The Powers of Europe and Fall of Sebastopol

by A British officer

The mighty genius of Carnot, who, in the energetic language of Napoleon, “organized victory,” soon appeared at the head of the military department of France. Austere in character, unbending in discipline, and of indefatigable energy, he resembled the great patriots of antiquity more than any other statesman of modern times, and in the midst of peril and disaster he infused his unparalleled vigor into his department, and France became one vast workshop of arms, resounding with the note of military preparation. The roads were covered with conscripts hastening to their destination; and fourteen armies, and 1,200,000 men, were soon under arms. The siege of Dunkirk, undertaken by the English, was raised, and the Austrian and Prussian armies were driven back to the Rhine.

The siege of Toulon, whose inhabitants had revolted from the horrors of the Reign of Terror, was remarkable for the horrible carnage with which it was accompanied, as well as for the appearance of a young officer of artillery, then chief of battalion, Napoleon Bonaparte. Its capture, which was owing to his genius, was accompanied by the destruction of nearly the whole French fleet in its harbor by the retreating English. At eight in the evening a fire-ship was towed into the harbor; soon the flames arose in every quarter, and fifteen ships of the line and eight frigates were consumed. The volume of smoke which filled the sky, the flames which burst as it were out of the sea, the red light which illuminated the most distant mountains, and the awful explosions of the magazines formed, says Napoleon, “a grand and terrible spectacle.” The arms of France, on the frontiers of Flanders and elsewhere, now began to be successful, while the dubious conduct or evident defection of Prussia paralysed all operations on the Rhine; and before the close of 1794 the Republican armies, in a winter campaign, invaded Holland and subdued almost the whole of that rich country without a battle. Amsterdam, which had defied the whole power of Louis XIV., was conquered; these successes were followed by others still more marvellous. On the same day on which General Dandels entered Amsterdam, the left wing of the army made themselves masters of Dordrecht, containing six hundred pieces of cannon, ten thousand muskets, and immense stores of ammunition. The same division passed through Rotterdam and took possession of the Hague, where the States General were assembled; and to complete the wonders of the campaign, a body of cavalry and flying artillery crossed the Zuyder Zee on the ice, and summoned the fleet lying frozen up at the Texel; and the commander, confounded at the hardihood of the enterprise, surrendered his ships to this novel species of assailant; and at the conclusion of the campaign, the Spaniards, defeated, were suing for peace. The Piedmontese were driven over the Alps; the Allies had everywhere crossed the Rhine; Flanders and Holland were subjugated; La Vendée pacificated; and the English fled for refuge to Hanover; 1,700,000 men had combated under the banners of France; and peace was concluded soon after between France, Spain, and Prussia.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 15th of August, 1769. Corsica is essentially Italian, and to this day a state of society prevails which differs from that of any other part of Europe. The wildest and most deadly feuds are common among its principal families. The people are turbulent and excitable. Napoleon was too great a man to derive distinction from any adventitious advantages, and when the Emperor of Austria, after he became his son-in-law, endeavored to trace his connexion with the obscure Dukes of Treviso, he answered that he was the Rudolph of Hapsburg of his family, and that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Montenotte. His mother, a woman of no common beauty, being at the festival of the Assumption on the day of his birth, was seized with her pains during high mass. She was brought home and hastily laid upon a couch covered with tapestry representing the heroes of the Iliad, and there the future conqueror was brought into the world. The winter residence of his father was usually at Ajaccio; but in summer the family retired to a villa near the isle of Sanguinere, once the residence of a relation of his mother’s, situated on a romantic spot near the sea shore. The house is approached by an avenue overhung by the cactus, acacia, and other shrubs, which grow luxuriantly in a southern climate. It has a garden and lawn showing vestiges of neglected beauty, and surrounded by a shrubbery permitted to run to a wilderness. There, enclosed by the cactus, the clematis, and the wild olive, is a singular and isolated granite rock, beneath which the remains of a small summer-house are still visible. This was the favorite retreat of young Napoleon, who early showed a love of solitary meditation, during the period when his school vacations permitted him to return home. And it may be supposed, perhaps, that here the magnificence of his oriental imagination formed those visions of ambition and high resolves, for which the limits of the world were, ere long, felt to be insufficient. At an early age he was sent to the military school at Brienne; his character there underwent a rapid alteration; he became thoughtful, studious, and diligent in the extreme.

On one occasion, while the youths were playing the death of Cæsar in their theatre, the wife of the porter, well known to the boys, presented herself at the door, and being refused admittance made some disturbance; the matter was referred to the young Napoleon, who was the officer in command on the occasion. “Remove that woman who brings here the license of camps!” said the future ruler of the revolution. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the military school at Paris, and at sixteen he received a commission in a regiment of artillery. When the revolution broke out he adhered to the popular side. After the siege of Toulon, Dugommier, the general in command, wrote to the Convention, “Reward and promote that young man, for if you are ungrateful to him he will raise himself alone.” He commanded the artillery in 1794 during the campaign in Italy. Dumbion, in command of the army, who was old, submitted the direction of affairs principally to Bonaparte. His intimacy with the younger Robespierre, and his refusal of a command in La Vendée in the civil insurrection, led to his being deprived of his rank as a general officer, and he was reduced to private life. But his talents being known led to his being called to the command of the forces in Paris, which triumphed over the sections; his decision saved the Convention. The story of his introduction to and marriage of Josephine is too well known to need repetition.

In 1796 Bonaparte took command of the forces destined to operate against Italy. With an army destitute of almost every thing, he, in a short time, overran Piedmont, conquered a peace with Sardinia, passed the Po and crossed the Adda at the Bridge of Lodi. The nervous eloquence of Napoleon, in his address to his soldiers, and the splendor of his success, intoxicated Paris with joy. The first day, they heard that the gates of the Alps were opened; the next, that the Austrians were separated from the Piedmontese army; the third that the Piedmontese army was destroyed and the fortresses surrendered. The rapidity of this success, the number of prisoners, exceeded all that had yet been witnessed. Every one asked, who was this young conqueror whose fame had burst forth so suddenly, and whose proclamations breathed the spirit of ancient glory?

“The 13th of Vendemiaire and the victory of Montenotte,” said Napoleon, “did not induce me to think myself a superior character. It was after the passage of Lodi that the idea shot across my mind that I might become a decisive actor on the political theatre; then arose for the first time the spark of great ambition.”

With pomp and splendor Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Milan, to the sound of military music and the acclamations of an immense concourse of spectators. The rapidity of the French victories in Italy, and the destruction of the Austrian armies, sent to oppose them, crowned Napoleon as the greatest chieftain of his time. The marshes of Arcola, the heights of Montebello, and the plain of Rivoli witnessed his successive glories. But while the arms of Republican France were conquering in Italy, they suffered reverse and defeat under Moreau on the frontiers and the Rhine; and the Archduke Charles drove back the French legions who had dared to penetrate Germany. At the close of the year the death of the great Empress, Catharine of Russia, and the accession of Paul to the throne, changed, in many important respects, the fate of the war.

In the midst of threatened invasion from France, a general panic seized England, and while the public funds had fallen from 99 to 51, a run commenced on the Bank of England, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. This caused those orders in Council in February, 1797—suspending specie payments, which, although only considered temporary at the time, continued a quarter of a century. The defeat of the Spanish fleet at St. Vincent, by Nelson and Collingwood, soon quelled the fear of invasion in England.