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to France the provinces situated on the left bank of the Rhine, and by a decree of the 13th December in the same year, Holland, the three Hanseatic cities of Hamburgh, Bremen, and Lubec, and a part of Westphalia, were added to the empire; as also by another decree, the Valais, so little did he now conceal his views of an universal French empire.
In March 1811, as it all his wishes were to be, gratified, a son was born to him, whom he christened Napoleon Francis Charles Joseph, and called king of Rome, Aware of the discontent of Russia, and of her intention to resist the first favourable opportunity, towards the end of the year 1811 he began those mighty, preparations for the invasion of that empire, which formed the nucleus of the greatest array of disciplined and able soldiery which ever moved under one command and in one direction.
In May 1812, he left Paris to review the grand army, made up of all his auxiliaries and confederates, (willing and unwilling,) assembled on the Vistula, and arriving at Dresden spent fifteen days in that capital, attended by the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, and nearly the whole of the princes of the Continent, among whom he moved the primum mobile and the centre. This eventful campaign against Russia may be said to have opened on the 22d June, on which day he issued a proclamation, wherein, with his usual oracular brevity, he declared that his " destinies were about to be accomplished.” On the 28th June he entered Wilua, where he established a provisional government, while he assembled a general diet at Warsaw. In the mean time the French army continued its march, and passed the Niemen on the 23d, 24th, and 25th June, arriving
