EDITOR'S TABLE.

A MANUSCRIPT SPEECH OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. You will, I am sure, derive great pleasure, as I myself have done,' writes a Worcester (Mass.) correspondent, in the perusal of the following plans of BONAPARTE, which the writer heard him deliver himself at the first class of the Institute at which he presided in August, 1800, when he was First Consul, and had recently returned from Marengo. It was rendered from the original manuscript for a member of the Institute, who communicated it to the translator. It was transcribed into a port-folio of my father some thirty years ago :'

'THE army of reserve assembled at Dijon gave me the advantage of passing rapidly either into Germany or into Italy, as the case might require. The season somewhat favored me: the monks of ST. BERNARD assured me that the snow had dissolved this year twenty days sooner than usual; they received our army, which was a little fatigued by the passage of the Alps, extremely well; I had preinformed them of our arrival; I had sent them money, and they furnished us with provisions and very good wine. The monks of ST. BERNARD are an order infinitely respectable; it is one of those institutions which governments ought never to destroy, but should protect and encourage, by all the means in their power.

'I arrived in Italy: I found myself behind the enemy, and master of all his magazines and equipages; I had obtained great advantages, but, once arrived at Stradella, I had a right to consider the campaign as finished. If Genoa had held out, I remained firm in my entrenched camp at Stradella, the strongest military position in Italy. I had five bridges over the Po, which rendered my communications easy with the divisions, CHABRAN, LAPEYRE, TURREAU and MONCEY: in case of necessity I could either summon them to my aid if attacked, or aid them in case they were. M. de MELAS, in short, was forced, in order to be able to open his communications, to come and offer me battle, on a ground which I myself had chosen ;* extremely intersected, covered with wood, very favorable to my infantry, and the reverse for his cavalry; and where I had the disposal of all my troops.

The capture of Genoa changed the face of every thing; henceforward the enemy possessed a sure retreat, and very strong positions: he could either retire into Genoa, and defend himself therein, deriving his provisions from the sea, or line the heights of Bobbio with artillery, and retire, in spite of my efforts to oppose him, into Placentia, regain Mantua and Peschiara, put himself into communication with Austria, and reduce me to an ordinary war. All my plan of the campaign would have been frustrated. A great chance presented itself to me; I risked it. I set out from Milan, and traversed thirty-two leagues in seven hours. I commanded the battle of Montebello; we gained it, and this victory caused the enemy's retreat from Genon; but this same victory weakened my army. I was obliged to leave two divisions on the other side of the Po, to close the entrance of the States of Milan; they were not, to say the truth, distant from me above three leagues, but they would require three days to effect them in; they must have passed by Placentia or by Stradella. I had also against me another disadvantage: the country, from Montebello to Alexandria, is nothing but an immense plain, most advantageous for the Austrian cavalry. I nevertheless resolved to offer a pitched battle, be

*PRECISELY in this way reasoned General TAYLOR at the great battle of Buena Vista, as Santa ANNA, like M. de MELAS, found to his sorrow.'

cause I was in so extraordinary a situation, that I risked little to gain much. Beaten, I should retire into my entrenched camp of Stradella; I should pass the Po by my five bridges, protected by my batteries, without the possibility of the enemy's army being able to hinder it; I should unite my second division with the corps of MONCEY, LECCHY and TURREAU. I suffered one corps of MELAS to pass the Po, (and he desired no better;) then, superior in numbers, I could attack him with all my forces, if I beat him. Conqueror, I obtained the same results. His army, pent up between us and the river, would have been forced to have laid down their arms, or to have surrendered all their forts. Had I been beaten, which I believe impossible, I brought myself to a regular war; and I had Switzerland for my support.

'Determined to give battle, I ordered an account of the effective strength of my army to be rendered to me. I had in all twenty-six thousand men. M. de MELAS had forty thousand, eighteen thousand of which were cavalry. At two o'clock in the morning they came to inform me that the enemy had fallen on our advanced guard, and that our troops gave way. The French like not to be attacked. Our troops fell back somewhat in disorder; some betook themselves to flight; the enemy took some prisoners; we had retreated a league and a half. The generals of the advanced guard, LANNES, MURAT and BerthieR, sent me courier after courier; they told me that their troops were in flight; that they could not stop them. They asked for support, and requested me to march with my reserve. I replied to all: 'Hold out as long as possible; if you cannot, fall back.' I perceived that the enemy had not yet employed his reserve; and in these kind of affairs, the great object is to make the enemy employ all his forces in managing your own, and to make him attack at right and at left, as long as you cannot be deceived; the difficulty being to make him employ his reserve. He had thirty-four thousand men, against at most twenty thousand, who were in flight: he had but to pursue his advantage. I repaired to the first line in an elegant uniform; I attacked them myself with a demi-brigade; I broke their order of battle; I pierced their line. M. de MELAS, who saw me at the head of the army, and his lines broken, imagined that I had arrived with the reserve to reinforce the combat. He advanced on this point with his own, six thousand Hungarian grenadiers, the flower of his infantry; this corps filled up the vacancy, and attacked us in our turn. Seeing this, I gave way; and, in a retreat of half a league, exposed to their cannon, I rallied all the army, and re-formed it in order of battle: arrived near my reserve, which was composed of six thousand men, had fifteen pieces of artillery, and DESSAIX for general, and which was my sheet-anchor. I opened, by an extremely rapid movement, the whole army. I formed the two wings of DESsaix, and I showed them six thousand fresh troops. A tremendous discharge of artillery, and a desperate charge at the point of the bayonet, broke the line, and cut his two wings. I then ordered KELLERMANN to attack them with eight hundred horse; and, as cavalry march quicker than infantry, they cut off from the rest of their army six thousand Hungarian grenadiers, in sight of the Austrian cavalry; but this was half a league off; they required a quarter of an hour to arrive, and I have always observed that it is these quarters of an hour which decide the fate of battles. KELLERMANN'S troops threw him toward our infantry; they were all made prisoners in a moment. The Austrian cavalry then arrived; but our infantry was in line, its cannon in the front: a line discharge and a barrier of bayonets prevented their attack; they retired, somewhat in disorder; I pressed them with three regiments which had just joined me; they deployed; and, in seeking to pass the bridge of Borunda, which is very narrow, a great many were drowned in the river. They were pursued till night.

'I learnt after the battle, from several general officers, prisoners, that in the midst of their success they were not without inquietude; they had a secret presentiment of their defeat. During the fight they questioned our prisoners, asking them, Where is General BONAPARTE?' 'He is in the rear,' they replied; and those who had already fought against me in Italy, who knew my custom to reserve myself for the end, exclaimed, 'Our day's work is not yet done! They confessed also that when I showed myself at the first line they were completely deceived, and that they believed all my reserve were engaged. In battles there is always a moment, when all the brave men have done their best, when they seek nothing better than to run away; but these are misgivings of the heart: they want a pretext; the talent is to give them one.

'At Arcole I gained the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I perceived the critical moment of lassitude in each army; I saw that the Austrians, in spite of their being old soldiers, would have been well content to find themselves in their camp; and that my Frenchmen, all brave as they were, had wished to be in their tents: all my forces had been engaged; more than once I had been forced to reestablish the battle. There remained to me but five-and-twenty guards; I sent them on the flanks of the enemy with three trumpets, sounding a charge very loud. Here is the French cavalry!' was the cry; and they were in flight. It is true that one must seize the moment; a moment sooner VOL. XXX. 11

or later it had been useless: had I sent twenty thousand horse, the infantry would have executed a quarter of a conversion; covered by its pieces, it would have made a good discharge, and the cavalry would not even have attacked.'

'Afterward, turning to some members of the Institute: 'You see, two armies are two bodies which encounter each other; there is a moment of panic, which must be seized. All this is nothing but mechanism and moral principle; in fact, all this is nothing but habitude; when we have seen many affairs, we distinguish the moment to a nicety; it is as common as a sum in arithmetic.

The first time I penetrated into Italy, I found there a good government; a little despotic, it is true, but mildly administered. This time it was widely different: a reaction had commenced with fury; they had imprisoned, condemned and fined all those who had taken any part in the government. I had placed in different charges of the Cisalpine republic the partizans of Austria; because it is my system to neutralize the great masses, in order that the country where I carry the war may not be an enclosed list, but a theatre. Well!-all these people had been regarded with an evil eye, and confounded in the hatred which they bore to the revolutionists.

'Moreover, the English, Russians and Turks had, in Italy, by despising the religion of the country in the degree that they scrupulously observed their own, entirely indisposed the inhabitants, for whom the extent of religion is much more than with us in France. Still more, the Austrian notes were sixty per cent. beneath par, which they forced the Italians to take as ready money, and this completed the alienation of their good will. They were enchanted to perceive that we paid for every thing in hard cash: Here are the French Louis again;' Ecci i Luigi di Francia tornati! It would seem that kings are at this moment at their seventeen hundred and ninety-three; they issue their assignats, make their requisitions, and they fatten their priests.

'It was a Turkish corps which guarded our Lady of Loretto, and who were cantoned in the church; I had not thus much difficulty in ranging the Italians on my side: I said to them, 'The Austrians pretend to be the defenders of your religion, and they bring you a set of Protestant English, who burn the Pope once a-year in St. Peter's-square; a number of Russians, who have been heretic and schismatic since the fifth century; and to crown all, a parcel of Mahometan Turks, a race of infidels. While I-I am a Catholic; I have fought against the Turks; I am almost a Crusader.' I established several priests in the government of the Cisalpine republic: the Italian priests are tolerant, but they form not a separate and powerful body, like the clergy in France; beside, accustomed to be conquered twice an age, they take any oath you wish; and such was all I wanted.

'In Italy I employed some priests: in Egypt it was my care to fill the administration with them; we knew not the language, but we had want of intermediators between us and the people. Their character and their wealth gave them a certain influence; beside, they are great cowards, know not the use of arms, nor how to mount a horse.'

In all the Conversations' and 'Reminiscences' of NAPOLEON which we have ever seen, we have never encountered any thing more comprehensive, or more characteristic of the Great Captain' than the foregoing, which will doubtless be as new and as acceptable to our readers as to ourselves.

THE DISOBEDIENCE OF ORDERS BY LIEUT. HUNTER, OF THE NAVY.- In the few remarks which ensue, we disclaim all intention of advocating disobedience of orders; yet we cannot resist the conviction that there are cases where it must be done, in order to accomplish a desirable result. The great responsibility assumed will always serve to prevent the frequent occurrence of such disobedience; and when, as in Lieut. HUNTER's case, it was for the honor of the service, and influenced too by circumstances of which the commander-in-chief must have been uninformed, it seems to us that there were good grounds for less harsh measures than were visited upon that gallant officer. Charges and specifications having been proved, the court-martial may have found itself obliged to award the sentence which it pronounced. The commander-in-chief had a noble opportunity of evincing a dignified magnanimity in

his reprimand of the young officer, (whose only fault appears to have been a little too much zeal,) and yet have preserved all the necessary influence of proper discipline. We quite concur with our friend and veteran contemporary, the editor of the Philadelphia United States Gazette,' in this remark of that calmly-judging journal: Inferior officers must obey, of course; but if an inferior officer was sent with a small vessel to blockade a port, and hold it in position to be taken by a superior, and it should appear that the place was ready to give up; that every day was diminishing its value as a prize, and that the delay was only necessary to fulfil the letter of an order, when the spirit of all orders was to conquer and take possession; and what is more, that the said letter only required obedience, in order that another and superior commander might come and have the honor of taking possession, the glory of conquest; then, we say, the spirit of all instructions was complied with by the very act of going beyond the letter. NELSON thought so; TAYLOR thought so; though neither of them might have suspected that the delay proposed was for any thing but prudence, not for the purpose of transferring laurels.' We would do Commodore PERRY no injustice; he is warmly commended elsewhere in the present number, for his gallant bearing at Vera-Cruz; yet we are reluctantly compelled to admit that his letter of reprimand to Lieut. HUNTER conveys an impression unfavorable to his disinterestedness and impartiality in a matter of great moment to a young officer, who, although deemed guilty of an act of unnecessary temerity, is yet acquitted by nine persons in ten with whom we have exchanged thoughts upon the subject-including many officers in the naval service of any intentional wrong to his superior. We are losing sight, however, of the object of these remarks, which was to introduce the subjoined account of a case, recently come to our knowledge, wherein it was found necessary to disobey orders, that a desirable result might be effected. The following narrative of the occurrences in question comes to us from one of the crew of the brig Enterprize,' to which it refers:

-

WHEN Cuba was infested with pirates, and every port of that extensive island was receiving their prizes, the government sent that active aud intelligent officer, Commodore KEARNY, then a lieutenant in command of that favorite little vessel, the brig‘Enterprize,' to cruise around it, and if possible to suppress in some degree their depredations. The Commodore had learned from good authority that Cape Antonio, the west end of the island, was the principal place of rendezvous, and he made his calculations so as to be up with it at early day-light, which he succeeded in doing. As the day opened upon him, he discovered a large brig ashore within the reef that lines that Cape, her sails flying in every direction, and one ship and a brig under weigh, just entering on the reef. Alongside of the brig on shore were four schooners and a small sloop, which, immediately after discovering the 'Enterprize' to be an armed vessel, made sail to the north'ard, with the hope of escaping by running around the north point of the Cape and beating up between the reef and the island, until far enough to the east to take the open sea; being aware that it was impossible for a vessel of the draft of the 'Enterprize' to pursue them across the reef; while the distance to beat around, with a southerly current opposed to her, would give them ample time to escape. The ship and brig were anchored immediately, and the piratical crews taken on board the vessels, which hugged the shore as near as possible. Every thing convinced the commander of the Enterprize' that these were pirati cal vessels: both the bow-chasers were brought on the starboard side, the brig was kept near the reef, and a brisk fire opened upon them; but finding the shot to fall short, the order was given to clear away, and prepare to hoist out the boats. At this moment a boat was seen approaching the 'Enterprize' from the brig on shore. The Enterprize' was hove to, and it was ascertained, on the boats reaching her, that the vessels in sight were all pirates, as had been anticipated. At this moment a large two-topsail schooner, having all the appearance of being armed, was discovered standing in for the Cape. The first cutter of the 'Enterprize' was now hoisted out, and the gig lowered from the stern, and crews selected for them; at the same time the brig and ship that had been brought to anchor were requested to send any boats they could spare to the Enterprize. Their yawl-boats were

.

received; and when the five were all manned, Commodore KEARNY desired his second lieutenant, now Commander MCINTOSH, to take charge of them and proceed in chase of the piratical vessels ; his intention being to find out in the brig the character of the schooner. On the north point of the Cape, under which the piratical vessels were striving to cover themselves, there was a pole erected on an eminence having all the appearance of a fortification. Before Lieutenant MCINTOSH left the brig, his commander directed him, in the presence of the officers and crew, on no consideration to separate his little force, saying: 'You do not know with what you may have to contend: there are five piratical vessels in sight, and every appearance of a fort on the shore, and I cannot spare you any additional force.'

'It was soon seen, after leaving the brig, that the heavy-pulling boats from the merchant vessels were unable to keep up with the two boats belonging to the Enterprize;' and to wait to keep in company, would be to defeat the object of the chase, by allowing the piratical vessels to escape. As soon as out of hail, Lieutenant MCINTOSH ordered up Midshipman PRATT, who commanded the gig alongside of his cutter, and observed to him: 'If we wait for those slow-pulling boats we shall accomplish nothing. I am convinced we can overhaul and capture every vessel in our two boats. I wish you to follow, and keep within speaking distance of me.' The crew of the two boats, hearing this order, gave three hearty cheers; and pulling with additional vigor, more rapidly widened the distance between the boats. The piratical vessels, finding the two boats nearing them very fast, hove to, doubtless to intimidate their pursuers. It had a different effect, however, for the American ensign being displayed at this moment from the boats, again three hearty cheers were given, and on they dashed, side by side. Once more the piratical vessels crowded all sail, and also got out their sweeps; but finding that they must be overtaken, (for the boats were gaining fast,) they commenced running their vessels on shore. The first, a fine schooner of about sixty tons, was beached just within the point of the Cape; and while her crew were jumping ashore from her bowsprit, smoke was seen arising from her hatches. It was evident that she was set on fire. Midshipman PRAtt, a gallant officer, who has since fallen a victim to the yellow fever, now volunteered to board her, and put out the fire; but he could not be spared. There were still four other vessels in sight, one of which, a schooner of seventy-five or eighty tons, commanded by the chief of the gang, and known to have a gun amidships, appeared to be making preparations to defend herself. On seeing no attention paid, however, to the one already ashore, but a determination to pursue the others, they all took advantage of a heavy squall of wind and rain, (which for some minutes entirely shut them in from view,) and run ashore; the crews all taking to the thick mangroves which skirt the shores of this Cape; and, by a perfect knowledge of the ground, escaping into the higher lands.

'So soon as the squall passed over, the four vessels were boarded, hauled afloat, and got under weigh; and while standing down to the first that had been run ashore and fired, she blew up with a tremendous explosion, sending her masts, and fragments of her deck, high in the air. On nearing her, it was perceived that she had burnt to the water's edge, her timbers appearing just above it. The vessels were anchored; and on examination they were found to contain more or less cargo of value. A lare quantity of wet goods were also taken from the burnt wreck. The shore was scoured in search of the crew, but it was evident they had run far into the interior; and the day now drawing to a close, after setting fire to some houses on shore, which had been occupied by the buccaniers, Lieutenant MCINTOSH, having been previously joined by the other three boats, got the vessels under weigh, and taking the boats in tow, returned to the brig, which was lying to, outside the reef. It was near night; an officer was sent on board to relieve him; and when he passed over that gangway which he had left in the morning, he was received by his commander, who expressed gratification at his success, but observed:

"You disobeyed my positive order, Sir, in separating your force, and have subjected yourself to arrest. Walk into the cabin, Sir.'

'On reaching the cabin, Lieutenant MCINTOSH saw that his commander had not yet dined; and he found there the master of the 'Aristides,' of Boston, the brig on shore, and the master of the ship 'Lucius,' of Charleston; the other brig proving to be an English vessel, had been permitted to go on her voyage, having but little cargo. Captain KEARNY, on entering the cabin, observed to his lieu

tenant:

"I have been awaiting dinner for you; although until I saw you standing out from under the point, I did not know but you had all been blown up; I heard an explosion distinctly.'

Seated at dinner, and hearing all the particulars from Lieutenant MCINTOSH, the gallant and high-souled KEARNY asked the pleasure of a glass of wine with him, saying:

"It is assuming a very dangerous responsibility for an officer to disobey orders; yet there are times