THREE:Meanwhile in Ireland, where Lord Anglesey had been succeeded by Lord Wellesley and Mr. Stanley by Mr. Littleton, O'Connell was openly agitating for a Repeal of the union. His conduct was much resented by Lord Grey's followers, and at a meeting at Hull Mr. M. D. Hill challenged the good faith of the Irish party, and declared that an Irish member, who spoke with great violence against the Coercion Bill, had secretly urged the Ministers to force it through in its integrity. O'Connell brought the statement before the House early in the Session, when it was unnecessarily confirmed by Lord Althorp, who said that he had good reason to believe it to be true. After a violent scene, he further admitted that Sheil was one of the members to whom he referred. Mr. Sheil denied the imputation so passionately that, on the motion of Sir F. Burdett, both he and Lord Althorp were taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms. They were released on submitting to the authority of the House, and a committee, after examining into the matter and collecting no evidence of value, were glad to avail themselves of an apology tendered by Hill and to bring the incident to a close.Napoleon reached Warsaw on the 10th of December, after a narrow escape of being taken at a village named Youpranoui. On the 14th of December he was in Dresden, and had a long conversation with his satrap king there; and, after escaping some endeavours of the Prussians to seize him, he arrived safely in Paris at midnight of the 18th, where the Parisians, who had with some indifference suppressed the conspiracy got up by the Republicans under General Mallet, hastened to overwhelm him with the most fulsome flatteries. The story of his rubbing his hands over the fire on his arrival at the Tuileries, and saying, "This is pleasanter than Moscow," shows an intensity of selfishness which no history on earth can equal. In this one campaign, that magnificent army, the very flower of French, German, and Polish soldieryperhaps the finest army ever assembledhad perished to a mere fraction, and that amid the most unheard of, the most hitherto unconceived horrors. The remnant of these soldiers was still struggling on in their deserted march, through these horrors even still more intensified. Numbers were falling every day all along the frozen desert tracks, exhausted by famine and cold, and the snows immediately buried them. When they approached any place of rest or refreshment, they fought furiously for fragments of firewood or pieces of horse-flesh. When a horse fell under the burdens they had piled upon him, he was torn by them limb from limb, while yet palpitating with life, and devoured raw. Such was the weariness of these miserable fugitives over immeasurable deserts of frost and snow, through cutting, scythe-edged winds, that nothing but the sound of the Cossack drum, and the howls of the Cossack avengers could induce them to rise and pursue their desolate march. And the man who had brought all these terrible calamities upon nearly half a million of menand more than half a million by far, including women, children, and other camp-followers, to say nothing of the invaded Russiansfelt not a pang for these vast human sufferings, but only for his own detestable pride.
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