872. BONAPARTE (N.), Imprisonment of.—
The Attila of the age dethroned,
the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the
human race, whose thirst for blood appeared
unquenchable, the great oppressor of the
rights and liberties of the world, shut up
within the circle of a little island of the Mediterranean,
and dwindled to the condition of
an humble and degraded pensioner on the
bounty of those he had most injured. How
miserable, how meanly, has he closed his
inflated career! What a sample of the bathos
will his history present! He should have perished
on the swords of his enemies, under the
walls of Paris.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vi, 352.
Ford ed., ix, 461.
(M.
July. 1814)
