Narrative of All the Principal Occurrences which Took Place During the Last Two Years of the Reign of Buonaparte: Giving a View of Every Transaction of Importance, from the Retreat of the French from Moscow Till the Entrance of the Allies Into Paris ... : Also an Account of the Dethronement of the Tyrant, the Arrival of Louis XVIII in the French Capital and the Departure of Buonaparte for Elba ... : Concluding with a Historical Character of that Extraordinary Man

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Thomas Duncan, 1814 - Leipzig (Germany), Battle of, 1813 - 32 pages

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Page 32 - A Royalist— a Republican and an Emperor — a Mahometan — a Catholic and a patron of the Synagogue — a Subaltern and a Sovereign — a Traitor and a Tyrant — a Christian and an Infidel — he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original — the same mysterious, incomprehensible self — the man without a model, and without a shadow.
Page 31 - It mattered little whether in the field or the drawing-room, with the mob or the levee, wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown, banishing a Braganza or espousing a Hapsburg, dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic — he was still the same military despot.
Page 30 - 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 31 - For the soldier, he subsidized every people; to the people, he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe.
Page 31 - The jailer of the press, he affected the patronage of letters; the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the...
Page 30 - Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank and wealth and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny.
Page 32 - His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world ; and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie. Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bonaparte ; the first, (and it is to be hoped, the last,) Emperor of the French.
Page 28 - ... which I have been treated by your Royal Highness and by every member of your illustrious House. It is to your Royal Highness's Councils, to this great Country, and to the constancy of its people, that I shall always ascribe, under Providence, the restoration of our House to the Throne of our ancestors, and that state of affairs which promises to heal the wounds, to calm the passions, and to restore the peace, tranquillity, and prosperity of all nations.
Page 21 - Highness Prince William of Prussia, with his brigade, together with the Prussian guards, were much distinguished. The enemy's cavalry attempted to charge, but were brilliantly repulsed by the Brandenburg and black hussar regiments.
Page 31 - All the visions of antiquity became common places in his contemplation; kings were his people — nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chessboard!

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