622 



FRANCE. 



and reached the ancient capital of the Czars, only to oe a witness of its conflcgration A 

 severe winter destroyed his whole army ; and the man, who shortly before, had the most pow 

 erful host in the world at his disposal, beheld himself in a paltry sledge, fleeing obscurely home- 

 ward across the frozen deserts of Poland. Yet never was the genius of this extraordinary 

 person more strikingly manifested than ni his unexampled reverses. A few months saw him 



Buonaparte cronsing the .Hps. 



again c!< (he head of 300,000 men, and though abandoned by his allies on the field of battle, he 

 made a glorious resistance against the combined efibrts of Europe. His capital was occupied 

 by the enemy in IMarch, 1814, and he abdicated the crown, and retired to Elba. 



The Bourbons, in the person of Louis the Eighteenth, returned to the thi one, from which 

 the revolution had expelled them, butihe disgrace of a foreign occupation wounded the national 

 pride. Napoleon availed himself of the general discontent, and landed at Frejus on the 1st of 

 March, 1815. The siglit of his face drove everything that was Bourbon out of the country, 

 and he entei'ed Paris at the head of the troops sent to take him prisoner. He levied an army 

 for the national defence, gained the victory of Ligny, and was defeated the next day at Wa- 

 terloo. He again abdicated, threw himself upon tlie generositv of tlie English, and died a 

 prisoner and an exile, at St. Helena, in 1821. 



