it was signified that Napoleon had demanded the hand of the Archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter to the Emperor Francis, the same youthful princess who has been mentioned as remaining in Vienna, on account of illness, during the second occupation of that capital.

Having given her hand, at Vienna, to Berthier, who had the honour to represent the person of his master, the young archduchess came into France in March, 1810. On the 28th, as her carriage was proceeding towards Soissons, Napoleon rode up to it, in a plain dress, altogether unattended; and, at once breaking through all the etiquettes of such occasions, introduced himself to his bride. She had never seen his person till then, and it is said that her first exclamation was, "Your majesty's pictures have not done you justice." Buonaparte was at this time forty years of age; his countenance had acquired a certain fulness, and that statue-like calmness of expression with which posterity will always be familiar; but his figure betrayed as yet nothing more than a tendency towards corpulence. He was considered as a handsomer man at this period than he had been in his earlier days. They spent the evening at the chateau of Compiegne, and were re-married, on the 2d of April, at Paris, amidst every circumstance of imperial splendour. Among other imperial gallantries, Napoleon had provided a set of apartments at the Tuilleries in which, down to the minutest article of furniture, Maria-Louisa found a facsimile of those which she had been accustomed to occupy in her father's palace of Schoenbrunn. For some time he seemed to devote himself, like a mere

VOL. II.

G.

lover, to the society of his new partner; and was really, according to his own account at St. Helena, enchanted with the contrast which her youthful simplicity of character and manners presented to the finished and elaborate graces of Josephine. Of the uniform attachment and affection of both his wives, he spoke afterwards with equal praises. But he in vain endeavoured to prevail on MariaLouisa to make a personal acquaintance with her predecessor; and, at length found it necessary to give up his own visits to Malmaison, which for a time were not unfrequent.

Napoleon, in his exile, said that "the Spanish ulcer" and the Austrian match were the two main causes of his ruin;-and they both contributed to it largely, though by no means equally. His alliance with the haughtiest of the old sovereign houses gave deep offence indeed to that great party in France, who, though willing to submit to a Dictator, still loathed the name of hereditary monarchy. Nothing, perhaps, could have shocked those men more grievously than to see the victorious heir and representative of their revolution seeking to mix his blood with that of its inveterate enemies, and making himself free, as it were, of what they had been accustomed to call the old established "corporation of tyrants." Another, and, it is to be hoped, as large a class of his subjects, were disgusted with his abandonment of the wife of his youth, for the sake of gratifying his vanity and ambition. There were also, we may easily believe, not a few royalists of the old school who had hitherto acquiesced in his sway the more easily, because he seemed destined to die childless, and in a contest

for the throne of France, they flattered themselves the legitimate heir of the monarchy might outweigh any of his remoter kindred. And, lastly, it is not improbable that some of Napoleon's marshals had accustomed themselves to dream of events such as occurred on the death of Alexander the Great. But making all allowance for these exceptions, it is hardly possible to doubt that a vast proportion of the upper classes of society in France must have been disposed to hail the emperor's alliance with the house of Austria, as a pledge of his desire to adopt, henceforth, a more moderate line of policy as to his foreign relations; or that his throne must have been strengthened in the eyes of the nation at large by the prospect-soon realized-of a son of his own blood to fill it after him. Napoleon's own opinion was, that the error lay, not in seeking a bride of imperial birth, but in choosing her at Vienna. Had he persisted in his demands, the Czar, he doubted not, would have granted him his sister; the proud dreams of Tilsit would have been realized, and Paris and St. Petersburg become the only two capitals of Europe.

The Emperor's new marriage was speedily followed by another event, which showed how little the ordinary ties and feelings of domestic life now weighed with him in the scale against ambition. His brother Louis, a weak, but benevolent man, had in vain been cautioned by Napoleon, on his promotion to the Dutch throne, that, in his administration of this subaltern monarchy, "the first object of his care must ever be the Emperor, the second France, and the third Holland." Louis, surrounded by native ministers, men of great ta

lents and experience, and enlightened lovers of their country, had his sympathies ere long enlisted on the side of those whom he might be pardoned for wishing to consider as really his subjects. His queen, on the other hand, the daughter of Josephine, and the favourite of Napoleon, made her court, as far as she could, a French one, and was popularly regarded as heading the party who looked in all things to the Tuilleries. The meek-spirited Louis, thwarted by this intriguing woman, and grossly insulted by his brother, struggled for some time with the difficulties of his situation; but his patience availed nothing: his supposed connivance at the violations of the Berlin and Milan decrees, in the same proportion as it tended to raise him more and more in the affections of the Dutch, fixed and heightened the displeasure of Napoleon. He was at length summoned to Paris, and without a moment's hesitation obeyed. On arriving there he took up his residence in the house of his mother, and next morning found himself a prisoner. Having abdicated his throne, Louis retired to Gratz, in Styria, and to that private mode of life for which his character fitted him: his name continues to be affectionately remembered in Holland. His beautiful wife, despite the fall of her mother, chose to fix her residence in Paris, where she once more shone the brightest ornament of the court. On the 9th of July, 1810, the kingdom of Holland was formally annexed to the French empire; Amsterdam taking rank among the cities next after Rome.

In pursuance of the same stern resolution to allow no consideration to interfere with the com

plete and effectual establishment of the Continental System, Buonaparte shortly afterwards annexed the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and the whole sea coast of Germany, from the frontier of Holland to that of Denmark, to the French empire. The king of Prussia was as yet in no condition to remonstrate against this new act of rapacity: opposition from any other German state was wholly out of the question.

In truth there had been, for several years, but one power in the North of Europe at once decidedly adverse in spirit, and in any degree independent; and now, to all appearance, this last exception also was removed. Gustavus IV., King of Sweden, had persisted in his original hatred of the French Revolution, and of Buonaparte, in opposition to a powerful party in that country, who considered the conduct of their sovereign, in standing out against so gigantic an enemy, as mere obstinacy-in fact as insane. In consequence of his pertinacious refusal to submit to the supreme will of Napoleon, the Pomeranian provinces and Finland had been lost to the kingdom. The monarch's personal behaviour unquestionably was so extravagant as to furnish fair grounds for suspecting him of mental aberration. He was arrested in his palace, and, an act of abdication for himself and his children being extorted, deposed: his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was called to the throne in his room, as Charles XIII.; and, amicable relations being soon established between the Courts of Stockholm and the Tuilleries, Pomerania was restored, and the English flag and commerce ba