sixty thousand strong, better equipped, organized, and disciplined, than Russia ever before had, and which equalled, perhaps exceeded in general composition, any army in Europe, was stationed on the line of the Danube, and occasionally blockaded the Turkish army in Schumla, (at the foot of the Balkan mountains,) the rampart of Constantinople-a rampart, which a general like Napoleon would long since have prostrated by his genius and kindling spirit of enterprise.

The Persian war had consumed annually from ten to twenty thousand men; but every year improved the Russian lines of communication, and gradually weakened the Persian frontier.

"Instead of one feeble army to guard the Niemen, one hundred and eighty thousand men were formed in three lines to repel any attack, and another considerable body of troops was stationed in Finland; all the arsenals were full of stores-fifteen hundred pieces of cannon in the field-recruits were training in every province-and a militia was instituted through the whole empire.

"Napoleon, who had never forgotten the battle of Eylau, and the martial qualities of a Russian army, saw the time was come when Russia was either to assume that attitude, which was the object of his ambition, a settlement in Europe, which from the strategical properties of her position and numerous population assured her the command of the continent, or, that she was to be dislodged, broken, repelled, and reduced, until she became again little more than an Asiatic power. He selected that moment to commence his operation, because he feared Russia might prevail on the Turks to make peace, and that England would acquire more influence from her good offices on

that occasion; perhaps, also, he had good

reason to suspect, that the character of the protracted war in Spain was reviving the hostile feelings of unwilling allies, and connecting them in alliances of reciprocal resistance and support.

"In opposition to the advice of many of

his best officers and statesmen, he refused to send eighty thousand more men to complete the conquest of the Peninsula, and disgust the English nation with continental wars, by a failure of hopes so highly excited, and so expensively supported. He always replied, that it was most judicious to leave the English army engaged in a country remote from one, where, in his view, they might more efficaciously contribute to the prejudice of

his interests

"At the head of a confederate army of above four hundred thousand men, Napoleon accused Alexander of a violation of treaties,

and demanded their renewal."

We shall not enter into a detail of this campaign, the occurrences and termination of which are fresh in recollection. Had we a disposition to go over the ground with our author, we have no

means of judging of the correctness of his decisions in regard to military operations, on which he pronounces with a peremptoriness that would be unbecoming in any man, and which in an anonymous pamphleteer is most absurd and ridiculous. Yet, incompetent as we are to convict him of error, on points on which we may possibly be a little more ignorant than himself, his inaccuracy, and even anachronisms in regard to historical events of a remoter period, of which he pretends to speak knowingly, have destroyed all claim to confidence, even were his demands as modest and moderate as they are impudent and unlimited. We will however copy, though we question its truth, as presenting to the imagination a vivid picture of the horrors attending the memorable retreat from Moscow, the following description of the miserable deaths of multitudes of the famished, fugitive invaders.

In the hospitals of Wilna there were left above seventeen thousand dead and

dying frozen and freezing. The bodies of the former, broken up, served to stop the cavities in windows, floors, and walls; but in one of the corridores of the Orear Convent, above fifteen hundred bodies were piled up transversely, as pigs of lead or iron. When these were finally removed on sledges to be burnt, the most extraordinary figures were presented by the variety of their attitudes, for none seemed to have been frozen in a composed state: each was fixed in the last action of his life, in the last direction given to his limbs: even the eyes retained the last expression, either of anger, pain, or entreaty. In the roads then were collected round the burning ruins of the cottages, which a mad spirit of destruction had fired, picking and eating the burnt bodies of fellow men; while thousands of horses were moaning in agony, with their flesh mangled and hacked to satisfy the cravings of a hunger that knew no pity. In many of the sheds, men, scarcely alive, had heaped on their frozen bodies human carcasses, which, festering by the communication of animal heat, had mingled the dying and the dead in one mass of putrefaction."

We rejoin our author and Alexander at the close of the first campaign.

"Alexander, during this crisis, had displayed a degree of firmness which deranged all the calculations of Napoleon and his coadjutors. He pledged himself, as a sovereign

and a man, that he would never treat with

Napoleon whilst there was an armed enemy in his country; and his inflexible firmness rendered nugatory those attempts at negotiation, which are reported not to have received the same discouragement in other quarters.

transactions at Abo, affords a memorable and splendid proof of his prospective policy.

England and Russia had determined to adopt the same line of proceeding with regard to Denmark as had occasioned, accord. ing to the declaration of Alexander, the war between those two nations.-Such are the unfixed, and it may be said, revolutionary principles of cabinets!

Alexander insisted that Sweden should be indemnified by Norway for Finland, in case Denmark refused to join the coalition. "The English minister, forgetting that Russia, by the possession of ALAND, SWEABORG, and the WHOLE GULPHS OF FINLAND AND BOTHNIA, was, in fact, mistress of STOCKHOLM, agreed to an annexation, which surrendered a country, so important for its maritime resources, ports, and position, to the same influence and authority. The treaty being signed, Alexander, who, as before said, never forgets the unintentional wrong which he did to his nephew, developed the true object of the arrangement, by saying to Bernadotte, If Napoleon fails in his attack against my empire, and the French throne becomes vacant by the result of his defeat, I shall think no one so eligible as yourself for that station. Important words, which serve as a key to explain many of the future mysteries, and which have not yet lost their value; although Bernadotte does not enjoy equal consideration in the eyes of Russia, since he did not acquire the expected suffrages of the French people, and afford the desired opportunity for the re-establishment of the ancient dynasty.

"Alexander, after joining the army at Wilua, had afforded useful encouragement to personal exertions by his own exemplary endurance of privations, cold, fatigue, &c.; an example, which, added to great affability, produced, not only very beneficial effects on the soldiery, but which sustained the enthusiasm of the Russian nation. In the head quarters at Kalish he was equally remarkable for diligence. Couriers, with autograph letters, in many instances were dispatched in all directions to bring up the recovered wounded and sick, to advance the new recruits and medical stores, and to infuse the ardour of the sovereign into every depart ment of the government.

"The efforts obtained full success: voluntary contributions in men and money poured in from the nobility; and the whole empire resounded with the huzzas of triumph, hymns of thanksgiving, and the Pashol, or march word, for Poland, and Paris.'

The Cossacks, enriched with the immense booty which their vigilance, activity, and valour, had acquired, streamed from the Don; and the oldest veterans, and youngest boys capable of wielding a lance, were seen daily amongst the reinforcements arriving to range themselves under the banner of their justly venerated Hetman.

It is computed that Norway furnished ten thousand sailors to England.

"The operations of the cabinet were no less vigorously conducted, and no less successfully accomplished.

"The King of Prussia, who had disclaimed the conduct of General York, and who had resolved on faithfully adhering to his treaties with Napoleon, at last signed the treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with Russia; but he acquiesced only an hour before the signature was affixed; and only then, under the suggestion, that in case of refusal, it was possible a provisional govern ment might be established in his kingdom." In the month of May, an army of abont eighty thousand Russians, and sixty thousand Prussians, passed the Elbe, near Wittenberg and Dresden.

Reinforcements replaced the Russian losses; negotiations offered by Napoleon were rejected; and the battle of Bautzen was hazarded, contrary to all military science and political prudence.

The French, by an attack in flank of a salient position, overpowered the Prussians (who fought gallantly) and gained the ground; but the retreat, ending in the affair of Reichenbach, where Duroc was killed, added to the honour of the Russians and the confidence of the allies.

"The armistice ensued; and, during the negotiatious, above sixty thousand good troops from Odessa, and distant provinces, entered the Russian camps.

"Austria was still unwilling to quit the position of arbitrator, and join the coalition, whilst the interests of Napoleon required peace to dissolve a confederacy which every day enlarged and cemented. Pride or destiny prevailed. He would not write even a conciliatory note to his father-in-law, which would have sufficed to prolong the period prescribed for the diplomatic answer; and the Austrians marched!"

We shall for reasons already stated omit the detail and discussion of military movements and successes-which are cursorily criticised, with an air of conscious superiority, by the author of the Sketch; and shall pay no regard to the opinions and insinuations he has contrived to connect with them. As a specimen of his candour and judgment, it may, however, be well tomention that he

* Napoleon, who knew this anecdote, and alluded to it in one of his bulletins, always spoke of the good faith of the King of Prussia with much respect.

The Russian rear guard could not pass the Elbe for ten days; during which time it was embarrassed with the protection of ten thousand four wheeled car. riages of every description, moving along the same

road

ascribes the capture of Paris, solely to treachery, and thinks that Buonaparte who "with sixty thousand brave and indefatigable mea, had baffled the operations of two hundred thousand, for more than six weeks," was just on the point of achieving victory-when "the movement on St. Dizier which merited empire, lost him his crown."

The Allies however, having somehow obtained possession of the metropolis, we are next instructed in the process by which the Bourbons were reinstated in the throne, and in divers other mysteries, of which our author seems to have been the depositary.

"Alexander had for some time been obliged to relinquish the proposed arrange. ments in favour of Bernadotte, who had loitered at Liege, and who, in fact, had done too much for his character in France, and too little for his interests with the allies."

"Alexander, personally, as it was believed, ill-disposed to the Bourbon family, reluctantly acquiesced in the proposition. The king of Prussia did not object; but Schwartzen. berg for a few instants was silent, and Tallerand was uneasy, if not alarmed. Schwartzenberg, however, probably unwilling to charge himself with the responsibility of a refusal (his sovereign and Metternich being absent) did not finally withhold his assent; and thus, by two foreign sovereigns, a fo

was

reign marshal, and an ex-minister, Louis chosen-King of France-legitimate pretensions, and the subsequently alleged right and title to the throne, not in the remotest degree influencing that choice.

"The defection of Marmont, accompanied with the contingent events, terminated the war; and Napoleon, still an emperor, proceeded to his asylum, overthrown, but not

overcome.

"Alexander, who had been ambitious at Chatillon to stipulate for the entrance of some battalions of his guards into Paris, bat he might in some degree balance parades at the Thuilleries against those of the Kremlin, and whose anxiety on this point had been one of the real obstacles to the conclusion of peace, now saw himself in possession of the French capital, the creator of its new monarchy, and the arbiter of its destinies!

"Gratified in his vanities, but not intoxicated by his successes, he sought after, and

* Nevertheless, England was true to her engagement, nay, to the constructive spirit of it; for she employed her fleet, the fleet of a free people, in blockading the Norwegian ports, to compel à reluctant nation, by famine, to receive the yoke; although that nation only required neutrality from England, that she might negotiate or fight for her independence. The Swedish government seems to have acted towards the Norwegians, when obliged to capitulate, with great liberality and good sense: but this conduct does not affect the question of the right of England to make over a nation to another power, because its own government refused to break its neutrality; nor does it mitigate the reproach of England for employing her arms in such a service VOL. 11.-No. III.

acquired by his policy and mildness, the af fections of all parties. To the Royalists he was the guardian of the royal dynasty—to the Napoleonists he was the preserver of the integrity of France, and to the Constitutionalists he was the champion of a liberal government. But in this moment of triumph he never forgot Russia, and added largely to former importations for the advancement of the arts, science, and industry in that country.

"The negociations of Paris regulated the points at issue with France, and left the fate of Naples, Saxony, and Poland, to be Belgium, and the destiny of the kingdom of settled at Congress; whilst the allotment of Italy were definitely arranged, although not officially promulgated.

"The Emperor of Austria had always declared that he would never reoccupy the Milanese states, in any event of the war; but Alexander, resolved on the acquisition of the Duchy of Warsaw, insisted on Austria's taking to ferself those provinces, as compensating aggrandizements; thus the kingdom of Italy, whose independence had so often been guaranteed by these very powers in their treaties with Napoleon, and whose moral regeneration had been commensurate with its political growth, was again reduced to a provincial dependence."* The reply to this groan over Italy is anticipated.

Italy was a fief to Napoleon-it was so, but "It may be said, that the kingdom of

not to France. The two crowns, after his decease, were never to be placed on the

same head."

Unanswerable logic!

"The two crowns after his decease, were never, &c."

Profound statesman!

The lament over the fallen fortunes of Italy, and the panegyric on the virtues of Napoleon which ensue, are most unfortunately conjoined, if the writer really meant to appeal to the condolence of honest hearts; for that breast which could beat with tenderness for the miseries of a subjugated and degraded people, must always throb with indignation at the mention of a stern and selfish tyrant, whose crimes ought never to be forgotten in his punishment.

"Whilst the congress was reconstructing Europe, not according to rights, natural affiances, language, habits, or laws; but by tables of finance, which divided and subdivided her population into souls, demi-souls, and even fractions, according to a scale of the direct duties or taxes which could be levied by the

Alexander had at that time determined to make himself King of Poland, and recommended the Emperor of Austria to preserve the Italian monarchy, and wear the iron crown; but the Emperor refused, as he was afraid to keep alive the recollections of independence. But the debarkation of Napoleon in 1815, forced acquiescence in a measure, which the Italians had much at heart.