which, being guilty of insubordinate conduct, he was shortly afterwards dismissed. Returning to his native place, he remained there until the Revolution, when he a second time entered the army—a step on this occasion attended with happier results than before. Partly from his military talent and ardour, and partly from his enthusiastic support of the principles then dominant, he rose rapidly through the various gradations, finally attaining the rank of colonel. His lip-worship of liberty and equality, notwithstanding, was soon metamorphosed into the more profitable devotion to the cause of Bonaparte, to which he thenceforth consecrated all his powers. At the affair of the sections in 1795 he afforded considerable aid to Napoleon; and the keen eye of the latter, ever on the watch for talent that might further his own cherished schemes of empire, marked the service, and recognized the merits of him who rendered it. Murat reaped his reward in being attached to the personal staff of Bonaparte during the famous Italian campaign of 1796. Ever after, the fortunes of the innkeeper's son were linked with those of his illustrious patron. In a hundred battles he signalized his dash and daring; and the brilliancy of his cavalry charges extorted even the admiration of his enemies. To the fact also that his character was not slightly impregnated with the romantic element, and that he gloried in reviving, both as regarded wonderful exploit and outward habiliment, so much of the valorous chivalry of old, may be doubtless attributed a large measure of the popularity that Murat was privileged to acquire. Be this as it may, his military career was one of unquestioned splendour, and apart from the mere flash and glitter of those externals in which he was perhaps too vainly solicitous to shine, his peculiar talents in the field procured for him the flattering appellation from the lips of Napoleon himself, of "the best cavalry officer in Europe." It was the cavalry that he commanded in the campaigns of Egypt, Italy, Austria, and Prussia; and it was when wielding that important arm of the service, that he succeeded in gaining his fairest laurels. Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau, will bear perpetual witness to his fame. The lustre of such achievements, even in its earliest dawn, invested him with a kind of halo before the eyes of his admiring fellow-soldiers, and their sentiments were shared by Napoleon himself. In 1802 General Murat received the hand of Caroline Bonaparte, youngest sister of the first consul, and in 1806 he was raised to the dignity of a sovereign prince, by the title of Grand-duke of Berg and Cleves. The next prominent event in Murat's history was his command of the French army, when the invasion of Spain took place in 1808. The June of that year saw Joseph Bonaparte appointed ruler of the Spanish dominions, and in the following July, a decree emanated from the arch-kingmaker, ordaining "his dearly beloved cousin Joachim Murat, grand-duke of Berg, to the throne of Naples and Sicily, which remains vacant by the accession of Joseph Napoleon to the kingdoms of Spain and the Indies." So the career of this poor soldier of fortune seemed prosperously closed at last, and the son of the innkeeper of Perigord had gained the goal of royalty! However, it was only king of Naples he became, for his attempts to reduce Sicily were frustrated by the English commanders. Sir John Stuart and Admiral Martin. Even from Naples he was obliged betimes to absent himself, to follow the standard of his imperial relative. In 1812 he accompanied the expedition to Russia at the head of the cavalry of the grand army, and during the advance on Moscow he displayed all his old fiery valour; but, disheartened and disgusted by the disastrous retreat, and with the memory of some fancied slights received from Napoleon still rankling in his bosom, he began to draw off from the side of the hitherto victorious emperor. After the battle of Leipsic he altogether deserted the imperial cause, and united himself to the enemies of Bonaparte. Such conduct temporarily saved his crown; yet, alarmed for its ultimate security, he commenced, on the return of Napoleon to France in 1815, to negotiate during the Hundred Days both with him and the allied sovereigns. At last reverting to his first love, he decisively sided with the former, and invaded the papal territories, threatening also Northern Italy. Waterloo determined his fate; he was compelled to flee from his kingdom; and in a half, or rather wholly, insane attempt to land again in arms on the coast of Calabria, he was captured and condemned to be shot, by the base sentence of a Neapolitan court-martial. His final words were—"Soldiers, save my face! Aim at my heart!" They fired, and he fell dead. This was on the 13th October, 1815, when he had attained the forty-fifth year of his age. There was in Murat much warm and noble feeling, and as a sovereign he pursued a mild and liberal course; but his politics were of the most vacillating kind. In fact, he seems to have been totally devoid of fixed principle; yet we need not judge him with undue severity. The lives of the imperial marshals have still to be written, we mean written in the proper way and with the befitting spirit, when the true place shall be assigned to each brilliant planet that revolved round that great central sun. There, not first, but among the first, will move the knightly figure of him whose white plume ever waved in the van of battle, and who, when he exchanged it for a monarch's diadem, only gave keener point and deeper significance to the old fatal truth, that a man may be a "beau sabreur," a dashing warrior, without possessing the higher gifts that go to form the character of the genuine αναξ ανδρων, the true ruler of his fellows. By the sister of Napoleon (who, after the tragic fate of her husband, lived many years in Austria under the title of Countess of Lipano, and finally died at Florence in 1839) Murat had several children, both sons and daughters. Of the sons one, Lucien, survives, who resides in France, and is generally understood to have some hankering after his father's former kingdom.—J. J.
MURATORI, Ludovico Antonio, an erudite and voluminous author and historian, born at Vignola in the Modenese, 21st October, 1672; died in Modena, 23d January, 1760. In 1685 he entered the jesuit schools of Modena, but not satisfied with the hours allotted to study, devoted to it also his leisure, and commenced that habit of restricting his sleep to seven hours in the twenty-four, which continued with him all his life. Subsequently, under various masters, he became versed in philosophy, dogmatic theology, morality, and law. He acquired the Greek language without an instructor, and with the learned Abate Bacchini explored the field of sacred and profane literature. On the 16th December, 1694, the university of Modena awarded to him the laurel crown of doctor of law. In February of the next year he removed to Milan to enter on his office of co-prefect of the Ambrosian library; and on the 24th of the following September he was ordained priest, having previously assumed deacon's orders. To his location in the Ambrosian library we owe his "Anecdota," published in 1697-98. In 1700 Rinaldo I., duke of Modena, recalled him from Milan to constitute him keeper of the archives of the house of Este, to which at his own request was added the post of librarian, his services being rated at an annual stipend of one hundred pistoles. The remainder of his peaceful life, with the exception of three years, was passed at Modena, his death being preceded by a brief period of deafness. In 1734, through the influence of his friend Apostolo Zeno, the chair of belles-lettres in the Paduan university was offered for his acceptance, a distinction which he modestly declined. The years 1714-15-16, he—by the duke's desire, and under the patronage of King George I. of England, whose house (of Brunswick) is an offshoot of that of Este—occupied in travelling from place to place, visiting and inspecting the valuable archives stored in various parts of Italy; and at this period were accumulated materials for his great work, "Antichità Italiane." In 1716 he was created provost of S. Maria della Pomposa in Modena. This church, as well as that of S. Agnese in Ferrara, he rebuilt at his own cost, and was a liberal donor not only to these, but also to other benefices which he held. His love of literature and learned labours never seduced him to neglect his high ecclesiastical duties. By him not only the needy who presented themselves for alms were relieved, but objects for charity were sought out, and any poor whom he encountered in the streets, brought home, warmed, and fed. He instituted a society of charity for the protection of widows, orphans, and destitute persons; he founded a Monte di Pietà, and by his own desire was constituted visitor to the ducal prisons: and when after his death his accounts were looked into, it was discovered that his alms and church gifts had outrun the united revenues of all the benefices he held. Merely to enumerate the works of Muratori would occupy a considerable space. A descriptive catalogue of them, amounting to sixty-four in number, may be consulted in Tiraboschi's Biblioteca Modenese. His project for a republic of letters was put forth under the assumed name of Lamindo Pritanio, but he eventually both avowed the authorship and admitted the unpracticable nature of a design which won for him keen opponents and eager partisans. The extent of his erudition and grasp of his mind are attested by the astonishing range of subjects which he
