39. In 1804, on an appeal of universal suffrage to the nation, Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor. By his marriage with the archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Germany, Napoleon seemed to have given to his throne the prestige of birth, which alone it had lacked. The disastrous Russian campaign, in which his noble army was lost amid the rigors of a northern winter, was soon followed by the falling away of his allies and feudatories. 40. Napoleon himself was still victorious wherever he appeared in person, but his generals were beaten in numerous engagements; and the great defeat of Leipsic compelled the French to retreat beyond the Rhine. The Swedes brought reinforcements to swell the ranks of his enemies on the east frontier, while the English pressed on from the west; Paris, in the absence of the emperor, capitulated after a short resistance, March 30, 1814. Napoleon retired to the island of Elba. 41. On the 2d of May, Louis XVIII. (the brother of Louis XVI.) made his entry into Paris. 42. On the 1st of March, 1815, Napoleon left Elba, and landed in France. Crowds followed him; the soldiers flocked around his standard; the Bourbons fled, and he took possession of their lately deserted palaces. The news of his landing spread terror through Europe; and on the 25th of March a treaty of alliance was signed at Vienna between Austria, Russia, Prussia and England, and preparations at once made to put down the movement in his favor, and restore the Bourbon dynasty. 43. At first, the old prestige of success seemed to attend Napoleon; but on the 18th of June he was thoroughly defeated at Waterloo; and, having placed himself under the safeguard of the English, he was sent to the island of St. Helena. 44. In 1821 Napoleon breathed his last at St. Helena; and in 1824 Louis XVIII. died without direct heirs, and his brother, the duc d’Artois, succeeded as Charles X. The same ministerial incapacity, want of good faith, general discontent, and excessive priestly influence characterized his reign, which was abruptly brought to a close by the revolution of 1830, and the election to the throne of Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, as king, by the will of the people. 45. Louis Philippe having abdicated (February 24, 1848), a republic was proclaimed, under a provisional government. Louis Napoleon was elected president of the Republic in December, 1848, but by the famous _coup d’état_ of December 2, 1851, he violently set aside the Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers; and a year after was raised, by the almost unanimous voice of the nation, to the dignity of Emperor, as Napoleon III. 46. The result of the appeal made to the nation in 1870, on the plea of securing their sanction for his policy, was not what he had anticipated. The course of events in the short but terrible Franco-German war of 1870-’71, electrified Europe by its unexpected character.