s, until in despair he threw himself into
Stralsund in hope of cooeperation from an English fleet. The city was
immediately beleaguered, and on May thirty-first it fell. The King of
Prussia had already denounced the gallant adventurer and his
companions as a robber band of outlaws. As has been told, the daring
patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his
comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were
court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment.
Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal
servitude. Frederick William, the young Duke of Brunswick, deprived
by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his father, had
raised, during the progress of the French campaign in Austria, a corps
of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon famous for its
extraordinary exploits, and became world-renowned as the Black Legion.
With this force, assisted by that of the Austrian commandant in
Franconia, General Kienmayer, he defeated the Saxons at Nossen, a
French army under Junot at Berneck, and repelled King Jerome of
Westphalia; he then seized Dresden, Leipsic, and Lindenau, holding at
the time of Wagram a considerable portion of Franconia. Napoleon's
victory rendered his situation desperate, but with fifteen hundred men
he cut his way northward through Leipsic, Halle, Halberstadt, and
Brunswick, defeating the Westphalian, Saxon, and Dutch troops which
sought to intercept him, and reached the shores of the North Sea at
Elsfleth, where, seizing a merchant flotilla, he embarked with his men
for England. He was received in London with jubilation, and was richly
pensioned for his heroic adventures.

Almost simultaneously the Tyrolese, taking advantage of Lefebvre's
withdrawal, rose again. The exploits of their hero, Andreas Hofer,
form a romantic episode of history, but they very indirectly affected
the central story, if at all. In the five weeks intervening between
Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized
his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of
French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down
the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled. The tactics of
Hofer's men were most effective against regular troops, who, marching
in thin lines through mountain defiles, were cut down by
sharp-shooters, overwhelmed with rocks hurled from high ledges over
the precipitou