ng French colours, sailed up the
Garonne, and captured five French vessels without losing a single man
in the enterprise. The actions of this year, indeed, are too numerous to
recount. Our fleets and squadrons were engaged in all the four quarters
of the globe, and the vessels of the enemy could nowhere move in safety
while his coast was kept in continual alarm.

AFFAIRS OF FRANCE.

Fortune still seemed to smile on Napoleon. According to outward
appearance everything was still in his favour. On the 20th of March his
cup of prosperity seemed to be full; for his empress, Maria Louisa,
was safely delivered of a son, to whom was given the titles of Napoleon
Francis Charles Joseph, Prince of the French Empire, and King of Rome!
Congratulatory addresses were poured in from all the departments and all
the principal cities of France, as well as from Belgium, Holland, the
Hanse Towns, the confederated states of the Rhine, and from Italy. Soon
after this Napoleon opened the session of the _Corps Legislatif_. In his
speech he told the members that his son would answer the expectations of
France, and bear to their children the sentiments which his father now
bore to them; that they must never forget that their happiness and glory
were dependent on the prosperity of the throne which he had raised,
consolidated, and aggrandized by them and for them, and that the love of
France was their first duty. This must have sounded oddly in the ears of
some of the members; for at this time Dutchmen from Holland, &c, Germans
from the Hanse Towns, Swiss from the Valais, which was now incorporated
with France, and Italians from the confiscated states of the church
had taken their seats in the _Corps Legislatif_. With conscious pride
Napoleon also declared to these "complaisant tools of tyranny," that
French dominion during the last year had been extended over sixteen
departments, containing five millions of people; the mouths of the
Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt, together with the whole course of the latter
river, were now French; that improvements on a gigantic scale had taken
place throughout the empire; and that its finances were in such a state
that France could go on for ten years without borrowing money. It is
possible, however, that Napoleon in making this last assertion had an
eye to the plunder of some rich kingdoms, for it was well known that
France was not in a prosperous condition. At this very time, indeed,
the French, having lost