men to the allied ranks, arrayed against Napoleon upwards of a million of combatants. The Emperor of Austria joined the Allied army at Dresden, on the 27th. The result of that day's struggle was, that the Allies retired in the evening with a loss of 6000 or 7000 men. On the 28th the Allies commenced their retreat towards the Bohemian mountains, and were followed on different roads by the French. In this pursuit, the division of General Vendamme, with all its baggage and 60 pieces of cannon, were captured. The disaster of Vendamme was followed by the defeat of another corps of the French army, under Macdonald, by Blücher, in which the French lost 18,000 prisoners and 103 pieces of

cannon.

In the meantime Napoleon had quitted Dresden, and was concentrating his army in the neighbourhood of Leipsic. The Allied army had also approached the same point, and it was evident that a decisive action must soon take place. On the 18th October the important battle of Leipsic took place. The contest continued throughout the whole of the day, and was maintained with desperate courage on both sides, until night parted the combatants. Napoleon in person led on his army, animating the troops by his presence and example to the performance of the most extraordinary acts of courage. All his exertions could not, however, cover defeat. The Allies were successful in every quarter; and though night divided the combatants, on the morning of the 19th, retreat having become indispensable, Napoleon took leave of the King of Saxony, who had accompanied him from Dresden, quitted Leipsic by the outer gate, and took the road towards France. This great battle, in which half-a-million of men engaged together on a surface of three square leagues, decided the fate of Europe. From this bloody field Napoleon retreated to Mayence, which he entered, but not without more conflicts, on the 2d November, and thence to Paris.

After the events of Leipsic, which thus lost to France a second formidable army, all the powers of the Coalition pledged themselves to each other at Frankfort, on the 9th November, never to separate before a general peace had been established, and to renounce all armistice or negociation which had not such peace for its object: they finally resolved to treat with Napoleon only in his capital. On hearing this, Napoleon profited by the occasion to raise once

more a levy of 300,000 men, to make a last effort to repel the attack against him.

The most critical period in Buonaparte's career was now reached. Fraud was united with force, and both against the Emperor; while the mighty resources still offered by France were paralysed through the inactivity of many agents of his government. He was betrayed by those who yet professed themselves allies. Murat joined the enemy, and the Swiss voluntarily opened their frontiers, which, as a neutral power, they had promised to see respected, or to defend; and the weakest side of France thus lay exposed to the blow. The treachery of Murat had proved doubly fatal-in itself and in its effects-upon the mighty combinations in which he had been destined to act an important part. In the gigantic scheme of defence now meditated by Buonaparte, his intention had been that Eugène and Murat, uniting their forces, should march upon Vienna through the Tyrol, and thus get to the rear of the Allies, and shake Austria to the centre. Meanwhile he himself, with the soldiers, and on the soil of France, would have multiplied obstacles in the enemy's front, and might have decided the campaign before the Allied army had reached Paris. In planning that campaign, Napoleon was all himself; again he unfolded that fervid mind, which, as in early conquests, annihilated time and space, and seemed omnipresent in its energies. Frustrated in this well-conceived attempt, he sent an ambassador to treat with the Allies; but the man who had imposed upon all Europe treaties of peace, not less disastrous than war itself, could not now obtain an armistice. Affairs were approaching daily to a crisis. In the course of the first fifteen days of 1814, one-third of France was invaded, and a new congress proposed at Châtillon-sur-Seine. At this juncture Napoleon summoned the National Guard, and confiding to them the Empress and King of Rome, he set out to join the army on the 25th January. Eastern France was already occupied by 500,000 men, and Napoleon had wherewith to oppose this host only, at most, 100,000; but his genius, far from failing him, seemed to renovate its youthful vigour at this terrible crisis. The same day that he quitted Paris, Alexander, Francis, and the King of Prussia were assembled at Langres. Napoleon rejoined his guard at Vitry, and, two days after quitting his capital, put to rout the Prussian army; then advancing, in two days more took

place the battle of Brienne, in which, with 15,000 men, he kept in check for twelve hours 80,000 Russians; and on the 1st of February from 70,000 to 80,000 men of the French and Allied armies drew up against each other. In the battle of ChampAubert, which has immortalised the village of that name, the Allies were again beaten; and the whole of February was a series of combats, a succession of reverses and defeats nearly balanced, in which the activity, the energies, and the resources of the French chief seemed inexhaustible. It is unnecessary to trace minutely the progress of this last struggle. For two months the hunted hero fought inch by inch the irresistible onset of the Allied invaders; wherever he met the enemy, he encountered them with the heroism of former days, and his troops fought with the energy of despair. Napoleon never displayed so much true greatness as during this last campaign. His transitions from point to point— the rapidity of his evolutions and marches-his unflagging resolution-his matchless skill-unwasting energy, and, above all, the invincibleness of his unbroken and unbending will, place him on an eminence apart from any other of his achievements, and render the last scenes of the dissolving Empire the most remarkable of his wonderful career. Valour at length could not withstand increasing numbers and the constant reinforcements added to the Allies. On the 26th March, Napoleon found himself cut off from Paris; the Allies gradually fought their way through the various divisions of the French army, defended by their gallant generals, and finally entered the capital on the 30th.

The result is well known; Napoleon's overthrow was complete. By the force of armed intervention the Bourbons were restored, and Louis XVIII. reascended the throne of France. Buonaparte had retired to Fontainbleau, where, on the 11th April, when he was entirely in the power of his enemies, and most of his ministers, marshals, and favourites had abandoned him, he signed at their dictation an abdication of the thrones of France and Italy for himself and his heirs. By a subsequent decree he was sentenced to banishment to the island of Elba, and on the 20th April he left Fontainbleau, after delivering a parting address to the soldiers of his Old Guard, the stranded masts and spars of that Imperial vessel which had braved so many tempests, who were assembled in the courtyard of the palace to take a last farewell of their illustrious

commander. Accompanied, at his own request, by a commissioner from each of the Allied armies, Napoleon proceeded to Fréjus, the place of embarkation, and, on the 28th April, he set sail for Elba in the English frigate Undaunted.

It is unnecessary to accompany the dethroned Emperor in his temporary exile. He arrived at Elba May 4th, and passed the ten months of his sojourn there in planning his liberation, and making a last attempt to regain his empire. The discontents which had manifested themselves under the new monarchy, and his own consciousness of popularity with the French army, unfolded the alluring prospects of ultimate success before the imagination of Napoleon as he stood upon the deck of the vessel that bore him from the rocks of Elba to the shores of France. He landed at Fréjus March 1st, and on the 20th of that month took up his abode at the Tuileries, where he once more held his Imperial court. It comes not within these limits to detail at length all the transactions of the period distinguished by the appellation of The Hundred Days, a brief mention of the most important events will suffice for the purpose of this memoir. Early in April, Napoleon made an appeal for the establishment of peace to each of the Allied Sovereigns, whose only reply was the adoption of measures still more energetic than those which had preceded them for the total annihilation of that authority in France to which Buonaparte had so suddenly and unexpectedly been restored. The Congress, then sitting at Vienna, signed a final treaty, in which they proclaimed Buonaparte an outlaw, and pledged their faith to exterminate him from the face of the earth. Once more every nation on the Continent rang with the clangour of warlike preparation, and the commencement of June witnessed a million of armed men marching to the scene of the final struggle. It is obviously superfluous to enter here into the particulars and result of the glorious contest at Waterloo. In every part of the civilised world it is well known, that whilst they placed the Duke of Wellington on the highest summit of military renown, they were fatal to the fortune of his great rival, whose sun on the evening of that day so glorious to Britain set, never to rise again. Immediately after the battle, Buonaparte left to his generals the care of collecting the scattered remains of his army and returned to Paris, where, despairing of further support, he consented to abdicate, and

After vainly

signed a proclamation to that effect, June the 22d. soliciting passports to America from the Duke of Wellington, he withdrew to Rochefort, where he remained until he learned the dissolution of the two Chambers and the entrance of the King into Paris. Up to this period he entertained an idea that the Chambers would recall him, but that hope having now passed away, and finding it impossible to escape the strict surveillance kept on him by the English ships, he embarked on the 14th of July in a French frigate, and the following day surrendered himself prisoner on board the English ship Bellerophon, and dispatched a communication to the Prince Regent, claiming protection from the British laws. On the 16th, the Bellerophon sailed for England, and arrived at Torbay, July 24th. The time between the arrival of the Bellerophon and the transfer of Buonaparte from that vessel to the Northumberland, was occupied in discussions between the Allied Powers as to the mode of his future disposal. Napoleon declared his object in surrendering himself to be, to obtain from the British Government permission either to reside as a private individual in England, or to be allowed to proceed to America. To neither of these propositions would the Allies accede, and it was finally determined that the man who had at one period had dominion in his own person over more than half Europe, and who had controlled seven-eighths of the remaining half, was to pass the rest of his days a prisoner and an exile, confined within the narrow limits of a barren island, not twenty miles in circumference, and separated from the rest of the habitable world on every side by thousands of leagues of trackless ocean.

On the morning of the 5th of August, Sir Henry Bunbury, accompanied by the Hon. Mr. Bathurst, was conveyed on board the Bellerophon by Lord Keith's yacht. On being introduced to the ex-Emperor, Sir Henry read to him the resolution of the Cabinet, by which he was informed of his intended transportation to St. Helena. Against this determination of the Allies he protested in the most vehement terms, as contrary to good faith and the law of nations. In surrendering himself to Captain Maitland, he said, he had sought an asylum as a private individual in England, and hoped to have been received under the King's allegiance, and to have been allowed to live under the protection of the laws. In making this protest, his manner was temperate