Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 6.djvu/11



HE period which this Volume embraces is one fraught with a multitude of incidents grave and gay, terrible, painful, and pleasing. We find ourselves at the very outset (1792) contemplating the fiendish massacres of a French Revolution, which saw not only the horrible murders of its innocent victims, but also the downfall and deaths of its short-lived favourites. We tell the story and history of the amiable Louis XVI. who, sprung from regal ancestors, was despoiled of his kingly rights and privileges, thrust with his family into a noisome prison, where he, in common with the rest suffered the most unheard-of degradation, insults, and cruelty, and was at length released from a life that had become burdensome, by death on the scaffold, which in his case lost that ignominy usually attached to such last penalties of the law, for "nothing in his life became him like the leaving it." We also speak at length of the sore fate of his wife—the beautiful, accomplished, and unfortunate Marie Antoinette, and are more than inclined to consider the shortcomings which marked her early life atoned for by the heroic attitude she assumed in her latter days. Complete mention is made of the dastardly cowards who acted so important a part in this fearful tragedy, and whose names are inscribed upon the page of history, standing forth in boldest type as "a bye-word and shaking of the head to the nations"—Robespierre, Marat, Danton, with their myriad cut-throat followers less scheming but as blood-thirsty as their Mephistophelean masters.

We pass on gladly from the events of this melancholy period, and by the aid of the seven-leagued boots renowned in nursery fable, step over many an interesting point, till we approach the beginning of the nineteenth century. This is an all-important era. Out of the ruins of intestine war France had arisen by the direction of a master-hand to a foremost place among the nations. One nation after another succumbed to the gigantic capabilities of the man; and ere long we find that he had even cherished the idea of an invasion of England. However, from the attitude which Englishmen assumed, Napoleon plainly saw that that notion of his was a mistake, and the time had not yet come. Meanwhile, all his attempts to cripple our sovereignty on the seas were futile, and were at length stultified at Trafalgar, though the victory cost us the life of a gallant admiral, who died in the discharge of his duty. The glorious career of Wellington in the Peninsula cramped Napoleon's progress in the South. From conquest to conquest the Iron Duke marched on, and by his example encouraged the other nations to take heart. They bided their time, however, but neither theirs nor Napoleon's was long in coming. The ill-fated invasion of Russia marked his final downfall. The spell was removed from the eyes of the French nation, and they only saw in the many conscriptions that were ruthlessly levied so many hecatombs of all who were near and dear to them to gratify the vanity and ambition of a wicked man. At last the crisis arrived: Waterloo overthrew one of the greatest and worst of conquerors, and he was sent into retirement on the lonely ocean isle, and the world was thus rid of the greatest despot it has ever seen.

The annals of our own nation are carefully narrated at great length. Its political history is so laid down,