officers included, giving a disposable effective of 155,000 men ready to take the field. By the 13th of June he had raised this force to 276,982 men, officers included: that is, 247,609 of the Line, and 29,373 of the Imperial Guard. The number disposable for war was 198,130; and it therefore follows that Napoleon had increased the general effective by 53,010 men, and that part of it disposable for war by 43,130. But it is unfair to test the genius of Napoleon by this result. Why he did not succeed in raising more men has been already explained. It does not touch his reputation as an administrator; it does not diminish the credit which his partisans claim for his energy and industry and ability. For, during the period of preparation, he not only sustained a sharp conflict with the politicians, but he directed and completed the fortification and armament of the north side of Paris; supplied the first line of frontier fortresses with provisions for six months, and the fortresses of the other lines in proportion; threw up entrenched works round several provincial towns, and fortified the defiles of the Jura, the Vosges, and the Argonne; he succeeded in obtaining horses absolutely required for the cavalry and artillery, and supplied the latter with harness for nearly 600 guns; he more than doubled the number of effective muskets. In addition to this, he totally reorganized the army, revived the Imperial Guard, and provided for the increase of the regiments of the line from two to five battalions, thus giving employment to the half-pay officers, so discontented under the Bourbons; he restored to the regiments the old numbers so foolishly taken away; he added two squadrons to each regiment of cavalry; and he raised upwards of 200 battalions of National Guards.

Beurnonville left Paris, only 300,000 muskets over and above those in the hands of the 150,000 men ready to take the field.

In short, by unceasing labour, he mastered the whole. military details of the empire; and, in so far as it was possible, he saw that what he ordered was done. No man could have effected more, few so much, with the same means in the same time.

For although Napoleon, speeding from town to town, and gathering round him, as he went, the soldiers who loved the eagles so well, was a grand and portentous figure of the melodramatic sort, yet, in reality, his triumph-the most showy in all his life—had nothing substantial about it except the sabres, bayonets, and cannon, and the hearts of the wreck of his great armies. The Emperor had appeared once more; but when he entered Paris he ceased to be Emperor. He had to compound and to temporize. Those writers alone take a correct view of the supreme crisis in the career of Napoleon who insist that his only chance of success against combined Europe was to be found in a revival of the old Committee of Public Safety, in an appeal to the revolutionary spirit, in an emphatic declaration that the country was in danger, and in rousing a whole people to arms. But these very writers forget that the wars of the Empire had exhausted the spirit as well as the body of the Revolution, and that no matter how imperiously the Emperor might have stamped his foot upon the soil of France, all his stamping could not have called forth the race of men whom he had consumed in his gigantic wars. Nothing remained but the military spirit. To blame Napoleon for not making himself, in 1815, "the arm of the democracy," to believe that the deeds of the Convention could be done twice in one generation, was to be blind to facts and to common sense. It has been said, indeed, by Count Thibaudeau, that the most formidable enemy of France and of Napoleon was Napoleon himself. But that expresses only half the truth.

In what condition was France in 1815? For a generation she had been in arms against the world. She had exhausted her vigour in the unrestrained indulgence of her passion for military glory. Her blood was impoverished; her muscles relaxed, her nerves unstrung, her moral force debilitated by twenty-three years of almost uninterrupted warfare. The laurels gathered in a hundred battles were poor compensation for a paralyzed industry and a crippled commerce, for desolate cornfields and half-cultured vineyards. She was la belle France no longer. She had used her prime in the debauch of war. Some traces of her strength and beauty still remained, but they only served to remind her of the noble heritage she had bartered for glory. The exultation inspired by Napoleon's return from Elba was but the feverish excitement of a moment, an outburst of expiring military passions, soon to be quenched in blood upon the war-trodden fields of Belgium.

§ 5. Champ de Mai: Meeting of the Chambers.

The Emperor had resolved on war, but before he quitted Paris for the army, he played the principal part in two striking political scenes-the famous Champ de Mai and the opening of the Chambers. The Acte Additionnel was submitted to the people, after a fashion which we have seen revived in our own time, and with a similar result-it was accepted. What we may call the solemn inauguration of this political instrument was to be celebrated at the Champ de Mai; when, in the presence of the Imperial Guard, the Line, the National Guard, civil delegates from the departments, and the people of Paris, the acceptance of the Acte Additionnel was to be proclaimed, and the Emperor was to take a solemn oath that he would observe and cause to

be observed the constitutions of the empire; and the troops of all kinds were to swear that they would defend the national flag against the enemies of France. This ceremony did not take place in May, as originally intended, but on the 1st of June. It was a revival of the theatrical shows of the empire. Napoleon, wearing his Imperial robes, appeared on a lofty platform erected in the Champ de Mars, attended by ministers, by prelates, by officers of the army, and surrounded by a mass of soldiers and thousands of people. But although, in his address to them, he appealed to their patriotism, and strove to influence their passions, yet it is admitted that, except in the army, he called forth no abiding enthusiasm for himself, his cause, or his throne, which he said was "the palladium of the independence, honour, and rights of the people." The Champ de Mai was a failure. Oh, that is what is called a Champ de Mai," it was said; we have seen nothing new in a ceremony announced with so much emphasis; the Revolution has accustomed us to these sights!"

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Napoleon had devised this imitation of "an antique usage dear to France," as it was described in Carnot's letter to the Prefects; he submitted, with great reluctance, to the meeting of the Chambers. He had issued the Acte Additionnel as a kind of promissory note, to be honoured if circumstances permitted—(“ à chaque circonstance sa loi”) -when the coming war was over, and had never intended that an assembly should sit during the campaign. But having "begun to reign as a constitutional king," he found that his repugnance to constitutional assemblies must give way, and that he must act his part, if he could, to the end, 'Quand la paix sera faite, nous verrons." The peers were nominated by the Emperor from a list prepared by his ministers. Their dignities were to be hereditary, and he

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selected those who he judged would most faithfully support his views of government. The deputies were summoned to co-operate with the Emperor in "saving France;' but in the distracted state of the country the Government could exercise little influence over the choice of the electors. On the 3rd of June they met, upwards of six hundred strong, and occupied three days in placing their business machinery in working order, and in choosing a president. They selected M. Lanjuinais, and Napoleon confirmed the selection. Yet he felt that the Chamber had chosen this ancient revolutionist, opposition senator of the Empire, and peer of the Restoration, to mark its distrust of Imperial good faith. On the 7th of June Napoleon opened the session in person and delivered a speech. Declaring that he was commencing his career as a constitutional monarch, he invited the Chambers to consolidate and co-ordinate the scattered constitutions of the Empire, remarking that men are powerless to insure the future, and that institutions alone determine the destinies of nations-a truth it had taken him long to learn. He pointed to the coalition of kings, whose armies were on the frontiers, and exhorted the peers and representatives of France to imitate the Roman Senate, and die rather than survive dishonour. It was a brief but elaborate production. The speaker seemed constrained by his new part. The impassioned and condensed eloquence of the Emperor is nowhere to be found in the utterances of the constitutional sovereign. Three days afterwards the two Chambers had voted addresses to the monarch, and on the 11th they presented them to the Emperor at the Tuileries. There was a marked difference in their substance. That of the Peers professed the strongest attachment to the Emperor, but at the same time did not fail to remind him that he had surrendered absolute power and submitted his Government