tone of vaunting and violence amidst the feasts and honours with which ne was welcomed, and he was soon named military commander of the district which included the capital. The very nomination was enough to warn the opposition that the Directory meditated violent measures, and they accordingly endeavoured to obtain the dismissal of Augereau. The cou d'état, or revolution of Fructidor, was planned by Barras, and ably executed by Augereau; the guard of the Legislative Body was driven from its post; the Tuileries, where the Assembly sat, was invested; the members hostile to the Directory were seized; and a most infamous act of illegality and injustice was consummated with the utmost skill and success.

Augereau was rewarded for this important service by the command of the army on the German frontier. Here he surrounded himself with the most furious Jacobins, and displayed so dangerous a spirit, that the Directory was obliged to deprive him of the command, and remove him to Perpignan. Augereau found his way to Paris, and was there on Bonaparte's return from Egypt. It is much to Augereau's honour, that, discontented as he was with the Directory, and connected as he had been with Bonaparte, the latter could not count upon his assistance in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire. Bernadotte and Augereau were the only generals whom Bonaparte dared not summon to his side. Augereau was at St. Cloud; for he had been elected deputy to the Cinq Cents, and anxiously hoped that the representative body and the republic would triumph over the military usurper. While the result of the struggle was doubtful, he approached Bonaparte, and said, "Well, you have brought yourself into a pretty dilemma." "Augereau," rejoined Bonaparte, "remember Arcole; my fortune seemed more desperate there; yet I retrieved it then, and shall now!" He was right; the usurpation was completed, and Augereau obliged to submit with the rest.

Bonaparte mistrusted his old comrade too much to appoint him again to the army of Italy. During the campaign of Marengo, Augereau commanded a division, for the most part Dutch, on the Lower Rhine, where he had hard fighting and little glory. After the treaty of Luneville, he retired to a property which he had been enabled to purchase near Melun. He was intrusted with no important employ until 1805, when, with the new dignity of marshal, he commanded the division of the great ariny which reduced the Voralberg. In 1806, he was engaged in the battle of Jena, and commanded the division which subsequently took possession of Berlin. The terrible winter campaign which ensued undermined the ealth, but added to the glory, of Augereau. In the advance through Poland, he was frequently engaged, and commanded the left of the French at Eylau. His division, which was ordered to attack the centre of the Russians, advanced for that purpose, when a thick shower of snow covered both armies, and totally prevented Augereau from seeing. He missed, in

consequence, the desired direction, (so say the partisans of Napoleon,) but his fault was remedied by the quickness of his commander, as well as by his own courage; though seized with sudden illness and fever, Augereau had himself tied upon his horse, and remained to the last in the action, though he was wounded.

After the battle of Eylau, he was obliged to retire for the recovery of his health. In the years 1809 and 1810, he commanded in Catalonia, where he showed but little mercy to the Spaniards. Considering Augereau as a veteran general, Napoleon, instead of taking him to Russia in 1812, left him to form a corps of reserve at Berlin. But here the Cossacks found him in 1813, and it was with some difficulty that he escaped. Notwithstanding his age, Augereau took part in the campaign of Saxony, and made a valiant stand near Leipzig, defending a wood against superior forces. In 1814, he was intrusted with the defence of the south-east of France against the Austrians, when he occupied Lyons, and organized its defence. At first he repulsed them in several combats; but at length, aware of their prodigious superiority of force, as well as of the diminishing resources of Napoleon, he made a capitulation, and retired to the south. Napoleon considered his conduct on this occasion as little short of treachery; and it is certain that, of all the marshals, Augereau was the least attached to a master who was so much his junior, and who, by his usurpation, had blasted the ambition of the republican general. Augereau made his peace with the Bourbons, was confirmed in his dignities, and created a peer. On the return of Napoleon in 1815, Augereau kept aloof. Louis XVIII. being a second time restored, Augereau reappeared, when the painful task was imposed upon him of being one of the council to try Marshal Ney. His vote of condemnation on his brother soldier is the greatest blot upon Augereau's memory in the eyes of the French. He did not long survive, being brought to the grave by a dropsy in June, 1816.

ICHEL NEY, duke of Elchingen, prince of Moscow, marshal and peer of France, grand-cross of the Legion of Honour, knight of St. Louis, and of several orders in foreign countries, was born in 1769, at Sarre Louis, in the department of the Moselle. He was of humble origin, and, at an early age, entered the military service. From a private hussar, he rose by degrees to the rank of captain, in 1794, when his courage and military skill were observed by General Kléber, who gave him the command of a corps of five hundred men, and, in 1796, appointed him adjutant-general. He soon surpassed the expectations which he had excited, and, in 1796, at the battle of Rednitz, was made general of brigade. Notwithstanding his rank, his impetuous courage often led him to expose his person like a private soldier. He contributed essentially to the victory of Neuwied, in 1797. After a valiant defence, he was taken prisoner at Diernsdorff; and, on his liberation, in 1798, was made general of division. As such, he commanded on the Rhine in 1799, and, by an able diversion at Manheim, contributed to the victory of Massena, at Zurich, over the Russians under General Korsakoff. Ney also distinguished himself under

Moreau, particularly at Hohenlinden. In 1802, he was sent ambassador to the Helvetic republic. In 1805, he commanded in the camp at Montreuil, and was appointed by Napoleon marshal of the empire and grandcross of the Legion of Honour. He opened the campaign of 1805 against Austria, by a brilliant victory at Elchingen, (whence he received his title, Duke of Elchingen,) and brought about the capitulation of Ulm. He occupied the Tyrol, and marched on to Carinthia, when he was stopped in his career by the peace of Presburg. In 1806 and 1807, he fought at Jena, and, after the capture of Magdeburg, at Eylau and Friedland. In 1808, he maintained his high reputation in Spain. Napoleon recalled him, but kept him at a distance till the commencement of hostilities against Russia, when he received the chief command of the third division of the imperial forces. At the battle of Moscow, Napoleon gave him the welldeserved title of le brave des braves, (bravest of the brave.) After the burning of Moscow, he led the van of the army, and, by his masterly conduct, prevented its utter destruction. On this occasion, his ability was, perhaps, more strikingly manifested than at any former period. The emperor made him Prince of Moscow, and Alexander confirmed the title on his visit to Paris, in 1814. In the spring of 1813, Ney re-organized the army which had conquered at Lützen and Bautzen, and marched with it to Berlin; but was met at Dennewitz by Bulow, and defeated. He was now obliged to retire to Torgau, but soon took the field again; chased the Swedes from Dessau, and fought with his wonted valour at Leipsic, where he received a wound, and afterwards at Hanau. When the enemy entered France, he disputed every step of their progress. Brienne, Montmirail, Craonne and Chalons-sur-Marne are shining names in the history of his battles. When Paris was taken, and the emperor was vacillating, Ney was the first who ventured to suggest to him that the contest would soon assume the character of a civil war, unless it were brought to a speedy termination. Thus he had an important influence upon Napoleon's abdication. After this event, Ney took the oath of allegiance to the king, was made a peer, and received the cross of St. Louis, and the command of the cuirassiers, dragoons, chasseurs, and light-armed lancers. He enjoyed the most marked distinction at court, and appeared to be entirely devoted to the Bourbons. When Napoleon landed, on his return from Elba, Ney collected a considerable force, was appointed its commander, and, with many assurances of his zeal and fidelity to the king, marched against the invader. But soon noticing the desertion of his soldiers, and their inclination for Napoleon, he regarded the cause of the Bourbons as lost; and, receiving an invitation from the late emperor, he joined him at Lyons, on the thirteenth of March, and thus opened his way to Paris. In the war of 1815, Napoleon gave him the command of his left wing, which engaged with the English at Quatre-Bras. The charge made by General Gou

gaud, from the lips of Napoleon himself, that Ney's conduct in this engage ment was the cause of all the disasters of the campaign, has been fully refuted by Gamot, by means of a copy of the written orders which the marshal received on that fatal day. At Waterloo, he led the attack on the enemy's centre, and, after five horses had been killed under him, remained last upon the bloody field. His clothes were full of bullet holes, and he fought on foot till night, in the midst of the slain. After the defeat, he returned to Paris, where he entered the chamber of peers, and publicly contradicted the assertion of Davoust, the minister of war, that sixty thousand men had arrived under the walls of Guise, declaring, in plain terms, that all was lost. On the return of the king, Ney was included in the decree of July 24, 1815. For a considerable time, he remained concealed in the castle of a friend at Aurillac, in Upper Auvergne. During an entertainment given by his friend, one of the guests observed a splendid sabre. The account of it reached the ears of the sub-prefect, and it was immediately recognised as the sabre of Ney. The castle was searched, the marshal taken, and imprisoned on the fifth of August. Ney might have escaped with ease, but he was confident of acquittal. He was brought before a court-martial, which declared itself incompetent to take cognisance of his case, on the tenth of November. His trial was therefore referred to the Chamber of Peers, where the minister, the Duke de Richelieu, was eager for his punishment. His advocate was Dupin. The twelfth article of the capitulation of Paris, signed July 3, 1815, promising a general amnesty, was quoted in his favour; but Wellington affirmed that this was not the true construction of the article. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of Marshal Davoust, who had made the treaty, and who explained it in favour of Ney, he was sentenced to death on the eighth of December, by a hundred and sixty-nine votes against seventeen. With the calmness which had distinguished him through the whole trial, he listened to the sentence; but when the person who read it came to his title, he interrupted him-"What need of titles now? I am Michel Ney, and soon shall be a handful of dust." When the assistance of a priest was offered him, he replied, "I need no priest to teach me how to die; I have learned it in the school of battle." He permitted, however, the curate of St. Sulpice to accompany him to the scaffold, and compelled him to enter the carriage first, saying, "You mount before me now, sir, but I shall soonest reach a higher region." On the 7th of December, 1815, at nine o'clock, A. M., he was shot in the garden of Luxemburg. When an attempt was made to blindfold him, he tore away the bandage, and indignantly exclaimed, "Have you forgotten that for twenty-six years I have lived among bullets?" Then, turning to the soldiers, he solemnly declared that he had never been a traitor to his country, and, laying his hand upon his heart, called out, with a steady voice, "Aim true. France for ever! Fire!"