The Emperor’s new marriage was speedily followed by another event, which showed how little the ordinary ties and feelings of domestic life now weighed with him in the scale against ambition.  His brother Louis, a weak, but benevolent man, had in vain been cautioned by Napoleon, on his promotion to the Dutch throne, that, in his administration of this subaltern monarchy, “the first object of his care must ever be the Emperor, the second France, and the third Holland.”  Louis, surrounded by native ministers, men of great talents and experience, and enlightened lovers of their country, had his sympathies ere long enlisted on the side of those whom he might be pardoned for wishing to consider as really his subjects.  His queen, on the other hand, the daughter of Josephine, and the favourite of Napoleon, made her court, as far as she could, a French one, and was popularly regarded as heading the party who looked in all things to the Tuileries.  The meek-spirited Louis, thwarted by this intriguing woman, and grossly insulted by his brother, struggled for some time with the difficulties of his situation; but his patience availed nothing:  his supposed connivance at the violations of the Berlin and Milan decrees, in the same proportion as it tended to raise him more and more in the affections of the Dutch, fixed and heightened the displeasure of Napoleon.  He was at length summoned to Paris, and without a moment’s hesitation obeyed.  On arriving there he took up his residence in the house of his mother, and next morning found himself a prisoner.  Having abdicated his throne, Louis retired to Gratz, in Styria, and to that private mode of life for which his character fitted him:  his name continues to be affectionately remembered in Holland.  His beautiful wife, despite the fall of her mother, chose to fix her residence in Paris, where she once more shone the brightest ornament of the court.  On the 9th of July, 1810, the kingdom of Holland was formally annexed to the French empire; Amsterdam taking rank among the cities next after Rome.

In pursuance of the same stern resolution to allow no consideration to interfere with the complete and effectual establishment of the “continental system,” Buonaparte shortly afterwards annexed the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and the whole sea-coast of Germany, from the frontier of Holland to that of Denmark, to the French empire.  The King of Prussia was as yet in no condition to remonstrate against this new act of rapacity:  opposition from any other German state was wholly out of the question.

In truth there had been, for several years, but one power in the North of Europe at once decidedly adverse in spirit, and in any degree independent; and now, to all appearance, this last exception also was removed.  Gustavus IV., King of Sweden, had persisted in his original hatred of the French Revolution, and of Buonaparte, in opposition to a powerful party in that country, who considered the conduct of their sovereign, in