While the prudent and sagacious English general slowly continued his work in Spain, the Emperor Napoleon had ventured, played, and lost his great stake against Russia. Moscow was set on fire through individual resolution, as patriotic as cruel. From victory to victory, the French army, destroyed by the climate, by the distances, by fatigue, and sufferings of all kinds, disappeared, little by little, in the snows; abandoned by the Emperor, who had secretly taken his departure for Paris on the 5th of December. Some lines inserted in the Moniteur had alone preceded him. These announced that he had assembled his generals at Smorgoni, transmitted the command to King Murat for the time being, as the cold paralyzed military operations, and that he was coming to Paris to personally direct the affairs of the empire. {436} Some months later he entered Germany, where a national movement, encouraged by the disasters of the Russian campaign, was becoming each day more determined against him. The King of Prussia finally took up arms. Everywhere the Emperor Alexander was hailed as the liberator of Germany. Only the terrible battles of Lützen and Bantzen slackened the zeal of the allies. The mediation of Austria obtained an armistice; more useful, however, to the allies than to Napoleon. He rejected all the conditions proposed by the Emperor Joseph. The terrible battles of Dresden and of Leipsic were the final struggles of the dying lion. Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister of England, a prudent, moderate, and determined statesman, was assassinated by a personal enemy, in the vestibule of the House of Commons. Lord Liverpool at once assumed the entire responsibility of affairs, recently complicated by a declaration of war from the United States. The English government had not revoked, in time, those decrees of the Council which were opposed to, and abused, the rights of nations, and which were particularly unfortunate in the present instance, as Napoleon had raised the continental blockade in their favor. When the English finally withdrew their prohibitions, it was too late, as hostilities had already begun on sea and land. An American army invaded Canada, and the English and American fleets fought with desperation. There, however, England did not expend her warlike efforts; for in 1813 the progress of Wellington in Spain absorbed all her thoughts and all her hopes. {437}