The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

.History of the Consulate and the. Empire of France,
under _Napoleon. By M. A. Thiers.— V 01.,,,,;
XIII. Willis and Sotheron.
Volumes 14 and 15 will complete this great his- r
tonic masterpiece. The labours of M. Thiers are
consequently rapidly approaching their termina-
tion. This remarkable instalment (the antepenul !'
timate !) brings us in fact within view of the •
grand and overwhelming catastrophe—the pathetio
and heroic close of that wonderful narrative which
has been happily termed the Fairy Tale of • '
Modern History, the downfall and death
of the great Emperor and King Napo.
leon ! Within view of it—are we not ?—that -‘
grand and overwhelming catastrophe consummated
in the little death-chamber at Longwood, and
commencing at Waterloo—nay ! rather should it be
said dating back much earlier, from the rupture
With the Pontiff, from the seizure of the Peninsula,
from the invasion of Russia, from the divorce from .
Josephine. Those arch-errors, to say the least
of them, which brought down the avenging blade
of Nemesis, by snapping asunder the death-thread
of the later Damocles ! Already two out of these •
four enormous blunders on the part of Napoleon
have been described in earlier chapters by the
master-hand of M. Adolphe Thiers--the result -
of the occupation of Spain being here illustrated
by fresh anxieties, mingled with new glories and
new disasters—that of the putting aside the Bride
of Lore for tits Bride of Ambition being in its tura .

illustrated by the record of the birth and baptism
of that young Astyanax the King of Rome ! Be..
yond all question one of the most enthralling and
masterly portions of M. Thiers' narrative of the ,
War in Spain is that in which he here relates the
memorable siege and capture of Tarragone—a
victory by which General Suchet won for himself
the glorious baton of one of the Imperial Marshals
of Napoleon. As for the account given in the
previous chapter or book of this great history by
M. Thiers of the advent of the King of Rome, we
wmoarythdy of having
eclareitat once to be penned in words
fallen from the golden style of
Tacitus. Are we, in so speaking, guilty in its re-
gard of any hyperbolical exaggeration f Let the
subjoined excerpt from the volume under our
hand suffice of itself to demonstrate conclu-
sively to the contrary. • It is the passage in which
the annalist depicts the heroic Founder of the
Napoleonian Dynasty holding aloft in the presence •
of the grand dignitaries of his empire the infant
King of Rome in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
"On the following day, the 9th of June, Napoleon,
accompanied by his wife and his family, conducted his
son to Notre Dame, and presented him to the ministers
of religion. 1 hundred bishops and twenty cardinals ,
the Senate, the Legislative Body, the mayors of the
large towns, and the representatives of Europe filled the
sacred enclosure, where the imperial infant was to re-
ceive the waters of baptism. When the Pontiff had
concluded the ceremony, and given the King of Rome
into the hands of the governante of the children of
France, Madame de Montesquiou, the latter transferrei •
him to Napoleon, who, taking him in his arms and ele-
vating him above his head, presented him in this manner
to the magnificent assembly which assisted at the cere-
mony with a visible emotion which speedily became
general. This spectacle moved all hearts.
" How great is the mystery which surrounds human
life. How grievously would the spectators have been
surprised if, behind this scene of prosperity and gran-
deur, they could suddenly have beheld a crowd of rains,
torrents of blood and fire, the flames of Moscow, the ice
of the Beresina, Leipzig, Fontainblean, the Isle of Elba,
Saint Helena,tthe death of this august infant at 18 years
of age, in exile, unpossessed of a single one of those
crowns which were now accumulated on his head ; and
could they have beheld, besides, all those other revoln- •
tions by which his family was still to be raised up after
having been overthrown."
It is in the very book (xli.) recounting the par-
' titulars of the birth and baptism of Napoleon's
son, that the biographer of Napoleon describes at
•
considerable length, and with minute particularity,
the rupture between the Pope and the Emperor, a
rupture from which the paling of the star of the
great Bonaparte may be incontestibly asserted
to have commenced. The Council is the significant
title of this portion of the narrative, meaning by
that phrase the National Council, through which
Napoleon hoped, but hoped in vain, to overcome
the resistance of the Sovereign Pontiff. Very
striking indeed is M. Thiers' account of the unex-
pected issue of this notable assemblage (dating
from the 17th of June, 1811), "when the Prelates,
scarcely collected together a few hours, manifested. .
the sentiments with which they had become in-
spired—sentiments of sympathy for the sufferings
of Pius, and of aversion for the despotism of Na-
poleon ! About the most startling manifestation
of which sympathy was that evidenced through
the lips of the uncle of Napoleon himself. Refer-
ring to which M. Thiers says :
" Immediately after the sermon, Cardinal Pesch, with
the mitre on his head, ascended the throne, which was
decked out in the customary manner for this ceremony,
and took the oath prescribed by Pins IV.:—I acknow-
ledge the Holy Catholic and apostolic Roman Chura,
Mother and Mistress of all the other churches ; I promise
and swear sincere obedience to the Roman Pontiff, suc-
cessor to St. Peter, Chief of the Apostles, and Vicar of
Jesus Christ."

No marvel that a council thus inaugurated be-
came before long tedious and distasteful to the
haughty Lord of Europe, or that weary at last of
the religious contest involved in it, Napoleon be-
came only solicitous in the end to get rid
of the assembled ecclesiastics. Within the
compass of this same forty-first book
besides the record successively of the birth
and baptism of the King of Rome and of
the assembling and scattering of the National
Council—M. Thiers relates events as remarkable
in their way as the transference by Napoleon of
the portfolio of foreign affairs from the Duke of.
Cadore to the Duke of Bassano ; as the permission
accorded by Napoleon to Bernadotte to accept the
proffered crown of Sweden, a crown proffered to
the Prince of Ponte Corvo solely with a view to
the conciliation of the Emperor of France, or as
as he might then have been termed more correctly,
the Emperor of Europe ; above all, as the gradual
preparation for the final rupture between Napo-
leon and the Russian Autocrat. Tarragone, the
theme of the forty-second book, follows in due
course: an important section of the History, in
which we learn not merely the particulars of the
siege and seizure of that great fortress by
the French soldiers under General, afterwards
Marshal Sachet, but besides this—of the return of
Joseph to Madrid, of the temporary relief of Ba-
dajoz by Marmont and Soult, of the recapture of
Figueres, of the revictualling of Cuidad Rodrigo, of
its ultimate fall on the 19th of January, 1812, before
the desperate assault of the British forces under
Wellington, and of the ulterior nomination by Na-
poleon (prior to his own departure for Russia) of
his brother, King Joseph, as the Commander-in-
Chief of the whole of the imperial forces of France
in the Peninsula. Finally comes the forty-third
book—the beginning of the end—the book descrip-
tive of the commencement of Napoleon's downfall
by the ever-memorable and, for him, the wholly
disastrous passage of the Niemen on the 24th of
June, 1812—the momentous crossinc, of the Rubi-
con, of the Evil Fortunes of the Gallic Omar.
Whereupon M. Thiers closes this thirteenth vo-
lume of his " History" with these sad and solemn
reflections :

"Thus the die was cast. Thus Napoleon marched
towards the interior of Russia at the head of four hun-
dred thousand men, followed by two hundred thousand
others. Thus the same man who two years before, on
his return from Austria, had reflected a moment on the
lesson given at Essling, had taken pains to bestow peace
on the world and on his empire, to 'endow his throne
with hereditary stability, to assume the character of a
man of domestic tastes, to appease all enmities, to eva-
cuate Germany, and to force England to make peace ;
this same man, we say, was now advancing to the north,
leaving behind him France exhausted and disgustedwith.
a murderous glory, all independent minds indignante
he
et
his political tyranny, and Europe weary
Yo
had laid upon her; whilst all those feelings were
ine.e
sul-
lenly cherished in the ranks of the army :_hallan
took with him, an army composed of troops I
na-
tions, only held united by his genius and his prosperity.
distant tracts
What would become, in the midst
' fthe
army of six hun-
dredof country it now traversed, of this vast of the k
;
suddenly pale from before their sight _
for the world in a man
thousand men, following one star,
our misfortune, has been solved.
still remains to inform
i This
h thisis psrotabrlsehmo ntl do
ner it can never forget ! But it
informed by the clamou ref a terrible
it has only been d and heroic recital we are
catastrophe. In this sa
nothe aactereaucetsb,
Glory we
shall meet with at ever
it, by the detailed narrative of events, of that of which
every
about to engage.
of
beyond the
stepxi
en
3;
of
of a e
nb.u"t of
full of tear .
Greek Tragedy—a voice s and
It is the grand and awful voice the Choiuss
good fortune
tenderness, poignant with t
and thrilling with the tones of lamentation. •

The telegraphic accounts from China are to the 13th
of September, and report a i enewal of the adverse move-
ment of the rate of exchange at Shanghai, the quota-
tions having advanced from 7s. 2d. to 7s. 6d: This,
however, was owing to the last mail having broUght
only a small amount of silver, that of the 3d of July,
with 456,4371., not being yet due. At Canton there
bad been a favourable turn, the quotations having re-
ceded from ss. Oid. to 4s. 100. The export of tea to
date were 14,500,0001 b.,
and of silk 19 000 bales. The
season's supply of tea was expected to be very short.
Prices of silk, on account of the advices from. thidside,
were 30 &As per picul higher. 'The settlernents to date
,
had been between 32,000 and 35,000 bales.
The Mormonites have taken a beer-shop at Meet
near Bow and intend converting it into a.ohapel,
for. the purpose of expoUndiog "their pectgiar religions
v 1 FqK.
• •