THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 



195 



enthusiasm, and which, before he took the com- 

 mand, though it had recently met with some 

 reverses, had already hurled back the hosts of 

 the Coalition. In Europe, when he set out on 

 his career, there was nothing to oppose him but 

 governments estranged from their nations, and 

 armies without national spirit, mere military ma- 

 chines, rusty for the most part, and commanded 

 by privileged incompetence. England was the 

 only exception, and by England he was always 

 beaten. The national resistance which his tyranny 

 ultimately provoked, and by which, when he had 

 provoked it, he was everywhere defeated, in Rus- 

 sia, in Germany, even in decrepit Spain, was 

 called into existence by his own folly. He ended, 

 not like Louis XIV., merely in reverses and hu- 

 miliations, but in utter and redoubled ruin, which 

 he and his country owed to his want of good 

 sense and of self-control, and to this alone, for 

 he was blindly served, and fortune can never be 

 said to have betrayed him, unless he had a right 

 to reckon upon finding no winter in Russia. Be- 

 fore he led his army to destruction, he had de- 

 stroyed its enthusiastic spirit by a process visible 

 enough to common eyes, though invisible to his. 

 in or was he more successful as a founder of politi- 

 cal institutions. He, in fact, founded nothing but 

 a government of the sword, which lasted just so 

 long as he was victorious and present. The in- 

 st^ility of his political structure was shown in a 

 lurid light by the conspiracy of Malet. Of its 

 effect on political character it is needless to 

 speak ; a baser brood of sycophants was never 

 gathered round any Eastern throne. At the 

 touch of military disaster, the first Empire, like 

 the second, sank down in ignominious ruin, leav- 

 ing behind it not a single great public man, noth- 

 ing above the level of Talleyrand. The Code sur- 

 vived ; but the Code was the work of the jurists 

 of the Revolution. With no great legal princi- 

 ple was Bonaparte personally identified, except 

 the truly Corsican principle of confiscation, to 

 which he always clung. The genius of the moral 

 reformer is to be measured by the moral effect 

 which he produces, though his own end may be 

 the cup of hemlock. The genius of the adven- 

 turer must be measured by his success ; and his 

 success is questionable when his career, however 

 meteoric, ends in total disaster. This is not the 

 less manifest to reflecting minds because the per- 

 nicious brightness of the meteor still dazzles and 

 misleads the crowd. But the greater Napoleon's 

 genius was, the worse was it for France and man- 

 kind. All his powers were employed in the ser- 

 vice of the most utterly selfish and evil ambition 



that ever dwelt in human breast. It has been 

 justly remarked that his freedom from every 

 sort of moral restraint and compunction lent a 

 unity to his aims and actions which gave him a 

 great advantage over less perfectly wicked men. 

 As to religion, he was atheist enough to use it 

 without scruple as a political engine, and to regret 

 that the time was past when he might, like Alex- 

 ander, have given himself out as the son of a god. 

 His selfishness is to be measured not merely by 

 the unparalleled sacrifices of human blood and 

 suffering which he offered to it ; not merely by 

 the unutterable scenes of horror which he wit- 

 nessed without emotion, and repeated without 

 a pang ; but by the strength of the appeal 

 which was made to his better nature, had he 

 possessed one, and the splendor of the reward 

 which was held out to him, if he would have kept 

 his allegiance to the interests of his country and 

 of humanity. What happiness and what glory 

 would have been his if, after Marengo, he had 

 given the world a lasting peace, and with it the 

 fulfillment, so far as fulfillment was possible, of 

 the social and political aspirations for which such 

 immense and heroic efforts, such vast sacrifices, 

 had been made ! Never, in all history, has such 

 a part been offered to man. Instead of accepting 

 this part, Napoleon gave the reins to an ambition 

 most vulgar as well as most noxious in its objects, 

 and to the savage lust of war, which seems after 

 all to have been the predominating element in 

 this Corsican's character, and which gleamed in 

 his evil eye when the cord was touched by those 

 who visited him at Elba. The results were the 

 devastation of Europe, the portentous develop- 

 ment of the military system under which the 

 world now groans, the proportionate depression 

 of industry and of all pacific interests, the resur- 

 rection in a worse form of the despotisms around 

 which the nations were fain to rally for protec- 

 tion against a foreign oppressor, and the new 

 era of convulsions and revolutions which the res- 

 urrection of the despotisms inevitably entailed. 



Of all the effects of Napoleon's career, the 

 worst perhaps was the revelation of the weakness 

 and meanness of human nature. What hope is 

 there for a race which will grovel at the feet of 

 sheer wickedness because the crime is on an 

 enormous scale, and the criminal is the scourge, 

 not only of one nation, but of his kind ? Next in 

 the order of evil were the ascendency given to 

 the military spirit and the example of military 

 usurpation. The military spirit it was that, ex- 

 cited by the flagitious writings of Thiers, and weak- 

 ly flattered by the house of Orleans, overturned 



