She felt, as

BLIGHT of

moderate and second degree of power. other German nations, the WITHERING the continental, or anti-social system; but, circumstanced as she was, with the possession of Swedish Pomerania, dependent on French pleasure, she had no other remedy than to wait her opportunity. Still

more was this the case with Prussia, through all her provinces the mortal enemy of the French name, but whom the large garrisons which France had planted in her dominions, and the numerous forces which she maintained there, compelled for the time to be as submissive as a handmaiden. The general eye saw in Prussia only a nation resigned to her bondage. Austria, besides the terrible losses which the last war had brought upon her, was now fettered to Napoleon by a link which gave the proud house of Hapsburg an apology for the submission, or at least the observance which she paid to the son-in-law of her emperor.'

66

Such was the supremacy of imperial power over wide Europe that was given to Napoleon; and such the "withering blight," as if scorching with great heat, which he cast over the Continent. As the successor of Charlemagne, he revoked, by express decree, the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff: and, imitating his illustrious predecessors," he designated his infant son the king of Rome. But, after having seen his aggrandisement thus completed, his empire consolidated and doubly secured both by conquest and alliance, and the joint imperial lineage and succession of the ancient and modern empire combined in his son,-to use the words of the historian, "we are now approaching the verge of that fated year, when Fortune, hitherto unwearied in her

Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vii. pp. 121, 122.

partiality towards Napoleon, turned first upon himself, personally, a clouded and stormy aspect.

Power was given unto Napoleon, as emperor, to scorch men with fire, and men were scorched with great heat, yet the vial was poured upon the sun itself, till it could neither scorch nor hurt any more, and every ray of its glory was extinguished.

From prophecy and from history we see the nations which Cyrus congregated around Babylon the great; the millions which Xerxes stirred up against Greece ; the intrepid band of Greeks who, under Alexander the Great, breasted the river and broke through the centre of the Persian hosts; the legions of Rome which desolated Judea, and subjugated the world; the Gothic nation in arms, headed by Alaric; the fiery Huns, led on by the blazing Attila; the swarms of Saracens, that flew, like locusts, from the desert, and spread over Europe; the Turkish horsemen, rated by myriads, that issued from Turkomania; the crusading hosts, that poured, like a torrent, upon Asia, and also the multitudinous Moguls, that flocked from the borders of China, to bind the Turkish sultanies;—yet not the Persians glittering with silver, nor the Greeks clothed in brass, nor the iron Romans, neither the furred Goths, the sable Saracens, the turbaned Turks, nor the mailed knights of Europe, ever formed an effective force, or showed the perfection of the art of war, like the armies, from all the kingdoms of continental Europe, that were ranged under the banners of the Emperor Napoleon. Moral culture is ever apt to decay in the rugged and degenerate soil of human nature. But instruments of destruction are wont to be improved in a world lying in wickedness. And in modern times, in which

*Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. vii. p. 144.

atheism has taken to itself the name of philosophy, science was not slack to devote its energies to the work of slaughter; and men, thus far wiser than their fathers, failed not to improve the evil art of war. The French revolution, which promised to fraternize the world, made war its trade. And having seen, and traced in his progress, "the little Corsican officer," who longed for a lieutenancy in the Turkish service, and who was called from the streets of Paris to clear them of an insurrectionary mob, till power was given him over a fourth part of the earth, to shine like the sun, and to scorch with fire, and till he scarcely found a compeer in Alexander, Attila, Charlemagne or Tamerlane, we may not only contemplate the splendour of his course and the scorching glare of his brilliancy, but we may look again on the mighty conqueror to see how soon his glory came to nought, or how the vial of wrath was poured upon that to which such power of scorching was given.

very sun

The fated year approached when Fortune, hitherto unwearied in her partiality towards Napoleon, turned first upon himself personally a clouded and stormy aspect, or, in other words, not less significative and expressive, the vial of wrath was poured out upon the sun, even upon him to whom power was given to scorch men with fire. And, as under the former vial, the French were in the same place the victims of the wrath of which they had been the executioners, so Bonaparte himself, or the imperial power identified with his person, though before" the child of destiny," whose path was not to be crossed, nor his arms to be arrested, while his work remained to be done, was fated to destruction, even as he himself had destroyed. The fourth part of the earth was his allotted sphere. The judgment as yet was sitting on the papacy, or the kingdoms where it once had prevailed. When

ever Russia came to the aid of other continental powers, within the range of Bonaparte's commission, its aid was ultimately ineffective. Italy, Austria, and Prussia fell in defiance of its helping hand; and though, the British excepted, by far the most stubborn of his foes, the soldiers of Russia were repulsed by Bonaparte, not only from Germany, but even from the Catholic kingdom of Poland. The "fated year" was that in which, passing his bounds, Napoleon invaded Russia, and quenched the scorching beams of his sun amidst its snows. Till that fatal moment it

shone with increasing brilliancy.

The Emperor of Russia refused to acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain; and an edict issued by the emperor of Austria (no longer emperor of Germany, or head of the empire) for the free passage of the armies of Napoleon through his territories, gave token of an approaching war with Russia.

"Napoleon omitted nothing as to the preparation of the military forces of his own empire. Before yet all hopes of an accommodatiou with St. Petersburgh were at an end, he demanded, and obtained, two new conscriptions in France; and, moreover, established a law, by which he was enabled to call out 100,000 men at a time, or those whom the conscriptions had spared, for service at home. This limitation of their service he soon disregarded; and in effect-the new system that of the Ban, as he affected to call it,— became a mere extension of the old scheme. The amount of the French army at the period in question (exclusive of the Ban) is calculated at 850,000 men ; the army of the kingdom of Italy mustered 50,000; that of Naples 30,000; that of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw 60,000; the Bavarian 40,000; the Westphalian 30,000; the Saxon 30,000; Wirtemberg 15,000; Baden 9000; Saxony 30,000; and the minor powers of the Rhenish league 23,000. Of

these armies Napoleon had the entire control. In addition, Austria was bound to furnish him with 30,000, and Prussia with 20,000 auxiliaries. The total sum is 1,187,000. Deducting 387,000,-a large allowance for hospitals, furloughs, and incomplete regiments, there remained 800,000 effective men at his immediate command. The Spanish peninsula might perhaps occupy, even now, 150,000; but still Napoleon could bring into the field, against Russia, in case all negotiation failed, an army of 650,000 men; numbers such as Alexander could have no chance of equalling; numbers such as had never before followed an European banner.”*

The armies of mortals are powerless before the word of God, as the host of Sennacherib before the breath of an angel. Bonaparte's fall was more rapid, and not less marvellous than his rise. He crossed the Niemen" at the head of at least 470,000 men.” He passed the bounds of his conquests. The Russians, instead of advancing to meet him, retired at his approach, burned their villages, and laid waste their country. Their continued retreat lured him on to destruction. A thrice repeated attack on Smolensko was thrice resisted and repelled. But the garrison abandoned the city they had defended; and left it in flames to the invaders. The conflagration, (the houses being chiefly of wood, and the season being dry,) according to the French bulletin, " resembled, in its fury, an eruption of Vesuvius." On the 7th September, the hostile armies, of nearly equal numbers, encountered each other at Borodino, where a thousand cannon were in the field. "In no contest, by many degrees so desperate, had Bonaparte hitherto been engaged. Night found either army on the ground they had occupied at day-break. The number of

* Hist. of Napoleon, vol. ii. p. 113.