A Conscription of 300.000 men decreed.

of his disasters. Europe in arms, treading on his footsteps. did not indeed allow of any further dissimulation. He affected to repose in them unlimited confidence, and to complain against men and destiny. He exerted himself to inspire with terror the souls of his courtiers who were linked to his fate, that this very terror should instil a desperate courage into the counsels he required of them.

VIII.

Napoleon began by addressing, in rude terms, severe and unexpected reproaches against some of his inferior ministers, as a sacrifice to untoward events, and in order that the thunder which fell upon them should re-assure and inspirit the others. He required the impost to be doubled; but being irritated by a slight murmur; -"Taxation," he boldly continued, "has no limits. It must progress in proportion to the danger of the country. Its proper scale is the necessity of the government. The law which says otherwise is a wicked law." The Council was silent, and acceded.

He proposed levying a new Conscription of 300,000 men, already exempt from service, and returned to their families four years before. A gloomy silence revealed the astonishment of the Council at this new decimation of the youth of France. One alone, more servile than his colleagues, acceded to the proposition, on the plea of salvation to the Empire. Napoleon, to whom everything short of enthusiasm appeared to be resist ance, changed colour, and contracted his brows. He wished to be not merely obeyed but applauded. Another approver was at length found, who ventured so far as to reproach the Emperor for talking of invaded frontiers, as if even the admission of a reverse was an outrage on the inviolability of his star. The certainty of invasion appeared to him more degrading to acknowledge than to submit to. France even conquered should still believe that its master was invincible.

Napoleon, prepared for the obsequiousness of his courtiers, affected to repel this servility with disdain. "Why should we endeavour," he exclaimed, "to conccal the truth? All must

Napoleon's Address on the state of France.

be told. Has not Wellington invaded the south? Do not the Russians menace the north? the Austrians and the Germans my provinces on the east?" Then with an accent resembling that of the Marseillaise of 1792, the enthusiasm of which he would gladly awaken, he continued:-"Wellington is in France! Oh what shame! and the country has not risen to expel him!" As if he had left anything in France to rise but the soil itself. "All my allies have abandoned me," he continued in broken accents, and casting his eyes reproachfully towards heaven. "The Germans have betrayed me! they even wished to cut off my retreat. Therefore have they been massacred!-No! no peace, till I have burnt their capital. A triumvirate is formed in the north-the same that dismembered Poland-(as if he himself had not secured the fragments of that dismembered Poland, and of Venice subdued by Austria!) No truce till this triumvirate is broken up! I want 300,000 men. I shall form a camp of 100,000 men at Bordeaux, one at Lyons, and one at Metz. I shall thus have a million of men! but I must have men full grown, and not children who encumber my hospitals, and die on my route."

66

Yes, Sire," said a councillor; "ancient France must remain intact." Napoleon was indignant at being so little understood, and at seeing the humility of his Council limit itself to this small portion of the Empire. "And Holland!" he exclaimed, striking with his clenched fist the arm of the chair"If I must give up Holland, I would rather give it back to the sea. Councillors of State, we require a new impulse! Every one must march! You are fathers of families; you are the chiefs of the nation; 't is you that must put it in motion-"

No enthusiasm, however, evinced itself in their manner. Napoleon looked at them, and continued, as if he had heard the word which beset his imagination, though as yet unpronounced. "You speak of peace, I think; I only hear this word peace! when every one should cry out for war!"

His Council decreed, without remark, the 300,000 men. Napoleon dismissed them with the watchword " Enthusiasm," but despondency was its only answer. He occupied himself,

Convocation of the Legislative Assembly.

with his usual feverish activity, in collecting around the weak skeletons of corps which he had left upon the Rhine, in Belgium and in Holland, the remains of veteran troops which he had at hand, detachments of his guard, and the new levies in garrison in the interior. But, with the exception of his old bands, reduced to about 80,000 men, his wishes were rendered fruitless by the exhaustion and the apathy of the empire. He issued orders to no effect; he called for chimerical contingents. He counted his men on his plans and his encampments, yet he had nothing but ciphers in his wide domains. His nights thus occupied produced nothing for the day. He displayed as much activity in his councils, in his capital, and in his palace, as at the period when he kept the whole world in motion from his cabinet; but he now only gave motion to himself. Military France had expired on the battle fields of Germany, of Spain, and of Russia; nothing but its general remained. He continued to speak of legions which no longer existed. His palace was become a palace of dreams. He was there alone with the spectre of his old universal power and his unconquerable will. He marched, but nothing followed him

IX.

In his communications to his Senate, Napoleon was fully as imperative as in the days of his victories. Certain beforehand of the servility of those men, worn out by revolution and grown old in adulation, he merely intimated his wishes, which they hastened to convert into a Senatus Consultum. He convoked the Legislative Assembly at Paris for the 19th December; but he feared that these silent representatives of the Departments, imbued with the general disaffection, might raise an importunate voice through the medium of their President. He foresaw that they might choose a man of independence for their President, and he therefore deprived them of their right to choose one. M. Molé was the Minister of Justice-a young man of illustrious name, precocious talent, and with opinions adapted to the time. Pushing his zeal for monarchy even to the extreme of despotism, venturing much to please