1813.] BATTLE OF VITTORIA. 201 of her general. For five years he had been fighting, and it seemed as if the French gripped Spain as tightly as ever. Money and precious lives had been sacrificed. Napoleon would soon return victorious from Russia, and all chance of saving Spain would be at an end. Wellington spent the winter in Portugal preparing for a final overthrow of the French. Joseph Bonaparte was now in command, having quarrelled with his brother's marshals. And so, when the vines began to shoot and the wheat was ankle deep, British drums and bugles sounded a long farewell to Portugal, for this must be the last campaign in the Peninsula. It is said when Wellington, at the head of his well-trained army, crossed the Douro into Spain, he turned round on his horse, and, taking off his hat, cried, "Farewell, Portugal: I shall never see you again!" Then on he marched, his iron will more determined than ever, on towards the Pyrenees to cut off Joseph, who had left Madrid for the last time, in his brief and troubled reign. "I looked beyond the limits of Spain," said Wellington as he marched on. "I knew the impression my advance would make on Europe." Joseph's army now filled the valley of Vittoria70,000 strong. He still might escape over the Pyrenees back to France. But Wellington took care to block the royal road to France. At dawn on the morning of June 22, the battle of 202 SPAIN FOR THE SPANIARDS. [1813. Vittoria began. By evening, the unfortunate King Joseph was flying from the field, and Wellington, standing victorious on the scene of action, was watching the retreating French. As far as the eye could reach, fields and hillsides were covered with a flying multitude of soldiers and camp-followers. The streets of Vittoria were blocked with waggons and carriages. The rout was complete: the splendid French army was shattered. The spoil that fell to Wellington was enormous. It was the result of five years' plunder in Spain. Chests of money, baggage, gunpowder, plate, pictures, were left behind. A general rush took place to seize the forsaken treasure, and soon the plain was strewn with things; while the soldiers, that night, marched about the camp arrayed in turbans and plumes, carrying about French monkeys, lap-dogs, and parrots. When Napoleon heard of the disaster, he was furious. "What is going on in Spain?" he cried. "Joseph could have collected a hundred thousand men they might have beaten the whole of England." "Tell Joseph," he added later, "his behaviour has never ceased to bring misfortune on my army for the last five years. It is time to make an end of it. There was a world of folly in the whole business." No wonder poor Joseph vanished from history. He sailed away to America, where he ended his 1813.] days in peace. Mexico. NAPOLEON'S LAST HOPE. 203 Once he was offered the crown of "I have worn two crowns: I will not risk a third," he answered pathetically. So after five years of dogged perseverance Wellington stood on the summit of the Pyrenees-a conqueror. Napoleon at last had found a rival. 42. THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE. "Farewell to the land where the gloom of my glory NAPOLEON had returned to Paris at Christmas-time in 1812. The following spring found him taking the field again, for Prussia had suddenly sprung to arms and allied herself with Russia against France. Napoleon had lost his Grand Army. The heroes of that fatal march, slept their last sleep beneath the winter snows of Russia, but he was undaunted still. His veterans were dead, but he called on the youth of the French empire. He commandeered lads of seventeen-the last hopes of France-to fight his battles. They were not soldiers, but children; enthusiastic, superbly brave, but without the strength or endurance needed for such a 204 BATTLE OF THE NATIONS. [1813. campaign. And it sounds almost brutal to hear their general complaining, that they "choked his hospitals with their sick and strewed his roads with their dead bodies." 66 grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about the lives of a million of men," Napoleon had explained. And so great was his genius, that with this young army, he defeated the Russians and Prussians in the two battles fought at Lutzen and Bautzen. The defeated armies now looked to Austria for help, and not in vain. Austria joined them, England joined them. One by one the nations of Europe arose, to shake off the yoke of Napoleon. "A year ago," said the French Emperor, "all Europe marched with us; now it all marches against us." It was five months after he had received the news of Wellington's victory at Vittoria, that Napoleon was beaten at last by the allies at Leipzig, in Germany. It was a terrible fight, lasting three days, and known to history as the "Battle of the Nations." It was almost a massacre in its loss of life; but it shook Napoleon's throne, and it broke his power. On November 9, 1813, Napoleon returned unexpectedly to Paris. He found the capital sullen and gloomy at the news of fresh disaster to the Empire. His Empress threw herself into his arms in floods of tears. The country was crying for peace. 1814.] NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL. 205 Inspire my papa, O God, with the desire to make peace, for the welfare of France and of us all," was the nightly prayer of the baby-king of Rome. Napoleon listened and smiled. But he rejected the terms of peace now offered by the four allies, and they prepared for the invasion of France herself. "We must march to Paris," said the famous Prussian general, Blücher. "Napoleon has paid his visit to every capital in Europe, and we can do no less than return the compliment." Yet once again, Napoleon prepared to march against them. On January 23, he held his last great reception in the palace of the Tuileries. "Gentlemen," he said to the assembled company, a part of France is invaded. I am about to place myself at the head of my army, and with the help of God and the valour of my troops I hope to drive the enemy back beyond the frontiers." Then he led forward his Empress and the little king of Rome, a flaxen-haired child of three, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard. 66 If," he added in a broken voice-" If the enemy approaches the capital, I intrust all that I hold dearest in the world-my wife and my son to the devotion of the National Guard." Amid sobs and shouts of fidelity, he carried round the child in his arms. Before the morning dawned on January 25, he said good-bye to Maria Louisa |