Two of the directors themselves (Carnot was one) were in this plot. The three others had their choice, either to commit the crime of violating the constitution, or to suffer it to fall. They vioiated it in order to defend it. Supported by the army of Italy, from whence they had sent for Augereau, and by that of Hoche, they seized, in military style, upon the legislative body, and fifty-one representatives, the two directors, and some journalists were condemned to transportation on the 18th of Fructidor. Merlin and Francis de Neufchateau replaced the proscribed directors.

General Buonaparte, who had rendered himself popular by his victories, received at Paris that homage, which must have excited his ambition, and which now brought it into action. It was already evident that he was aiming to play the part of Caesar, when he made the directory adopt the project of an expedition as adventurous as the crusades; the army of Italy was embarked at Toulon. In Europe the loftiness of the republican plenipotentiaries had embroiled France, a second time, with all her neighbours; the gold of England had united Russia and Austria in a coalition (1798); Suwaroff was marching upon Italy, and the directory had sent Massena into Switzerland, to humble the aristocratic despotism of Bern by protecting the democracy of the Pays de Vaud, when the news reached them, that the French fleet had been destroyed at Aboukir, while the army was victorious by land. Nelson returned to Naples to enjoy his triumph, and hang the ablest men of the country at the instigation of the queen. A detachment of Frenchmen quickly succeeded in chastising Rome and Naples, and founded (1799) the Roman republic. Italy, however, was soon retaken from Moreau, and Joubert's army was reduced to great feebleness. The Austro-Russians and the army of the emigrants already were on their march towards France. But the fortune of the day was again changed: Massena routed the allied army at Zurich. Italy was reconquered, and new and flattering accounts reached France of the expedition to Egypt. Bruno, in the mean time, had beaten the English and the Russians in Holland, where he re-established the Batavian republic.

France triumphed, but some intriguing persons were preparing a revolution by sowing the seeds of trouble in the nation and the public councils; the latter of which opposed or perverted all the measures of the directory. The persecution and transporting of the priests excited discontent, as also did the reduction of twothirds of the debt. Speculators, who had enriched themselves by stock-jobbing; the royalists, who wished to get into favor with the monarchy, expecting its restoration; the contractors, who had introduced licentiousness, and corruption, into the expenses of the unfortunate soldiers; generals and governors, who had acted as judges in foreign countries, all cried out that France had need of a stronger government; that is, one that might ennoble and decorate them. The systematic Sieyes had at this time been called to the directory; on the 30th of Prairial, year 7, the councils had introduced three members; and

while the momentary confusion increased, a man was wanted to grasp the falling reins of power. Buonaparte, informed of this state of things, did not hesitate to leave the army in Egypt; where he also left Kleber, the just,' in a desperate situation; but the opportunity was a fine one for him. His disembarkation surprised every body: he was received with great pomp, although his conduct in returning was, in the estimation of cool and reflecting men, that of a coward and a rebel. Sieyes now took from the republican, Bernadotte, the post of minister of war. A conspiracy was pretended; the councils were called together at St. Cloud, and Buonaparte put himself at the head of the directory's guard in order to overturn it. He gained over the ancients by promising to make them senators; but the resistance of the Five-hundred disconcerted him for a moment: he grew pale and hesitated in the sight of the danger he had created for himself, and which the president Lucien, his brother, alone succeeded in turning aside by presence of mind. They resumed their courage for him: the grenadiers, with bayonets fixed, rushed in upon the national representatives and dispersed them. On the 18th of Brumaire (10th of November, 1799), Buonaparte became a usurper and Sieyes a dupe.

Buonaparte now digested a constitution which was intended to deliver the power to a consul (that is to say, himself), assisted, for form's sake, by two under-consuls; and a mute legislative assembly passed the laws, under which a tribunate alone had the right of speaking. A public body, called the conservative senate, was paid to approve of all that was done. 'What shows,' say her own historians, ' how they make a jest of every thing in France, is, that they still preserved the name of a republic.' Buonaparte, who had already discovered the way of fascinating the nation by his enterprising disposition, his superior talents, his prodigious fire, and his skilful charlatanism, met with more opposition in the army, where the republican spirit was still preserved. He left that of Egypt to the English and the Turks; only some feeble remains of it returned to France. A little while after he sent to St. Domingo, in order to repress the independence of the negroes, 40,000 of the old soldiers of the republic. The burning sky of the tropics killed numbers of them; for Hayti knew how to defend the liberty of which she now shows berself worthy. The only trophy ever gained by France in this ruinous expedition was the black chief Toussaint Louverture, whom Buonaparte suffered to perish miserably in a strong fortress, where he was immured.

Six months had hardly passed away since Buonaparte became consul when he unexpec edly passed the St. Bernard, to fall upon the Austrians, and gained the battle of Marenge. where the virtuous Desaix met his death in giving him victory. During this time Moreau. commanding the army of the Rhine, triumphed at Hohenlinden, and threatened Vienna. The peace concluded at Luneville further aggrandis. France. Italy and Switzerland placed themseive under her protection; Piedmont became French territory; when Spain, and England hersel

ne made a monopoly of public education, in which youth were taught the glories of the emperor, as children are taught their catechism. Some of the priests declared from the pulpit, that he had a divine mission. He created a military nobility, something like that which existed before the time of Henry IV.; and his generals, adorned with ribands, endowed with pensions, and enriched with the spoils of an enemy's country, respected him as their chief. They were no longer those poor leaders, who led the French on foot to the defence of their country; the times of the patriots Jourdan and Perignon had passed away; Hoche, Desaix, Marceau, Dugomier, and Kleber were dead: yet the army could still reckon in the list of its worthies such men as Lecourbe, Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, Lefebvre, De eau, Desolles, and Lannes, who preserved their dignity, and were not cowed by their new master. Some of the old Jacobins, strangely decorated with feudal titles, and some emigrants installed in the antechambers, rivalled one another in submission, and in prostrating themselves around him. He re-established the imposts, the abuses and prodigalities of the ancient monarchy. The aids and monopolies re-appeared under the name of united duties. The press was kept under by a merciless censorship; juries were perverted; prefects and other petty subaltern despots assumed the place of free administrations of justice; the emperor nominated all the public functionaries, and all, even down to the field-keepers, were inviolable: the council of state, a dependent and removable body, was the sole arbiter of their responsibility. The election of the deputies was a ridiculous thing in this pretended representative government, the laws of which were the dicta of the emperor, under the name of decrees, or senatorial edicts. Individual liberty no longer existed; and while the 14th of July was often celebrated, many bastiles were occupied throughout France in the service of this arbitrary despot. A police, that was a true political inquisition, suspected even silence itself; accused even the thoughts of men, and extended over Europe a net of iron. All this time too the conscription, a dreadful tax upon human life, was levied with unsparing activity; and the French youth were surrendered to his will by the senate as a sort of annual contribution. It is said that Napoleon held the human race in sovereign contempt; he had, indeed, good reason to do so!

Portugal was now in the emperor's possession, and Spain placed herself at his feet: the army of the latter fine country he transported into the north to fight the battles of his future ambition. Discord prevailed at this time among the Bourbons at Madrid, who chose Napoleon arbitrator, and he made them prisoners, in order to raise his brother Joseph to the throne; Murat, his brotherin-law, being transferred to Naples. The emperor went to Erfurt to meet Alexander of Russia, and they agreed to shut up the Continent of Europe against the English who had blockaded it. The Spaniards, however, rose against the conquerors of Europe, and for several years Spain became the grave of the French. Both NapoJeon and France well knew what the most

stupid nation could achieve, when directed by enlightened men, and roused to a pitch of fanaticism by the priests; and yet to this unjust ag gression Spain owes the dawn of liberty she has seen; and Europe her deliverance from his iron grasp. Suddenly Napoleon was once more (A. D. 1809), obliged to transport his powerful army to Vienna; where, after having beaten Austria at Essling and at Wagram, he demanded Maria Louisa in marriage. To accomplish this adulterous alliance Josephine Beauharnais was divorced; and an arch-duchess espouses a man whom the nobility of Germany looked upon as an upstart. Half-a-dozen kings were present at the marriage; and Napoleon, a year after, was presented with a son, whom he decorated, from his cradle, with the title of king of Rome.

The French departments now (1811), extended from Rome to Hamburg: all Europe bowed to Napoleon but it could not contain him. He undertook to chastise Russia, which had just broken the blockade; and the English, whose attempt upon Belgium had been repulsed by the national guards, effected a coalition between Russia and Sweden, which had just elected Bernadotte her crown prince. Napoleon now urges the whole of Europe upon Russia: 400,000 men, who might have crowned him on the way emperor of Constantinople, arrived in time to witness the heroic and ever to be lamented burning of Moscow. Nature at length subdued the pride of a man who never started at impossibilities; and, while an unusual severity of cold annihilated his superb army, he who had dated his decrees from the Kremlin returned alone to Paris to put himself into a terrible and ridiculous passion against the liberal sentiments of the people. During his absence (1812) the conspiracy of Mallet had failed of effecting a change in the government. The senate, however, furnished men, money, and horses, and Napoleon went to Saxony to subdue the Prussians and Austrians who had declared against him. There Moreau fell, with the reproach of having fought against his country, but with the satisfaction of knowing, at the same time, that he was defending the cause of Europe and civilisation. The emperor, however, could not stand out against the defection of all his allies, and even of the kings whom he himself had made. Still, however, he might have concluded a glorious peace; but he would yield nothing, and therefore lost all. His campaign in France evinced the energy, the constancy, and the supe riority of his genius; there, struggling with a handful of men against immense forces, he gave a sufficient answer to those who would pretend that he never conquered but with vast armies at his command. But France, enslaved and gagged, had forsaken him; the mutes of the legislative body had found their tongues; a cry of liberty resounded in Germany; the kings seemed to approve it, and accepted the assistance of those liberal notions which at this day they fear and disavow.

The English and Portuguese, united with the whole Spanish people, had driven into the south of France the few forces that opposed them. and the battle of Toulouse left the glory uncer

tain between the success of numbers and the resistance of the vanquished. Bourdeaux was betrayed to the English by its mayor; while Paris, defended by its inhabitants, a few invalids, and the young pupils of that school, all the thoughts and labors of which were consecrated to the good of their country, opened its gates to a foreign force. The people now (1814) learned that he who had been emperor but the night before, was the next day to retire to a little island in the Mediterranean: and some persons, in white robes, proclaimed the Bourbons, who were advancing with a promise of the abolition of the conscription and the united duties. Led on by M. de Talleyrand, ever skilful in taking advantage of circumstances, the senators formed a plan of a constitution, nearly the same as that which exists in the charter, and recalled Louis XVIII., on condition that he would continue to them their situations. They then signed the projected deposition of Napoleon. The allied monarchs approved it; France was reduced to its ancient limits; the remainder of the fleet, which had been almost annihilated at Trafalgar in 1805, and by the fireships at Rochefort, was delivered up, as well as part of the artillery.

If,' says the able French writer whom we have permitted chiefly to tell this tale of France, we have judged Napoleon with rigor, we render homage to his great actions. At a time when his will, in conjunction with his genius, directed him to that which was good, he deepened the port of Cherbourg, and formed the roads of mount Cenis and the Simplon; he despoiled Rome and Nismes, to embellish Paris. His continental system and his prohibitions, which were good as far as they were reprisals, gave to French industry that activity which peace has redoubled. But he depopulated the country parts, and already covered France with military fiefs. There is an author, a declared supporter of feudalism, who admires Napoleon, because,' as he says, he alone could and would have established it. Certain it is that he destroyed the revolution by its own power; while he was to be pitied for his predilection for nobility and the splendor and etiquette of courts; one cause, perhaps, of his own fall.'

Wearied with the imperial yoke, and with continual war, France hailed the approach of peace with acclamations of joy and hope. The declaration of St. Ouen, which included in it several of the fundamental principles of the revolution, re-assured all hearts. France, and even Europe are indebted to Louis XVIII. for having set a useful example, by assisting in the re-establishment of the representative system. The senators, in conjunction with some others, formed a chamber of peers. At the same time was convened the legislative body of the empire, which formed the chamber of deputies; and Louis, who had declared his determination to adopt a liberal constitution, granted the charter, which, notwithstanding some omissions and imperfections, contains sufficient guarantees for liberty, were they well executed; but here lies the difficulty. The imperial institutions still existed, and these alone had any real effect. The charter promised, but it organised nothing; the constitution of the year 8 remained in force

with regard to the people, and the charter was founded on that constitution, and on the despotic decrees of Napoleon. Had Buonaparte been bribed to smooth the way for the restoration of royalty, he could not more faithfully have fulfilled his mission. The Bourbons found the communes, the national guard, trial by jury, the department, the elections even, and an enormous budget in the hands of the executive authority; they found a hierarchy of irresponsible officers, rising in various degrees around this centre, from which every thing emanated, and to which all tended. It has been disputed, whether or not a counter-revolution had taken place: the fact is, Napoleon had already in part formed a counterrevolution; take away the right of general taxation, and the equality of men in the eye of the law, and it is completed. Louis re-established, with the representative system, a part of the revolution; to restore it entirely, it was necessary to put in the place of the imperial institutions, which govern France, the liberal institutions that she hopes to behold.

Little alteration in fact was made at this time: the ministers contented themselves with displaying the charter, and, without fulfilling its conditions, cavilled about its meaning. There was need of economy, but prodigality was the order of the day. The parties which had not been dissolved, but only depressed by Napoleon, raised themselves again. The most ridiculous claims were urged with insatiable eagerness; the satellites of despotism, in order to reinstate themselves, openly displayed their treason; and prefects, who had executed the conscription in a way similar to the treatment of negroes, dreamed only of serving the legitimacy in the same manner. The possessors of national property were disturbed alternately by hopes or by fears; the army, discontented at having lost its political ascendancy, had already begun to move. sudden in the spring of 1815 it was reported that Napoleon, having escaped the unsuspicious commissioners of the allies, had landed at Cannes with a few soldiers, which in Grenoble were taken for a regiment; that he was entering Lyons, and would soon be at Paris with an army. Every thing was thrown into confusion; the king and the princes again swore fidelity to the charter; they confided the security of it to the citizens and the army, and protested their love for liberty. Napoleon also promised liberty; he was again placed on the throne, and the Bourbons fled to Ghent.

On a

France now knew not what law to obey, but order was restored. A chamber of representatives was convoked; and an assembly of the French electors announced under the name of champ-de-mai. Napoleon obliged, in these circumstances to have something to do with liberty, offered for the provisional acceptance of the people, the additional act, in imitation of the charter. The congress of Vienna, however, where the kings had divided among themselves the nations, to whom they owed their deliverance, still continued. One of the king's ministers, Talleyrand, still accredited there, stirred up the coalition against the usurper of Europe. The army and the national guards hastened to the

frontiers; but the foreign troops entered on all sides. While the west, where an insurrection had with much difficulty been excited, and the south, aided by the king of Spain, were yielding to the discipline of a few regiments, and to the power of patriotic confederations, Napoleon at Waterloo lost his throne in a moment. Paris, where Fouché still was, capitulated; the representatives who, at the call of la Fayette, had renewed the declaration of rights, and enacted even at the cannon's mouth a free constitution, separated. Napoleon abdicating a second time, went to deliver himself up to the English, who imprisoned him in the midst of the ocean, at the distance of near 5000 miles. The army retired beyond the Loire, to submit peaceably to its discharge, and to sacrifice to the tranquillity of the country, even the irritated feelings of a disappainted hope. The allies proceeded to seize on and pillage a great part of France, and the king re-entered Paris on the 18th of July.

This disastrous epoch of the hundred days was a very remarkable one. The spirit of liberty had roused itself in France, after a slumber of fifteen years; Napoleon was resisted; the army and the National guards recollected the re-action of 1792; the citizens and soldiers began to approach one another; the military again became citizens; Napoleon was no longer their idol, he had been only a rallying point imposed by circumstances; they resolved, in fine, for the cause of their country, and of liberty, both of which they had too much forgotten. Some few places held out for a length of time, and an Austrian army, that was besieging Huningen, were astonished at being stopped in their course by an invalid and a few veterans. The situation of the king, on the whole, was a critical one; he entered his capital, preceded by irritated foreigners, who exacted an enormous contribution, part of which was paid on the spot by means of a forced loan; cannon was planted on his palace, and the greatest disorder prevailed in France. The king proclaimed, on the 29th of June, that his government had perhaps been faulty in some respects, promised to add to the charter all the guarantees which secure its execution, and declared that the representative government should be maintained. The rest belonged to his ministers and to circumstances; the responsibility of the former has been unnoticed in the charter, but it ought not to escape the notice of history.

The chamber of 1815, called the Unsearchables, was nominated by the yet incomplete electoral colleges, and the knights of St. Louis, who were united to it. It seemed as if it gave the signal for a re-action of the most furious passions. The tribunals, the military commissions, and the provostal courts, shed the blood of a great number of persons, accused of political crimes. Denunciators, partly some of the old Jacobins, filled the places of the former functionaries, and the standing commissions were renewed. The impunity of assassination organised, in the south, a set of royalists called green-men, who made the country tremble. Brune killed himself at Avignon; Ramel, sent in the name of the king, was assassinated; some unfortunate

Mamelukes, who had attached themselves to the fortunes of Napoleon, expired under the cruel hand of the Marseillais; while the Protestants were murdered at Nismes by some wretches, who walked about boldly, encouraged by a chamber, which imposed silence on Argenson, their accuser. Enquiries pursued the military, and the amnesty was on the point of becoming dreadful to France, if the ministry had not opposed the chamber. Espionage and domiciliary visits were for a long time the reprisals for some measures of a similar kind, adopted during the hundred days. Fiery orators signalised themselves in the chamber by propositions, little encouraging to the nation, or perhaps to the throne itself. In fine, the discontented state of France, that had already manifested itself by an insurrection in the Iserer, which had been severely repressed, warned the minister, that it was time to stop this torrent, which grew more rapid the more it was confined. The foreign cabinets even showed a desire for this step. The charter itself was threatened, and, to place things in safety, the ordinance of the 5th of September was renewed, and the chamber dissolved.

A new assembly, elected under the influence of a moderate policy, adopted, notwithstanding the opposition of the aristocratic party, a law for elections agreeable to the charter: this was the chief requisite of the representative government. Prosecutions gradually ceased; the public spirit revived; the ministry, without granting all that was claimed, seemed at least to allow the people to hope. Other institutions, conformable with the charter, were promised; the administration became more lenient, and mutual instruction was encouraged and already made great progress. Fifteen members, introduced into the chamber by the new law, strengthened the constitutional majority; salutary measures, with regard to military promotion, were defended with talent by the conscientious minister, Gouvion Saint Cyr; and the frontiers were delivered from 100,000 foreigners, whose presence had given all its force to the re-action. Still, however, that system of policy which, while it sought support on the right and the left, was finally influenced rather by private interest, and the advantage of a set of pensioners, than by public opinion, insinuated itself slowly. Expenses swelled, notwithstanding extraordinary public burdens; but the frank opposition avowed by the nation marked these abuses, and expressed their wants.

The aristocratic party, which appeared to have assumed, in their parliamentary tactics, the language of the liberals, and implored in vain by their secret notices for the aid of a foreign power, foresaw that they would soon be reduced in the chamber to the rank they held in the nation; they therefore stirred up opposition to the elec toral law. The chamber of peers, which till then had excited little notice, received the proposition for modifying this law-a proposition which a ministry, appointed at this crisis, rejected; and sixty new peers were created to displace the majority. The ministry resting on public opinion, a satisfactory law on the freedom of the press was adopted, and the journals became free. Soon, however, an injudicious discussion on the re