the Emperor of Russia to ratify the treaty signed by M. d'Oubril. This important event made no alteration in the proposals of Great Britain, further than an announcement that any treaty now concluded must be with the concurrence of Russia; but it considerably lowered those of Napoleon, and Talleyrand announced that France "would make great concessions for the purpose of obtaining peace." These were afterwards explained to be the restoration of Hanover to Great Britain; the confirmation of its possession of Malta; the cession of the Cape, Tobago, and Pondicherry to its empire; and the grant of the Balearic Isles, with an annuity from Spain, in lieu of Sicily, as a compensation to the King of Naples. To these terms the English cabinet would by no means accede; and as there was no longer any appearance of an accommodation, Lord Lauderdale demanded and obtained his passports, nine days after Napoleon had set out from Paris to take the command of the army destined to act against Prussia.

80. Thus this negotiation, begun under such favourable auspices, both with England and Russia, broke off with both powers on the subject of the possession of Sicily and of the mouths of the Cattaro. Apparently these were very inconsiderable objects to revive so dreadful a contest, and bring the armies of the south and north of Europe to Eylau and Friedland; but in reality the secret ends which the hostile powers had in view, in contending for these distant possessions, were more considerable than might be at first imagined. It was not merely as an appanage of the crown of Naples that Napoleon so obstinately insisted on Sicily for his brother; it was as the greatest island in the Mediterranean, as opening the way to the command of that inland sea, and clearing the route to Egypt and the Indies, that it became a paramount object of desire. It was not an obscure harbour on the coast of the Adriatic which brought the colossal empires of France and Russia into collision; it was a settlement on the skirts of Turkey, it was

the establishment of a French military station within sight of the Crescent, which was the secret matter of ambition to the one party, and jealousy to the other. Thus, while Sicily and Cattaro were the ostensible causes of difference, India and Constantinople were the real objects in the view of the parties; and the negotiation broke off upon those eternal subjects of contention between England, Russia, and France-the empire of the seas, and the dominion of continental Europe.

81. The intelligence of the refusal of Alexander to ratify d'Oubril's treaty with France excited an extraordinary transport at Berlin, which was much heightened when shortly after it became evident that the negotiations at Paris for an accommodation with Great Britain were not likely to prove successful. The war party became irresistible: a sense of national degradation had reached every heart; the Queen was daily to be seen on horseback at the head of her regiment in the streets of Berlin. The enthusiasm was universal; but in the guards and officers of that distinguished corps it rose to a pitch approaching to frenzy. In proportion to the force with which the bow had long been bent one way, was the violence with which it now rebounded to the other. Wiser heads, however, saw little ground for rational confidence in this uncontrolled ebullition of popular effervescence; and even the heroic Prince Louis let fall some expressions indicating that he hoped for more efficient support in the field than the declaimers of the capital.* Lucchesini, who had so long conducted the Prussian diplomacy at the French capital, sent despatches to his government full of acrimonious complaints of the cabinet of the Tuileries, which either by accident or design fell into the hands of the French police, and were laid before Napoleon. He instantly demanded the recall of the ob

*

He repeated with emphasis the lines of the poet Gleims, in allusion to the warlike bards of Berlin :

"Sie singen laut im hohen chor

Vom Tod, fürs Vaterland uns vor:
Doch kommt ein einziger Husar,
So lauft die ganze Barden Schar.”

noxious minister, who left Paris early | in September, and was succeeded by Knobelsdorf, whose mission was mainly to protract matters, that the cabinet of Berlin might complete its preparations, and if possible gain time for the distant succours of Russia to arrive on the Elbe. But as the troops on both sides were hastening to the scene of action, and it was evident of how much importance it was that the strength of Russia should be thrown into the scale before a decisive conflict took place, Napoleon easily penetrated their design, and resolved himself to commence hostilities. His forces were so great that they might well inspire confidence in the issue of the contest. He had four hundred and fifty thousand men on foot, of whom a hundred and fifty thousand were in the interior, and a hundred and seventy thousand with the Grand Army in the centre of Germany, besides fifty thousand in Lombardy. Thirty thousand horse, and ten thousand artillerymen, formed part of the force with which he would first commence operations. His troops for some weeks past had been rapidly defiling from Braunau, the Inn, and the Necker, towards the banks of the Elbe, and one hundred thousand men were approaching the Thuringian Forest. He set out, therefore, from Paris to put himself at their head on the night of the 26th September, conveyed the Guard by post to Mayence, and was already far advanced on his journey to the theatre of war, when the Prussian ultimatum was delivered at Paris by M. Knobelsdorf. Its conditions were 1st, That the French troops should forthwith evacuate Germany, commencing their retreat from the day when the King of Prussia might receive the answer of the Emperor, and continuing it without interruption. 2d, That the districts on the Wesel should be detached from the French empire. 3d, That no obstacles should be thrown in the way of the formation of a counter-league in the north of Germany. No stronger proof of the infatuation which had seized the cabinet of Berlin can be desired than the fact of their having, in the presence of

Napoleon and the Grand Army, and without any present aid either from Russia, Austria, or England, proposed terms suitable rather to the day after the rout of Rosbach than the eve of the battle of Jena.

82. The public mind was at this period violently excited in Germany against the French, not merely by their prolonged stay beyond the Rhine, and the enormous expenses with which it was attended, but by a cruel and illegal murder committed by orders of Napoleon on a citizen of one of the free cities of the empire, who had sold a work hostile to his interests. Palm, a tradesman in Nuremberg, had been instrumental with many other booksellers in circulating the celebrated pamphlet by Gentz, already mentioned, in which the principle of resistance to French aggression was strongly inculcated, and another by Arndt, entitled "The Spirit of the Age," of a similar tendency, but in neither of which was any recommendation of assassination or illegal measures held forth. The others were fortunate enough to make their escape; but Palm was seized by the French soldiers, dragged before a military commission of French officers assembled by the Emperor's orders at Braunau, and there sentenced to be shot, which inhuman decree was immediately carried into execution, without his being so much as allowed to enter on his defence.* This atrocious

*The judgment of the military commission convicting Palnı, and sentencing him to death, bore in its preamble :-"Considering that wherever there is an army, the first and most pressing duty of its chief is to watch over its preservation; that the circulation of writings tending to revolt and assassination that of nations; that nothing is more urgent menaces not only the safety of the army, but

than to arrest the progress of such doctrines, subversive alike of the law of nations and the respect due to crowned heads; injurious to the people committed to their government: in a word, subversive of all order and subordination-declares unanimously, that the authors, printers, publishers, and distributors of libels bearing such a character, should be considered as guilty of high treason, and punished with death." Such were the doctrines in which the frenzy of the French Revolu tion, which began by proclaiming war to the which opened by an invitation to the people palace and peace to the cottage, the contest of all countries to throw off the yoke of

proceeding, for which there is not a shadow of excuse, either in the nature of the publication charged, or in the law of nations, excited the most profound indignation in Germany. Men compared the loud declamations of the republican partisans in favour of the liberty of the press with this savage violation of it by their military chief; and concluded, that the only freedom which they really had at heart was license for their own enormities, and the only system of government which was to be expected from their ascendancy, that of military violence. A dignified proclamation, issued about the same time by the senate of Frankfort, after recounting the enormous contributions which they had paid to the French armies in 1796, 1799, 1800, and 1806, concluded with declaring their inability to preserve the independence of their country, which had been transferred to the Elector of Mayence, and recommending submission to the arms of France. Augereau replied to this

ment.

crowned heads, terminated! It is hard to say whether the barefaced falsehood, delusive sophistry, or cold-blooded cruelty of this infamous conviction are most conspicuous. The pamphlets which Palm had sold contained no doctrines whatever recommending assassination, or any private crime. If they had, they were published, not in the dominions of France, or by any person who owed allegiance to its Emperor, but in the free city of Nuremberg, in the heart of the German empire; and they were addressed, not to the subjects of Napoleon, but to Germans, aliens to his authority, and enemies of his governThe French armies, contrary to the express terms of the peace of Pressburg, were remaining in and devouring the resources of that country, upon the hollow pretext that Russia, a separate power at war with France, had in the usual course of hostility conquered a town ceded by Austria to the French empire. The pamphlets published were nothing but appeals to the Germans to unite against this foreign oppression, and certainly never had men a more justifiable cause of hostility. Applying Napoleon's principles to himself, what punishment would they fix on the head of him who published proclamations calling on the Venetians, the Irish, and Swiss, to throw off the yoke of their respective governments, and avowed his intention, when he landed in England, to call on the whole subjects of the British empire to throw off the rule of their sovereign and parliament, and to establish annual parliaments and universal suffrage?

-BIGNON, v. 337, 338.

proclamation by a stern requisition to have the authors of it delivered up to him in twenty-four hours: the fate of Palm was universally anticipated for the magistrates of the state but after they had been arrested, Napoleon, alarmed at the universal horror which that tragic event had excited, deemed it prudent to drop further proceedings.

83. The death of this unfortunate victim did not pass unrevenged, either upon Napoleon or the French people. It fell deeply and profoundly on the generous heart of Mr Fox, whose enthusiastic hopes of the extension of general freedom by the spread of republican principles were thus cruelly belied by the deeds perpetrated by its leaders in the name of the French people, and contributed, perhaps more than any other circumstance, to produce that firm resolution to adhere to the basis originally laid down by Napoleon for the negotiations which ultimately led to their abandonment. The carnage of Spain, the catastrophe of Moscow, the conquest of France, the exile to St Helena, are thus directly associated with this deed of blood. The brave and the free thenceforward saw clearly, in every part of Europe, that no hope for public or private liberty remained but in a determined resistance to the aggressions of France; that slavery and chains followed in the rear of the tricolor flag. Napoleon has frequently said, that if Mr Fox had lived, peace would have been concluded, and all the subsequent misfortunes of his reign averted; but the truth of history must dispel the illusion, and the English annalist cannot permit the insidious praises of an enemy to tear from one of the brightest ornaments of his country the honour of having at last been awakened to a sense of the nature of revolutionary ambition, and of having possessed the magnanimity, in opposition to his former long-continued delusion, instantly to act upon the conviction.

84. In his last instructions, dictated a few weeks before his death, to Lord Yarmouth, there is to be found the firmest resolution to insist on the original basis of the negotiation, and never