66

32. Bonaparte made his escape from the scene of his defeat, and proceeded to Paris. In his address to the senate, he frankly acknowledged his disasters. "All Europe," said he, was with us a year ago-all Europe is now against us." Having attempted in vain to rouse the French people, he again joined his army. In the mean time, the Allies had crossed the Rhine, and penetrating, after a desperate struggle, into the heart of France, they entered Paris.

33. The situation of Bonaparte having now become hopeless, he abdicated the throne of France, and, after various deliberations, the island of Elba was fixed upon for his future residence; but he was allowed to retain the title of emperor. The mighty empire which he had raised, was suddenly crumbled to the dust; and Louis XVIII. was restored to the throne of his ancestors. /

34. A General Congress was immediately assembled at Vienna, to arrange and settle the affairs of Europe, with a view to restore, yet with many variations, the ancient order of things. But while the sovereigns were deliberating on these matters, Bonaparte, dissatisfied with his situation, made another effort to regain the throne of France. Landing at Frejus, he marched with 1140 men, without opposition, through the country; presented himself in an open carriage to the royal army at Melun; was received with shouts of applause; the same evening, entered Paris in triumph, amiust the loudest acclamations; and was proclaimed emperor; and Louis XVIII. fled, on his approach, to the frontiers. This progress of the exiled emperor through France, which was one of the most extraordinary exploits that he ever performed, is without a parallel in history, and evinces, in the most striking manner, his ascendency over the French nation. In 20 days from his landing at Frejus, he found himself quietly seated on the throne, without having spilled a drop of blood.

35. Aware that he had not returned to his former power, he therefore, in order to strengthen his authority, issued some popular decrees, establishing the freedom of the press, abolishing the slave-trade, and regulating the taxes which weighed most heavily on the people he also condescended to offer them the plan of a constitution very different from the system of despotism upon which he had before acted, and containing many excellent regulations.

36. He had, however, but little time for legislative measAs soon as his arrival in France was known at Vienna, he was declared by the Congress a traitor, and an outlaw;

ures.

and a new and formidable coalition was immediately formed against him among the European powers. He placed himself once more at the head of a large army, but was entirely defeated by the Allies under the command of Wellington and Blucher, in the memorable battle of Waterloo, which cost the French army upwards of 40,000 men in killed and wounded.

37. This battle sealed the fate of Bonaparte. He returned immediately to Paris, abdicated the throne in favor of his son, and afterwards surrendered himself to captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon, claiming, in a letter to the Prince Regent of England, an asylum, "like Themistocles, among the most powerful, most constant, and most generous of his enemies." By the unanimous agreement of the allied sovereigns, he was sent a prisoner to St. Helena, where he arrived on the 17th of October, 1815; and there died on the 5th of May, 1821, in the 6th year of his captivity, and 52d of his age.

38. The career of Bonaparte surpassed, in many respects, that of every great conqueror who preceded him. No other man has appeared on the theatre of the world, who has been the cause of so many and so astonishing revolutions, or whose contemporary fame has been so widely extended. In his 27th year, he was raised to the chief command of the French army; at the age of 30, he caused himself to be elected first consul; and in his 35th year, he was proclaimed emperor of France. During the ten years that he possessed the imperial throne, he was the most powerful potentate, not only of the age, but of modern times; and he made the world tremble by the terror of his name.

39. He may be emphatically called a king-maker; for he raised to the rank of kings, three brothers, one brother-inlaw, and three German electors; Bernadotte, also, one of his generals, was raised to the throne of Sweden. The last four were recognized, by the Congress of Vienna, among the legitimate sovereigns of Europe.

40. He united in his own person, at an early period of his life, and in an advanced state of society, the conqueror, the usurper, and the lawgiver. He triumphed over civilized enemies; legislated in a refined age; and seized upon the sceptre of a powerful and enlightened people, among powerful and enlightened rivals. To him France is indebted for an admirable code of laws, in the formation of which he was an efficient agent in which he greatly prided himself; and with regard to which he was repeatedly heard to say, he “could wish to be buried with it in his hands."

41 He favored, in many instances, liberal principles; patronized merit independent of rank; encouraged liberally such branches of science as were useful to his purposes; granted religious toleration; removed or diminished many abuses; broke down oppressive feudal and ecclesiastical institutions and establishments; and left France, and also Europe, in many respects, in a better condition than he found them. But though he was not more unprincipled than other great conquerors have been, yet his ruling passion was evidently insatiable ambition and lust of power, to which he was ready to sacrifice every principle of justice and humanity. No man ever enjoyed a greater opportunity of benefiting his species than he; but this opportunity he cast away, except so far as it suited his own purposes of self-aggrandizement. He chose to be an Alexander or a Cæsar, rather than a Washington; a subverter, rather than a protector of liberty; a terror and a scourge, rather than a delight and a blessing to mankind.

42. He exercised over his own dominions a military despotism: his ambition prompted him to sacrifice, without scruple, the rights and independence of nations; and rendered him an enemy to freedom, and to the repose of the world. It was not, therefore, without reason, that the friends of liberty, of peace, and of human improvement, exulted at his downfall. His eventful life, and his miserable end, furnish a most instructive lesson on the instability of human affairs, and the vanity of human glory.

43. After the second dethronement of Bonaparte, Louis XVIII. was again placed or the throne, and a second pacification took place at Paris. France was reduced to nearly the same limits as before the revolution; she was compelled to restore much of the plunder which had been collected at Paris, to pay £28,000,000 sterling, as a partial indemnification for the expenses of the war, and to maintain, for five years, an army of occupation, consisting of 150,000 of allied troops, to be placed in 16 frontier fortresses. In 1817, the Allies consented to reduce the army of occupation to one fifth; and in 1818, it was wholly withdrawn.-Murat, who had been raised to the throne of Naples, and Marshal Ney, having both of them sided with Bonaparte in his attempt to reäscend the throne of France, were shot.

44. The principal event during the reign of Louis XVIII., was the unprovoked invasion of Spain, by a French army, under the Duke d'Angoulême, by means of which, the designs

of the Constitutionalists of that country for establishing a more liberal system of government, were frustrated.

45. Louis XVIII. was succeeded, in 1824, by his brother, Count d'Artois, with the title of Charles X., whose reign was signalized by two enterprises of foreign war of some importance; one in favor of the Greeks, in which France united with England and Russia; the other against Algiers, which city, after a siege of 6 days, surrendered to the French army, on the 5th of July, 1830.

46. But the reign of Charles was rendered memorable chiefly by the revolution of 1830. Since the restoration of the Bourbons, there have existed animated contests between the ultra-royalists and the liberal party; and the government endeavored, in various ways, to check the rising spirit of liberty, by exerting an influence on the elections, by dissolving the chambers, and by restraining the liberty of the press. In March, 1830, the chamber of deputies made a strong stand against the ministry, of which Prince Polignac was the head; and in consequence of this, the chamber was dissolved by the king; new elections were ordered, and the two chambers were convoked for August 3. On the 26th of July, it having been ascertained that a large majority of the newly elected members were liberal, three ordinances were published by the government, one dissolving the chamber before it had met, another suspending the liberty of the press, and a third altering the law of election. The liberal newspapers were suppressed; the bank refused to discount bills; the manufacturers discharged their workmen; Paris was soon in a state of great commotion; the citizens took up arms against the government, and on the 29th of July, the last of the "three days," obtained a complete victory over the king's guards. The chamber of deputies met on the 3d of August (Charles X. having already filed from Paris); declared the throne vacant; new-modelled the constitutional charter; invited the Duke of Orleans to accept the crown, who, on the 9th of August, took the prescribed oath, with the title of Louis Philip, King of the French.

[For a chronological view of the History of France, see page 329.1

ENGLAND.

SECTION I.

The History of England: The Roman Conquest: The Saxon Conquest: The Heptarchy.-From B. C. 55 to A. D. 827.

1. The history of no country, of either ancient or modern times, is richer in various instruction, or calculated to excite deeper interest, than that of England. We here see the gradual rise of a people from a low state of barbarism, to the highest rank in national power, in the arts both of peace and war, in commercial wealth, and intellectual and moral greatness.

2. In England, liberty has maintained frequent and bloody conflicts with tyranny. No nation can boast of more ardent patriots, of firmer and more enlightened frien is to the rights and liberties of mankind, or men of higher excellence, or of greater intellectual endowments, than are presented to us in the eventful pages of English history.

3. To the citizens of the United States, the history of England is next in importance to that of their own country; for it is, to a majority of them, the history of their own ancestors; as it is also of the country from which have been derived, in a great measure, their language and literature, and their civil and religious institutions.

4. We feel a peculiar interest and sympathy in the conflicts which civil and religious liberty has there maintained with despotism and bigotry; for our ancestors were, more or less, involved in them; and the first settlement and early growth of our own country were, in a great degree, owing to oppression and persecution in the parent state. We have a fellow-feeling for the English patriots of former days, and the memory of John Hampden is scarcely held in greater honor in his native country, than in this.

5. Britain was little known to the rest of the world till the time of its conquest by the Romans. Julius Cæsar invaded the island 55 years before the Christian era, and conquered a part of it. In the reign of the emperor Claudius, the Roman general Osto'rius defeated the British king Carac'tacus, and