PREFACE. 



AMONG the striking examples of vicissitude in 

 human affairs presented by history, it would 

 be difficult to produce any one more extraordinary 

 in its circumstances and important in its effects 

 than that which the present year has exhibited. 

 The preceding year, indeed, which witnessed the 

 discomfiture of a mighty attempt to ruin one em- 

 pire by the accumulated force of another, followed 

 by prodigious loss to the assailing power, closed 

 with a prospect of great changes in the relative state 

 of Europe ; but the extent to which these changes 

 have actually proceeded could scarcely have been 

 contemplated by the most sagacious or sanguine 

 political speculators. That the wild and unlimited 

 schemes of ambition which had urged the French 

 Ruler to annex remote provinces to his overgrown 

 dominion, and trample upon all the rights of in- 

 dependent states, must sooner or later be crushed 

 by their own vastness, and the universal alarm and 

 odium they were calculated to create, might almost 

 with certainty have been predicted from the unde- 

 viating course of events in the records of mankind ; 

 but that the wheel of fortune should revolve with so 

 much rapidity, who could hope or foresee? In 1812 

 France led against Russia, along with her native and 

 associated troops, the contingents of her allies, Prus- 

 sia, Saxony, Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhenish con- 

 federates. In 1813 all these were leagued against 

 her, and in conjunction with Russia, displayed hos- 

 tile banners upon French ground on one frontier, 

 whilst another, with its strong barrier of the Py- 

 Tenees, was forced by a combined army of English, 



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