Recollections of military service in 1813,1814, & 1815

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Page 174 - Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate ; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent ; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross ; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the republic ; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism.
Page 174 - ... despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope ; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Caesars! Through this pantomime of his policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns...
Page 173 - Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind bold, independent, and decisive — a will, despotic in its dictates — an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary...
Page 103 - Louis, by the grace of God King of France and Navarre, to our dear and well-beloved Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, greeting.
Page 175 - His person partook the character of his mind — if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount ; space no opposition...
Page 176 - Such a medley of contradictions, and, at the same time, such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist, a republican, and an emperor; a Mohammedan, a Catholic...
Page 175 - ... the prodigies of his performance ; romance assumed the air of history ; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals.
Page 177 - Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people ; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they have not a resource; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson that if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest.
Page 15 - Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
Page 173 - A mind, bold, independent, and decisive — a will, despotic in its dictates — an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character — the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell.

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