Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ flames, lamentations, and tears. Twenty-five years of universal conflagration; the numerous coalitions that added fuel to the flame; the revolution and devastation of Europe; the bloodshed of nations; the frightful debt of England, by which all these horrors were maintained; the pestilential system of loans, by which the people of Europe are oppressed; the general discontent that now prevails – all must be attributed to Pitt. Posterity will brand him as a scourge. The man so lauded in his own time, will hereafter be regarded as the genius of evil. Not that I consider him to have been willfully atrocious, or doubt his having entertained the conviction that he was acting right. But St. Bartholomew had also its conscientious advocates. The Pope and cardinals celebrated it by a Te Deum; and we have no reason to doubt their having done so in perfect sincerity. Such is the weakness of human reason and judgment! But that for which posterity will, above all, execrate the memory of Pitt, is the hateful school, which he has left behind him; its insolent Machiavellianism, its profound immorality, its cold egotism, and its utter disregard of justice and human happiness. Whether it be the effect of admiration and gratitude, or the result of mere instinct and sympathy, Pitt is, and will continue to be, the idol of the European aristocracy. There was, indeed, a touch of the Sylla in his character. His system has kept the popular cause in check, and brought about the triumph of the patricians. As for Fox, one must not look for his model among the ancients. He is himself a model, and his principles will sooner or later rule the world. The death of Fox was one of the fatalities of my career. Had his life been prolonged, affairs would have taken a totally different turn. The cause of the people would have triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."

      Austria really desired peace. The march of Napoleon's armies upon Vienna was an evil more to be dreaded than even the consolidation of Napoleon's power in France. But Austria was, by loans and treaties, so entangled with England, that she could make no peace without the consent of the Court of St. James. Napoleon found that he was but trifled with. Interminable difficulties were thrown in the way of negotiation. Austria was taking advantage of the cessation of hostilities, merely to recruit her defeated armies, that, as soon as the approaching winter had passed away, she might fall, with renovated energies, upon France. The month of November had now arrived, and the mountains, whitened with snow, were swept by the bleak winds of winter. The period of the armistice had expired. Austria applied for its prolongation. Napoleon was no longer thus to be duped. He consented, however, to a continued suspension of hostilities, on condition that the treaty of peace were signed within forty-eight hours. Austria, believing that no sane man would march an army into Germany in the dead of winter, and that she should have abundant time to prepare for a spring campaign, refused. The armies of France were immediately on the move. The Emperor of Austria had improved every moment of this transient interval of peace, in recruiting his forces. In person he had visited the army to inspire his troops with enthusiasm. The command of the imperial forces was intrusted to his second brother, the Archduke John. Napoleon moved with his accustomed vigor. The political necessities of Paris and of France rendered it impossible for him to leave the metropolis. He ordered one powerful army, under General Brune, to attack the Austrians in Italy, on the banks of the Mincio, and to press firmly toward Vienna. In the performance of this operation, General Macdonald, in the dead of winter, effected his heroic passage over the Alps, by the pass of the Splugen. Victory followed their standards.

      Moreau, with his magnificent army, commenced a winter campaign on the Rhine. Between the rivers Iser and Inn there is an enormous forest, many leagues in extent, of sombre firs and pines. It is a dreary and almost uninhabited wilderness, of wild ravines, and tangled under-brush. Two great roads have been cut through the forest, and sundry woodmen's paths penetrate it at different points. In the centre there is a little hamlet, of a few miserable huts, called Hohenlinden. In this forest, on the night of the 3d of December, 1800, Moreau, with sixty thousand men, encountered the Archduke John with seventy thousand Austrian troops. The clocks upon the towers of Munich had but just tolled the hour of midnight when both armies were in motion, each hoping to surprise the other. A dismal wintry storm was howling over the tree tops, and the smothering snow, falling rapidly, obliterated all traces of a path, and rendered it almost impossible to drag through the drifts the ponderous artillery. Both parties, in the dark and tempestuous night, became entangled in the forest, and the heads of their columns in various places met. An awful scene of confusion, conflict, and carnage then ensued. Imagination can not compass the terrible sublimity of that spectacle. The dark midnight, the howlings of the wintry storm, the driving sheets of snow, the incessant roar of artillery and of musketry from one hundred and thirty thousand combatants, the lightning flashes of the guns, the crash of the falling trees as the heavy cannon-balls swept through the forest, the floundering of innumerable horsemen bewildered in the pathless snow, the shout of onset, the shriek of death, and the burst of martial music from a thousand bands – all combined to present a scene of horror and of demoniac energy, which probably even this lost world never presented before. The darkness of the black forest was so intense, and the snow fell in flakes so thick and fast and blinding, that the combatants could with difficulty see each other. They often judged of the foe only by his position, and fired at the flashes gleaming through the gloom. At times, hostile divisions became intermingled in inextricable confusion, and hand to hand, bayonet crossing bayonet, and sword clashing against sword, they fought with the ferocity of demons; for though the officers of an army may be influenced by the most elevated sentiments of dignity and of honor, the mass of the common soldiers have ever been the most miserable, worthless, and degraded of mankind. As the advancing and retreating hosts wavered to and fro, the wounded, by thousands, were left on hill-sides and in dark ravines, with the drifting snow, crimsoned with blood, their only blanket; there in solitude and agony to moan and freeze and die. What death-scenes the eye of God must have witnessed that night, in the solitudes of that dark, tempest-tossed, and blood-stained forest! At last the morning dawned through the unbroken clouds, and the battle raged with renovated fury. Nearly twenty thousand mutilated bodies of the dead and wounded were left upon the field, with gory locks frozen to their icy pillows, and covered with mounds of snow. At last the French were victorious at every point. The Austrians, having lost twenty-five thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, one hundred pieces of artillery, and an immense number of wagons, fled in dismay. This terrific conflict has been immortalized by the noble epic of Campbell, which is now familiar wherever the English language is known.

      "On Linden, when the sun was low,

      All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,

      And dark as winter was the flow

      Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

      "But Linden saw another sight,

      When the drums beat at dead of night,

      Commanding fires of death to light

      The darkness of her scenery." &c.

      The retreating Austrians rushed down the valley of the Danube. Moreau followed thundering at their heels, plunging balls and shells into their retreating ranks. The victorious French were within thirty miles of Vienna, and the capital was in a state of indescribable dismay. The Emperor again sent imploring an armistice. The application was promptly acceded to, for Napoleon was contending only for peace. Yet with unexampled magnanimity, notwithstanding these astonishing victories, Napoleon made no essential alterations in his terms. Austria was at his feet. His conquering armies were almost in sight of the steeples of Vienna. There was no power which the Emperor could present to obstruct their resistless march. He might have exacted any terms of humiliation. But still he adhered to the first terms which he had proposed. Moreau was urged by some of his officers to press on to Vienna. "We had better halt," he replied, "and be content with peace. It is for that alone that we are fighting." The Emperor of Austria was thus compelled to treat without the concurrence of England. The insurmountable obstacle in the way of peace was thus removed. At Luneville, Joseph Bonaparte appeared as the embassador of Napoleon, and Count Cobenzl as the plenipotentiary of Austria. The terms of the treaty were soon settled, and France was again at peace with all the world, England alone excepted. By this treaty the Rhine was acknowledged as the boundary of France. The Adige limited the possessions of Austria in Italy; and Napoleon made it an essential article that every Italian imprisoned in the dungeons of Austria for political offenses, should immediately be liberated. There was to be no interference СКАЧАТЬ