Having delivered Spain, Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, advanced into France, and sorely pressed the retiring foe. It needed all the ability of Marshal Soult to hold together the shattered remnant of his broken and disspirited army. With masterly tact and skill he preserved a seeming order in his retreat, so as to save the army from the ignominy of a flight. Meanwhile, France having exhausted her resources, her people became tired of the yoke of the Emperor, who, whilst fortune smiled upon his arms, had been to them a very god, but now that the spell of victory was broken, was revealed in truer colours as the ambitious yet mighty despot. Martial glory, as the ruling passion of the nation, had bewitched the people, and received in ready sacrifice the best blood of the land. Long, too long, had the power of Napoleon, like a dark shadow, rested upon one-half of the known world, whilst the empty vanity of unhappy France was charmed by delusive visions of victory. The times were sadly changed. With a melancholy joy Europe had witnessed the utter ruin of the splendid and countless host which the fiat of the mighty chief had pressed into his service. Buried beneath the snows of a Russian winter—hurled in confusion back upon his own land— “The might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.” This appalling catastrophe, combined with British successes in the Peninsula, had revived the spirit of the nations, allied them in a holy crusade, and marshalled the might of Europe in array to crush the tyrant. One by one, they wrested from his sway the kingdoms he had engulfed, and which groaned beneath a cruel bondage. Step by step, their hosts converged, as the tide of war rolled, towards France. All but alone, with his brave and devoted Guard driven to bay, he made a desperate but unavailing stand on the plains of France. In vain he addressed the patriotism of the people; already the fountain had been dried up by his incessant wars and the unremitting demands he had made upon the blood and treasure of the land. Surrendering, at length, the hopeless contest, abdicating the throne, he passed into honourable exile in Elba.