“Napoleon had just returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could not be expected to take the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from without, everything was to depend upon his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the population of the city, held out to the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British naval Commander in Chief in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance of his naval force to the Austrians, and by the vigilance of his cruizers, the whole coasting trade right and left was effectually cut off. It is not at once that the inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the daily sight of well-stored shops and an abundant market, begin to realize the idea of scarcity; or that the wealthy classes of society, who have never known any other state than one of abundance and luxury, begin seriously to conceive of famine. But the shops were emptied, and the storehouses began to be drawn upon; and no fresh supply or hope of supply appeared. Winter passed away, and Spring returned, so early and so beautiful on that garden-like coast, sheltered as it is from the north winds by its belt of mountains, and open to the full rays of the Southern Sun. Spring returned, and clothed the hill sides within the lines with its fresh verdure. But that verdure was no more the delight of the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the citizens by its loveliness and softness when they rode or walked up thither from the city to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the prospect! The green hill sides were now visited for a very different object; ladies of the highest rank might be seen cutting up every plant which it was possible to turn to food, and bearing home the common weeds of our road sides as a most precious treasure! The French general pitied the distress of the people; but the lives and the strength of his garrison seemed to him more important than the lives of the Genoese, and such provisions as remained were reserved in the first place for the French army. Scarcity became utter want, and want became famine! In the most gorgeous palaces of that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of the poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the lingering and most miserable death of famine! Infants died before their parents’ eyes, husbands and wives lay down to expire together! A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825 told me that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women