Croats, the Tyrolese,
all the Illyrians were rising, and--so far from giving aid in the
defence of the French soil--it was manifest that the Viceroy could
hardly hope to maintain himself much longer in Lombardy. An English
naval force had already taken Trieste: the Adriatic was free; and, to
complete Napoleon's perplexity as to this quarter, it was no longer a
secret that Murat, his brother-in-law, his creature, was negotiating
with Austria, and willing, provided that Naples were guaranteed to him,
to array the force of that state also on the side of the confederacy.

As little comfort could Buonaparte derive if he turned to the Pyrenees.
He had sent Soult thither from Dresden, to retrieve if possible the
fortunes of the army defeated in June at Vittoria; and that most able
general, with considerable reinforcements, had entered Spain, and
attempted to relieve the siege of Pamplona--of which strong place, as
well as St. Sebastian Lord Wellington had resolved to be master before
he should pass the French frontier with his victorious army. But Soult
also had been twice defeated; the fortresses had fallen: except a
detached, and now useless force under Suchet in Catalonia, there
remained no longer a single French soldier in Spain. The Peninsula had
at length been delivered by the genius of Wellington; and his army were
cantoned within the territory of France ere the close of the campaign.
Such were the tidings which reached Napoleon from his Italian and
Spanish frontiers, at the very moment when it was necessary for him to
make head against the Russians, the Austrians, and the Germans, chiefly
armed and supplied at the expense of England, and now rapidly
concentrating in three great masses on different points of the valley of
the Rhine.

Nor were even these the worst tidings. Two parties, of which one had not
of late years attracted much public notice, and the other had as long
wanted efficient leaders, were well-known ere now to be labouring
throughout France, though not as yet in conjunction, for one common
purpose--the deposition of Buonaparte. The royalists had recovered a
great share of their ancient influence in the society of Paris, even
before the disasters of the Russian expedition. The exiled Bourbon had
found means to distribute proclamations early in 1813: his agents had
ever since been exerting themselves indefatigably, both in Paris and in
the provinces, especially in those of the west. The Mayor of Bourdeau