The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-02 00:00:00

embassy JEROME acquitted himself completely to
his Imperial brother's satisfaction. He had the
personal gratification of conducting back to Genoa
250 of these released captives, and of there
receiving from the population of the city a
grateful ovation for his lramane achievement.

Appointed before the close of 1805 to the com-
mand of the 74 line-of-battle ship, the Veteran,
JLROME for the third time sailed for the West
Indies. There he cruised about for eight months
in their immediate vicinity—on his homeward
voyage capturing six English merchantmen, but
being subsequently compelled to escape himself
from a British squadron by stranding his vessel
(without, however, losing his crew) upon the coast
of Brittany, under the batteries of the little har-
bours of Concarneau. Arriving in Paris shortly
afterwards, he was in 1806 decorated with the
Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour, created
an Admiral, and proclaimed a Prince of the Empire.
Here, however, JEROME'S nautical career termi-
nated. Quitting the navy as a profession uncon-
genial to his tastes, and entering the army forth-
with, Prince JEROME, in the November of 1806,
was placed in conjunction with VANDAMME, at the
head of the ninth corps of the Grand Arraee, a
column of 25,000 troops of Bavaria and Wurtem-
burg. The task entrusted to him by the Emperor
and King NAPOLEON was the reduction in rapid
sequence of the six fortresses of Silesia—
Glogau, Breslau, Brie g , Neisse, Glatz, and
Schweidnitz. This undertaking, difficult though
it was, JEROME and VANDAMME, with their
25,000 men, rapidly and most successfully
accomplished : the former himself in person
directing the blockade of Glogau in December. On
the 17th of the January following (1807), he was
appointed Governor of the Province of Silesia. And
having besides this been in March promoted to the
rank of General of Division in the Grande Armee,
he had the satisfaction of capturing Glatz, the last
of the Silesian strongholds, on the 14th of June,
1807, the very day of the renowned battle of Fried-
land.

It was on the 12th of August, in the same event-
ful year, that Prince JEROME was married to the
Princess FREDERICA CATHARINE SOPHIA Dono-
=rot, daughter of the reigning King of WURTEM-
BURG. With this second wife Hill. lived happily
to the date of her death—namely, until the 28th of
November, 1838—having by her three children :1
their first-born, JEROME NAPOLEON, born in 1814,
and who died at the age of thirty-three, in 1847.
And two others, a son and daughter still surviving
—the Princess MATILDA LETITIA WILHELMINA,
born on the 27th of May, 1820, and married to
Prince ANATOLE DE3IIDOFF of San Donato, and
the Prince NAPOLEON JOSEPH CHARLES PAUL, born
on the 9th of September, 1822, and who was
until the birth of the Prince Imperial (Enfant de
France), heir presumptive to the Imperial crown of
NAPOLEON. Almost within the date of his honey-
moon H.I.H. was proclaimed by the Conqueror of 11
Europe—King of Westphalia. In this capacity
JEROME continued for very nearly eight years
uninterruptedly—namely, from the Ist December,
1807, the day of his proclamation, to the 26th Oc-
tober, 1813, the day of his downfall from sove-
reignty. History has since told the story of his
vigorous rule, and—more than its vigour—has re-
lated its " liberality." As a reigning Prince, he
was not without a love for genuine magnificence.
A considerable portion of his capital he resolutely
tore down, summoning the famous Parisian archi-
tect GRANDJEAN to superintend the labour of its
reconstruction. As illustrative of his kingly
energy and determination, it should be remem-
bered of him that in 1809 a formidable insurrec-
tionary movement in his dominions was crushed
out by his strong hand—King JEROME, as ALISON
emphatically remarks in recording the event, "evinc-
ing in these critical circumstances a spirit worthy
of his family." The precarious tenure of his sove-
reignty—precarious in so far that it depended:en-
tirely upon the whim and pleasure of his Imperial
brother, Suzerain virtually of the whole European
continent, directly or indirectly, from the Gulf of
Bothnia to the Straits of Gibraltar, from the
Skager Rack to Cape Matapan—was strikingly in-
dicated during the following year, 1810, when the
Electorate of Hanover was suddenly separated from
the Kingdom of Westphalia by a stroke of NAPO-

LEON'S pen ; Hanover being, thereupon, absorbed
within the boundaries of the vast French Empire,
under the distinctive title of the 32d military

division.

Summoned by NAPOLEON to take part in 1812 in
the stupendous Russian Expedition, King JEROME
received from the EMPEROR the command of the
German Division of the Grande Armee, this single
division alone numbering in all a gigantic force of
no less than 75,000 men. At the commencement
of the expedition the young Monarch distinguished
himself even among that host of heroes, the Marshals
of France, the Paladins of the later and greater
CHARLEMAGNE. A daring movement improvised
by JEROME at the battle of Mihilow, covered him
with a momentary glory which was soon afterwards
quenched, however, by a movement less fortunate
at the far more important battle of Smolensk°. In
consequence of this last mentioned casualty the King
of WESTPHALIA was summarily dismissed from the
command of the German Division, in a sudden and
impetuous burst of indignation on the part of the
Emperor, an outburst of wrath which his Majesty
afterwards avowedly regretted. The remainder of
the narrative is soon related. It may be summed
up in one pregnant sentence, that JEROME—almost
dethroned by the incursion of CHERNICHEFF—Was
finally swept away from the kingdom of West-
phalia by the arms of BERNADOTTE. This, of
course, occurring in the midst of the general dis-
ruption of the mighty fabric of sovereignties raised
by the spells of the wonder-working gmius at the
beck of the magical sword of NAPOLEON BONA-
PARTE! NAPOLEON, besides making himself Em-
peror of France, King of Italy, Protector of Ger-
many, and Mediator of Switzerland—having made
his brother JOSEPH King of Spain, his brother
Louis King of Holland, his brother JEROME King
of Westphalia, his brother-in-law JOACHIM King
of Naples, his favourite JuNoT Governor of the
Kingdom of Portugal : beyond this transforming
the electorates of Bavaria and Saxony and Wur-
temburg into sovereignties, and surrounding him-
self by subordinate kingdoms, and feofs of the
empire, such as Illyria, Algarves, Dalmatia, and
Estramandura. When the whole marvellous
system crumbled together under the pressure
of events—when, as Lord BROUGHTON has written,
the whole world, "from the Tanais to the Thames,"
seemed to be rising against that " one dauntless
mortal"--the brothers of NAPOLEON fell by neces-
sity, of course, with the bunter of the dynasty. In
the midst of the universal subversion JenomE
yielded up to the Allies the Crown he had worn
for eight years as Kieig of Westphalia. Afterwards
came the Hundred Days, with the second and final
crash of the, fortunes of NAPOLEON. Here it was,
in that closing scene, upon the field of Waterloo,
that, as the evening fell in, when the last hopes of
the EMPEROR were dashed by the arrival of the
Prussians, the Prince JEROME, grasping the hand
Of NAPOLEON, exclaimed, " Here, brother, all who
bear the name of BONAPARTE should die." At