Abensberg (20th April); at Eckmühl (22nd April); entered Vienna on the 17th of May, there annexing the Roman states to France; received a check at Aspernn and Essling (21st May); but signally defeated the Austrians at the great battle of Wagram (July 6-7). By the peace of Schönbrunn (14th October, 1809) Austria made new cessions of territory, and one of the results of the overthrow at Wagram was the marriage of the Austrian Archduchess Maria Louisa (daughter of the Emperor Francis) to Napoleon, who was divorced from Josephine in the December of 1809. The marriage by proxy between Napoleon and Maria Louisa (2nd April, 1810), was followed by the birth (20th March, 1811) of a son, proclaimed in his cradle King of Rome, known afterwards as Duke de Reichstadt. During a brief breathing-time of peace with all the world except England, whose armies under Wellington were defeating the French marshals in the Peninsula, Napoleon annexed Holland (Louis Bonaparte abdicating), the Hanse towns, and portions of the Germanic confederation to France. After his marriage to an Austrian archduchess, his relations with the Emperor Alexander grew cold. Alexander began by relaxing the operation of the continental system in his dominions, while he watched with alarm the advance of the French empire in northern Europe. Preparations had been made for some time on both sides, when in the May of 1812 Napoleon collected round him at Dresden his tributary kings, and princes, whose contingents were to swell the French army invading Russia. With the enormous force of more than six hundred and fifty thousand men, nominally, he set out on his fateful Russian expedition. The battles of Smolensk (17th August, 1812), and of Borodino (7th September), frightful in its carnage, allowed the weakened host to enter Moscow, September 14. Moscow was set on fire by the Russians, and after lingering among the ruins for more than a month, his overtures for peace being rejected. Napoleon began on the 15th October his memorable retreat, the most disastrous known in history. At the passage of the Beresina, November 22-28, the enemy completed the destruction which the cold had begun. With the loss of an enormous army. Napoleon hurrying forward reached Paris on the 18th December. Now began the war of liberation against the despot of Europe. Prussia joined Russia, Austria remaining for a while neutral. Collecting and organizing with wonderful celerity and energy a new army, Napoleon appeared in Germany and defeated the allies at Lützen (May 2, 1813), and at Bautzen (May 3). Through the mediation of Austria the boundary of the Rhine was offered to France and refused by Napoleon. Then Austria joined the coalition, and on the plain of Leipsic (October 16-18), the star of the conqueror paled, and Napoleon was signally defeated. Steadily refusing, in spite of defeat, the proposal that France should revert to her boundaries of 1792, Napoleon had to fight the allies on the soil of France itself, and in the closing struggle of the early months of 1813, he displayed, all military critics agree, the most consummate skill. But it was a losing game, for France herself was weary of him. On the 31st March, 1814, Paris capitulated. Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau on the 11th of April, with Elba assigned to him as a residence. He landed in that island on the 3d of May, and for a time appeared absorbed in the improvement of his little realm. Through the autumn and winter, however, his secret correspondence with his adherents in France was active. On the 26th of February, with his slender army of Elba, he set sail and landed at Cannes on the 1st of March—startling news for the members of the European congress, which at Vienna was rearranging the map of Europe, and who on the 13th passed a European sentence of outlawry on their resuscitated foe. Generals and soldiers joining him as he proceeded, on the evening of the 20th March, 1815, he entered Paris, from which Louis XVIII. had fled the night before. To outbid the Bourbons and to rally round him the republicans. Napoleon proclaimed a constitution, with two chambers, and the freedom of the press. Convoking deputies from the departments, he took the oath to the new constitution in the Champ-de-Mars, 1st June. The republican Carnot was minister of the interior during the Hundred Days, as this period of French history is called. Meanwhile, before the allies could march in concentrated force on France, he resolved to attack the English and Prussians in Belgium, and if possible defeat them in detail. "Crossing the frontier of Flanders," says Sir Archibald Alison, "on the morning of the 15th of June, 1815, he attacked and defeated the Prussians, eighty thousand strong, under Blucher at Ligny, and the same day sustained a bloody conflict with Wellington's advanced guard, in which he was at length routed at Quatre Bras. But two days after he met the stroke of fate. Wellington retired to and stood firm at Waterloo, whereon the 18th he gave battle to the French, with an army nearly equal in numerical amount, but greatly inferior in artillery and the quality of part of his troops, being not more than half of them English. A desperate battle ensued, in which both parties displayed prodigies of valour, and victory seemed long doubtful. At length the Prussians came up late in the evening, and Napoleon was by the united allied force totally defeated, with the loss of forty thousand men and fifty pieces of cannon." Leaving his army to its fate after the crowning discomfiture of Waterloo, Napoleon reached Paris on the night of the 20th June, and from the attitude assumed by the chambers saw that the sceptre had departed from him. He proposed a conditional abdication in favour of his son, but the proposal was rejected. As the enemy approached nearer Paris, he offered to give the aid of his skill as a simple volunteer in an operation against the Prussians, who had crossed the Seine. The offer was laughed at. On the 29th of June, 1815, he set out from Malmaison whither he had been forced to retire, and reached Rochefort in the hope of escaping to America. On communicating with Captain Maitland, commanding the English man-of-war Bellerophon, he found that he would not be permitted to proceed to America, and, addressing a letter to the prince regent, he placed himself under the protection of the English laws, and announced that his political career was terminated. On the 15th July Napoleon embarked on board the Bellerophon, which reached Plymouth on the 26th. Not allowed to land, he found himself a prisoner, and on the 30th he received the official information that he was relegated for life to captivity at St. Helena. Accompanied by a few faithful friends and followers, he arrived on that island on the 16th October. The custody of his person was intrusted to the British government, and, after a short sojourn elsewhere, Longwood was fixed on as his residence. A circuit of twelve miles was allowed him for exercise, and he was treated as a general officer, prisoner of war, and addressed as "General Bonaparte." Sir Hudson Lowe arrived early in 1816 as governor of St. Helena and custodier of Napoleon, who speedily quarreled with him. The refusal of the imperial title was one of the chief grievances of the exile of St. Helena. He spent the time not devoted to exercise in reading and conversation, but especially in dictating commentaries on his life, achievements, and reign. For four years before his death he had complained of pain in the region of the stomach. At the beginning of 1821 the symptoms became alarming, and he could scarcely retain food of any kind. Early in April he felt that his end was approaching, and recognized that he was dying of the disease which had killed his father—cancer of the stomach. He made his will, and among the later wishes which he expressed was one that his heart should be sent to the Empress Maria Louisa. Towards his end he professed himself a christian, and spoke of a project which he had discussed with Alexander of Russia at Tilsit for the union of all the sects of Christendom. On the 3d of May he received the viaticum for the second time. On the following day he bade farewell to the generals who still shared his captivity, and exclaimed, "I am at peace with mankind!" His last words, it is said, were—"Téte d'armée" as if he fancied himself on the field of battle. He expired at six in the evening of the 5th of May, 1821; and while he was dying a violent hurricane swept over the island, shaking many of its houses to their foundations and tearing up some of its largest trees. The expression of his countenance after death is described as having been remarkably placid and indicative of mildness. On the 9th of May he was buried in a spot of his own choice—a garden in the middle of a deep ravine, under the shade of two willow trees, near a fountain from which water had been daily brought for his special use. In 1840, under the premiership of Thiers, the French government received the permission of that of England to exhume and transport to France the remains of Napoleon. They were brought by the Prince de Joinville in a French frigate from St. Helena, and on the 15th of December, 1840, were deposited in a temporary resting-place in a chapel of the Invalides, whence in the presence of the imperial family, in April, 1861, they were transferred to the magnificent tomb sculptured for them by Pradier in the church of the Invalides. In 1858 was begun the publication of the "Correspondence de Napoleon I.," at the expense and under the superintendence of a commission nominated for the purpose by Napoleon III. For a complete
