as you do, and am ready to promote your enterprises against her? In that case,' Napoleon replied, we shall readily agree, and peace is already made. They retired to a tent, and had a long conversation in private. On the morrow a similar meeting was held, at which the king of Prussia was present, to whom Napoleon extended but a grim reception. The three monarchs afterwards removed to Tilsit, where Alexander and Napoleon grew to be singularly intimate and smitten with each other. Napoleon, in fact, completely dazzled the imagination of Alexander, and easily induced him to separate his cause from that of Frederick-William. He showed him that, by uniting, they might rule the world as they chose, and partition Europe according to their several interests. He would rule and absorb the West; the czar might take what he pleased of Turkey (excepting always Constantinople), Finland, and Sweden to boot, if it suited him. He consented, in deference only, as he professed, to his august ally, that Prussia should not be altogether extinguished, but reduced to the line of the Elbe, and shorn of her Polish provinces, which were erected into a separate principality under the name of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and conferred upon the king of Saxony, whom Napoleon had taken into his especial favour, and previously invested with the royal dignity. The provinces on the left of the Elbe, with Hesse, were given to Prince Jerome, who received them with the title of King of Westphalia. By secret articles, the two imperial dominators settled their scheme for dividing the whole of the Turkish dominions between them, by which France was to have all the Mediterranean dependencies, and for compelling every power in Europe, without exception, to close its harbours and declare war against England. Against the rigorous conditions imposed on Prussia, her unhappy monarch in vain protested; his seductive consort lavished her blandishments on the conqueror; but he was not to be moved by the allurements of female charms from his stern resolves. He insisted upon the conclusion of the different treaties as he had dictated them; and they were accordingly signed at Tilsit on the 7th July, after which the sovereigns separated in a solemn adieu; and so closed the famous congress of Tilsit, in which such licentious freedom was taken with princedoms, nations, and communities.

Thus raised to a pinnacle of human greatness which words are inadequate to depict, which the hyperbole of Oriental extravagance could not exaggerate, Napoleon turned his face again towards France, whither he returned, trampling, as he passed, on the prostrate populations. He bore with him innumerable spoils -trophies of art which he had rifled from conquered cities, and vast sums of money which he had exacted from subjected countries. The amount of contributions he levied on Germany-until the complete payment of which, the French army was to remain

in possession of its territories and fortresses-is stated at £25,000,000 sterling, but the Prussian accountants represent it as much greater. This was an enormous burden for a poor country to bear in addition to its ordinary taxation and the charges of supporting a numerous army, which were prolonged by the very magnitude of the imposition. Grievous, indeed, was the oppression under which the German people henceforth laboured, and bitterly had they to mourn the fatal errors committed by their princes. The French themselves were held in a bondage truly ignominious to a gallant and generous nation, yet they had the satisfaction of being the most favoured of the slaves of Europe. Under the banner of their victorious lord they enjoyed a material prosperity and a military glory which other nations certainly could not boast, since to them these owed their misfortunes and their chains, and which not only consoled them for their loss of liberty, but created in them an impure exultation. This was the only feeling, indeed, to which they were allowed to give utterance, as freedom of thought or speech was wholly extinguished amongst them. Not only political discussions were disallowed, but even disquisitions on questions of social policy, public ethics, or economic science. Under such fetters literature perished; and the age of Napoleon, unlike that of Augustus, is a barren waste in letters. The mind of the nation was crushed, and it was permitted to feed only on the crumbs of information vouchsafed in the Imperial bulletins, and on the redundancies of servile adulation. Wielding alone the potent engine of the press, Napoleon could at pleasure direct public feeling in any channel, and give to events such colouring as it suited him. Thus he was not content with forbidding his subjects to think, to write, to speak, but took upon himself the task of doing so for them. Even the professors of the Academy could not deliver lectures until they had been submitted to the approval of this censor, who often animadverted upon their aberrations in historical or even critical allusions. The contemplation of this unequalled despotism and mental slavery is rendered more mournful by the reflection, that, anomalous as it may appear, it was identified with the cause of liberty in Europe. Kings and princes had been taught by this plebeian conqueror how little they could rely on their armies to uphold their power; and in proportion as he humbled their pride, and heaped on them indignities, promoted the era of enfranchisement for communities. But the lesson was as yet incomplete, and his supremacy was still needed to insure the triumph of the democratic principle throughout the world; since both in the prostration of the princes and in their own misery the people saw they could depend on themselves only, and that their emancipation and regeneration must be their own work. Alas! the lesson was then, and has ever been, incomplete to teach the princes and

rulers of the earth wisdom; the lust of authority has still blinded them to the light of reason; and the question may still be at issue at the dawn of the twentieth century, when AT LAST the equitable balance shall be struck between the anarchical license of mobs and the iron tyranny of despots-when a beneficial, because stable, freedom may reign among mankind-when the passions of democracy and aristocracy shall be allayed and blended in a harmonious fusion !

CHAPTER XV.

COPENHAGEN-SPAIN AND PORTUGAL-ECKMÜHL AND WAGRAM-RUSSIA -LEIPZIG-CHAMPAGNE-DOWNFALL OF NAPOLEON-JULY 1807 TO

APRIL 1814.

The treaty of Tilsit wrought as complete a change in Europe as the irruptions of the barbarians who overran and partitioned the provinces of the Roman Empire. Not merely were all the ancient landmarks obliterated, and the territorial configurations displaced, but the system on which it had hitherto reposed, and which all the wars of the last century had been waged to establish and maintain, was utterly abrogated. Instead of an adjusted balance among a few great powers, tending to secure the repose and independence of numerous minor states, every vestige of an equipoise was rudely destroyed, and two colossal empires arose, overshadowing and crushing the whole continent by their weight. The principles of public law fell into abeyance with the order of things in which they might have been enforced, and unblushing robbery of the weak by the strong became the rule of conduct for all able to realise it. The two despots of the east and the west had given to each other license to do what he pleased with the property of his neighbours; and England, on her part, was not backward to imitate their example. The tenor, if not the precise terms, of the secret agreement between Napoleon and Alexander, to coerce every power in Europe to embrace the continental system, and declare war against England, had sufficiently transpired to alarm the latter, and stimulate her to take precautions against so universal a confederacy. The smaller maritime powers had fleets which might be made subservient to effect her ruin, and particularly Denmark, who was well-disposed to revenge the aggression of 1801. The new Tory ministry-comprising Perceval, Hawkesbury, Castlereagh, and Canning-was animated with a determination to carry on the war with vigour, and in the contest

of life or death, which it had become, to oppose the redoubtable foe with his own weapon of unscrupulous violence. Accordingly, it took an immediate resolution to seize the Danish fleet lying in the harbour of Copenhagen, and destined for that purpose an expedition tardily prepared to co-operate with the Swedes in Pomerania. This expedition consisted of twenty-seven sail of the line, with numerous transports, and 20,000 land soldiers, assisted by heavy artillery. It reached the Sound in the beginning of August, and as the Prince Regent refused to deliver up his fleet upon the summons of Lord Cathcart, who commanded the British forces, the troops were disembarked, and Copenhagen abandoned to a merciless bombardment of three days, during which 1800 houses were destroyed, and 1500 of the inhabitants killed. To save their capital from total devastation, the Danes then capitulated, and surrendered their fleet, with all their naval stores and munitions of war, vehemently protesting to the last against the unjust and nefarious conduct of the British. The conquerors bore away their important capture, indifferent to the reproaches of which they were the objects, and carried into the ports of England the splendid acquisition of eighteen ships of the line and fifteen frigates, thus converting the strength of Denmark into a source of security instead of danger.

This audacious and unprecedented enterprise against a neutral power, without any previous declaration of war, excited a storm of indignation against England throughout Europe, and coupled with her breach of engagement towards Russia, gained for her denunciations of perfidy from every quarter of the globe. It was in vain she alleged, in her exculpation, the secret intentions of Russia and France: she was not at the time believed, and she long endured the opprobrium of having committed an outrage wholly unjustifiable. Yet there is little doubt she acted wisely upon the occasion, even in violating the canons of morality, if it were the fact that her implacable enemy had determined to make the Danes, willingly or otherwise, arm their fleet for the invasion of England. That he did so there is no reason to question, but every evidence to prove; and therefore the point is narrowed to the case already canvassed by jurisconsults of accredited authority, in which they agree that a belligerent may rightfully take possession of a neutral's means if he have reasonable ground to fear their being used to his prejudice, but only to keep in pledge, and to be restored when the apprehended hazard is passed. The crime of the British ministry, consequently, was not so much in seizing the Danish navy, as in retaining and utilising it after the seizure. At the same time, it may be said that the law of selfpreservation is with nations, as well as individuals, paramount to all others; and against such an adversary as Napoleon many things might be allowable which, against one more under moral

He

restraint, would be justly condemned as unwarrantable. himself was both disconcerted and infuriated by the measure; for it not only balked a favourite scheme, but evinced a spirit in the British government for which he had long ceased to give it any credit. It tended, however, to hasten his proceedings against the other countries he had marked out for subjugation; and whilst Alexander took Finland from his own brother-in-law, the king of Sweden, the last remaining ally of England in the north, he fulminated a decree against Portugal, her only other ally on the continent, and announced, in the arrogant phraseology he assumed on such occasions, that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign.'

To execute this imperious purpose, he despatched Junot with 30,000 men to Lisbon, which that general entered without resistance on the 30th November, and reduced the whole country under the French sway, the royal family retiring on board the Portuguese fleet, and under the protection of a British squadron to be conveyed to the Brazils. Simultaneously with this large addition to his empire, he promulgated decrees annexing to it in Italy the duchies of Parma and Placenza, the kingdom of Etruria, and the principal dominions of the Pope, whom he threatened to dethrone for refusing to shut the Roman harbours against the English. But his great design-one long meditated, and now matured-was the appropriation of Spain. That noble country--so rich in glorious reminiscences, the greatest of European monarchies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the discoverer and conqueror of the New World, and the inheritor of its teeming mines-had sunk into a state of degradation through long misgovernment, which almost took it from the category of nations. Lying at the back of France, and commanding a ready access to it through the gorges of the Pyrenees, the union of Spain with France in an intimate alliance has always been an object of solicitude with the rulers of the latter when seeking aggrandisement in Europe. Thus Louis XIV., Napoleon, and Louis-Philippe -the most ambitious monarchs who have occupied the throne of France--have pursued an identical policy with regard to their unfortunate neighbour, which has continually suffered to promote French interests. Louis XIV., in violation of a triplysolemn treaty, placed his grandson on the throne of Spain, and ever since that time, it has been in a constant state of decay. After the execution of Louis XVI., it entered, with more propriety than any other power, into the coalition against the French Revolution, but soon withdrew from it, defeated and disgraced. Subsequently it declared war against England, and formed a close alliance with the French Republic, enduring all the ills of war without obtaining any of the benefits secured by its ally. Since the accession of Napoleon to supreme power, he