to be accomplished. Will you leave it in the power | slave, a fine horse, a splendid house?—they all beof posterity to say that in Lombardy you have found long to the Mamelukes. If Egypt be really their a Capua? Let us go on! We have still forced farm, let them show what grant God has given marches to make, enemies to subdue, laurels to them of it. But God is just and merciful towards gather, and insults to avenge. his people. All Egyptians have equal rights. Let the most wise, the most enlightened, and the most virtuous rule, and the people will be happy. "There were in former days among you great cities, great canals, and vast trade. What has de

"To reestablish the capitol, and reërect the statues of its heroes; to awake the Roman people sunk under the torpor of ages of bondage ;-behold what remains to be done! After accomplishing this, you will return to your hearths; and your fellow-citi-stroyed all these, if it be not the cupidity, the inzens, when they behold you pass them, will point justice, and the tyranny of the Mamelukes? at you and say-He was a soldier of the army of Italy!"

"Cadis, Sheiks, Imans, Charbadgys, tell it to the people that we also are true Mussulmans. Was it not we that subdued the pope, who exhorted nations to war on the Mussulmans? Are we not also friends of the Grand Signor?

Such language was never before addressed to a French army. It excited the soldiers even to delirium. They would have followed him to the "Thrice happy those who shall be on our side! ends of the earth. Nor was such an event foreign-happy those who shall be neuter: they will have to his thoughts. The army no longer obeyed it was devoted. It was not led by a mortal commander-it followed a demigod.

When he sailed from the shores of France, on the celebrated expedition to Egypt, the destination of the fleet was confided to none but himself. Its

course was directed first to Malta, which, as is well known, submitted without resistance. When lying off its harbor, Bonaparte thus addressed the splendid army which floated around him :

"Soldiers!-You are a wing of the army of England. You have made war on mountain and plain, and have made sieges. It still remains for you to make a maritime war. The legions of Rome, which you have sometimes imitated, but not yet equalled, warred with Carthage by turns on the sea and on the plains of Zama. Victory never abandoned them, because they were brave in combat, patient under fatigue, obedient to their commanders, and firm against their foes. But, soldiers! Europe has its eyes upon you; you have great destinies to fulfil, battles to wage, and fatigues to suffer."

When the men from the mast tops discovered the towers of Alexandria, Bonaparte first announced to them the destination of the expedition :

"Frenchmen!-You are going to attempt conquests, the effects of which on the civilization and commerce of the world are incalculable. Behold the first city we are about to attack. It was built by Alexander."

time to be acquainted with us, and to join with us. the Mamelukes, and who shall combat against us! "But woe, woe to those who shall take arms for For them there will be no hope! They shall perish!"

After quelling the revolt at Cairo, he availed himself of the terror and superstition of the Egyptians, to present himself to them as a superior being, as a messenger of God, and the inevitable instrument of Fate :

"Sheiks, Ulemas, worshippers of Mahomet, tell the people that those who have been my enemies shall have no refuge in this world or in the next! Is there a man among them so blind as not to see Fate itself directing my movements?

"Tell the people that since the world was a world, it has been written, that after having destroyed the enemies of Islamism-after having beaten down their crosses, I should come from the depths of the west, to fulfil the task which has been committed to me. Show the people that in the holy volume of the Koran, in more than twenty places, what happens has been foretold, and what will happen is likewise written.

"I can call each of you to account for the most hidden thoughts of your heart; for I know all, even the things you have not whispered to another. But a day will come when all the world will plainly see that I am conducted by orders from above, and that no efforts can prevail against ME!"

After the 18th Brumaire, surrounded by his brilliant staff, he apostrophized the Directory with the haughty tone of a master who demands an account of his servants, and as though he were already absolute sovereign of France :

Where Charlatanism was the weapon most efAs he advanced through Egypt he soon per-fective, he there scrupled not to wield it for the ceived that he was among a people who were fa- attainment of his ends. natical, ignorant, and vindictive, who distrusted the Christians, but who still more profoundly detested the insults, exactions, pride, and tyranny of the Mamelukes. To flatter their prejudices and confirm their hatred, he addressed them in a proclamation conceived in their own Oriental style :"Cadis, Sheiks, Imans, Charbadgys, they will say to you that I have come to destroy your religion! Believe them not. Tell them that I come to restore your rights, and to punish your usurpers, and that I, much more than the Mamelukes, respect God, his prophet, and the Koran!

"Tell it to the people that all men are equal before God. Say that wisdom, talents, and virtue, alone constitute the difference between man and man.

"Is there on your land a fine farm?-it belongs to the Mamelukes. Is there anywhere a beautiful

I

"What have you done with that France which left you surrounded with such splendor? I left I left you the you peace-I return and find war. millions of Italy-I return and find spoliation and misery! What have you done with the hundred in glory, and in toil? THEY ARE DEAD!" thousand brave French, my companions in arms,

Bonaparte was remarkable for contemptuously breaking through the traditions of military practice. Thus, on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, he adopted the startling and unusual course of dis

closing the plan of his campaign to the private | The Oder, the Warta, the deserts of Poland, the soldiers of his army :—

bad weather, nothing has stopped you. All have fled at your approach. The French eagle soars "The Russians," said he, "want to turn my over the Vistula; the brave and unfortunate Poles right, and they will present to me their flank. Sol- imagine that they see again the legions of Sobieski. diers, I will myself direct all your battalions; "Soldiers! we will not lay down our arms until depend upon me to keep myself far from the fire, a general peace has restored to our commerce its so long as, with your accustomed bravery, you liberty and its colonies. We have, on the Elbe and bring disorder and confusion into the enemy's ranks; the Oder, recovered Pondichery, our Indian estabbut, if victory were for one moment uncertain, you lishments, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Spanish would see me in the foremost ranks, to expose my-colonies. Who shall give to the Russians the hope self to their attack. There will be the honor of the to resist destiny? These and yourselves. Are we French infantry-the first infantry in the world. not the soldiers of Austerlitz?" This victory will terminate your campaign, and then the peace we shall make will be worthy of France, of you, and of me!"

What grandeur, combined with what pride, we find in these last words!

He commenced the Prussian campaign by a speech that burned and flashed like lightning itself

"Soldiers! I am in the midst of you. You are the vanguard of a great people. You must not His speech after the battle is also a chef-d'œuvre return to France unless you return under triumphal of military eloquence. He declares his content-arches. What! shall it be said that you have ment with his soldiers-he walks through their braved the seasons, the deep, the deserts, conquered ranks he reminds them who they have con- Europe, several times coalesced against you, carquered, what they have done, and what will be ried your glory from the east to the west, only to said of them; but not one word does he utter of return to your country like fugitives, and to hear it their chiefs. The emperor and the soldiers said that the French eagle had taken flight, terrified at the aspect of the Prussian armies? Let us advance, then; and since our moderation has not awakened them from their astonishing intoxication, let them learn that if it is easy to obtain any increase of power from the friendship of a great people, its enmity is more terrible than the tempests of the

France for a perspective-peace for a rewardand glory for a recollection! What a commencement, and what a termination !—

"Soldiers! I am content with you; you have covered your eagles with immortal glory. An army of one hundred thousand men, commanded by the emperors of Russia and of Austria, have been, in less than four hours, cut to pieces and dispersed; whoever has escaped your sword has been drowned in the lakes. Forty stand of colors-the standards of the imperial guard of Russia-one hundred and twenty pieces of cannon, twenty generals, and more than thirty thousand prisoners, are the results of this day, forever celebrated. That infantry, so much boasted of, and in numbers so superior to you, could not resist your shock, and henceforth you have no longer any rivals to fear.

Soldiers! when the French people placed upon my head the imperial crown I entrusted myself to you; I relied upon you to maintain it in the high splendor and glory, which alone can give it value in my eyes. Soldiers! I will soon bring you back to France; there you will be the object of my most tender solicitude. It will be sufficient for you to say, I was at the battle of Austerlitz,' in order that your countrymen may answer, 'Voila un brave!'"'

On the anniversary of this battle, he used to recapitulate with pleasure the accumulated spoils that fell into the hands of the French, and he used to inflame their ardor against the Prussians by the recollection of those victories; thus, on the morning of another fight, he apostrophized his soldiers in the following manner :-" "Those," pointing to the enemy, "and yourselves, are you not still the soldiers of Austerlitz?" This was the stroke of

master.

ocean.

On the eve of his celebrated entry into Berlin, he excited the pride of his troops by placing before them the rapidity of their march, and the grandeur of their triumphs :

"The forests, the defiles of Franconia, the Saale, and the Elbe, which your fathers had not traversed in seven years, you have traversed in seven days, and in this interval you have fought four fights and one pitched battle. You have sent the renown of your victories before you to Potsdam and to Berlin. You have made sixty thousand prisoners, taken sixty-five standards, six hundred pieces of cannon, three fortresses, and more than twenty generals; and yet nearly one half of you still lament not having fired a shot. All the provinces of the Prussian monarchy, as far as the banks of the Oder, will be in your power."

It is true, and it will occur to every mind, that a large part of the force of this eloquence of the camp in the case of Bonaparte, depended on the astounding character of the facts which he had the power of repeating. Even now, after these miracles of military prowess have been repeated in as many versions by a hundred contemporary historians in every living language, we cannot read these simple references to them without being overwhelmed with amazement. The narrative of them a borders often on the impossible, and forcibly impresses us with the justness of the adage, that truth is often more wonderful than fiction, and that the historian has often to record that from which the novelist would shrink.

"Soldiers! it is to-day one year, this very hour, that you were on the memorable field of Austerlitz. The Russian battalions fled terrified; their allies were destroyed; their strong places, their capitals, their magazines, their arsenals, two hundred and eighty standards, seven hundred pieces of cannon, five grand fortified places, were in your power.

At Eylau, he thus honored the memory of his brave warriors who had fallen ::

"You have marched against the

and

enemy, you

have pursued him, your swords in his reins, over a | also, you have treachery to revenge. Soldiers! you space of eighty leagues. You have taken from him have surpassed the renown of modern armies, but sixty-five pieces of cannon, sixteen standards, and have you equalled the glories of the legions of killed, wounded, or captured, more than forty-five Rome, who, in the same campaign, triumphed on thousand men. Our braves who have remained on the Rhine and on the Euphrates, in Illyria and on the field of battle have died a glorious death. the Tagus?" Theirs is the death of true soldiers."

At Friedland, he again apostrophized his gorgeous drama. Behold! the scene is the court army:

"Soldiers! after having triumphed on the Danube and the Vistula, you have traversed Germany by forced marches-I order you now to traverse On the morrow of his arrival at the Tuileries, France without a moment's repose. Soldiers! I have need of you. The hideous presence of the and amidst the astonishment which followed that leopard defiles the peninsula of Spain and Portugal; night of enthusiasm and intoxication, he called his let it fly terrified at your look. Carry your victo-old guard around its flag, and presented to it his rious eagles even to the columns of Hercules; there, brave companions of the island of Elba :

added he, with a smile, " the people there below should be afraid to see so many warriors together.' In an excess of delirium, which occurred during his illness, he imagined that he was at the head of the army of Italy, and that he heard the drums beating. He exclaimed,

"Steingel, Dessaix, Massena, away, away, run -to the charge!-they are ours!"

Pondering on his melancholy situation on the rock of St. Helena, he used to soliloquize

"Another Promethus, I am nailed to a rock, where a vulture devours me. Yes! I had robbed fire from heaven to give it to France; the fire has returned to its source, and behold me here! The love of glory is like that bridge which Satan threw over chaos to pass from hell to paradise: glory joins the past to the future, from which it is separated by an immense abyss. Nothing remains for my son save my name.

The concluding words of his testament were marked by his usual eloquence.

"I desire," said he, " that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the people whom I have so much loved."

But let us now endeavor to dispel the illusions created by the sublimity of his genius, and to look at Napoleon as he will be viewed by the wisdom of posterity.

As a statesman, he had at once too much genius and too much ambition to lay down the supreme power, and to reign under any master whatever, be it parliament, people, or king.

As a warrior, he fell from the throne, not for having refused to reestablish legitimacy, not for having smothered liberty, but as a consequence of conquest. He was not, and he could not be, either a Monk or a Washington, for the simplest of all reasons, that he was a Napoleon.

He reigned as reign all the powers of this world, by the force of his principle; he perished, as perish all powers of this world, by the violence and the abuse of his principle.

insurrection-was the flag surmounted by the French eagle-it was the flag of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of Wagram, and not that of Jemappes or Eleurus; it was the flag that was unfurled in the squares of Lisbon, of Vienna, of Berlin, at Rome, at Moscow, and not that which floated over the federation of the Champs de Mars. It was the flag riddled by the bullets of Waterloo; it was the flag which the emperor embraced at Fontainbleau, when he bade adieu to his old guard; it was the flag which had shaded his expiring brow at St. Helena-it was, in one word-the FLAG OF NAPO

LEON.

He-this man—

-had dispelled the popular illusion which attached itself to the blood of kings— He raised the sovereignty, majesty, and power. people in their own esteem, by showing to them kings, descended from kings, at the foot of a king who had sprung from the people. He so overwhelmed hereditary monarchs by placing them in juxta-position with himself-he so oppressed them with his own greatness, that, in taking them one by one, all these kings, and all these emperors, and bringing them beside himself, that they were scarcely perceivable, so small and obscure did they become by the comparison with this Colossus.

But let us listen to what the severe voice of history will pronounce against him.

He dethroned the sovereignty of the people. The emperor of the French republic, he became a despot-he threw the weight of his sword into the scales of the law-he incarcerated individual liberty in his state prisons-he stifled the liberty of the press, by the gags of the censorship-he violated trial by jury-he trampled under his feet the tribunals, the legislative bodies, and the senate

he depopulated the workshops and the fields— he engrafted on the army a new noblesse, which soon became more insupportable than the ancient one, because it had neither the same antiquity nor the same prestige; he levied arbitrary taxes-he desired that in the whole empire there should be but one voice-his voice; and but one law, his will. The capital, the cities, the armies, the fleets, the palaces, the museums, the magistrates, the citizens, became his capital, his cities, his armies, his fleets, his palaces, his museums, his magistrates, and his subjects. He drew the nation out to conflict and to battle, where we have nothing left remarkable save the insolence of our victories, our corpses, and our gold. In fine, after having besieged the forts of Cadiz-after having in his hands the keys of Lisbon, of Madrid, of Vienna, of Berlin, of Naples, and of Romeafter having made the pavement of Moscow tremble under the wheels of his artillery, he left France When the people accomplished the revolution less great than he found her-bleeding with her of July, the flag, all soiled with dust, which was wounds, dismantled of her fortresses, naked, unfurled by the soldier-artisans the chiefs of the impoverished, and humiliated.

Greater than Alexander, Charlemagne, Peter, or Frederick, he, like them, has imprinted his name on an age; like them, he was a legislator; like them, he established an empire; and his memory, which is universal, lives under the tent of the Arab, and crosses, with the canoes of the Indian, the far waters of the Oceania. The people of France, who forget so soon, have retained nothing of that revolution, which disturbed the world, except his name. The soldiers, in their discourses of the bivouac, speak of no other captain; and when they pass through our cities, direct their eyes to no other image.