Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851

Around the vessels the crews built a wall of ice; and in ice huts they stowed away their cordage and stores to make room for exercise on the decks. They organized a theatrical company, and amused themselves and the officers with comedy well performed. Behind the pieces of hummock each actor learned his part, and by means of calico they transformed themselves into female characters, as occasion required. These dramas were acted upon the deck of the Advance, sometimes while the thermometer indicated 30° below zero, and actors and audience highly enjoyed the fun. They also went out in parties during that long night, fully armed, to hunt the polar bear, the grim monarch of the frozen North, on which occasions they often encountered perilous adventures. They played at foot-ball, and exercised themselves in drawing sledges, heavily laden with provisions. Five hours of each twenty-four, they thus exercised in the open air, and once a week each man washed his whole body in cold snow water. Serious sickness was consequently avoided, and the scurvy which attacked them soon yielded to remedies.

Often during that fearful night, they expected the disaster of having their vessels crushed. All through November and December, before the ice became fast, they slept in their clothes, with knapsacks on their backs, and sledges upon the ice, laden with stores, not knowing at what moment the vessels might be demolished, and themselves forced to leave them and make their way toward land. On the 8th of December, and the 23d of January, they actually lowered their boats and stood upon the ice, for the crushing masses were making the timbers of the gallant vessel creak and its decks to rise in the centre. They were then ninety miles from land, and hope hardly whispered an encouraging idea of life being sustained. On the latter occasion, when officers and crew stood upon the ice, with the ropes of their provision sledges in their hands, a terrible snow-drift came from the northeast, and intense darkness shrouded them. Had the vessel then been crushed, all must have perished. But God, who ruled the storm, also put forth his protecting arm and saved them.

Early in February the northern horizon began to be streaked with gorgeous twilight, the herald of the approaching king of day; and on the 18th the disc of the sun first appeared above the horizon. As its golden rim rose above the glittering snow-drifts and piles of ice, three hearty cheers went up from those hardy mariners, and they welcomed their deliverer from the chains of frost as cordially as those of old who chanted,

"See! the conquering hero comes!Sound the trumpet, beat the drums."

Day after day it rose higher and higher, and while the pallid faces of the voyagers, bleached during that long night, darkened by its beams, the vast masses of ice began to yield to its fervid influences. The scurvy disappeared, and from that time, until their arrival home, not a man suffered from sickness. As they slowly drifted through Davis's Straits, and the ice gave indications of breaking up, the voyagers made preparations for sailing. The Rescue was re-occupied, (May 13th 1851), and her stern-post, which had been broken by the ice in Barrow's Straits, was repaired. To accomplish this, they were obliged to dig away the ice which was from 12 to 14 feet thick around her, as represented in the engraving. They re-shipped their rudders; removed the felt covering; placed their stores on deck, and then patiently awaited the disruption of the ice. This event was very sudden and appalling. It began to give way on the 5th of June, and in the space of twenty minutes the whole mass, as far as the eye could reach became one vast field of moving floes. On the 10th of June they emerged into open water (7, on the map) a little south of the Arctic Circle, in latitude 65° 30'. They immediately repaired to Godhaven, on the coast of Greenland, where they re-fitted, and, unappalled by the perils through which they had just passed, they once more turned their prows northward to encounter anew the ice squadrons of Baffin's Bay. Again they traversed the coast of Greenland to about the 73d degree, when they bore to the westward, and on the 7th and 8th of July passed the English whaling fleet near the Dutch Islands. Onward they pressed through the accumulating ice to Baffin's Island, where, on the 11th, they were joined by the Prince Albert, then out upon another cruise. They continued in company until the 3d of August, when the Albert departed for the westward, determined to try the more southern passage. Here again (8,) our expedition encountered vast fields of hummock-ice, and were subjected to the most imminent perils. The floating ice, as if moved by adverse currents, tumbled in huge masses, and reared upon the sides of the sturdy little vessels like monsters of the deep intent upon destruction. These masses broke in the bulwarks, and sometimes fell over upon the decks with terrible force, like rocks rolled over a plain by mountain torrents. The noise was fearful; so deafening that the mariners could scarcely hear each other's voices. The sounds of these rolling masses, together with the rending of the icebergs floating near, and the vast floes, produced a din like the discharge of a thousand pieces of ordnance upon a field of battle.

Finding the north and west closed against further progress, by impenetrable ice, the brave De Haven was balked, and turning his vessels homeward, they came out into an open sea, somewhat crippled, but not a plank seriously started. During a storm off the banks of Newfoundland, a thousand miles from New York, the vessels parted company. The Advance arrived safely at the Navy Yard at Brooklyn on the 30th of September, and the Rescue joined her there a few days afterward. Toward the close of October the government resigned the vessels into the hands of Mr. Grinnell, to be used in other service, but with the stipulation that they are to be subject to the order of the Secretary of the Navy in the spring, if required for another expedition in search of Sir John Franklin.

We have thus given a very brief account of the principal events of interest connected with the American Arctic Expedition; the officers of which will doubtless publish a more detailed narrative. Aside from the success which attended our little vessels in encountering the perils of the polar seas, there are associations which must forever hallow the effort as one of the noblest exhibitions of the true glory of nations. The navies of America and England have before met upon the ocean, but they met for deadly strife. Now, too, they met for strife, equally determined, but not with each other. They met in the holy cause of benevolence and human sympathy, to battle with the elements beneath the Arctic Circle; and the chivalric heroism which the few stout hearts of the two nations displayed in that terrible conflict, redounds a thousand-fold more to the glory of the actors, their governments, and the race, than if four-score ships, with ten thousand armed men had fought for the mastery of each other upon the broad ocean, and battered hulks and marred corpses had gone down to the coral caves of the sea, a dreadful offering to the demon of Discord. In the latter event, troops of widows and orphan children would have sent up a cry of wail; now, the heroes advanced manfully to rescue husbands and fathers to restore them to their wives and children. How glorious the thought! and how suggestive of the beauty of that fast approaching day, when the nations shall sit down in peace as united children of one household.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 2

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTTCONCLUSION OF THE FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

Mantua had now fallen. The Austrians were driven from Italy. The Pope, with the humility of a child, had implored the clemency of the conqueror. Still Austria refused to make peace with republican France, and with indomitable perseverance gathered her resources for another conflict. Napoleon resolved to march directly upon Vienna. His object was peace, not conquest. In no other possible way could peace be attained. It was a bold enterprise. Leaving the whole breadth of Italy between his armies and France, he prepared to cross the rugged summits of the Carnic Alps, and to plunge, with an army of but fifty thousand men, into the very heart of one of the most proud and powerful empires upon the globe, numbering twenty millions of inhabitants. Napoleon wished to make an ally of Venice. To her government he said, "Your whole territory is imbued with revolutionary principles. One single word from me will excite a blaze of insurrection through all your provinces. Ally yourself with France, make a few modifications in your government such as are indispensable for the welfare of the people, and we will pacify public opinion and will sustain your authority." Advice more prudent and humane could not have been given. The haughty aristocracy of Venice refused the alliance, raised an army of sixty thousand men, ready at any moment to fall upon Napoleon's rear, and demanded neutrality. "Be neutral, then," said Napoleon, "but remember, if you violate your neutrality, if you harass my troops, if you cut off my supplies, I will take ample vengeance. I march upon Vienna. Conduct which could be forgiven were I in Italy, will be unpardonable when I am in Austria. The hour that witnesses the treachery of Venice, shall terminate her independence."

Mantua was the birth-place of Virgil. During centuries of wealth and luxurious ease neither Italy nor Austria had found time to rear any monument in honor of the illustrious Mantuan bard. But hardly had the cannon of Napoleon ceased to resound around the beleaguered city, and the smoke of the conflict had hardly passed away, ere the young conqueror, ever more interested in the refinements of peace than in the desolations of war, in the midst of the din of arms, and contending against the intrigues of hostile nations, reared a mausoleum and arranged a gorgeous festival in honor of the immortal poet. Thus he endeavored to shed renown upon intellectual greatness, and to rouse the degenerate Italians to appreciate and to emulate the glory of their fathers. From these congenial pursuits of peace he again turned, with undiminished energy, to pursue the unrelenting assailants of his country.

Leaving ten thousand men in garrison to watch the neutrality of the Italian governments, Napoleon, early in March, removed his head-quarters to Bassano. He then issued to his troops the following martial proclamation, which, like bugle notes of defiance, reverberated over the hostile and astonished monarchies of Europe. "Soldiers! the campaign just ended has given you imperishable renown. You have been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and seventy actions. You have taken more than a hundred thousand prisoners, five hundred field-pieces, two thousand heavy guns, and four pontoon trains. You have maintained the army during the whole campaign. In addition to this you have sent six millions of dollars to the public treasury, and have enriched the National Museum with three hundred masterpieces of the arts of ancient and modern Italy, which it has required thirty centuries to produce. You have conquered the finest countries in Europe. The French flag waves for the first time upon the Adriatic opposite to Macedon, the native country of Alexander. Still higher destinies await you. I know that you will not prove unworthy of them. Of all the foes that conspired to stifle the Republic in its birth, the Austrian Emperor alone remains before you. To obtain peace we must seek it in the heart of his hereditary state. You will there find a brave people, whose religion and customs you will respect, and whose property you will hold sacred. Remember that it is liberty you carry to the brave Hungarian nation."

The Archduke Charles, brother of the king, was now intrusted with the command of the Austrian army. His character can not be better described than in the language of his magnanimous antagonist. "Prince Charles," said Napoleon, "is a man whose conduct can never attract blame. His soul belongs to the heroic age, but his heart to that of gold. More than all he is a good man, and that includes every thing, when said of a prince." Early in March, Charles, a young man of about Napoleon's age, who had already obtained renown upon the Rhine, was in command of an army of 50,000 men stationed upon the banks of the Piave. From different parts of the empire 40,000 men were on the march to join him. This would give him 90,000 troops to array against the French. Napoleon, with the recruits which he had obtained from France and Italy, had now a force of fifty thousand men with which to undertake this apparently desperate enterprise. The eyes of all Europe were upon the two combatants. It was the almost universal sentiment, that, intoxicated with success, Napoleon was rushing to irretrievable ruin. But Napoleon never allowed enthusiasm to run away with his judgment. His plans were deeply laid, and all the combinations of chance carefully calculated.

The storms of winter were still howling around the snow-clad summits of the Alps, and it was not thought possible that thus early in the season he would attempt the passage of so formidable a barrier. A dreadful tempest of wind and rain swept earth and sky when Napoleon gave the order to march. The troops, with their accustomed celerity, reached the banks of the Piave. The Austrians, astonished at the sudden apparition of the French in the midst of the elemental warfare, and unprepared to resist them, hastily retired some forty miles to the eastern banks of the Tagliamento. Napoleon closely followed the retreating foe. At nine o'clock in the morning of the 10th of March, the French army arrived upon the banks of the river. Here they found a wide stream, rippling over a gravelly bed, with difficulty fordable. The imperial troops, in most magnificent array, were drawn up upon an extended plain on the opposite shore. Parks of artillery were arranged to sweep with grape-shot the whole surface of the water. In long lines the infantry, with bristling bayonets and prepared to rain down upon their foes a storm of bullets, presented apparently an invincible front. Upon the two wings of this imposing army vast squadrons of cavalry awaited the moment, with restless steeds, when they might charge upon the foe, should he effect a landing.

The French army had been marching all night over miry roads, and through mountain defiles. With the gloom of the night the storm had passed away, and the cloudless sun of a warm spring morning dawned upon the valley, as the French troops arrived upon the banks of the river. Their clothes were torn, and drenched with rain, and soiled with mud. And yet it was an imposing array as forty thousand men, with plumes and banners and proud steeds, and the music of a hundred bands, marched down, in that bright sunshine, upon the verdant meadows which skirted the Tagliamento. But it was a fearful barrier which presented itself before them. The rapid river, the vast masses of the enemy in their strong intrenchments, the frowning batteries, loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot, to sweep the advancing ranks, the well fed war-horses in countless numbers, prancing for the charge, apparently presented an obstacle which no human energy could surmount.

Napoleon, seeing the ample preparations made to oppose him, ordered his troops to withdraw beyond the reach of the enemies' fire, and to prepare for breakfast. As by magic the martial array was at once transformed into a peaceful picnic scene. Arms were laid aside. The soldiers threw themselves upon the green grass, just sprouting in the valley, beneath the rays of the sun of early spring. Fires were kindled, kettles boiling, knapsacks opened, and groups, in carelessness and joviality, gathered around fragments of bread and meat.

The Archduke Charles, seeing that Napoleon declined the attempt to pass the river until he had refreshed his exhausted troops, withdrew his forces also into the rear to their encampments. When all was quiet, and the Austrians were thrown completely off their guard, suddenly the trumpets sounded the preconcerted signal. The French troops, disciplined to prompt movements, sprang to their arms, instantly formed in battle array, plunged into the stream, and, before the Austrians had recovered from their astonishment, were half across the river. This movement was executed with such inconceivable rapidity, as to excite the admiration as well as the consternation of their enemies. With the precision and beauty of the parade ground, the several divisions of the army gained the opposite shore. The Austrians rallied as speedily as possible. But it was too late. A terrible battle ensued. Napoleon was victor at every point. The Imperial army, with their ranks sadly thinned, and leaving the ground gory with the blood of the slain, retreated in confusion to await the arrival of the reinforcements coming to their aid. Napoleon pressed upon their rear, every hour attacking them, and not allowing them one moment to recover from their panic. The Austrian troops, thus suddenly and unexpectedly defeated, were thrown into the extreme of dejection. The exultant French, convinced of the absolute invincibility of their beloved chief, ambitiously sought out points of peril and adventures of desperation, and with shouts of laughter, and jokes, and making the welkin ring with songs of liberty, plunged into the densest masses of their foes. The different divisions of the army vied with each other in their endeavor to perform feats of the most romantic valor, and in the display of the most perfect contempt of life. In every fortress, at every mountain pass, upon every rapid stream, the Austrians made a stand to arrest the march of the conqueror. But with the footsteps of a giant, Napoleon crowded upon them, pouring an incessant storm of destruction upon their fugitive ranks. He drove the Austrians to the foot of the mountains. He pursued them up the steep acclivities. He charged the tempests of wind and smothering snow with the sound of the trumpet, and his troops exulted in waging war with combined man and the elements. Soon both pursuers and pursued stood upon the summit of the Carnic Alps. They were in the region of almost perpetual snow. The vast glaciers, which seemed memorials of eternity, spread bleak and cold around them. The clouds floated beneath their feet. The eagle wheeled and screamed as he soared over the sombre firs and pines far below on the mountain sides. Here the Austrians made a desperate stand. On the storm-washed crags of granite, behind fields of ice and drifts of snow which the French cavalry could not traverse, they sought to intrench themselves against their tireless pursuer. To retreat down the long and narrow defiles of the mountains, with the French in hot pursuit behind, hurling upon them every missile of destruction, bullets, and balls, and craggy fragments of the cliffs, was a calamity to be avoided at every hazard. Upon the summit of Mount Tarwis, the battle, decisive of this fearful question, was to be fought. It was an appropriate arena for the fell deeds of war. Wintry winds swept the bleak and icy eminence, and a clear, cold, cloudless sky canopied the two armies as, with fiend-like ferocity, they hurled themselves upon each other. The thunder of artillery reverberated above the clouds. The shout of onset and the shrieks of the wounded were heard upon eminences which even the wing of the eagle had rarely attained. Squadrons of cavalry fell upon fields of ice, and men and horses were precipitated into fathomless depths below. The snow drifts of Mount Tarwis were soon crimsoned with blood, and the warm current from human hearts congealed with the eternal glacier, and there, embalmed in ice, it long and mournfully testified of man's inhumanity to man.

The Archduke Charles, having exhausted his last reserve, was compelled to retreat. Many of the soldiers threw away their arms, and escaped over the crags of the mountains; thousands were taken prisoners; multitudes were left dead upon the ice, and half-buried in the drifts of snow. But Charles, brave and energetic, still kept the mass of his army together, and with great skill conducted his precipitate retreat. With merciless vigor the French troops pursued, pouring down upon the retreating masses a perfect storm of bullets, and rolling over the precipitous sides of the mountains huge rocks, which swept away whole companies at once. The bleeding, breathless fugitives at last arrived in the valley below. Napoleon followed close in their rear. The Alps were now passed. The French were in Austria. They heard a new language. The scenery, the houses, the customs of the inhabitants, all testified that they were no longer in Italy. They had with unparalleled audacity entered the very heart of the Austrian empire, and with unflinching resolution were marching upon the capital of twenty millions of people, behind whose ramparts, strengthened by the labor of ages, Maria Theresa had bidden defiance to the invading Turks.

Twenty days had now passed since the opening of the campaign, and the Austrians were already driven over the Alps, and having lost a fourth of their numbers in the various conflicts which had occurred, dispirited by disaster, were retreating to intrench themselves for a final struggle within the walls of Vienna. Napoleon, with 45,000 men, flushed with victory, was rapidly descending the fertile steams which flow into the Danube.

Under these triumphant circumstances Napoleon showed his humanity, and his earnest desire for peace, in dictating the following most noble letter, so characteristic of his strong and glowing intellect. It was addressed to his illustrious adversary, the Archduke Charles.

"General-in-chief. Brave soldiers, while they make war, desire peace. Has not this war already continued six years? Have we not slain enough of our fellow-men? Have we not inflicted a sufficiency of woes upon suffering humanity? It demands repose upon all sides. Europe, which took up arms against the French Republic, has laid them aside. Your nation alone remains hostile, and blood is about to flow more copiously than ever. This sixth campaign has commenced with sinister omens. Whatever may be its issue, many thousand men, on the one side and the other, must perish. And after all we must come to an accommodation, for every thing has an end, not even excepting the passion of hatred. You, general, who by birth approach so near the throne, and are above all the little passions which too often influence ministers and governments, are you resolved to deserve the title of benefactor of humanity, and of the real saviour of Austria. Do not imagine that I deny the possibility of saving Austria by the force of arms. But even in such an event your country will not be the less ravaged. As for myself, if the overture which I have the honor to make, shall be the means of saving a single life, I shall be more proud of the civic crown which I shall be conscious of having deserved, than of all the melancholy glory which military success can confer."

To these magnanimous overtures the Archduke replied: "In the duty assigned to me there is no power either to scrutinize the causes or to terminate the duration of the war, I am not invested with any authority in that respect, and therefore can not enter into any negotiation for peace."

In this most interesting correspondence, Napoleon, the plebeian general, speaks with the dignity and the authority of a sovereign; with a natural, unaffected tone of command, as if accustomed from infancy to homage and empire. The brother of the king is compelled to look upward to the pinnacle upon which transcendent abilities have placed his antagonist. The conquering Napoleon pleads for peace; but Austria hates republican liberty even more than war. Upon the rejection of these proposals the thunders of Napoleon's artillery were again heard, and over the hills and through the valleys, onward he rushed with his impetuous troops, allowing his foe no repose. At every mountain gorge, at every rapid river, the Austrians stood, and were slain. Each walled town was the scene of a sanguinary conflict, and the Austrians were often driven in the wildest confusion pell-mell with the victors through the streets. At last they approached another mountain range called the Stipian Alps. Here, at the frightful gorge of Neumarkt, a defile so gloomy and terrific that even the peaceful tourist can not pass through it unawed, Charles again made a desperate effort to arrest his pursuers. It was of no avail. Blood flowed in torrents, thousands were slain. The Austrians, encumbered with baggage-wagons and artillery, choked the narrow passages, and a scene of indescribable horror ensued. The French cavalry made most destructive charges upon the dense masses. Cannon balls plowed their way through the confused ranks, and the Austrian rear and the French van struggled, hand to hand, in the blood-red gorge. But the Austrians were swept along like withered leaves before the mountain gales. Napoleon was now at Leoben. From the eminences around the city, with the telescope, the distant spires of Vienna could be discerned. Here the victorious general halted for a day, to collect his scattered forces. Charles hurried along the great road to the capital, with the fragments of his army, striving to concentrate all the strength of the empire within those venerable and hitherto impregnable fortifications.