with general avidity, and his fall, as miraculous as his rise, is an object of a still more general and acute interest.

We are aware of, because we have shared, the public anxiety on this subject, and though the details which we may have collected from the works that form the title of this article, or from other sources, are far from being complete and satisfactory to the mind of the statesman or philosopher; yet at least they may gratify the innocent curiosity of some, and afford materials for the moral reflections of others of our readers. We know how important seeming trifles sometimes are, in forming an estimate of the human mind; we know too how soon these minute traces of character are lost; and it is therefore that we are induced to call our readers' attention to the fugitive tracts now under consideration; and that we shall endeavour to give a local habitation' to some anecdotes relative to this extraordinary person, which, though now in the mouths of many, would probably be in ten years absolutely forgotten.

The name of one work, indeed, we have prefixed to this article, for the mere purpose of disclaiming the having made any use of it: —we mean the Mémoires Secrets, which is certainly the most audacious, yet the clumsiest attempt at imposition we ever have witnessed.

It professes to be written by a personal attendant of Buonaparte's, AT THE LEAST his private secretary; and to give, as it were, an internal view of this extraordinary man. We hesitate not for a moment to pronounce the work a forgery, a gross, palpable' forgery; written by some wretched scribbler, of the lowest rank in literature and in life, for the basest of purposes, a pecuniary fraud. We hear that there are no less than six translations of this trash at present in the London-press, and we hasten to warn our readers against being induced to purchase the most contemptible and impudent catchpenny that ever appeared. If the moral defects of

appeared a fit birth-day for the saviour of France, as Buonaparte called himself, and a convenient niche for the new patron-saint Napoleon.

From the same contract of marriage it seems that Josephine's real names were MarieJoseph-Rose.

The names of the rest of the family, as they appear in the act of guardianship made on their father's death, and now remaining in the archives of the Chambre des Comptes, are as follow, Joseph, Napolione, Lucciano, Luiggi, Girolamo, Mariana, Carletta, Annonciada; in the last three persons, our readers would have some difficulty in recognizing their Imperial Highnesses the Princesses Elise and Pauline, and her Majesty Queen Caroline of Naples: but even this change did not satisfy him, for latterly, his court calendar announced these ladies as Marie-Elise, Marie-Pauline, and Marie-Caroline; and even his ald mother Letzia was new christened Marie-Letitia.

The story of Napoleon's having been baptized Nicholas is therefore not true; though at the college of Brienne he may have substituted this familiar name for his foreign one of Napolione.

the

the writer were redeemed in any degree by his talents or information, if his story, though false, were entertaining, it would still have some recommendation; but we assure our readers that it is as dull as it is false; and if we had a stronger expression we should make use of it. For ourselves, we beg to say, that in the following summary we have taken pains to ascertain the accuracy of the facts which we relate; and we have not ventured to state any circumstance which does not appear to us to be established by the most satisfactory and conclusive testimonies.

It is well known to our readers, that after the tremendous campaign of Moscow-a reverse that ought to have tamed the heart, if it did not shake the throne of the proudest sovereign that ever wore an hereditary crown-Buonaparte appeared alike undiscouraged by the past, and undismayed at the future. Peace was within his reach-peace that would have legitimated him on the throne of France, and assured to his empire bounds as extensive as nature seemed to afford or policy to require-but peace was. not for him. Defeated in a second campaign, more bloody, and almost as mortal as the former, he finds himself driven-not merely to the boundaries of his new empire- not merely to those of ancient France, but into the very heart of his country:-there again peace is offered to him, and there again the Usurper-like him of England-professes to set his life upon the cast,' and resolved Ito stand the hazard of the die."* With Richard, we know this was no empty menace;-he was found dead in the field of battle, with his sword in his hand, and his crown on his head; we shall see by-and-by how differently Buonaparte terminated his career.

In his audacity Buonaparte stood alone; La paix, pour l'amour de Dieu, la paix!' was, as we stated in an article written at the time of the negociations at Châtillon, the universal cry of France. It is now known that even the council of ministers, presided by the empress, unanimously advised him to accept the terms that were offered, his obsequious senate ventured to repeat frequently in its addresses the word peace; and the Commission of the Legislative Body, even before the invasion of France, went so far as to urge its necessity upon him. It was on this latter occasion that Buonaparte, on the first of January 1814, assembled this body in his apartment at the Tuileries, and dismissed them with a furious invective, of which, as an unique specimen of a speech from the

* Dans quatre mois j'aurai la paix, et les ennemis seront chassés, oU JE SERAI MORT!' Réponse faite le 1er Janvier, 1814, par NAPOLEON, au Rapport de la Commission extraordinaire du Corps Législatif.

+ Vol. X. No. XX. Art. X. p. 493.

VOL. XII. NO. XXIII.

throne,

throne, we shall extract a part. This strange oration was evidently extemporaneous, but each of those, says M. Giraud, before whom it was spoken, recollected some passages; these were immediately put together, and of the whole thus collected we have seen several copies, differing in expression as was natural, but agreeing in substance. The following summary has been made from the most authentic copies.

'I have suppressed your address,' he began ex abrupto, it was incendiary-I called you round me to do good, you have done ill. Eleven-twelfths of you are well-intentioned, the others, and above all M. Lainé, are factious intriguers, devoted to England, to all my enemies, and corresponding through the channel of the advocate Déseze with the Prince Regent.

'Return to your departments, and feel that my eye will follow you; you have endeavoured to humble me, you may kill me, but you shall not dishonour me-you make remonstrances-is this a time, when the stranger invades our provinces, and 200,000 Cossacks are ready to overflow our country? There may have been petty abuses; I never connived at them. You, M. Renouard, you said that Prince Massena robbed a man at Marseilles of his house-you lie !-the general took possession of a vacant house, and my minister shall indemnify the proprietor.-Is it thus that you dare affront a marshal of France who has bled for his country, and grown grey in victory? Why did you not make your complaints in secret to me? I should have done you justice.-We should wash our dirty linen in private, and not drag it out before the world. "You call yourselves representatives of the nation-it is not true; you are only deputies of the departments; a small portion of the state, inferior to the senate, inferior to even the council of state. The representatives of the people! I am alone the representative of the peopleTwice have twenty-four millions of French called me to the thronewhich of you durst undertake such a burden? It had already overwhelmed (écrasé) your Assemblies and your Conventions, your Vergniauxs and your Gaudets, your Jacobins and your Girondins-They are áll dead!

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What, who are you? nothing-all authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? this wooden frame covered with velvet? no, I am the throne. You have added irony to reproaches. You have talked of concessions-concessions that even my enemies dared not ask. I suppose if they asked Champaigne, you would have had me give them La Brie besides.-But in four mouths I will conquer peace, or I shall be dead. You advise! how dare you debate of such high matters (de si graves intérêts)! You have put me in the front of the battle as the cause of war-it is infamous (c'est, une atrocité.) In all your committees you have excluded the friends of government-extraordinary commission--committee of finance-committee of the address, all, all my enemies.

M. Lainé, I repeat it, is a traitor; he is a wicked man, the others are mere intriguers. I do justice to the eleven-twelfths; but the façtious,

tious I know, and will pursue. Is it, I ask again, is it while the enemy is in France that you should have done this? But nature has gifted me with a determined courage-nothing can overcome me. It cost my pride much to -I made that sacrifice; I, but I am above your miserable declamations. I was in need of consolation, and you would mortify me-but, no, my victories shall crush your clamours: in three months we shall have peace, and you shall repent your folly. I am one of those who triumph or die.

Go back to your departments. If any one of you dare to print your address, I shall publish it in the Moniteur with notes of my own. Go, France stands in more need of me than I do of France. I bear the eleven-twelfths of you in my heart-I shall nominate the deputies to the two series which are vacant, and I shall reduce the legislative body to the discharge of its proper duties. The inhabitants of Alsace and Franche Comté have a better spirit than you; they ask me for arms, I send them, and one of my aides-de-camp will lead them against the enemy.'

Having delivered this speech with a rapidity and violence approaching to fury, he dismissed the insulted representatives of France, and hastened to his own destruction in the continuance of the war.

6

To what are we to attribute this astonishing obstinacy? He has given one solution, and we have heard from some of his friends another. When he was asked, after his abdication, by a person whom he admitted to a very free intercourse, how he could refuse to conclude a peace on terms which would still have left him the monarch of the greatest country upon earth? he is said to have answered, with apparent frankness, Ce n'était pas dans mon caractère; d'ailleurs peut-être, avais-je de l'humeur.' When the same question was put to those who knew him and France best, they answered,' that a peace dictated in France would have undone him ;'-'that his throne was founded on public opinion,' and that if the prestige,' for so they called it, of his glory were to be destroyed, the state of his affairs, and the character of the French people forbade him to expect that his power would long survive it.' In this latter opinion we can easily believe that his opponents in the negociations may have coincided, and that when they offered him terms of fair and even honourable peace, they may have felt, that though they offered as much as they could grant, they offered what he could not accept, or, accepting, would not long be permitted to enjoy. Nor indeed is his own account irreconcileable with this opinion: he thought probably that his audacious' caractère' was the prestige' which surrounded him, and that by indulging in its hitherto successful sallies, he should continue to derive and enjoy the same attachment from France, and the same success over his enemies.

A third reason has been also frequently assigned, and especially by M. Giraud.

It may be, that unmeasured presumption, the habit of victory, and the desire of vengeance, blinded him-but it may also be, that the epilepsy, which sometimes attacked him, may have touched his intellectual faculties; and military men who have had constant access to his person, state, that since Moscow he has given frequent instances of mental alienation.'

Figuratively speaking, we should not hesitate to pronounce him mad; but we do not believe that there is the slightest reason for supposing Buonaparte to have been, in a medical sense, more deranged after the retreat of Moscow than before. But that which was genius and glory while success attended him, became folly and madness as soon as fortune frowned. In no time had he shewn greater abilities as a captain than after the battle of Leipsic; and even to the last, his military movements, though the event was not always or finally answerable to his expectations, were very able; and the days of Montmirail, Champ Aubert, and Vauchamp, were as brilliant, though fortunately not so decisive, as the greater transactions of Marengo or Jena.

The whole of the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 are extremely well given in M. Giraud's book, which is chiefly, if not solely valuable as a military detail; but we must commence our history nearly where M. Giraud concludes his..

Napoleon's bold and characteristic resolution of throwing himself behind the allies, in the expectation that this daring movement would alarm them so much for their own safety, as not only to draw them away from Paris, but actually entangle them in the very difficulties with the prospect of which he endeavoured to terrify them;-this movement, we say, was fortunately defeated by the resolution of marching upon Paris, a resolution which was considering the time and circumstances in which it was taken-one of the grandest that ever entered into the mind of man, and does the highest honour to the names of the Emperor Alexander and Prince Schwartzenburg: to which of those great men the idea suggested itself, perhaps they themselves are not conscious; but it is certain they both eagerly adopted it, and must equally share in the glory of that great enterprise in which they risked themselves and their armies for the deliverance of mankind.

For two days after this determination and change of march, Buonaparte was employed, as he hoped, in anticipating the allies, and in preparing the springes in which his victims were to be caught -but no enemy came-no intelligence arrived from Paris he

* It is said, that the interception of three successive couriers with dispatches from Napoleon to Marie-Louise, conduced to this resolution. heard