are served by their best soldiers, wherever the ground will best admit, they are also eminently indebted for their success: yet, with all those advantages, striking and eminent as they are, and the negative assistance which she derived from the frequently imbecile conduct of the enemy, France would perhaps never have been crowned with the success which has marked her march, had not her population been enormous, and had not the stupendous idea of placing a great portion of that population, by the novelty of a conscription, at the disposal of her ruler, been developed by the mighty monster[4] whose name I have before mentioned. If she had had twenty thousand men on the plains of Maida, she would have been spared the disgrace of seeing 7,000 of her chosen soldiers fly before 4,795 of the British arms under the gallant Stuart. Footnote 4: For this sanguinary tyrant the following epitaph was well penned. Passant, ne pleure point son sort; Car, s’il vivait, tu serais mort. Ye who pass by his grave, need not weep that he’s gone, Had he liv’d, ye would now be as cold as this stone. To comprehend the present political state of those cities on the right and left banks of the Rhine, which I visited in my way to the south of Germany, it is necessary to lay before the reader the following memorable document, and letter of abdication, by which the Germanic empire is annihilated, and Bonaparte is raised to be imperial chief of a mighty _feudatory_ confederation, in the organization of which new sovereign dignities have been conferred, and new dominions allotted, for securing his conquests in Germany. _Ratisbon, August 2._