Portugal was safe; and the character of the British army had been raised by another splendid victory in Spain; but these were trivial advantages compared with what Lord Wellington might have achieved, had his government placed him, as they could easily have done, at the head of an army of 80,000 or 100,000 men, while Napoleon was occupied with the campaign of Essling and Wagram.  Instead of strengthening Wellington’s hands in an efficient manner, the English cabinet sent 40,000 troops, under the command of the Earl of Chatham, an indolent or incompetent general, to seize the isle of Walcheren, and destroy the shipping and works at the mouth of the Scheld; nor was this ill-judged expedition despatched from Britain until the first of August, three weeks after the decisive battle of Wagram had been fought and won.  Lord Chatham took Flushing, and fixed his headquarters at Middleburg; but Bernadotte (Prince of Ponte Corvo) put Antwerp into such a state of defence that the plan of besieging that city was, ere long, abandoned.  A pestilence, meantime, raged among the marches of Walcheren; the English soldiers were dying by thousands.  The news of the armistice of Znaim arrived; and Lord Chatham abandoned his conquests.  A mere skeleton of his army returned to their own country, from the most disastrous expedition which England had undertaken since that of Carthagena, seventy years before.

The announcement of the armistice with Austria put an end, in effect, to all hostile demonstrations on the continent, the Peninsula alone excepted.  The brave Schill (as has already been said) was happy enough to fall in the field:  his followers, being at last compelled to surrender at Stralsund, were treated as rebels, and died with the constancy of patriots.  The Duke of Brunswick, who had by this time obtained considerable successes in Franconia, found himself abandoned, in like manner, to the undivided strength of Napoleon.  At the head of a few regiments, whose black uniform announced their devotion to the one purpose of avenging their former sovereign, the Duke succeeded in cutting his way to the Baltic, where some English vessels received him.  Germany, in apparent tranquillity, awaited the result of the negotiations of Vienna.

Napoleon, a few days after he returned from Moravia to Schoenbrunn, escaped narrowly the dagger of a young man, who rushed upon him in the midst of all his staff, at a grand review of the Imperial Guard.  Berthier and Rapp threw themselves upon him, and disarmed him at the moment when his knife was about to enter the Emperor’s body.  Napoleon demanded what motive had actuated the assassin.  “What injury,” said he, “have I done to you?” “To me, personally, none,” answered the youth, “but you are the oppressor of my country, the tyrant of the world; and to have put you to death would have been the highest glory of a man of honour.”  This enthusiastic youth, by name Stabbs, son of a clergyman of Erfurt, was, justly—­no doubt—­condemned to death, and he suffered with the calmness of a martyr.