emperor of the French.'

"All this, which was now urged by M. Metternich, had already been brought to Napoleon's notice by M. Otto, his ambassador at Vienna, but without producing any effect, as Napoleon refused to allow the force of a distinction which left him open to the attacks of his enemies, while it denied him the right of replying."-P. 177.

We skip the account of the preparations for invading England, in Chapter IV., and also that which follows on the murder of the Duke d'Enghien. A couple of sentences, however, we must extract, from a long rigmarole speech of Napoleon's to the Council of State, in which he betrays the great uneasiness he felt in consequence of the manner in which

the aforesaid murder was received in Paris:

"The population of Paris,' said he, 'is a collection of blockheads (un ramas de babauds) who believe the most absurd reports.

"If I had chosen to do so, I might have put the Duke d'Enghien to death publicly,and, if I did not, it was not from any fear of the consequences-it was in order to prevent the secret partisans of that family from exposing themselves, and thus being ruined. They are now quiet-and it is all I ask of them. I don't investigate the hearts of men to discover their secret sorrows. No complaints have been laid before me against the emigrants included in the amnesty-they were counted as nothing in this conspiracy. It was not with them that Georges or the Polignacs found refuge-but with the women of the town and other reprobates of Paris.' -P. 47.

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Napoleon frequently interrupted himself while running on in this way; for he evidently felt the necessity of making out a justification, but was puzzled what to say, and hence the vagueness of his expressions, and their want of coherence when touching on the main fact. After he had ceased speaking, no one else said a word; and this silence was abundantly significant. He then immediately left the room, and the meeting broke up; for our thoughts were too deeply fixed on this one topic to be able to attend to ordinary affairs."-P. 49.

He seems to have had a mortal hatred for lawyers.

"Napoleon complained bitterly of the conduct of the lawyers of Paris. 'One of these gentlemen,' said he, had the temerity, during the trial of Moreau, to pronounce a public eulogium on the Count d'Artois ; and another, who was engaged to go to Lyons to defend a man who had killed a gen-d'arme employed to arrest him, actually preached up the doctrine of resistance to authority! These lawyers are ever ready,' he continued, 'to intermeddle with political affairs-they attack, on all occasions, the law of divorce and that of the national property. It is thus that they sap all foundations of government. I shall forbid their pleading any where out of Paris without permission from the grand judge-and that shall be granted only to those who will not make a bad use of it. If that is not found to answer, I shall find still more effectual means of managing them.""

-P. 88.

The most important Chapter in this volume, in a historical point of view, is certainly the eleventh, which gives an account of the rise, progress, termination, and consequences of the fa

tal campaign of Austerlitz. M. Pelet, from his connexion with M. Otto, who was then French Minister at the Court of Bavaria, has been enabled to furnish us, not only with a series of exceedingly curious original and hitherto unpublished letters of Bonaparte, struck off in all the ardour of pursuit, when he was preparing, or rather when he was in the very act of pouncing on his prey-the unfortunate Emperor of Austria, afterwards the still more unfortunate father-in-law to this merciless "three-tailed bashaw!"

The causes of the war are pointed out with singular clearness, as well as the address of the French Minister at Munich in managing the distracted Elector of Bavaria. In taking upon himself afterwards-in the genuine spirit of a great officer-to order two corps of the French army to march instantly to the scene of action, and without waiting for Napoleon's sanction, albeit these forced marches were made across a neutral territory, M. Otto showed himself well worthy of the confidence reposed in him by his master. The letters of Napoleon to M. Otto here given are ten in number, and are dated from the 14th of September to the 24th October, 1805; and we think the translator has judged well in transferring these singular documents from the appendix to the body of the work. A fac-simile of one of these, we are glad to see, is given for the amusement of those who are curious in handwritings.

The Chapter (XIII.) on Napoleon's marriage with Maria Louisa will amuse every class of readers, for it relates to all sorts of things, from those momentous negotiations by which the fate of empires was sealed, solemn marriages dissolved, and national feelings highly excited, to the minutest arrangements of a lady's household, and the details of her journey regulated by imperial mandates. In the original these minor details are buried in the appendix, but the translator has given them, as he would express it, "a berth in the text," under an impression, we suppose, that even these trivial matters help to throw light on Bonaparte's character-a different light, indeed, from what is cast by the more glaring incidents of this great adventurer's career, but not a whit less true.

In this Chapter, where indeed one might least have expected it, we

meet with a precious sample of Bonaparte's brutality. After having conquered the kingdom of Austria, reduced the Monarch to the lowest state of degradation, and with the point of his sword having forked out for himself an archduchess for a wife, to the grief and indignation of the people, he might have been content, we think, to have left the unhappy

Austrians alone. Not a bit! Such forbearance was not in his nature. He went on adding insult to injury, and, under his directions, of course, "the newspapers of Paris," M. Pelet tells us, "were filled with the most offensive articles against persons of the highest consideration in the Court of Vienna."-P. 154. In vain Metternich remonstrated-in vain the French minister (M. Otto) represented to his Master the impolicy of pressing Austria too hard. The only result was fresh injuries and insults! Let those who are shocked on hearing Bonaparte called a tyrant, ponder well the following passages:—

"The Emperor of Austria felt still more deeply hurt by Napoleon's decree of the 6th of April, requiring every person, born in France, or in the countries conquered by France, and who were either employed or pensioned by Austria, instantly to return to France, upon pain of death and confiscation of their property. This decree was aimed at a great number of military officers as well as civilians in the service of Austria. Some of these persons had quitted France before the Revolution, with the King's consent, while others had established themselves in Austria at the period of the emigration. Napoleon even extended his decree to persons born in Belgium, and who had entered the service of Austria before that country had been united to France, and when the Emperor of Austria was their legitimate sovereign! "The treaty of Campo Formio (17th October, 1797), which united Belgium to France, had formally guaranteed to these individuals the right of making their election between France and Austria; and they had chosen Austria. Nevertheless, it was declared that this right of choice was annulled by secret articles in subsequent treaties, which gave to France the right of recalling those officers born in the departments united to her. The Emperor of Austria was thus called upon to relinquish the services of many very distinguished men, employed not only in the army, but in the civil service of his country. He was likewise required to send back between

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be forced to give up his most faithful counsellors, and to dismiss a host of men whose

services are indispensable to him. These

persons must abandon a country which has become their home, and relinquish employments which support them and their families, to return, against their will, to places in which they are strangers, and where they have no means of earning a livelihood! They will be reduced to the alternative of dying of hunger, or of begging their bread from the very government which has brought these miseries upon them. Is this the manner to cherish a good understanding with a friendly nation?'"-P. 155.

This is pretty sharp work! But the heartless despot was not satisfied with recalling those persons born within the territory of France, he wantonly extended his cruel mandate to those countries which had no other connexion with France, than having just had the honour and glory of being trodden under foot by her troops!

"The severity of this decree did not press only on those persons who had been born within the limits of the French empire. The Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine zealously followed up the example of their chief. A great many of the Austrian functionaries, both civil and military, had been born in Bavaria or in Wirtemberg; and all these were ordered to return."-P. 156.

Mean while, to the astonishment of all Europe (Napoleon, we presume, inclusive), one of our hero's own flesh and blood, exhausted with the intolerable weight of his kinsman's rule, fairly ran rusty, and having abdicated his little coveted throne, took refuge in Austria! The letter of the ex-King sador at Vienna, which is given at page Louis to M. Otto, the French ambas159, is as capital a specimen of the "get-off" as we remember to have

seen.

We regret exceedingly to learn that M. Otto's papers, with the exception of a few fragments, were destroyed by the foreign troops who plundered his

country-house in 1814.—(P.17.) Had it not been for this, we might have been let still more deeply into the secret history of those times when Bonaparte ruled the Continent literally with a rod of iron.

Napoleon tried in vain to make a good boy of his brother, the exKing of Holland, who, however, resisted with the most admired pertinacity all attempts to seduce him out of his snug quarters; and we suppose Napoleon was deterred from carrying matters to extremities, only by some small remaining trace, not of shame, but of prudence. So he left Louis to the enjoyment of his "raisin skin bath" at Marbourg, while he carried on the war elsewhere.

We have already given some extracts from the 15th chapter, which gives a hurried sketch of the fatal war with Russia, but we must make one more extract, which not only exhibits Napoleon in a pet, but represents him acting in the spirit of that childish humour.

After he had been beaten back from Russia, and was in some degree pommelled into reason, he condescended to listen to the offer of Austria to act as mediator. He required that an Austrian ambassador should be sent to Paris in place of Prince Schwartzenberg, who was absent with the army. Two perfectly competent diplomatic characters were mentioned to him for this service, but few people will guess why he refused to receive them. Their names did not please him!

"The Count of Bellegarde and M. Stadion were proposed for this purpose, as the only disposable men, in their rank, at least, of sufficient capacity in these difficult circumstances. Napoleon objected to the nomination of either of these statesmen, not only because they were both looked upon as enemies to France, but because the appointment as ambassador from Austria of a person with the French name of Bellegarde, might seem rather insulting, after the decree which recalled every Frenchman from foreign service. fact of M. Bellegarde having been born in Saxony made no difference; and at last M. de Vincent was named-though born in Lorraine !"—P. 175.

The

The truth is, poor Bony was like a spoiled child sorely pressed by his doctors to take physic he abominated. Take it quietly he would not, and therefore force became necessary. He

struggled long, and cried lustily, but at last the dose was exhibited, as it is technically called, and the first part of Mons. Pelet's book ends with these words.

"At length, even Austria declared herself against him, and Napoleon, weakened by so many battles, could no longer resist this formidable coalition. The retreat from Dresden and Leipsic renewed the

disasters of the retreat from Moscow. The

allies passed the Rhine on the 1st of January, 1814, and spread themselves like a torrent over the fair provinces of France. The nation, tired of war, and so long weighed down by absolute power, stood, almost without exception, inactive spectators of the struggle. Napoleon in vain employed his multifarous resources in the art of war to arrest his numerous enemies.

In spite of all his exertions to block up the way which led to the capital with the fragments of his army, the allies arrived there His throne was overturned, before him. and France, occupied on every side by the hostile armies of Europe, expiated most bitterly the intoxication of twenty years of victory!"-P. 181.

In Part the Second we see Napoleon in Council, laying down the law quite as imperiously as in his camp. He seems to have wished to derive the double advantages of the unity of despotism, and the expansion of freedom

He

but these parts of the machinery of Government he in vain endeavoured to combine, so as to make them work together. He desired sincerely to obtain the opinions of the able and highly informed counsellors whom he assembled about him-while he reserved to himself the entire right of action consequent upon those opinions. wished to combine all the parties in the nation into one, and to direct the But he energies of that one himself. did not see that by thus destroying all freedom of action in others, he not only removed all the responsibility from them to himself, but what proved even more baneful in practice, he took away from them both the will and the capacity to think to any good purpose -so that he virtually left himself "alone in his glory."

It is curious and instructive (and we are uncharitable enough to say, that it is pleasing), to witness the difficulty as well as the pain which it cost this selfish tyrant to exercise his authority. Nothing, indeed, can work smoothly, when there is no genuine or hearty

assistance to be derived from the governed by the governor, and where every thing has to be ordered. And it is especially curious to observe the shallow artifices by which he endeavours to disguise his tyranny, even from himself, by affecting to shift the immediate operation of his acts unto other hands, as if the transference of the dagger to the clutch of the assassin could transfer likewise the guilt of the crime from the principal to the instrument!

"I grieve daily,' says the Emperor, ⚫ over the numerous arbitrary acts which I am now obliged to perform, but which would come much more appropriately (plus convenablement) from the tribunal I have been speaking of. I am made to sign, in the dark, all sorts of decisions deliberated upon in the Council of State upon disputed matters, so that I am merely a cat's-paw on these occasions! (Je ne suis pour cela qu'un griffe.) Yet I have

no mind,' he adds, that such power shall be possessed by my successors, because they might either abuse it themselves, or allow others to do so."—P. 228.

It never appears to have entered his head to suppose that any one would suspect him of abusing these powers. All he complains of is the inconvenience.

"His invariable system," says M. Pelet," was to contract as much as possible the functions of the legislative body, and to regulate by his own decrees a multitude of things which till then had been left to the legislature. The Tribunat could not denounce his infractions of the constitution, because it no longer existed; the Conservative senate preserved nothing; the legislative body dared not murmur; and the tribunals obeyed."-P. 183. Bonaparte justified all this by strange sort of argument, which, coming from such a quarter, would at once surprise and delight the heart of our present rulers.

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"There does not exist in the world,' said he, on the 9th of January, 1808, single constitution which is acted up to. Every thing is in a state of change. The government of England, for example, has fallen into the hands of forty or fifty great families, who found no difficulty in giving the law to the House of Brunswick, who were strangers in the land; but that cannot last.'"-P. 104.

"How wise and prophetical!" exclaim our Radical Reformers.

Napoleon, however, is not more complimentary to his own country than to ours. He thus proceeds :

"In France, things are not a whit more firmly established. A corporal might take possession of the Government at the moment of any crisis, for the Constitution does not give the Government power enough; and whenever the Government is feeble, the army are the masters."

It is now the Conservative's turn to shout "How wise and prophetical!"' The following dicta we fear will please neither party.

"It ought not, therefore, to be in the power of the legislature to check the march of Government by stopping the supplies. The taxes, accordingly, when once fixed, ought to be collected by simple decrees, for it is absurd to suppose that in the interval between the sessions there shall not exist an authority to promulgate such laws as the circumstances of the period may require."-P. 184.

There is good sense in the remarks he makes on newly constituted states:

"We must take care," said he, "not to tie up the hands of a new government by laws too much in detail; for constitutions are the work of time, and too wide a way for improvements can never be left open. (On ne saurait laisser une trop large voie aux améliorations.)-P. 105.

The following observations on the fittest method of bringing a refractory senate to their senses must, we think, have furnished our precious Reformers with the brilliant idea of swamping the House of Lords!

"The senate," said Napoleon, "which was too feebly constituted in principle, and required improvement, I have duly strengthened. If ever I shall have any reason to

dread the power of this body, I have nothing to do but throw in half a hundred d'y jeter une cinquantaine de jeunes conyoung counsellors of state! (Il me suffirait selliers d'état.) Far, however, from their becoming formidable, the senate in a few years will be merely an assembly of old gentlemen, upwards of eighty years of age! As for the other bodies in the state, none of them have adequate consistence-not one of them offer any guarantee against the nation becoming the prey of a colonel commanding four thousand men. In fact, the only institutions which afford any guarantee at this moment are the senate and electoral colleges."-P. 186.

All he allowed his legislature (as he called it) to attend to was the details

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