Napoleon, lost in the labyrinths of his exorbitant ambition, afforded at length a chance of redress to the nations he had enslaved.  Elevated so suddenly and so high, he seemed suspended between two influences, and unfit for either.  He might, in a moral view, be said to have breathed badly, in a station which was beyond the atmosphere of his natural world, without being out of its attraction; and having reached the pinnacle, he soon lost his balance and fell.  Driven from Russia by the junction of human with elemental force, in 1812, he made some grand efforts in the following year to recover from his irremediable reverses.  The battles of Bautzen and Lutzen were the expiring efforts of his greatness.  That of Leipzig put a fatal negative upon the hopes that sprang from the two former; and the obstinate ambition, which at this epoch made him refuse the most liberal offers of the allies, was justly punished by humiliation and defeat.  Almost all the powers of Europe now leagued against him; and France itself being worn out by his wasteful expenditure of men and money, he had no longer a chance in resistance.  The empire was attacked at all points.  The French troops in Holland were drawn off to reinforce the armies in distant directions; and the whole military force in that country scarcely exceeded ten thousand men.  The advance of the combined armies toward the frontiers became generally known:  parties of Cossacks had entered the north of Holland in November, and were scouring the country beyond the Yssel.  The moment for action on the part of the Dutch confederate patriots had now arrived; and it was not lost or neglected.

A people inured to revolutions for upward of two centuries, filled with proud recollections, and urged on by well-digested hopes, were the most likely to understand the best period and the surest means for success.  An attempt that might have appeared to other nations rash was proved to be wise, both by the reasonings of its authors and its own results.  The intolerable tyranny of France had made the population not only ripe, but eager for revolt.  This disposition was acted on by a few enterprising men, at once partisans of the House of Orange and patriots in the truest sense of the word.  It would be unjust to omit the mention of some of their names in even this sketch of the events which sprang from their courage and sagacity.  Count Styrum, Messieurs Repelaer d’Jonge, Van Hogendorp, Vander Duyn van Maasdam, and Changuion, were the chiefs of the intrepid junta which planned and executed the bold measures of enfranchisement, and drew up the outlines of the constitution which was afterward enlarged and ratified.  Their first movements at The Hague were totally unsupported by foreign aid.  Their early checks from the exasperated French and their overcautious countrymen would have deterred most men embarked in so perilous a venture; but they never swerved nor shrank back.  At the head of a force, which courtesy and policy called an