cut for Poland two years before, so different was their state of discipline. In that earlier period the strictest order was maintained among themselves, whatever violence they might be permitted to offer to the inhabitants. Even their pillage was regulated, and proceeded upon a sort of principle which insured an equal partition of spoil. Their duties, their supplies, were divided amongst the different corps with a scrupulous attention to justice and regularity. But in 1813, this system was dissolved, and all appeared disorganized and in disorder. It was not uncommon for one brigade to intercept and slaughter the bullocks intended to feed another, and the alter natives of waste and of famine were to be witnessed among the French soldiers, even within the same lines. I have seen," continued the same eye witness," within a walk of two miles, one band of Frenchmen satiated with food, flinging away and trampling upon their half-eaten rations of fresh beef, and another dispersed in groups, seat ed upon the skeletons of dead horses, and disputing with each other the refuse which the ravens and wolves had left them."—All acted on the principle of seizing what they could for themselves, without regard to the wants of their comrades; and, in proportion as such tumultuary bands became formi. dable to the cultivators of the soil, and the inhabitants of the towns where they were stationed, they lost, through want of discipline, the terror with which they were wont to impress the armed enemy. If such was the case before the battle of Leipsic, that great defeat, with all the calamities attending the rapid retreat towards the Rhine, and the losses sustained in the battle of Hanau, were additional shocks to their remaining discipline. But, in the field of battle, the exertions of the French soldiers were undiminished, and their courage unbroken; and the observa

tions which we have made, must be understood as confined to their quarter-master-generals' department, and to that of the commissariat, and as chiefly affecting the marches, combinations, and maintenance of their armies.

Other evils assailed the unfortunate remains of the French army of 1813. Their dispirited and broken battalions had scarce found a refuge in the line of strong fortresses beyond the Rhine, when an infectious distemper, the consequence of privations and fatigue, broke out in the garrisons where they were quartered, and carried off numbers of those who had escaped the sword of the allies. Yet, it was upon these bands, thinned and diseased as they were, that France had to rely as the first barrier against those evils of invasion, which she had so often inflicted upon other countries. These troops occupied various towns and fortresses upon the Rhine, from Strasbourg to Coblentz, upon the left bank of the river, under the Marshals Victor and Marmont. The former general occupied the upper part of the stream, from New-Brisach to Weissembourgh. The latter held a line, covered by the fortresses upon the river, from Landau to Coblentz. Neither army exceeded ten or twelve thousand men, the gleanings of the bloody fields of Leipsic and Hanau.

In Belgium, and upon the Lower Rhine, the defensive preparations of the French were more considerable. Alarmed at the progress of the Dutch revolution, at the preparations made to support it in the British ports, and at the insurrections already threatened in Belgium, almost all the disposable forces in the north of France were placed under the command of Macdonald, to whom was entrusted the defence of the Lower Rhine, from Cologne to Nimeguen. An army of 25,000 men, under General Decaen,

was specially destined to the protection of Antwerp, while Noorden, Gorcum, Bois-le-Duc, and Bergen-opZoom, all which fortresses the French still retained, were strongly garrisoned by the remains of Molitor's army. Buonaparte has in this posture of affairs been censured by tacticians, for attempting to maintain too extended a frontier, and for shutting up so large a portion of his regular army in distant garrisons, which became of little use in checking the invasion of an enemy numerous enough to spare troops to besiege, or at least to blockade them, without materially diminish ing the immense force with which he prepared to penetrate to the French capital. It was, said such reasoners, the fault of Buonaparte's system, or rather of his temper, that he could not yield to circumstances, and that, as formerly in the case of the numerous garrisons left in Dresden, Magdeburgh, and other strong places on the Elbe, he now clung with useless pertinacity to the preservation of his Belgian conquests, when prudence required the concentration of all his disposable force to maintain the very existence of his authority, and the independence of the country which he governed.

Yet Napoleon's conduct in the case of Holland and Belgium, although the consequence of a choice of difficulties, may be defended on reasonable grounds. The fortresses which he held were of the first class of strength, and, should regular sieges be undertaken against them, were likely to find ample employment for a great army. They overawed the insurgents of Holland, and kept down the discontented in Belgium, a country which was obviously about to follow the example of the Dutch, and add its numerous population to the ranks of his enemies, if the removal of the French garrisons should afford them an opportunity.

Above all, the possession of these fortresses rendered the co-operation of the English with the allied forces circuitous and precarious; and it was of no little importance to divide from the forces and councils of his continental enemies, those of a foe so persevering and inexorable. Hopes of victory also still gleamed before him; and while these Belgian strong-holds remained in his power, they afforded means by which, in the event of his affairs taking a favourable turn in the ensuing campaign, he might speedily recover all of which the insurrection of Holland had deprived him.

The allies, in the meanwhile, lost no time in preparing to improve the favourable condition of their affairs. The impulse of past success and of future hope communicated itself to each of the confederate states, and the exertions which they made were of a nature commensurate to the mighty enterprize before them. From England reinforcements were sent with all haste, to support the insurgents of Holland, and to co-operate with Bulow, whose right wing, stationed in the more eastern of the Dutch provinces, formed the extreme right of that immense allied army, whose left was lost among the mountains of Switzerland, occupying thus a frontier of at least five hundred miles in extent. The British troops in Holland were placed under the command of Sir Thomas Graham, now Lord Balgowan, a general whose exploits have frequently before commanded our attention, and which will again soon claim to be distinguished. We postpone the consideration of them for the present, because the campaign in Belgium, although it embraced events highly worthy of historical notice, was unconnected with the combats and successes of the grand army, which finally ended the war by occupying Paris. It is only necessary here to observe, that in furthering an

object so important to the regeneration of British commerce, as the independence of Holland, no effort was spared on the side of the British war department; and that notwithstanding the large army maintained and reinforced under the Duke of Wellington, in the south of France, a body of troops, amounting to at least 10,000 men, was put under the command of General Sir Thomas Graham, to co-operate in the final expulsion of the French, not only from the territory of our ancient allies, the states of Holland, but also from Flanders. This number, aided by Bulow and the Dutch patriots, was sufficient fully to engage the attention of the French troops in that quarter, and to threaten those fortresses which Buonaparte seemed to have reserved as stepping-stones, (to use a popular and expressive phrase,) for regaining possession, at some favourable opportunity, of the opulent and important territories of the Netherlands.

In Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the operations for recruiting the allied armies proceeded with equal zeal on the part of the people and of the government. Russia neither forgot what she had suffered, nor what she had achieved; and her people, easily converted into soldiers, because poor, hardy, and submissive, were sent forth by their lords or boyars, even in larger proportions than they were demanded by the ukase of the emperor. The utter most depths of the desart had caught the impulse. Tribes of wandering Baskirs and Tartars, who had never before heard the name of a Frenchman, had become acquainted with it by the conflagration of Moscow, and by the spoils which their brethren of the Caspian and Ukraine collected during the retreat of the French. These barbarians took arms in immense numbers; and, though very different in manners and discipline from the real Cossacks, and as inferior to them in valour as in

military appointments, were confounded by the French under the same general name, and added, by their savage ppearance, to the terrors which that name excited. The Russian army, including reserves, might amount to nearly 200,000 men.

Austria, eager to avenge the successive disgraces and defeats of Ulm, Austerlitz, and Wagram, made the most extended levies through her dominions. The war was in the highest degree popular, both with the soldiers and the people, because it had for its object the redemption of the military honour of Germany, and the vindication of her civil liberty. Italy, so frequently the scene of hostilities between France and Austria, and through the north-eastern frontier of which Buonaparte had formerly directed a vital blow at the power of the latter, was at present a secondary object of consideration to both, as success in that quarter was almost certainly dependent on the event of the campaign between the grand armies. The Italian war was maintained by Count Bellegarde, on the part of Austria, against Eugene Beauharnois, the Viceroy, as he was called, of Italy. But the events of this contest, with the remarkable defection of Murat, King of Naples, from the cause of his brotherin-law Buonaparte, belong to another part of these annals. The main body of the Austrian army, amounting to 150,000 men, with a reserve of nearly equal numbers, was stationed along the Upper Rhine, and extended its operations from Geneva to Spires.

Such were the immense preparations of Russia and Austria. Those of Prussia, if the extent and population of that state are considered, greatly exceeded the proportion of both. With the people of that country, so lately held in the most ignominious as well as the most destructive thraldom by Buonaparte, the war against his au