to surprise and cut off these armies one by one; and with that view marched into Silesia, well knowing that it was not Blucher's habit to reckon the number of his enemies when battle was offered. But the crafty veteran, fully aware of his intention, for the first time in his life avoided an engagement. Meanwhile, Marshal Oudinot had been ordered to march with 80,000 men on Berlin, which was now in the hands of the crown prince of Sweden; and so confident was Napoleon of success that he issued bulletins announcing that Oudinot would enter the city of Berlin on the 23d of August. On the 22d the army halted at the village of Grosse-Beeren, about two German miles from Berlin, and the French soldiers were looking forward with exultation to the triumph of the morrow, when, in the middle of the night, which happened to be unusually wet and stormy, their bivouac was attacked by a considerable force under the Prussian general Bulow. Panic stricken by the suddenness of this attack and the fury of the Prussian soldiers-for when their powder was so wetted by the rain that they could no longer fire, they dashed out the brains of the French with the butt-ends of their musketsthe enemy commenced a disorderly retreat towards the Elbe, leaving twenty-six pieces of cannon and several thousand prisoners in the hands of Bulow. Having received intelligence that the grand army of the Allies was advancing on Dresden, Napoleon quitted Silesia, leaving behind him an army of 80,000 men under Marshal Macdonald, who found himself in the presence of Blucher on August 26th. A small stream called Katzbach (cat's back), now considerably swollen by heavy rains, separated the two armies. Blucher allowed the first division of the French to cross the brook without interruption, and then shouting out to his men, "There are enough of them now, my lads, Forwards!" (he was known ever after as Marshal Forwards) attacked the enemy with such fury that they were utterly routed, with the loss of 18,000 prisoners, forty pieces of cannon, and two eagles.

On the same evening Napoleon repulsed an attack of the army of Bohemia in Dresden; and on the 27th, strengthened by the addition of his guards, he determined to attack the Allies on the plain which lies to the south-east of the city of Dresden. Murat, king of Naples, under cover of a deluge of rain, charged the left wing of the Austrians so fiercely that

Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, who had been allowed to go into exile in America, in consequence of his opposition to Napoleon's assumption of the imperial crown, but who had now returned and accepted a command in the army of the Allies, had his thigh shattered by a cannon-ball, as he stood by the side of the emperor Alexander, on an eminence which overlooked the field, and died a few days afterwards. But the joy of Napoleon for his victory was damped by the arrival of Macdonald with the news that his army of Silesia was annihilated. The grand army of the Allies had, as we have seen, retreated towards Bohemia; but there were difficulties yet to be overcome before they could place the mountains of that rugged country between themselves and the enemy. In the pass of Culm, near Töplitz, they found the French general Vandamme ready to dispute their progress; and for many hours the fortune of the day was doubtful, until the Prussian division of General Kleist, taking the enemy in flank, and supported in front by the Austrians and Russians, attacked them with such violence, that they fled in all directions, leaving behind them 10,000 prisoners, among whom were the generals Vandamme and Haxo. Napoleon now commanded the ablest of his marshals, Ney, to advance on Berlin at the head of 80,000 men, with strict orders to make himself master of the capital, cost what it might. But this attempt, like that of Oudinot, was foiled by the vigilance of General Bulow, who met the invading army at Dennewitz; and kept them at bay until the crown prince of Sweden came up; when the French, giving way before overwhelming numbers, retreated in good order, and, although pursued by 150,000 men, reached Saxony without having sustained any very considerable loss. These disastrous defeats of his generals threw them on Napoleon's centre at Dresden, which the Allies were again preparing to surround. Napoleon continued to manoeuvre till the beginning of October; but the Allies were always on their guard.

The country round Dresden was now completely exhausted of provisions. The French army endured

the greatest privations, and it was plain that retreat was no longer avoidable. This step was also hastened by the news of the defection of Bavaria. On the 7th of October Napoleon evacuated Dresden, and commenced his retreat towards the Rhine, closely followed by the Allies, who appeared on the 16th before the walls of Leipsic, where the emperor had already taken up his position, resolved to stand the hazard of a general engagement. The city being in the occupation of the French, who were drawn up in a circle round it, the allied army was immediately formed into a crescent, having a single opening towards the south-west, which they intended to fill up on the arrival of the Swedish army under Bernadotte, and the Russian and Austrian divisions of Benningsen and Colloredo.

The allied force amounted to 300,000 men, the French scarcely to two-thirds of that number. The battle began the same day, and so great was the vibration caused by the discharges of artillery (of which at least 1,200 pieces were brought into the field), that windows were shivered to atoms in the houses of Leipsic, and the ground shook and reeled as with an earthquake. About mid-day some important advantages had been gained by the French; and Napoleon had already commanded the bells of Leipsic to be rung, despatched a messenger to Paris with the news of his victory, and sent the Austrian general Meerveldt, who had been taken prisoner early in the day, with proposals of peace to the emperor of Austria. But the success of Blucher over Marshal Ney on the right wing, near the village of Möckern, changed the aspect of affairs; and on the 17th Napoleon announced his intention of evacuating Germany, and sued for peace-but no answer was returned to his overtures. On the 18th, at eight o'clock in the morning, the Allies, reinforced by the Swedish army, renewed the engagement. Napoleon nobly sustained his ancient reputation, and for a long time the issue was doubtful; but when in the very heat of the action he found himself abandoned by the troops of Saxony and Wurtemberg, and saw the remnant of his army crushed by the superior weight of the enemies' columns, he deemed it necessary to fall back upon Leipsic, and made preparations for continuing his retreat towards the south.

To cover the escape of his imperial guard, and the flower of the French army, a division under

Poniatowski was commanded to defend the city, which the emperor himself did not quit until ten o'clock on the morning of the 19th. Unfortunately the bridge, by which the first division of his army had crossed the Elster, was blown up soon after Napoleon joined them, and 25,000 men were in consequence cut to pieces, taken prisoners by the Allies, or drowned in the river. Poniatowski himself, after fighting bravely until the streets of Leipsic were strewed with the bodies of his soldiers, retreated towards the Elster; and finding the bridge destroyed, attempted to swim his horse across the stream; but the bank being steep on the other side, the horse in attempting to clear it fell back on his rider, and both were drowned. Soon after mid-day the two emperors and the king of Prussia entered Leipsic, amidst the acclamations of the grateful citizens. This memorable battle is called by the Germans the "Völkerschlacht," or battle of the nations. The Allies lost nearly 47,000 men; the French upwards of 60,000. The king of Saxony was among the prisoners.

Napoleon fled precipitately with the remnant of his army. The Prussians came up with him at Freiburg on the Unstrut, where a scene ensued somewhat similar to the passage of the Beresina, on the retreat from Moscow. The Prussian artillery played with terrible effect on the masses who poured towards the river. Napoleon himself was obliged to alight and pass on foot through the throng. At Hanau, Napoleon's path was obstructed by General Wrede at the head of the Bavarians. Here the last great battle was fought, Oct. 20. Napoleon succeeded in forcing his way through the Bavarian army, but with a loss of seven thousand men; the Bavarians lost ten thousand. On Nov. 1 Napoleon arrived at Mayence, and began to cross the Rhine. His army then numbered seventy thousand men. In the course of November Germany was completely evacuated by the French, except the garrisons of Dresden, and the northern fortresses in which one hundred thousand men were shut up, and now completely cut off from their country. One by one these fortresses were taken or capitulated; several, however, held out till the beginning of the following year; and Magdeburg and Hamburg did not surrender till the war was brought to a close.

Scarcely had Napoleon re-crossed the Rhine when

the whole of the Rhenish Confederacy abandoned him, as did also Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. The Allies, now on the eve of entering France, issued a manifesto, in which they solemnly declared that they made war, not on the French nation, but on Napoleon alone. The people, nevertheless, remained unbroken in their attachment, and flocked in crowds to his standard. In the beginning of the year 1814 four armies invaded France from different quarters: Bulow, from Holland; Blucher, from Coblentz; the grand army under Schwarzenberg, from Switzerland; and the united forces of the English and Spaniards from the Pyrenees. On the 29th of January Blucher was attacked by the emperor near the town of Brienne, so suddenly, that he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. But a few days later (Feb. 1) his division, supported by the whole army of the Allies (who had now concentrated an overwhelming force of more than one hundred thousand men, under the command of the emperor Alexander and the king of Prussia), obtained a decisive victory over the French near La Rothiere. On the 3d, Napoleon fell back on Troyes, the capital of Champagne; where Mortier was already occupied in erecting barricades and making other preparations for a vigorous defence.

A Congress was held at Châtillon early in February, and peace offered to Napoleon, on condition of his ceding all those provinces which had not formed part of the French dominions before the revolution; but this proposal he rejected with indignation, declaring that he would either retain or lose all. The Allies, thinking a combined plan of operations no longer necessary, now committed the error which had well-nigh proved ruinous to their cause, of separating the army of Silesia from the grand army under Schwarzenberg, the former following the course of the Marne to Paris, the latter marching on the capital by Troyes and Montereau through the valley of the Seine. The difficulty of finding provision and forage for such a multitude was the reason assigned for this imprudent manœeuvre, which placed the two armies at a considerable distance from each other; whilst Napoleon, still at the head of 70,000 men, occupied a central position between them. The consequences of their separation were soon apparent. Napoleon, disregarding the Austrians, whose movements, always slow and methodical, were now embarrassed by the unwilling

ness of Francis to precipitate the ruin of his sonin-law, resolved on intercepting Blucher at all hazards; and having on the 10th defeated the Russian divisions at Champaubert, and the corps of General Sacken on the following day at Montmirail, he appeared unexpectedly before the village of Vauchamps, which had just been evacuated, after a gallant defence, by the corps of Marshal Marmont. At sight of the imperial standard the retreating army instantly halted, and facing round, forced back the Prussian advanced guard upon the main body, which had barely time to form itself into squares, when it was attacked on two sides by the French cavalry under General Grouchy; whilst at the same time the artillery of Marmont's division, which had been for some time silent, re-opened a heavy fire in front. It was now Blucher's turn to commence a retreat, which he effected in good order, until, on ascending an eminence, he found himself confronted by Grouchy, who had been sent forward with 3,000 cuirassiers to intercept the allied army before they reached the forest of Etoges, where the horse would be no longer available. Already hard pursued by a superior force and almost without cavalry, Blucher seemed for a time to have lost his presence of mind. "In the fiend's name," said he to an officer who tried to raise the spirits of his commander by turning the whole affair into a jest, "in the fiend's name, hold thy peace, man, my head is confused enough already."

Meanwhile two Prussian batteries had been cut to pieces by the French cuirassiers, and the destruction of the whole army seemed inevitable, when Blucher, starting from his melancholy reverie at the voice of his aide-de-camp, commanded the bu gles to sound a charge, and rushing forward at the head of his artillery and infantry, succeeded in clearing a passage through the enemy and reaching Etoges. Scarcely, however, had the wearied soldiers. commenced their bivouac when an alarm was given that General Usedom's brigade was attacked by Marmont, whose troops were comparatively fresh. On receiving this intelligence Blucher at once abandoned the town, and, after a fierce conflict, arrived about midnight at Bergeres. After a few hours' rest the army continued its march on Chalons, which it reached on the evening of the 15th. The divisions of the Silesian army were now re-united, and shortly afterwards marched toward the Aube,

in order to form a junction with the grand army. Meanwhile the advanced guard of Schwarzenberg nad halted within ten leagues of the capital, and Napoleon, abandoning all pursuit of Blucher, proceeded to Montereau, where he attacked the division. of the prince-royal of Wurtemberg on Feb. 18, and worsted it.

The

This was the last of Napoleon's victories. Allies, now fully aware of the fatal error which they had committed, resolved on concentrating their forces in front of Troyes and offering battle to the enemy; but scarcely had Blucher's division, which he had raised by extraordinary exertions to the. number of fifty thousand, effected a junction with the grand army, when it was resolved in a council of war to evacuate Troyes, and falling back on the Rhine, await there the result of fresh negotiations with Napoleon. Against this resolution Blucher and the emperor Alexander vehemently protested; and, after a long and stormy discussion, it was at length decided, on the motion of the English plenipotentiary, Viscount Castlereagh, that the grand army alone should retreat to Langres, whilst Blucher, marching to the Marne, should be joined by the corps of Winzingerode, Bulow, and Woronzow, and advance at once on Paris. On the 20th of March, Napoleon, after taking the town of Rheims, engaged the grand army, without any decisive result, at Arcis-sur-Aube; and on the following day, instead of renewing the engagement, commenced a retreat towards the Rhine, with the intention of obtaining reinforcements from his frontier garrisons, and assisting the peasants of Lorraine and Alsace, who only waited his approach to commence a fierce attack on the flanks and rear of Schwarzenberg's army. A letter addressed by Napoleon to the empress, in which the whole of this plan was detailed, having fallen into the hands of the Allies, it was resolved in a council of war held at Vitry on the 24th, that General Winzingerode should remain behind with ten thousand cavalry and artillery to meet Napoleon, whilst the united armies of Schwarzenberg and Blucher advanced without further delay to the capital. On the 30th of March, after some skirmishing on the heights of Belleville and Montmartre, a capitulation was signed by Marshals Mortier and Marmont, who engaged to withdraw the remnant of their troops and surrender Paris to the Allies on the following morning. Meanwhile

Napoleon, kept in play by the divisions of Winzingerode and Tettenborn, only became aware of the departure of the main body of the Allies when it was too late to overtake them. Hurrying back to Fontainebleau, he had there the misfortune to learn that many of his marshals had abandoned him; and, finding further resistance hopeless, he abdicated the imperial crown on the 10th of April, and retired to the island of Elba, which was assigned to him as his property and future place of residence. On the 4th of May, Louis XVIII. re-entered the capital, of his ancestral kingdom; and on the 30th of the same month, a general peace was concluded on terms so unreasonably favorable to France, as it appeared to Blucher, that the veteran protested vehemently, but ineffectually, against an arrangement which permitted the French to retain the German provinces of Lorraine and Alsace. "It was a magnanimity," he said, "which the French had no right to expect, and of which no good could come."

At the Congress assembled in Vienna in September, Prussia received as an indemnity the whole of Saxony, which the Allies resolved to treat as a conquered country. Against an arrangement so obviously unjust, all the nations of Germany raised their voices. "If an indemnification," they said, "be required for Prussia, let France be compelled to disgorge the provinces of which she has robbed. Germany; but let not the Saxon people be mulcted because their king has committed a political error.' After long and stormy discussions it was at length decided that Russia should receive the whole of Poland, except the grand duchy of Posen, which, with half of Saxony, should be ceded to Prussia.

Meanwhile a dark thunder-cloud was gathering in the south. At Elba, on the 25th of February, 1815, during a fête given by the banished emperor Napoleon to his little court, orders were suddenly issued for the troops to embark on seven small vessels which were lying in the roadstead. A fresh breeze carried them to France. So little suspicion however was caused by their appearance, that a French cruiser actually hailed one of them, and enquired after the emperor's health. The answer was given by Napoleon himself, who, seizing a speakingtrumpet, shouted out, "Il se porte à merveille" (He is wonderfully well). On the 1st of March he landed with 1,100 men. No sooner was his arrival known than a small body of troops marched to the

coast to oppose his progress. Napoleon subdued them by one of those coups de théâtre which seldom fail to touch the heart of a Frenchman. Advancing in front of his little army, he fixed his eyes with a melancholy expression on the French troops, and called on those who would slay their emperor to stand forth. Not a man quitted the ranks. For a few moments there was a pause-then the whole corps, as if animated by one spirit, tore the white cockade from their caps, and raised a universal shout of "Vive l'Empereur!" "Oui,” growled some of the veterans, who had grown grey under his eye, "Vive notre petit caporal! nous ne l'abandonnerons jamais." Another regiment having joined him under the walls of Grenoble, that fortress, as well as Lyons, capitulated.

Marshal Ney, who had been despatched from Paris with a considerable force, no sooner found himself in presence of his former master than he forgot his oath of allegiance to Louis XVIII., and a second time changed sides. Encouraged by this propitious commencement of his enterprise, Napoleon now issued a proclamation denouncing death against any Bourbon who should remain in France. On the night of 19th March Louis XVIII. quitted the Tuileries, and on the following day the usurper entered Paris in triumph. As soon as the news of Napoleon's escape reached Vienna, where the Congress was still sitting, a manifesto was published by the allied monarchs, declaring him an outlawed traitor, and calling on all the other sovereigns of Europe to aid them in replacing the king of France on the throne, from which he had been driven by a desperate faction. At the same time the. three allied sovereigns and the prince regent of England pledged themselves each to equip with all speed an army of 180,000 men. The English ambassador at Berlin was still sleeping, when a rough voice shouted in his ear, "Have the English a fleet in the Mediterranean?" Starting up in astonishment, he saw Blucher at his bedside, and learned from him the disastrous intelligence which had just reached the Prussian capital. After a very short visit the veteran took his leave with these ominous words-" We must begin it all over again- thanks to the carelessness of your countrymen," and hastened to his own house, whence he was soon afterwards seen to issue in the full-dress uniform of a field-marshal. About the middle of April Blucher marched into the Neth

erlands and established his head-quarters at Liége, and on June 2d found himself, through the strenuous exertions of the war-minister, Bogen, at the head of an army of 117,000 men, with which he occupied the country between the Sambre and the Meuse, while the Duke of Wellington with 100,000 occupied the whole of Flanders from Brussels to the sea. Napoleon with 130,000 men and three hundred and fifty pieces of cannon took up his position between Valenciennes and Lille. His plan was first to attack Blucher and then march to meet the English. The English commander-in-chief heard of the advance of the French on the afternoon of the 15th; but with characteristic coolness attended, with his staff officers, a ball given at Brussels that evening by the Duchess of Richmond. On the following day he had an interview with Blucher, and promised to send 20,000 men to his assistance before four o'clock on the 16th; but the occupation of Wavre by Ney's division rendered this impossible without prematurely risking an engagement.

In the afternoon of the 16th, Napoleon with 75,000 men advanced to attack Blucher's position at Ligny. Just before the battle began, General Bourmont went over to the Prussians. "It signifies little," said Blucher contemptuously, pointing to the white cockade which Bourmont had placed in his hat, "it signifies little what colors a man wears—a scoundrel will still be a scoundrel." The Prussians fought with their accustomed bravery, and for five hours made their position good against the enemy; but at length a terrible charge, led by Napoleon in person, threw their infantry into inextricable confusion. Blucher, at the head of a few thousand light cavalry, now attacked the heavy French dragoons; but as he galloped, cheering his men to the charge, a cannon-ball struck his horse, which fell to the ground mortally wounded, crushing the rider beneath its body. After lying in great agony, and being several times ridden over, he was at last descried by some of his soldiers and conveyed to a place of safety, where he was attended by a surgeon who proceeded to chafe his bruised limbs with some liquid. Blucher inquired what it was. "Spirits," replied the surgeon. "It is of no use applying it outwardly," roared the untractable patient, and seizing the flask he swallowed its contents, and then dismissed the surgeon from his presence. The remnant of his army retreated in tolerable order,