Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION II 



Series III SEPTEMBER 1915 Vol. IX 



Elba, a Hundred Years After. 

 By George M. Wrong, M .A., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1915). 



There are striking parallels between Napoleon's struggle for world 

 power a hundred years ago and that of Germany a century later. 

 It was only in the period of the Revolution that France had begun to 

 attain a vital national union. The older France had not been really 

 united. Many provinces had come under the sway of the French 

 crown, by conquest or by inheritance; but though they had one ruler 

 they still retained in many respects their old character as separate 

 states. There was not even free trade between these provinces. 

 They had different modes of government, different systems of taxa- 

 tion and of laws. There was, it has been said, a French state but not 

 a French nation. The ferment of the Revolution produced a France 

 "one and indivisible" with an intense national spirit. It was Napoleon 

 who organized this France, who gave it unity of system, and who made 

 its national life a homogeneous reality. Under him France had found 

 a head who directed all the energies of the nation. He did not give 

 France freedom. He was the Emperor of the French, their leader and 

 war-lord. In his mind was the thought that he was the successor of 

 Charlemagne, the great world-ruler. The realm of Charlemagne had 

 stretched eastward far across the Rhine. Napoleon felt called upon 

 to revive this old dominion, for the successor of Charlemagne ought to 

 rule over the territory that Charlemagne had ruled. The Empire 

 thus meant expansion, reunion with peoples who had been separated 

 from it by the incidents and accidents of history. 



The Imperial idea involved of course aggression against neighbours. 

 The Empire of Napoleon was military and in military equipment 

 and method was far in advance of any other state of the time. At the 

 head was one of the greatest soldiers of any age, a military genius, 

 who evolved new conceptions of strategy and tactics. An army makes 

 its strength effective, he said, not merely by mass of numbers but by 

 the velocity of its blows. Strike in overwhelming force and strike 

 quickly the enemy's weakest line. Take the initiative and keep it. 



