close of that year all Belgium obeyed the National Convention at Paris, and the kings of Europe, after the lapse of eighteen 'centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military re public.

Göthe's description of the cannonade has been quoted. His observation to his comrades, and the camp of the allies at the end of the battle, deserves quotation also. It shows that the poet felt (and probably he alone, of the thousands there assembled, felt) the full importance of that day. He describes the consternation and the change of demeanor which he observed among his Prussian friends that evening, He tells us that “most of them were silent; and, in fact, the power of reflection and judgment was wanting to all. At last I was called upon to say what I thought of the engagement, for I had been in the habit of enlivening and amusing the troop with short sayings. This time I said, From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.'"

6

SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS BETWEEN THE BATTLE OF VALMY, A.D. 1792, AND THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO, A.D. 1815.

A.D. 1793. Trial and execution of Louis XVI. at Paris. England and Spain declare war against France. Royalist war in La Vendée. Second invasion of France by the allies.

1794. Lord Howe's victory over the French fleet. Final partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

1795. The French armies, under Pichegru, conquer Holland. Cessation of the war in La Vendée.

1796. Bonaparte commands the French army of Italy, and gains repeated victories over the Austrians.

1797. Victory of Jervis off Cape St. Vincent.

Peace of Campo Formio between France and Austria. Defeat of the Dutch off Camperdown by Admiral Duncan.

1798. Rebellion in Ireland. Expedition of the French under Bonaparte to Egypt. Lord Nelson destroys the French fleet at the battle of the Nile.

1799. Renewal of the war between Austria and France. The Russian emperor sends an army in aid of Austria under Suwar

row. The French are repeatedly defeated in Italy. Bonaparte returns from Egypt and makes himself First Consul of France. Massena wins the battle of Zurich. The Russian emperor makes peace with France.

1800. Bonaparte passes the Alps, and defeats the Austrians at Marengo. Moreau wins the battle of Hohenlinden.

1801. Treaty of Luneville between France and Austria. The battle of Copenhagen.

1802. Peace of Amiens.

1803. War between England and France renewed.

1804. Napoleon Bonaparte is made Emperor of France. 1805. Great preparations of Napoleon to invade England. Austria, supported by Russia, renews war with France. Napo leon marches into Germany, takes Vienna, and gains the battle of Austerlitz. Lord Nelson destroys the combined French and Spanish fleets, and is killed at the battle of Trafalgar.

1806. War between Prussia and France. Napoleon conquers Prussia at the battle of Jena.

1807. Obstinate warfare between the French and Prussian armies in East Prussia and Poland. Peace of Tilsit.

1808. Napoleon endeavors to make his brother King of Spain. Rising of the Spanish nation against him. England sends troops to aid the Spaniards. Battle of Vimiera and Corunna.

1809. War renewed between France and Austria. Battles of Asperne and Wagram. Peace granted to Austria. Lord Wel· lington's victory of Talavera, in Spain.

1810. Marriage of Napoleon and the Archduchess Maria Louisa. Holland annexed to France.

1812. War between England and the United States. Napoleon invades Russia. Battle of Borodino. The French occupy Moscow, which is burned. Disastrous retreat and almost total destruction of the great army of France.

1813. Prussia and Austria take up arms again against France. Battles of Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Culm, and Leipsic. The French are driven out of Germany. Lord Wellington gains the great battle of Vittoria, which completes the rescue of Spain from France.

1814. The allies invade France on the eastern, and Lord Wellington invades it on the southern frontier. Battles of Laon, Montmirail, Arcis-sur Aube, and others in the northeast of France;

and of Toulouse in the south. Paris surrenders to the allies, and Napoleon abdicates. First restoration of the Bourbons. Napoleon goes to the Isle of Elba, which is assigned to him by the allies. Treaty of Ghent between the United States and England. P 2

CHAPTER XV.

BATTLE OF WATERLOO, A.D. 1815.

Thou first and last of fields, king-making victory!—BYRON. ENGLAND has now been blessed with thirty-six years of peace. At no other period of her history can a similarly long cessation from a state of warfare be found. It is true that our troops have had battles to fight during this interval for the protection and extension of our Indian possessions and our colonies, but these have been with distant and unimportant enemies. The danger has never been brought near our own shores, and no matter of vital importance to our empire has ever been at stake. We have not had hostilities with either France, America, or Russia; and when not at war with any of our peers, we feel ourselves to be substantially at peace. There has, indeed, throughout this long period, been no great war, like those with which the previous history of modern Europe abounds. There have been formidable collisions between particular states, and there have been still more formidable collisions between the armed champions of the conflicting principles of absolutism and democracy; but there has been no general war, like those of the French Revolution, like the American, or the Seven Years' War, or like the war of the Spanish Succession. It would be far too much to augur from this that no similar wars will again convulse the world; but the value of the period of peace which Europe has gained is incalculable, even if we look on it as only a long truce, and expect again to see the nations of the earth recur to what some philosophers have termed man's natural state of warfare.

No equal number of years can be found during which science, commerce, and civilization have advanced so rapidly and so extensively as has been the case since 1815. When we trace their progress, especially in this country, it is impossible not to feel that their wondrous development has been mainly due to the land having been at peace.* Their good effects can not be obliterated See the excellent Introduction to Mr. Charles Knight's History of the "Thirty Years' Peace."

*

even if a series of wars were to recommence.

When we reflect

on this, and contrast these thirty-six years with the period that preceded them-a period of violence, of tumult, of unrestingly destructive energy—a period throughout which the wealth of nations was scattered like sand, and the blood of nations lavished like water, it is impossible not to look with deep interest on the final crisis of that dark and dreadful epoch-the crisis out of which our own happier cycle of years has been evolved The great battle which ended the twenty-three years' war of the first French Revolution, and which quelled the man whose genius and ambition had so long disturbed and desolated the world, deserves to be regarded by us not only with peculiar pride as one of our greatest national victories, but with peculiar gratitude for the repose which it secured for us and for the greater part of the human race.

One good test for determining the importance of Waterloo is to ascertain what was felt by wise and prudent statesmen before that battle respecting the return of Napoleon from Elba to the imperial throne of France, and the probable effects of his success. For this purpose, I will quote the words, not of any of our vehement anti-Gallican politicians of the school of Pitt, but of a leader of our Liberal party, of a man whose reputation as a jurist, a historian, and a far-sighted and candid statesman was, and is, deservedly high, not only in this country, but throughout Europe. Sir James Mackintosh said of the return from Elba,

Wars

"Was it in the power of language to describe the evil? which had raged for more than twenty years throughout Europe · which had spread blood and desolation from Cadiz to Moscow, and from Naples to Copenhagen; which had wasted the means of human enjoyment, and destroyed the instruments of social improvement; which threatened to diffuse among the European nations the dissolute and ferocious habits of a predatory soldieryat length, by one of those vicissitudes which bid defiance to the foresight of man, had been brought to a close, upon the whole, happy, beyond all reasonable expectation, with no violent shock to national independence, with some tolerable compromise between the opinions of the age and the reverence due to ancient institutions; with no too signal or mortifying triumph over the legitimate interests or avowable feelings of any numerous body of men, and, above all, without those retaliations against nations