By far the most important as well as most interesting contribution to the current number of the Revue des Dew Mendes (Ist December), is an extract from the hitherto unpublished memoirs of Prince Metternich. These memoirs are shortly to appear simultaneously in London, Paris, and Vienna, Meanwhile the chapters here given form a very effective advertisement. We are let into the conflicting councils of the Emperors of Russia and Austria and, the King of Prussia at that critical period in European history when the first Napoleon was tottering to his fall. His fate being already sealed, the question was how to establish such a condition of things as would ensure a long period of peace. All felt that 2 necessary preliminary was to overthrow Napoleon completely, not only to bring his victories to a close, but to uproot his prestige by some crushing and immediate disgrace. The occupation of Paris was clearly the measure which before all others would prove to Napoleon himself and to the whole of Europe that the old order had pasted away, and that all things were about to become new. After much discussion the details of the march on Paris were arranged to the great joy of the allied armies Austria burned to avenge the defeats which had been inflicted on her during the wars of the Revolution. Russia was proud of, and emboldened by, the suc: cesses she had gained in 1812, and Prussia was overflowing with fanatical professors and students, poets and men of letters, who haa flocked into her army, and whose hatred to Napoleon and the French demanded nothing short of extermination as the price of gratifying it. The battle of Leipzig having thrown the French army back upon their own territory, the revolutionary Baron Stein was, through the preponderating influence of the Czar, and totally against the wishes of the Austrian Emperor and his Prime Minister, left as administrator of the reconquered German territories. To his influence, by the way, Metternich attributes in great measure the popular outbreaks which convulsed Germany during the succeeding years, and which we at this day regard with feelings far different from those which animated the Austrian Chancellor.
At all events, under the impulse of relief from French domination, Germany was for the moment unanimous in hailing as do-liverers the representatives of pre-revolutionary Europe. The Princes of the Rhenish confederation sent envoys in hot haste to Frankfort to identify themselves with the movement against France, and in one day twenty-one treaties were signed binding each separately tothe triple alliance. Arrived at length atLangres, whence the final operations of the campaign were to be conducted, and having full in view, without the interposition of any serious obstacle, the attainment of the long-sought object, discussions which till now have never come to light, arose as to the future which was to be arranged for France. The Czar, whose political capacity is represented as being of the meanest order, held his intelligence at the mercy of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.