rn--if the war between France and
Naples, which subsisted in 1814, had ever been terminated by treaty?
Murat lingered for some time in obscurity near Toulon; and, relanding on
the coast of Naples after the King of the Two Sicilies had been
re-established on that throne, in the vain hope of exciting an
insurrection and recovering what he had lost, was seized, tried, and
executed. This vain, but high-spirited, man, met his fate with heroic
fortitude; and Napoleon, at St. Helena, often said that the fortune of
the world might have been changed, had there been a Murat to head the
French cavalry at Waterloo.

The result of this rash expedition enabled Austria to concentrate all
her Italian forces also for the meditated re-invasion of France. The
Spanish army began to muster towards the passes of the Pyrenees: the
Russians, Swedes, and Danes were already advancing from the north: the
main armies of Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhenish princes were rapidly
consolidating themselves along the Upper Rhine. Blucher was once more in
command of the Prussians, in the Netherlands; and Wellington,
commanding in chief the British, Hanoverians, and Belgians, had also
established his headquarters at Brussels by the end of May. Every hour
the clouds were thickening apace, and it became evident, that, if
Napoleon remained much longer in Paris, the war would burst
simultaneously on every frontier of his empire.

He had no intention to abide at home the onset of his enemies; but the
situation of civil affairs was such as to embarrass him, in the prospect
of departure, with difficulties which, in former days, were not used to
perplex the opening of his campaigns.

Hard indeed was his task from the beginning--to conciliate to himself
heartily the political faction who detested, and had assisted in
overthrowing the government of the Bourbons, and this without chilling
the attachment of the military, who despised these coadjutors, both as
theorists and as civilians, and had welcomed Napoleon only as the
certain harbinger of war, revenge, and plunder. How little his soldiery
were disposed to consider him as owing anything to a civil revolution,
appeared almost from the commencement of his march from Cannes. It was
observed that these haughty bands moved on in contemptuous silence
whenever the populace cheered his approach, and shouted _Vive
l'Empereur_ only when there were no _pequin_[71] voices to mingle in the
clamour. Every act of Napoleon afte