appointment with universal delight.  Addicted to drinking, smoking, and gambling, and little conversant with the higher branches of war as an art, Blucher was at first despised by Napoleon.  But his technical deficiencies were abundantly supplied by the skill of Scharnforst, and afterwards of Gneisenau; and he himself possessed such influence over the minds of his men in the day of action, and was sure to rally them so rapidly after defeat, and to urge them on so keenly when fortune was more favourable, that ere long the Emperor was forced to confess that no one gave him so much trouble as that “debauched old dragoon.”  Blucher hated the very names of France and Buonaparte with a perfect hatred; and, once more permitted to draw his sword, he swore never to sheathe it until the revenge of Prussia was complete.

The Crown Prince of Sweden landed with 35,000 men at Stralsund, and advanced through Mecklenburg, while the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia were concentrating their armies in Silesia.  It was announced and expected that German troops would join Bernadotte, so as to enable him to open the campaign on the lower Elbe with a separate army of 100,000.  Lord Wellington was about to advance once more into Spain, with his victorious veterans.  Three great armies, two of which might easily communicate with each other, were thus taking the field against him at once; and yet, such was Napoleon’s pride or obstinacy, that he would make no sacrifice whatever to secure the assistance of Austria.  He still adhered to his resolution of entering into no general peace which should not recognise Joseph as King of Spain; and refused absolutely to listen to any proposals which included the cession either of Illyria or the Tyrol.  Ere he once more left Paris, he named Maria Louisa Regent in his absence; but this was a circumstance not likely to have much weight with the wavering counsels of the Austrian.

While Napoleon’s military preparations were in progress, he made an effort to conciliate that large party of his subjects, who had hitherto looked on him with coldness as the oppressor of the head of the Catholic church.  During his absence in Russia, the Pope had been removed once more to Fontainebleau, where he now occupied apartments in the palace, under strict surveillance of the police.  The Emperor presented himself suddenly in his hunter’s dress before the holy father on the 13th of January; and exerted his talents with such success, that preliminary articles of a new concordat were at length drawn up.  But in his eagerness to produce a favourable impression on the Catholic public, Napoleon published these preliminary articles, as if they had formed a definite and ratified treaty; and Pius, indignant at this conduct, which he considered as equally false and irreverent, immediately announced his resolution to carry the negotiation no further.

The Pope, however, was the only man in France who as yet durst openly confront the rage of Buonaparte.  As the time when he was expected to assume once more the command of his army in the field drew near, the addresses of his apparently devoted subjects increased in numbers, and still more in the extravagance of their adulations.