wrote (from Valladolid) to the princes of the Rhenish league, ordering them to hold their contingents in readiness-and travelled to Paris with extraordinary haste. He reached his capital on the 22d of January; renewed the negotiations with Vienna; and, in the meantime, recruited and concentrated his armies on the German side-thus adjourning, and as it turned out for ever, the completion of the Spanish conquest.

On the 6th of April, Austria declared war; and on the 9th, the Archduke Charles, Generalissimo of armies which are said to have been recruited, at this period, to the amount of nearly 500,000 men, crossed the Inn at the head of six corps, each consisting of 30,000; while the Archduke John marched with two other divisions towards Italy, by the way of Carinthia; and the Archduke Ferdinand assumed the command of a ninth corps in Galicia, to make head against Russia, in case that power should be forced or tempted by Napoleon to take part in the struggle. Napoleon having so great an army in Spain, could not hope to oppose numbers such as these to the Austrians; but he trusted to the rapid combinations which had so often enabled him to baffle the same enemy; and the instant he ascertained that Bavaria was invaded by the Archduke Charles, he proceeded, without guards, without equipage, accompanied solely by the faithful Josephine, to Frankfort, and thence to Strasbourg. He assumed the command on the 13th, and immediately formed the plan of his campaign.

He found the two wings of his army, the one under Massena, the other under Davoust, at such

a distance from the centre that, if the Austrians had seized the opportunity, the consequences might have been fatal. On the 17th of April, he commanded Davoust and Massena to march simultaneously towards a position in front, and then pushed forward the centre, in person, to the same point. The Archduke Lewis, who commanded two Austrian divisions in advance, was thus hemmed in unexpectedly by three armies, moving at once from three different points; defeated and driven back, at Abensberg, on the 20th; and utterly routed, at Landshut, on the 21st. Here the Archduke lost 9,000 men, thirty guns, and all his

stores.

Next day Buonaparte executed a variety of movements, considered as among the most admirable displays of his science, by means of which he brought his whole force, by different routes, at one and the same moment upon the position of the Archduke Charles. That prince was strongly posted at Eckmühl, with full 100,000 men. Napoleon charged him at two in the afternoon; the battle was stern and lasted till nightfall, but it ended in a complete overthrow. The Austrians, besides their loss in the field, left in Napoleon's hands 20,000 prisoners, fifteen colours, and the greater part of their artillery; and retreated in utter disorder upon Ratisbonne. The Archduke made an attempt to rally his troops and defend that city, on the 23d; but the French stormed the walls and drove the Austrians through the streets; and their general immediately retreated into Bohemia: thus, in effect, abandoning Vienna to the mercy of his conqueror.

Napoleon was wounded in the foot during the storming of Ratisbonne, and for a moment the troops crowded round him in great alarm; but he scarcely waited to have his wound dressed, threw himself again on horseback, and restored confidence by riding along the lines.

Thus, in five days, in spite of inferiority of numbers, and of the unfavourable manner in which his lieutenants had distributed an inferior force, by the sole energy of his genius did the Emperor triumph over the main force of his opponent.

He reviewed his army on the 24th, distributing rewards of all sorts with a lavish hand, and, among others bestowing the title of Duke of Eckmuhl on Davoust; and forthwith commenced his march upon Vienna. The corps defeated at Landshut had retreated in that direction, and being considerably recruited, made some show of obstructing his progress; but they were defeated again and totally broken at Ehrensberg, on the 3d of May, by Massena, and on the 9th Napoleon appeared before the walls of the capital. The Emperor had already quitted it, with all his family, except his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Louisa, who was confined to her chamber by illness. The Archduke Maximilian, with the regular garrison of 10,000 men, evacuated it on Napoleon's approach; and though the inhabitants had prepared for a vigorous resistance, the bombardment soon convinced them that it was hopeless. It perhaps deserves to be mentioned, that on learning the situation of the sick princess, Buonaparte instantly commanded that no fire should be directed towards

that part of the town. On the 10th a capitulation

was signed, the French troops took possession of the city, and Napoleon once more established his head quarters in the imperial palace of Schoen

brunn.

In the meantime, the Archduke Ferdinand had commenced the war in Poland, and obtaining the advantage in several affairs, taken possession of Warsaw; but the news of Eckmuhl recalled this division to the support of the main army, under the Archduke Charles; and the Russian troops not only retook Warsaw, but occupied the whole of the Austro-Polish provinces. Alexander, however, showed no disposition to push the war with vigour, or to advance into Germany for the support of Napoleon. In Italy, in like manner, the Archduke John had at first been successful. But after defeating Eugene Beauharnois, Napoleon's viceroy, and taking possession of Padua and Vicenza, this prince also was summoned to retrace his steps, in consequence of the catastrophe at Eckmuhl. Eugene pursued him into Hungary, and defeated him in a great battle at Raab. Colonel Schill, the Prussian partizan already mentioned, had availed himself of the concentration of Napoleon's troops for the Austrian campaign, to take up arms, though without any authority from his sovereign, in the hope that the national resentment would burst out in an universal insurrection; and the Duke of Brunswick, son to him who was mortally wounded at Jena, had also appeared in Lusatia, and invited all true Germans to imitate the heroic conduct of the Spaniards. These occurrences threatened a general burst of war wherever the Tugenbund and other patriotic association

had for some time been strongly influencing the popular mind. The battle of Eckmuhl, however, diffused new awe all over the north of Germany. The troops of Saxony checked the Duke of Brunswick's progress, and Schill's heroic band were at last shut up in Stralsund, where their leader perished in a sortie; thus, and only thus, escaping the vengeance of Napoleon.

Among the mountains of the Tyrol, the native zeal of a few hardy peasants achieved more than all the mighty population of Germany. This ancient province of the house of Austria had been, in sinful violation of all the rights of mankind, transferred to the hated yoke of Bavaria, by the treaty of Presburg. The mountaineers no sooner heard that their rightful sovereign was once more in arms against Napoleon, than they rose (early in April), under the guidance of Hofer, a gallant peasant, seized the strong passes of their country, and, in the course of four days, made every French and Bavarian soldier quartered among them a prisoner, with the exception of the garrison of the fortress of Kufstein. Napoleon caused Lefevre to march into the country with his division; but Hofer posted his followers on the edge of precipices, from which they fired on the French columns with the skill of practised marksmen, and rolled down torrents of stones with such effect, that Lefevre was compelled to retreat. Austria, however, having enough of work at home, could not afford to sustain the efforts of these heroic peasants by any detachment of regular troops. On the retirement of Lefevre, they issued from their hills and wasted the neighbouring