horrors continued throughout the night, and when the morning dawned, Victor saw the Russian advanced guard approaching; the destruction of the bridge, therefore, became indispensable to the safety of the French army, and orders were given to burn it. A frightful cry arose from the host on the eastern shore of the river, who were too late awakened to the realities of their situation: numbers rushed on the burning bridge, and, to avoid the flames, jumped into the water, while the greater proportion wandered in helpless misery along the river, and beheld their last hopes expire with the receding columns of their countrymen.

This dreadful passage of the Beresina completed the ruin of the Grand Army, which lost during its continuance, twenty-five pieces of cannon, sixteen thousand men in prisoners, and twelve thousand in slain. The corps of Victor and Oudinot were reduced to the deplorable state of the troops that came from Moscow, and the whole army, having lost all appearance of military order, marched in a confused mass along the road to Wilna, harassed at each step by the Cossacks, who cut off every strag gler and made constant attacks on the rear-guard. In the midst of the general ruin, a number of officers organized themselves into a guard, called the Sacred Squadron, for the Emperor's protection. The gentlemen who composed it discharged with heroic fidelity the task assigned to them; and executed without murmuring all the duties of common soldiers: but the severity of the cold soon destroyed their horses, and they, as well as the Emperor, were again compelled to pursue their route on foot through the snow. At night, their bivouac was formed in the middle of the still unbroken squares of the Old Guard, who sat around the watchfires on their haversacks, with their elbows on their knees, their heads resting on their hands, and crowding close together, strove by assuming this posture to repress the pangs of hunger and gain additional warmth.

On the 5th of December, Napoleon arrived at Smorgoni. He there collected his. marshals around him, dictated a bulletin which fully developed the horrors and disasters of the retreat, explained his reasons for immediately returning to Paris-which were connected with a conspiracy soon to be related-and after bidding them all an affectionate farewell, set out in a sledge at ten o'clock in the evening for the French capital, accompanied by Caulincourt and Lobau, leaving the command of the army to Murat.

The departure of the Emperor increased the disorganization of the troops. The officers ceased to obey their generals, the generals disregarded the marshals, and the marshals set at defiance the authority of Murat. The private soldiers, relieved from the duty of protecting their Emperor, forgot everything but the instinct of self-preservation. The colonels hid the eagles in their haversacks or buried them in the ground; the inferior officers dispersed themselves to look after their own safety; and indeed, nothing was thought of but the urgent pangs of hunger and the terrible severity of the cold. If a soldier dropped, his comrades instantly fell on him, and, before life was extinct, tore from him his cloak, his money and the bread he carried in his bosom; when he died, some one of them would sit on his body for the sake of the temporary warmth it afforded; and when it became cold, he, too, would often drop beside his companion to rise no more. The watch-fires at night were surrounded by exhausted men, who crowded like spectres about the blazing piles; and, in the morning, the melancholy bivouacs were marked by circles of bodies as lifeless as the ashes at their feet.

Nevertheless, the fatal retreat continued to Wilna; and although between Smorgoni and that city no less than twenty thousand men in straggling detachments had joined the army, scarcely forty thousand in all reached its gates. Here, the troops found an abundance of food; but they had scarcely begun to refresh themselves from the immense magazines that the city contained, when the roar of the Russian cannon compelled them to renew their flight. They rushed out of the gates on the evening of December 10th, and at the foot of the first hill beyond the town abandoned the remainder of their cannon and wagons, including the equipage of Napoleon and the treasure-chest of the army. The Russians immediately took possession of Wilna, and found within its walls, in addition to a large amount of magazines and military stores, fourteen thousand soldiers and two hundred and fifty officers, who preferred surrendering as prisoners of war to continuing their march.

On the 12th December the army arrived at Kowno, on the Niemen, and on the 13th, they passed over the river. As the covering force in the rear, under the command of Ney, defiled across the bridge, it was seen that the remnant of the Imperial Guard consisted of but three hundred men. Before quitting Kowno, Ney seized a musket, and made a final stand with the few men he could rally around him. He maintained his post for several hours against the whole Russian advanced guard; when the retreat of all the men who would march was secured, he slowly retired; and he was the last man of the Grand Army who left the Russian territory.

The first halting place on the German side of the Niemen was Gumbinnen; and General Mathieu Dumas had just entered the house of a French physician in that town, when a man followed him wrapped in a large cloak, having a long beard, his visage blackened by gunpowder, his whiskers half burned by fire, but his eyes sparkling with undecayed lustre. "At last, then, here I am," said the stranger: "what! General Dumas, do you not know me? I am the rear-guard of the Grand Army, Marshal Ney. I have fired the last musket-shot on the bridge of Kowno; I have thrown into the Niemen the last gun we possessed; and I have walked hither, as you see me, across the forests."

The scattered French troops continued to retreat through the Polish territories, still hunted down by the Russians and Cossacks. They made a brief stand at Koningsberg, and, hastening thence with an additional loss of ten thousand men, they finally reached Dantzic in the latter part of January, 1813, when the Russians gave over the pursuit. The losses of the French in this disastrous campaign may be thus estimated :

The eagles and standards that fell into the hands of the Russians amounted to seventy-five, and the artillery, to nine hundred and twentynine guns.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

EVENTS IN FRANCE FOLLOWING THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN.

NAPOLEON outstripped his own couriers in his journey. He traversed Poland and Germany in an exceedingly brief space of time, and arrived at Paris on the 18th of December, before the officers of the government were aware that he had quitted the army. He held a levee at nine o'clock on the following morning, and, as the news of his unexpected return spread quickly through the metropolis, it was numerously attended. The bulletin that he dictated at Smorgoni, containing the details of his disasters, had not yet reached Paris, and no other feeling than that of surprise at the sudden reappearance of the Emperor pervaded the minds of his guests but in the course of that day the bulletin was received and published. No words can paint the stupor, consternation and astonishment of the inhabitants, when this terrible overthrow was promulgated. The calamity was even exaggerated by the public terror; it was thought that the old system of concealment and deception had been practiced on this, as on all previous occasions; that the army had in fact been utterly annihilated, and that Napoleon was literally the sole survivor.

Gloom and disquietude, therefore, overspread every countenance at the levee of the succeeding day, and all felt the utmost anxiety to hear what details Napoleon himself might furnish as to the actual extent of the overthrow. The Emperor, on his own part, was calm and collected; and, so far from seeking to evade the questions that every one was eager to put, he anticipated their wishes by a lengthened recital of the events. "Moscow," he said, in the course of his remarks, "had fallen into our hands; we had surmounted every obstacle; even the conflagration in no degree lessened the prosperous state of our affairs; but the rigor of winter induced upon the army the most frightful calamities. In a few nights, all was changed, and the losses we then experienced would have broken my heart if, in such circumstances, I had been accessible to any other sentiments than a desire for the welfare of my people."

The admissions and firmness of the Emperor had a surprising effect in restoring public confidence, and dissipating the impression produced by the greatest external disaster recorded in history. The confidence of the people in his fortune returned, and his star appeared to emerge from the clouds that had so deeply obscured it. His words, eagerly gathered and repeated, soon circulated through the public journals; addresses, containing assurance of unshaken loyalty were presented by the public bodies of Paris, and similar proofs of devotion speedily followed from all parts of the Empire. But, though Napoleon was not insensible to these flattering testimonials of attachment, his thoughts were now more occupied with the incidents of a newly-detected conspiracy, than with a nation's homage.

This extraordinary event, of which the Emperor received intelligence a short time before he left the army in Russia, might well arrest his attention; as it nearly overturned his government, and showed conclu. sively that, despite all professions of fidelity, both his own authority and

the prospects of succession in his family, rested on a sandy basis. An obscure but able man, named Malet, had, by reason of his restless and enterprising character, been detained in custody at Paris for more than four years; and this person, in the solitude of his cell, conceived a project for overturning the Imperial dynasty. In connexion with two accomplices-Lafon, an old abbé and fellow-prisoner, and Rateau, a cor. poral of the prison guard-he had long meditated his plan, and the whole was to rest on a fabricated report of Napoleon's death. To support this story, he forged a decree of the Senate, abolishing the Imperial government, and creating himself, General Malet, governor of Paris. Various orders on the treasury were also forged, intended to dispel the doubts or shake the fidelity of the individuals to whom he should address himself. Having completed these preliminary arrangements, he easily escaped from his confinement, dressed himself in the uniform of a general of brigade, and repaired to the barrack-gate of the 2nd regiment and 10th cohort: : but, being denied admission, without the orders of the colonel, Soulier, he went to the house of that officer and informed him that the Emperor had been killed on the 7th of October, at Moscow, that the Senate had taken its measures, and that he had himself been appointed governor of Paris. The forged decree that he immediately displayed was well calculated to deceive the most experienced eye, from the precision with which it had been drawn, and the seeming genuineness of the signatures appended to it: but Malet did not rely on this alone. The decree contained the appointment of Soulier as general of brigade, and Malet exhibited with it a treasury order for one hundred thousand francs for his use. Deceived, or won, Soulier fell into the snare, and accompanied Malet to the barrack-yard.

The chief difficulty of the enterprise was here to be surmounted; but Malet proved himself equal to the task he had undertaken. He assumed a decided tone; ordered the gates to be opened; mustered the soldiers by torch-light; announced the Emperor's death; and commanded the drums. to beat that the cohort might assemble and listen to the Senate's decree.

Yielding to the habit of obedience, suspecting no deceit, and familiar with similar changes during the Revolution, the soldiers instantly conformed to these orders. Malet next directed a body of the troops to march with him to the prison of La Force, where he liberated Generals Lahoric and Guidal, sturdy republicans, who had long been confined by orders of Napoleon. They were immediately put in command of detachments, and the three moved in different directions to gain possession of the principal posts of the capital. These measures were successful. Savary, the minister of police, was arrested in his bed, and conducted to prison: Pasquier, the prefect of police, was treated in the same manner; the Hotel de Nelle was occupied by Soulier, and Malet took possession of the Place Vendome. A number of other public functionaries, including the actual governor of Paris, were also arrested; and the whole was ac complished with such ease, that Malet, conceiving his power to be already established, imprudently ventured without a sufficient guard into the hotel of the adjutant-general, Doucet, where he met Laborde; and that officer, suspecting something was wrong, intrepidly ordered Doucet's attendants. to arrest Malet. This act of course, disconcerted at a blow the whole conspiracy; the deception was exposed; and the troops with shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" returned to their duty. Nevertheless, the power

thus suddenly defeated, would in a short time have proved irresistible. Had Malet succeeded in arresting Doucet, Savary says that, "he would in a few moments have been master of almost everything; and in a country so much influenced by the contagion of example, it is impossible to say where his success would have stopped. He would have had possession of the treasury, the post-office, the telegraph, and the entire command of the National Guard. He would soon have learned, by the arrest of all couriers, the state of affairs in Russia, and nothing could have prevented him from making the Emperor prisoner on his solitary journey to France."

The defeat of this conspiracy gave Napoleon abundant cause for selfgratulation, but its previous existence furnished equal reason for despondency. He saw at once, and for the first time, that the Revolution had in fact destroyed the foundations of hereditary succession, and that the greatest achievements of him who had won the diadem, afforded no secu. rity that the crown would descend to his heirs-for in the crisis of this conspiracy, his son seemed, by common consent, to have been overlooked, and it was as a matter taken for granted, that his own death vacated the throne and rendered a new election indispensable. Yet, although Napoleon was from this moment convinced that his dynasty was unstable, and the hope of his son's succession at least equivocal, he took extraordinary measures to secure both against the threatened contingency; and caused a decree to be passed by the Senate, securing, as ingeniously and firmly as any mere enactment could secure, the claims of his posterity to the throne of France.

The next care of the Emperor was to raise an army to replace the one he had lost. He demanded from the Senate an addition to the existing military force of the Empire, of three hundred and fifty thousand men, which that obsequious body immediately granted; and the conscription was enforced with such zeal and rapidity, that within a few months the whole number was actually enrolled for service.

When this important measure was completed, Napoleon set about reconciling his differences with the Holy See: for, having one half of Europe openly arrayed against him, and the other half but doubtfully enlisted under his banners, he could no longer afford to brave the hostility of the head of the Church. After the pope had been arrested in 1809, he was brought to Grenoble and thence transferred to Savona, where he endured the rigorous treatment of a close prisoner. But Napoleon, at his departure for Moscow, not deeming Savona sufficiently secure, caused his holiness to be removed to Fontainebleau. Here, though a prisoner, he had a handsome suite of apartments and was respectably attended, but was excluded from the society of those he most wished to meet. It has already been mentioned, that Napoleon's original intention in seizing the person of the pope, was to compel his holiness to legislate for the Church in accordance to the Emperor's views, and thus, in effect, unite the tiara and the imperial crown on his own head: but the disasters of the Russian campaign cut short this splendid project, and awakened Napoleon to the necessity of an amicable adjustment of his quarrel with the pope. He therefore opened a communication with the reverend father, which was graciously received; and, after a sufficient exchange of compliments, he repaired with the Empress to Fontainebleau and had an interview with his prisoner. The pope was so fascinated with Napoleon's