of Austria and the future issue of the war. Nothing, however, was done; the English ministry, under the direc tion of Lord Howick, notwithstanding the most urgent entreaties from Russia and Prussia, sent no succours in men or money. The decisive period was allowed to pass by without anything being attempted in support of the common cause, and the British nation, in consequence, had the Peninsular war to go through to regain the vantage-ground which was then within their grasp.t there cannot be the smallest doubt | decisive effects both upon the conduct that the triumphs of 1813 might have been anticipated by seven years, and the calamities of Europe at once arrested. The first accounts of the battle received through the French bulletins rendered it evident that some disaster had been incurred, and the anxious expectation everywhere excited by this unsatisfactory communication was increased by the long interval which ensued before the Russian accounts arrived. At length, when, from Benningsen's report, it appeared that he claimed the victory, and, from the stationary condition of the Russian army in front of Königsberg, and the ultimate retreat of the French to the banks of the Passarge, that these pretensions were not devoid of foundation, the public transport rose to the highest pitch. It was confidently expected that, now that Napoleon had for once been decisively foiled, the Austrians would instantly declare themselves, and their sixty thousand men in observation in Bohemia, be converted into a hundred thousand in activity on the Elbe.* To stimulate and support such a combination, the public voice in England loudly demanded the immediate despatch of a powerful British force to the mouth of the Elbe; and, recollecting the universal exasperation which prevailed in the north of Germany at the French in consequence of the enormous requisitions which they had everywhere levied from the inha bitants, whether warlike or neutral, there cannot be a doubt that the appearance of fifty thousand English soldiers would have been attended with "I trembled," says Jomini, speaking in the person of Napoleon, "lest 150,000 of those mediators had appeared on the Elbe, which would have plunged me into the greatest difficulties. I there saw that I had placed myself at the mercy of my enemies. More than once I then regretted having suffered myself to be drawn on into those remote and inhospitable countries, and having received with so much asperity all who sought to portray its danger. The cabinet of Vienna had then a safer and more honourable opportunity of re-establishing its preponderance than that which it chose in 1813, but it had not resolution enough to profit by it, and my firm countenance proved my salvation."JOMINI, ii, 369. 83. It is the most signal proof of the obstinacy with which the British government, under the direction of Lord Howick (afterwards Earl Grey), adhered to their ill-timed system of withdrawing altogether from Continental affairs, that they clung to it even after the account of the battle of Eylau had arrived in London, and it was universally seen over Europe that a crisis in Napoleon's fate was at hand. In the end of February 1807, earnest applications were made by the cabi nets of St Petersburg and Berlin for the aid of a British auxiliary force to menace the coasts of France and Holland, and land on the shores of Pomerania. The advantage was pointed out of "despatching, without a moment's delay, on board the swiftest ships of Great Britain, a strong British auxiliary land force to co-operate with the army of Gustavus Adolphus, and thereby compel the French to retreat. They were engaged in the siege of Stralsund, and in laying waste that province; and if the British force did not arrive in sufficient time to dislodge them, they might steer for some harbour in the Baltic, from whence their junction with the allied armies could certainly be effected." Lord Howick replied on the 10th March— "Repeated and urgent applications were made in February and March 1807 for an English army, consisting of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, to co-operate with the Swedish forces in Pomerania, but in vain. Some subsidies were granted in April, but. no troops sailed from England till July, when they consisted only of 8000 men, who were sent to the island of Rugen."-Ann Reg. 1807, p. 23; LUCCHESINI, ii. 290, 296. "The approach of spring is doubtless | tive senate, announced that a fresh conthe most favourable period of military scription was to be raised of eighty operations; but in the present junc- thousand men, in March 1807, for Septure the Allies must not look for any tember 1808. This was the third levy considerable aid from the land force which had been called for since the of Great Britain." Prussian war began; the first when the contest commenced, the second during the triumph and exultation which followed, the victory of Jena, the third amidst the gloom and despondency which succeeded the carnage of Eylau. No words can do justice to the consternation which this third requisition excited amongst all classes, especially those whose children were likely to be reached by the destructive scourge. In vain the bulletins announced that victories were gained with hardly any loss. The terrific demand of three different conscriptions, amounting to no less than two hundred and forty thousand men, in seven months, too clearly demonstrated the fearful chasms which sickness and the sword of the enemy had made in their ranks. The number of young men who annually attained the age of eighteen in France, which was the period selected for the conscription, was about two hundred thousand. Thus, in half a year, more than a whole annual generation had been required for a service which experience had now proved to be almost certain destruction. So great was the general apprehension, that the government did not venture to promulgate the order until, by emissaries, and articles in the public journals, the public mind had been in some degree prepared for the shock. When it was announced, Regnault St Jean d'Angely, the orator intrusted with the task, shed tears; and even the obsequious senate could not express their acquiescence by any of the acclamations with which they usually received the imperial mandates. So powerful was the public feeling, so visible and universal the expression of terror in the capital, that it was found necessary to assuage the general grief by a clause, declaring that the new levy was at first to be merely organised as an army of reserve for the defence of the frontier, under veteran generals, members of the con 84. In proportion to the sanguine hopes which this bloody contest excited in Germany and England, was the gloom and depression which it diffused through all ranks in France. The Parisians were engaged in a vortex of unusual gaiety; balls, theatres, and parties succeeded one another in endless succession, when the news of the battle of Eylau fell at once on their festivities like a thunderbolt. They had learned to distrust the bulletins; they saw clearly that Augereau's divergence had been occasioned by something more than the snowstorm. The funds rapidly fell, and private letters soon circulated, and were eagerly sought after, which gave a true and even exaggerated account of the calamity. Hardly a family in Paris but had to lament the loss of some near relation or intimate friend: the multitude of mourners cast a gloom over the streets; the general consternation suspended all the amusements of the capital. The most exaggerated reports were spread, and found a ready reception by the excited population. One day it was generally credited that Napoleon had fallen back 'behind the Vistula; the next that a dreadful engagement had taken place, in which he himself, with half his army, had fallen. So far did the universal consternation proceed, that the members of the government began to look after their own interests in the approaching shipwreck; and even the imperial family itself was divided into factions, Josephine openly supporting the pretensions of her son, Eugene, to succeed to the throne, and the Princess Caroline employing all the influence of her charms to secure Junot, governor of Paris, whom she held in silken chains, in the interest of her husband Murat. 85. The general gloom was sensibly increased when the message of Napoleon, dated March 26, to the conserva servative senate. These promises, how- were now assembled on the shores of ever, proved entirely elusory. The victory of Friedland saved the new conscripts from the slaughter of the Russian bayonets, only to reserve them for the Caudine forks, or the murder of the guerillas in the fields of Spain. 86. Meanwhile the prodigious activity of the Emperor was employed, during the cessation of hostilities in Poland, in the most active measures to repair his losses, organise the new levies, wring the sinews of war out of the conquered provinces, and hasten forward the conscripts as fast as they joined their depots on all the roads leading to the theatre of war. All the highways converging from France and Italy to the Vistula were covered with troops, artillery, ammunition, and stores of all sorts, for the use of the army. Extensive purchases of horses in Holstein, Flanders, and Saxony, provided for the remounting of the cavalry and the artillery-drivers; while enormous requisitions everywhere in Germany, furnished the means of subsistence to the unwieldy multitude who * The requisitions from the city of Hamburg and the Hanse Towns will give an idea of the almost incredible extent to which these exactions were carried by Napoleon at this time; and of the blind violence with which he pursued the English commerce at the very time that it had become, from his own acts, indispensable for the equipment of his troops. By an imperial decree, in March 1807, Hamburg was ordered to furnish 200,000 pairs of shoes; 50,000 great-coats; 16,000 coats; 37,000 waistcoats. M. Bourrienne, the resident at Hamburg, who was charged with the execution of this order, had no alternative but to contract with English houses for these enormous supplies, which all the industry of the north of Germany could not furnish within the prescribed time; and as the same necessity was felt universally, the result was, that when the Grand Army took the field in June, it was almost all equipped in the cloth of Leeds and Halifax, and that too at a time when the penalty of death was affixed to the importation of English manufactures of any sort ! A full enumeration of all the contributions levied on Germany during the war of 1807, will be given in a succeeding chapter, drawn from official sources: the magnitude of them almost exceeds belief.-See BOURRIENNE, vii. 293, 294. the Vistula. Nay, so far did the provident care of the Emperor go, and so strongly did he feel the imminent danger of his present situation, that, while his proclamations breathed only the language of confidence, and spoke of carrying the French standards across the Niemen, he was in fact making the most extensive preparations for a defensive warfare, and anticipating a struggle for life or death on the banks of the Rhine. By indefatigable exertions, and forcing up every sabre and bayonet from the rear, he was ere long enabled to calculate on eighty thousand combatants ready for action on every point which might be threatened on the Passarge: but this was all he could rely on out of three hundred and thirty thousand French and their allies, who formed, or were marching to reinforce, the Grand Army. No less than sixty thousand were in hospital, or had become marauders, and had never rejoined their colours since the desperate shock at Eylau. All the fortresses on the Rhine and on the Flemish frontier were armed, and put in a posture of defence. The new levy was directed to be placed in five camps, to cover the most unprotected points of the territory of the empire; while the whole veterans in the interior were called out and organised into battalions with the coastguard, to protect the coasts of Flanders and the Channel, and overawe the discontented in Brittany and La Vendée. "It is necessary, "said he, "that at the sight of the triple barrier of camps which surround our territory, as at the aspect of the triple line of fortresses which cover our frontier, the enemy should be undeceived in their extravagant expectations, and see the necessity of returning, from the impossibility of success, to sentiments of moderation." 87. Neither Napoleon nor his enemies were mistaken in the estimate which they formed of the perilous nature of the crisis which succeeded the battle of Eylau. Nothing can be more certain than that a second dubious encounter on the Vistula would have been immediately followed by a disas trous retreat beyond the Rhine. Metternich afterwards said to the ministers of the French Emperor, "We can afford to lose many battles, but a single defeat will destroy your master;" and such, in truth, was the situation of France during the whole reign of Napoleon. It is the precarious tenure by which power is held by all those who rest for their support upon the prestige of opinion or the fervour of passion, whether democratic or military, which is the secret cause of their ultimate fall. Constant success, fresh victories, an unbroken series of triumphs, are indispensable to the existence of such an authority. It has no middle ground to retire to, no durable interests to rouse for its support; it has perilled all upon a single throw; the alternative is always universal empire or total ruin. This was not the case in a greater degree with Napoleon than any other conqueror in similar circumstances. It obtained equally with Cæsar, Alexander, and Tamerlane; it is to be seen in the British empire in India; it is the invariable attendant of power in all ages, founded on the triumphs of passion over the durable and persevering exertions of reason and interest.* It is a constant sense of this truth which is the true key to the character of Napoleon, which explains alike what the world erroneously called his insatiable ambition and his obstinate retention of the vantage-ground which he had gained; which was at once the secret reason of his advance to the Kremlin, and of his otherwise inexplicable stay at Moscow and Dresden. He knew that, throughout his whole career, he could not retain except by constantly advancing, and that the first step in retreat was the commencement of ruin. manner to the interests of their own 89. Benningsen's assembling of his army in silence behind the dark screen of the Johansberg forest; the hardihood and resolution of his winter march across Poland; and his bold stroke at the left wing of the French army when reposing in its cantonments, were entitled to the very highest praise, and if executed with more vigour at the moment of attack, would have led to the most important results. His subsequent retreat in presence of the Grand Army, without any serious loss, and the desperate *When Lord Ellenborough gave his consent to the second advance of the British to stand he made at Eylau, as well as the Cabul, in 1841, under Generals Nott and Pol- skill with which the attacks of Nalock, he said in his despatches to these gene-poleon were baffled on that memorable rals, "Recollect, a second disaster like that of the Coord-Cabul Pass will lose us our In- field, deservedly place him in a very dian Empire. high rank among the commanders of 88. The Polish winter campaign demonstrates, in the most striking manner, the ruinous effects to the common cause, and in an especial that age of glory. Napoleon's ad- | rienced were sustained; the Russians vance to Pultusk and Golymin, and fronted quickly and fought desperately subsequently his march from Warsaw on every side, and from the hazardous towards Königsberg, in the depth of game the assailant suffered nearly as winter, were distinguished by all his much as the retiring party. A striking usual skill in combination and vigour proof of what so many other events in execution; but the results were during the war conspired to demonvery different from what had attend- strate, that a certain degree of native ed the turning of the Austrian and resolution will often succeed in foiling Prussian armies at Ulm and Jena. the greatest military genius, and that Columns were here cut off, communi- it was as much to the want of that cations threatened, corps planted in essential quality in his opponents, as to the rear, but no tremendous disasters his own talents, that the previous such as had previously been expe- triumphs of Napoleon had been owing. CHAPTER XLV. DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN MEASURES OF MR FOX'S ADMINISTRATION. pass into the page of history, and excite the astonishment or provoke the ridicule of their pacific successors. Such a period is, of all others, the most conducive to general happiness; but it is far from being that in which the greatest and most original efforts of human thought are made. Selfishness, like a gangrene, then comes to overspread the state, and generosity of feeling, equally with elevation of thought, are lost in the pursuit of private interest. The age of the Antonines in ancient, the era of the Georges in modern times, were unquestionably those when the greatest sum of general happiness prevailed in the Roman and British empires; but we shall look in vain in the authors or statesmen of either for the original thought, vigorous expression, or disinterested feeling, which characterised the stormy periods of Cæsar and Pompey, of Cromwell and Napoleon. 1. IF history were composed merely | violent passions, the warm enthusiasm, of the narrative of wars and campaigns, the enduring fortitude of former days, it would, how interesting soever to the lovers of adventure, or important to those intrusted with the national defence, be justly subject to the reproach of being occupied only with the passions and calamities of mankind. But even in the periods when military exploit appears to be most conspicuous, and battles and sieges seem to occupy exclusively the attention of the historian, great and important civil changes are going forward; and the activity of the human mind, aroused by the perils which prevail, and the forcible collision of interests and passions which is induced, is driven into new channels, and turned to the investigation of fresh objects of thought. It is the tendency of those periods of tranquillity, when no serious concerns, whether of nations or individuals, are at stake, to induce a state of torpor and inactivity in the national dispositions. Mankind repose after their struggles and their dangers; the arts of peace, social interests, the abstract sciences, are cultivated; the 2. The accession of the Whig ministry to the direction of affairs was an event eminently calculated to afford |