On the 5th of December, Napoleon, mortified and sick at heart, abandoned the miserable wreck of his once magnificent army, and repaired to Paris.
Though the mighty Emperor had been defeated more by the elements than the Russian foe, the result of the campaign was to raise the renown of the Czar’s arms; and Alexander, to complete the work thus begun, called upon the other powers of Europe to vindicate their independence against his former ally. The invitation was not unavailing; for with the reverses of the French arms commenced the defection of Napoleon’s allies. A triple alliance was formed between Russia, Austria, and Prussia; the Emperor of the French was designated as the common enemy; the allied sovereigns undertook their campaign for the liberties of Europe, and their army marched triumphantly into Paris.
The Congress of Vienna assembled in 1814; and while Prussia was bent on the acquisition of Saxony, Alexander applied his energies to obtaining the duchy of Warsaw, which was still occupied by his troops. He was successful in his object; and what remained of Poland was handed over to the Czar, on condition of his ruling it by a special and constitutional government.
Ten years passed over; Alexander, in 1825, died of a fever at Taganrog; Constantine, the next son of the murdered Paul, a man of savage spirit, renounced his hereditary claim to the crown, and the vacant throne was ascended by his younger brother, Nicholas. That daring autocrat, within a year of his accession, undertook against Persia a war, which terminated in his favor; and, in 1828, he availed himself of the temporary weakness of Turkey to commence hostilities, to cross the Balkan mountains, and to impose upon the Sultan, among other hard terms, the Protectorate of the Danubian Principalities.
Meanwhile, the policy of Nicholas, and the personal character of the Grand Duke Constantine, rendered the condition of the Poles intolerable; a general insurrection took place in 1830; and the Czar, deeming that this outbreak released him from his engagements, determined upon the extirpation of Polish nationality. His army marched with that object into Poland; the nobles of the unhappy nation were exiled to Siberia; the patrician ladies were given as helpmates to the invading soldiers; and their infants were conveyed away to be educated with Russian ideas, and inspired with Russian sentiments. The constitution of Poland was then withdrawn; her laws were abrogated; and the ancient nation, over which John Sobieski had reigned, and for which Kosciusko had fought, was declared an integral part of an Empire that had been fostered into importance by the genius of Peter the Great, extended in its limits by the lawless appropriations of the second Catherine, and aggrandized by the unscrupulous ambition of her despotic descendants. The death of Nicholas took place in 1855, at the time when the combined armies of Turkey, England, and France, were besieging Sebastopol, the details of which are given in the preceding pages. He was succeeded by his son Alexander II.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
COLONIAL HISTORY
North America, with the exception of Mexico, was not colonized by Europeans so early as the southern part of the Continent. The discoveries of Cabot, A. D. 1497, had given England a valid claim to the whole coast from Labrador to Florida; but the country presented none of the allurements that had incited and rewarded the Spanish adventurers. Fertile and well wooded, indeed, intersected by noble rivers, and inclosing safe and capacious harbors and bays, it seemed a promising region for permanent settlements and agricultural industry, but offered only a faint prospect of wealth to be obtained from gold and silver mines, or from plundering the native inhabitants. A party of French Huguenots attempted to colonize Florida; but the Spaniards, who claimed the country, surprised the infant settlement, and massacred nearly all its inhabitants, not sparing even the women and children, A. D. 1564. This slaughter was soon avenged by a Frenchman, Dominique de Gourges, who captured Fort Carolina, where the victors had established themselves, and hanged all his prisoners; but he made no attempt to form another colony, and did not even disturb the little Spanish city of St. Augustine, which remained, but did not flourish, as the only permanent settlement of Europeans on the coast north of the Gulf of Mexico during the sixteenth century.
The English, under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh and his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, attempted to create a settlement on the coast of what was subsequently called North Carolina. Three parties of colonists were sent thither, A. D. 1583–1587, but they were few in number, and ill provided with necessaries; one returned, and the other two perished, either from starvation or the hostility of the natives. Early in the seventeenth century, the French, under de Monts and Champlain, explored the country around the Bay of Fundy and that bordering on the St. Lawrence, laying claim to Acadie (Nova Scotia) and Canada, which together were called New France. In 1609, the Dutch sent out Henry Hudson, who explored the American coast for a considerable distance, entered New York harbor, and sailed up the river which now bears his name. Stimulated by a feeling of rivalry with the French, the English renewed their attempts at colonization on a larger scale. James I granted the whole country, from Cape Fear to Passamaquoddy Bay, to two companies of merchants and adventurers. The southern portion, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude, was given to the London Company; and the northern part, from the thirty-eighth to the forty-fifth degree, was to be colonized by the Plymouth Company.