AFFAIRS OF FRANCE.
Fortune still seemed to smile on Napoleon. According to outward appearance everything was still in his favour. On the 20th of March his cup of prosperity seemed to be full; for his empress, Maria Louisa, was safely delivered of a son, to whom was given the titles of Napoleon Francis Charles Joseph, Prince of the French Empire, and King of Rome! Congratulatory addresses were poured in from all the departments and all the principal cities of France, as well as from Belgium, Holland, the Hanse Towns, the confederated states of the Rhine, and from Italy. Soon after this Napoleon opened the session of the Corps Législatif. In his speech he told the members that his son would answer the expectations of France, and bear to their children the sentiments which his father now bore to them; that they must never forget that their happiness and glory were dependent on the prosperity of the throne which he had raised, consolidated, and aggrandized by them and for them, and that the love of France was their first duty. This must have sounded oddly in the ears of some of the members; for at this time Dutchmen from Holland, &c., Germans from the Hanse Towns, Swiss from the Valais, which was now incorporated with France, and Italians from the confiscated states of the church had taken their seats in the Corps Législatif. With conscious pride Napoleon also declared to these “complaisant tools of tyranny,” that French dominion during the last year had been extended over sixteen departments, containing five millions of people; the mouths of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt, together with the whole course of the latter river, were now French; that improvements on a gigantic scale had taken place throughout the empire; and that its finances were in such a state that France could go on for ten years without borrowing money. It is possible, however, that Napoleon in making this last assertion had an eye to the plunder of some rich kingdoms, for it was well known that France was not in a prosperous condition. At this very time, indeed, the French, having lost their colonies, were substituting roasted horse-beans for coffee, and extracting sugar from beet-root. The boast of Napoleon, however, was pleasing to a vain-glorious people, and none dared dispute his word. Subsequently to making it, accompanied by his young empress, he visited Ostend, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, where he announced the division of the departments of Holland, and their proportion of the annual expenses. On his return to Paris, however, the course of events bid fair to run more roughly with Napoleon than they had hitherto done. All the cabinets of Europe were at this time anxious to break their fetters, and a rupture with Russia had become inevitable. The czar was offended by Napoleon’s seizure of Oldenburg, the extension of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and the continued occupation of Dantzic, and prepared for a contest; and Napoleon replied to his menaces by angry complaints, and by calling out fresh conscripts in order to meet him in the field. At the close of the year 1811 the preparations for war were on such a gigantic scale, that most men in France saw they would be followed by an unprecedented campaign.