In inquiring how Napoleon was shaped by circumstances we considered how far he might have been carried by merely executing with military ability the ideas of others. Revolutionary France wanted a leader to perform for her one of the greatest of military tasks. Napoleon rose to the height of power because he presented himself as incomparably well qualified for the purpose.
    But what was he in himself? That is, what were his own ideas and views?
    Brumaire divides two very different periods in his life, which we might distinguish as the Bonaparte period and the Napoleon period. In the first he is a general, a servant of the state; in the second he is sovereign and master of the state. Not it is necessarily in the latter period that his personality is most important, because as a sovereign he shaped his own policy, and planned his own achievements; whereas, so long as he was a mere general, the principal responsibility lay with the Directory. Even then, no doubt, he acted with much more freedom than an ordinary general in ordinary times. But though he was no mere executive agent in the partition of the Venetian Empire or in the Egyptian expedition, at least he did not make the war with Austria which caused the fall of Venice, nor the war with England which occasioned the Egyptian expedition. But after Brumaire, or at least after the treaties of Luneville and Amiens, whatever is done by France is the act of Napoleon, and of him alone. What France does he does, and what he does he also designs and conceives in his own mind.
    It follows that in this second period we have the best chance of discovering what he was in himself.

    We can scarcely be content with the current opinion that, no sooner had he become master of France than, yielding to his military instincts, he plunged into wars of conquest.
    The simple fact is, that before Bonaparte began to reign there had been uninterrupted war with England since 1793, and war scarcely interrupted on the Continent since 1792, whereas after he began to reign, and had had time to make peace, the Continent was quiet for more than four years, and even the interminable rivalry of France and England ceased for a year. Even after the period of unbounded conquest had begun in 1805, Napoleon was not quite so continually at war as the number of his battles and victories might lead us to suppose. He did not take the field either in 1810 or 1811, and during those years there was peace on the Continent except in the Peninsula.
    He was, in fact, not at all more aggressive than the Fructidorian republic, and for a long time he was decidedly less aggressive. During the Consulate he was renowned as the great peace-maker, as the friend of civilisation, who alone had been capable of healing the discord created by Jacobinism.
    Are we then to suppose simply that the love of war mastered him by degrees; that after gratifying for a year or two the Anti-Jacobinical party which had called him to the throne, he gave way again to his martial instincts; that after deliberately reckoning up his resources, and comparing them with those of Europe, he became convinced that he could found a universal empire, and proceeded to execute this design by breaking the peace of Amiens in 1803? Certainly his behaviour, his diplomacy in 1803 and 1804 is that of a ruler intoxicated with the sense of overwhelming power, and eagerly desirous of war. But yet the theory that he formed at this time a conscious design of subjugating Europe seems far too simple to meet the facts. On that supposition he would hardly have proceeded as he did.
    Any one who considers as a whole the history of Napoleon's empire will be struck by a strange peculiarity, which, if we regarded the empire as founded by deliberate design, would convict Napoleon of an unaccountable and fatal blunder. It was evidently his interest, first, not to engage England and the Continental Powers at the same time; secondly, to engage the latter first, disarming England by conciliation, if not obtaining her help by bribes. When we consider with what triumphant success he humbled Germany and Russia between 1805 and 1807, and that he held the German Powers successfully in submission till 1812, and then recollect that during all this time he was also waging war with England, the question suggests itself, What might he not have done if only he had remained at peace with England? But for England, the Peninsula would not have pressed upon him with such a fatal weight. But for England, the avenging coalition formed in 1813 would have wanted both money and credit - would have wanted the cement that held it together. And a second question arises: for what purpose did he maintain these unceasing hostilities with England, hostilities 'nullos habitura triumphos'? In this war no victories were won or could be won; after 1805 it was but a monotonous blockade, maintained by England until the time came when England could take the offensive in the Peninsula, but no offensive was possible on the side of France. As soon as this question is asked, we remark another fact, which is of the first importance, viz that the war with England began in 1803, though peace had been signed only the year before, and that it began with marks of great passion on the side of Bonaparte, whereas the war with the Continental Powers was still delayed for two years, and then had all the appearance of being forced on, not by Bonaparte, but by the other Powers. He did not turn his armies in the direction of Germany till he had become convinced of the impossibility of invading England, and even then he only marched to repel a threatened invasion.
    It appears, then, that when he broke the peace of Amiens in 1803; he cannot at least have had in view such a Continental empire as he actually founded. He was thinking of something not less great, but of something different, viz the conquest or humiliation of the British Empire. He did not suppose that he should fail in the invasion of England, and suddenly substitute for it an invasion of Germany; he anticipated success in his first plan.
    But he was alive from the outset to the extreme difficulty of the invasion. Accordingly he held in reserve, as we learn from a paper of Talleyrand, written just before the rupture of 1803, an alternative plan. 'England,' writes Talleyrand, 'may compel France to conquer Europe.' It is characteristic of Napoleon throughout his career, that he keeps two plans in his head at once, and is at all times ready, if one fails, to fall back upon the other. 'I always,' he said, 'work out my problem in two ways.'
    It thus appears that the actual Napoleonic Empire, as it was founded between 1805 and 1807, was not a work deliberately designed by Napoleon. It was his pis aller. His original plan had been to engage England singly, and to crush her. The fall of the British Empire was to take place in the years 1803 and 1804. This was Napoleon's object.
    This plan failed. The English naval power proved too great, and Pitt, recalled to office, brought into existence a new Continental coalition. Thereupon Napoleon put into execution his alternative plan. Instead of conquering England directly, he would conquer the Continent, and by that means England. As Talleyrand foresaw, the first part of this plan proved not difficult to execute. He did conquer the Continent, and he marshalled all its forces against England. The enterprise was colossal, and the duel between a confederated Europe and the World-Empire of England was an unparalleled spectacle. But difficulties arose which had been but imperfectly foreseen. The confederacy, being held together by force, was but half efficient; when required to sacrifice the English trade, it became mutinous; gradually the idea of conquering England by means of a European confederacy showed itself to be - like that earlier conception of the same mind, a revolution of the East effected through a fusion of Mohammedanism with French Deism - merely a dazzling chimera.
    Thus viewed, Napoleon appears not as a mere ambitious sovereign, aiming at universal empire, but as having a more definite plan. His end is the defeat of England; what we call his universal empire is but a means to it.
    He sees but one enemy, England; he engages England alone, but England calls the Continent to her aid. He masters the Continent, and turns it resources against England. The again, after Tilsit, he has but one enemy, England. But his monstrous design requires monstrous expedients.
    As he has to deal with a colonial and naval Power, he finds it necessary to control all the maritime states of Europe. Hence the seizure of Spain and Portugal, which brought his ships and colonies; hence the annexation of Holland and the Hanseatic towns. So much violence provoked mutiny. The rising of Germany in 1809 he was able to suppress; but a little later the Czar placed himself at the head of the insurrection of Europe. The mutiny of the Czar could only be suppressed by a prodigious effort, and in this effort Napoleon failed.
    The point to be especially noted is that in this Russian war, as in all the violent annexations which mark the years between the Russian war and the Treaty of Tilsit, the ground openly avowed is always the commercial system and the war with England. In truth, what we call the universal empire of Napoleon, would be more appropriately called the universal coalition against England. The territory actually ruled by Napoleon and his family by no means amounted to a universal empire; and Prussia, Austria, and Russia always remained outside it; but the coalition against England included these Powers too, and even in some sense the United States.

    Regarded so, Napoleon's plan, though, as the event proved, unsound, appears intelligible - vitiated only, as a Napoleonic plan might naturally be, by extravagance and exaggeration. But this view suggests the further question, why was Napoleon so bent upon compassing the fall of the British Empire? The answer to this question is simple and natural, but shows perhaps that the workings of Napoleon's mind were more like those of an ordinary statesman than we are apt to think.
    After his return from Italy at the end of 1797 he had been appointed, as we have seen, general of the army of England. It was at first expected that in 1798 he would invade England, but after due consideration he rejected this plan, and substituted for it an invasion of Egypt. This enterprise was directed ostensibly and in part, though only in part, really against England; but England opposed it with a vigour which she has seldom displayed. The heroism of Nelson has always been duly recognised, but the immense greatness of his work seems to have been generally overlooked. At Aboukir he reconquered, as it were, the Mediterranean for England. He dissolved, at a blow, all Napoleon's dreams of colonisation and Oriental conquest. Soon afterwards he broke up the Armed Neutrality. Abercrombie crowned the work of Nelson in Egypt, and France had really no resource but to conclude peace. As Ranke says, 'the man of the century had entirely failed….. Nothing remained for the First Consul but to recognise the maritime predominance of England.' At the very height of her greatness France had suffered a complete naval defeat at the hands of England.
    No further explanation surely is needed of the persistent hostility with which Napoleon henceforth pursued England. The all-powerful master of France had not only been beaten, had not only been forced to yield Egypt, but soon after the treaty had been concluded, he saw also that England was likely to keep Malta. It was too much for him that his darling enterprise should end not even in simple nothing, but in delivering over to the enemy one of the strongest positions in the world. The rupture of the peace of Amiens was not so much as it seems a deliberate new beginning in Napoleon's life. It was but the recommencement of a war which had never really ceased, the retractation at the last moment of a step which Napoleon found after all intolerable. And, war being once recommenced, it was not likely that he would put up with failure. Yet he found all his maritime plans in 1803 and 1804 fail. In 1805 England met him with a European coalition, and he found himself drawn into the wild crusade above described, into the attempt to conquer England by conquering Europe.
    It appears, then, that Napoleon formed no deliberate plan of universal empire, but in the first instance merely took up the foreign policy of the Governments that had preceded him. He waged war with England merely because they had done so ever since 1793; he conducted the war with passionate and at last with insane persistency, merely because he could not conquer this enemy as he had conquered others, because he had naval defeats to wipe out; because it was intolerable to him, and not even safe, to put up with failure. But his military resources being as enormous as his naval resources were insufficient, and the new coalition affording him an opportunity of striking England by striking Austria and Russia, the war with England converted itself insensibly into a war with the allies of England, and Napoleon consoled himself for not being able to enter London by entering Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow. In all this there was nothing really new except the immense magnitude of the military operations.
    If we trace the foreign policy of France from the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find, first, a naval and colonial rivalry with England, which grows steadily more intense; secondly, a constant disposition to interfere and play the ascendant power in Germany; thirdly, a proneness to spoil either game by trying to play both at once. The war with England, begun by Napoleon in 1803, was the fifth which France had undertaken in a period of sixty years. A generation earlier, Frederick the Great had spoken with impatience of the interminable quarrel of England and France, which allowed no peace to Europe. But both in the War of the Austrian Succession and in the Seven Years' War, the rivalry had blended itself in a most confusing manner with other quarrels which France made for herself in Germany. This confusion had always proved most disastrous to France, and Chatham had been able, as he said, to conquer Canada in Germany. Nevertheless, the first step taken by the Convention was to repeat the old blunder by declaring war with England at the very moment when the French republic was struggling for life against the Continental Powers. If Napoleon had been able, as we are apt to think, to look down upon French politics from a superior height, if he had thought of inventing a new policy of his own, he would probably have begun by correcting this error, and would either have made peace with England, or, while he went to war with England, would have taken pains to propitiate the Continental Powers. But, like most statesmen, he was fettered by the past, and his career was spoiled in the end by the false policy which he inherited from the eighteenth century, and which he practised on an exaggerated scale. He adopts the old methods of the eighteenth century, the armed neutrality and the occupation of Hanover; by placing a brother on the throne of Spain he revives the family compact. But his exceptional position enables him to go beyond the eighteenth century, and to form against the so-called tyrant of the seas a stronger coalition than she had formed against the ascendancy of Louis XIV. But this coalition is formed by force, and is a greater tyranny than that against which it is directed. Accordingly in the moment of need it passes over to the English side, and France is once more found to have overreached herself by undertaking a war with England and a war with the Continent at the same time.

    It appears, then, that the special and peculiar work of Napoleon is that colossal attempt to conquer England by conquering Europe. Another general, a Moreau, if he had been raised to supreme power at Brumaire, would in like manner have found himself involved in war with England, would have met with the same difficulties, would have been equally reluctant to part with Malta, possibly would have felt himself impelled to break the peace of Amiens. But his ideas and his resolutions would have been less extreme; he would have been less impatient of failure. When he became clearly aware of England's naval superiority, he would have made peace, and contented himself with undermining it gradually. For Napoleon this does not suffice; he presses the war against England's allies, as though his object was the subjugation of the Continent. And yet his power did not increase much after 1803, when his ascendancy, alike in Italy, Spain, and Germany, was unbounded, and, wisely handled, might have been raised much higher. He did but substitute for this an invidious tyranny, which could be maintained only by an unintermitted effort and uninterrupted good fortune. A Moreau, such as we have described him, might even have been more powerful than Napoleon. Had he witnessed the new coalition, he would have felt it as a failure of his policy that the wild times before Brumaire should be reappearing. He too, probably, would have won considerable successes against the German Powers, but he would not have ventured upon the enormous hazards of the Austerlitz campaign. The idea of conquering Europe would have struck him as insane; he would have said, untruly, that it was impossible of execution, and more reasonably, that it was a reckless adventure. Accordingly, France would have had no Austerlitz, no Jena, no Friedland to boast of, and her ruler would not have distributed crowns among his brothers, or married an arch-duchess. But he might without great difficulty have continued for many years to be incomparably the greatest sovereign in Europe, and without actually entering Vienna he might have entirely eclipsed Austria within the empire, and have gathered the smaller German states round him in a Confederation of the Rhine.
    For the ruler personally such a career would have been brilliant enough. Had he been Moreau, he would perhaps have imitated Washington, and handed the Presidency over to another after a limited term. But if we suppose him less disinterested, he might, like Napoleon, have established an hereditary throne. Along with Jacobinism, France might have given up all that belonged to the Second Revolution, and have returned to the Liberal Monarchy of 1791, correcting only the great mistake of that constitution, which consisted in giving too little power to the executive. With such a monarchy Europe would have been disposed to live at peace. It would have suited France, in which monarchism had struck far deeper roots than could be eradicated in a few years of republican government. The Bourbons would have been forgotten, the monarchical party of France would have transferred its allegiance, and, preserved from that double schism which afterwards ruined it, would perhaps have continued to this day to form the vast majority of the nation. That nation would include at least Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy, and Nice.
    We see, then, precisely how history was modified by the exceptional character of Napoleon. He neither made peace with England, nor concentrated his force upon her, carefully conciliating the Continental Powers, nor endeavoured by diplomacy to form a European coalition against her, but plunged into the enterprise of forcing the Continent by arms into a confederacy against her. Yet he had himself, in 1800, shown the possibility of reviving by negotiation the Armed Neutrality; nor would it have been difficult for him, by moderate conduct in 1804 and 1805, to avert at least the third coalition.
    Evidently no political instrument can be less trustworthy than a confederacy held together by force. The defection, first of Spain, then of Prussia, then of Austria, could cause no surprise. And apparently it had been open to Napoleon in 1803 to create a voluntary confederacy, which would have reduced England to a great extremity without endangering Napoleon's power. Yet, not only at the outset, but at every stage of his progress, he seems deliberately to prefer forced allegiances, the result of a war, to any free combination of interests. He had Prussia as an ally, but preferred to have her as a subject; he was enthusiastically followed by Spain, but preferred to plunder and humiliate her; and he throws away his alliance with Russia, choosing deliberately to recover it at the head of 600,000 men.

    'Better in a battle than in a war' is the phrase which Livy applies to Hannibal. But the popular view regards only battles, and seems unable to embrace a whole war, still less a comprehensive political scheme in which even a war may be but an episode. Hence the prevalent notion of Napoleon as a kind of incarnation of success. In whatever way we conceive success, Napoleon missed it, and if the Caesars and Alexanders may be called the gods of history, Napoleon is the Titan. If we ascribe to him a purely personal ambition, he would have been successful if he had established his dynasty in France. To any one who saw him about 1802, it must have seemed that such an object was easily within his reach, if only he could stoop to pick up a crown. He did stoop, he picked up the crown, but it dropped from his hands again. Everything favoured this ambition, the profoundly monarchical disposition of the country, the total failure of the Jacobins on the one side, and of the Bourbons on the other, his own military achievements, which, as early as 1802, were unrivalled in modern history. The success with which, a generation later, his nephew traded on his mere name, is a measure of the mistakes which caused his own ruin and that of his son.
    But let us suppose that he had higher views, that he thought of the greatness and well-being of France. What was the effect upon France of the specially Napoleonic work, of the attempt to conquer England by conquering Europe? As in the popular view the triumphant success which this enterprise had in its earlier stages, seems to conceal the total failure which it met with in the end, so it makes us utterly blind to the irretrievable disaster which it brought upon France. Much, it is true, has been said of the loss of life incurred, and indeed the statistics of the campaigns of 1812, 1813, 1814, 1815, are appalling. But the bloodshed fell upon several nations at once. What was peculiar to France was the loss of territory. And it was not merely the conquests made by Napoleon that were lost. We may indeed hold that France suffered no real loss by the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine, or by the expulsion of her armies from Spain and Italy, that the fall of the Napoleonic Empire was to France but the removal of an unhealthy excrescence. But France lost more than this; she lost not merely the conquests of Napoleon, but those of the Revolution; and these stand on quite another footing. She had held Belgium for twenty years, and the left bank of the Rhine for nearly as long a time. None of the acquisitions made by France under the Bourbons seemed more solid and secure than these. They had cost France dear, and the loss of them had been felt as an almost incurable wound to Germany. But the transference had been effected, the struggle was over, the European system had adapted itself to the change. Other questions had arisen since. For a long time after the Treaty of Luneville it was not thought likely that the result of the revolutionary war would be undone again, or that France could be forced back within her ancient limits.
    To a Moreau or a Bernadotte it would probably have been an easy task to defend these acquisitions, for there was no discontent, no indignant patriotism in the annexed territories, and how could Europe in cold blood tear them by main force from such a Power as France? Napoleon found the way to lose them.
    When we speak of Napoleon as a great conqueror, do we consider that he not only lost all his conquests, but left the territory of France actually smaller than he found it when he became its ruler? Belgium was no part of his conquests; the left bank of the Rhine was an acquisition for which France thanked him only among others; and this splendid tract of territory, which seemed as safely incorporated with France as Burgundy; was lost by Napoleon.
    The title 'Mehrer des Reichs' was deserved by several Bourbon princes. Henry II won the three bishoprics, Alsace and Franche Comte are the trophies of Louis XIV, Lorraine and Corsica those of Louis XV. The struggle by which the First Republic had deserved the same title, and of which Belgium and the Left Bank were the trophies, was grander than any of these. What is the trophy of Napoleon? Alone of all the modern rulers of France, he inflicted upon her a vast and irreparable loss of territory.
    And yet not alone, for Alsace and Lorraine have gone since; but they have been lost in his name, and by recurring to his system.

    The beneficial consequences which may be traced to Napoleon's career fall into two principal classes: (1) those caused not by him, but by resistance to him; (2) those caused by him as the child of his age or the representative of the Revolution.
    (1) It is said, Did not he carry a refreshing, regenerating influence wherever he appeared at the head of his armies? Do not several European states date their modern period of progress and regeneration from a Napoleonic invasion? This is true at least of Prussia, Russia, and Spain; but in what sense is it true? In the same sense in which the greatness of ancient Greece is to be traced to the invasion of Xerxes. A pressing danger, the necessity of a great national rally, if it is followed by victory, is the most beneficial thing that can happen to a state. In Prussia the reform commenced by Stein and Scharnhorst and the victories of the war of liberation which followed, in Russia and Spain the heroic resistance, had the effect of inspiring these nations as nothing had done before. But as the Greeks did not honour Xerxes for the great impulse they had received from the efforts which caused his defeat, so we ought to consider that it was not Napoleon, but resistance to Napoleon, which had such a bracing effect upon Europe. Did he intend to rouse national spirit? What he ultimately intended it is indeed difficult to say. Possibly he calculated that the military tyranny which he exercised would not be long needed, and that it would cease as a matter of course, when the fall of England should be accomplished. But he certainly did not intend to rouse in Germany and Italy a political consciousness leading to national unity and liberty; still less did he intend to create that rebellion in Spain which was fatal to his empire. He intended in these cases the opposite result, as we see by the great impulse which he gave to despotism in the middle states of Germany, and by the pains he took to prevent his Russian expedition from leading to a restoration of Poland. Had he been successful - that is, had English influence been destroyed and English liberties been overthrown, had Prussia been reduced to a mere electorate, and Piedmont to a French province, had the system of French imperialism been consolidated in Germany, Italy, and Spain, - all the movements which have since made the life and animated the history of this century would have been precluded. Napoleon's own direct influence tended to ruin and to the stagnation of imperialism, and was only beneficial in backward countries such as Spain and Italy; the regenerating influence of that age is the spirit of resistance to Napoleon. It was the great Anti-Napoleonic Revolution of Europe which, by arming the peoples against tyranny, laid the foundation of European liberty.
    (2) It is however true that he professed, in a vague manner, to be the champion of the liberal principles of the First Revolution, that is, of civil equality, religious toleration, and enlightened legislation. And it is possible to show that liberal reforms of this kind were introduced by his government in the Rhine provinces, in Westphalia, and in Italy. Naturally the expansion of France which followed the Revolution had many such beneficial consequences. But that expansion was not specifically his work. It began before him; it would have proceeded almost as far without him. Had Moreau reigned instead of Bonaparte, a similar influence would have flowed from liberal France upon the neighbouring states; it would have flowed more constantly and more uniformly, and it would have been followed by no similar reaction. Such liberal reforms are not specifically Napoleonic; they belong to the movement which bore him along, not to that which he himself originated.
    The same remark applies to his domestic reforms. When he did only what Moreau or Bernadotte would have done in his place, he often did what was good in itself, and he did it with remarkable energy. Thus it fell to him, wielding the first strong government that had been seen since the destruction of ancient France, to found a whole system of national institutions, Army, Church, University, Bank, Local Government, Code. Modern France dates from the Consulate. And it may be possible to show that in some parts of the new system his own mind has left its stamp, and also that no ruler less energetic would have met the needs of the time so fully. Still in the main this work was done by committees of experts, and it was done at that time and at no other, not because Napoleon was specially enlightened, but because the country found itself at last at peace and almost without institutions. A Moreau would have done perhaps not so much, but he must have done a similar work; and it is easy to show that, being disinterested, he might have avoided great legislative errors, into which Napoleon was led by his rapacity of power.
    A similar remark may be applied to that great work of discipline, for which he often receives credit. It is said that his firm will, vigilant eye, and indefatigable energy presiding for years over ever department of administration, gave an impulse to the public service and a discipline to officials, which, passing afterwards into a tradition of conscientious work, has upheld the French state ever since. No doubt the contrast is great between the stern martial energy of the Napoleonic generation and the effeminacy of the age of Pompadour. But here, again, the reform had been begun and was even far advanced when Napoleon appeared. It had been set on foot by the Convention: Marceau, Kleber, Hoche, in the army, Carnot in the Government, had set great examples, which an organised imperialism could not but emulate; and what Bonaparte did in this respect would have been done by a Moreau, with less energy no doubt, but with a purer spirit.

    When we compare Napoleon's way of thinking with that of other rulers of the same class, even the most ambitious, we seem to see a difference. Louis XIV and Frederick are thought ambitious, but they were scarcely ambitious in the same sense as Napoleon. Their course was unscrupulous and lawless, but in most cases they aimed at acquisitions which were really important, nay, often seemed indispensably necessary to the country. Thus by the partition of Poland Frederick at once rescued Prussia from a position of extreme difficulty, and acquired a province which seemed almost indispensable for the compactness of the kingdom. Louis XIV also had for the most part a serious public object in view. To fortify France on the side where she was weakest, to complete the incorporation of Alsace, acquired during his minority, were objects so important that we may suppose many of his aggressions to have seemed to him justifiable on the grounds of necessary self-defence. The feverish impatience with which the Emperor Joseph presses his wild schemes of annexation, is certainly to be explained by the extreme and dangerous want of compactness which he found in the Austrian territory. Napoleon, in adopting the unscrupulous maxims of the eighteenth century school of rulers, applies them not only on a scale which would have appalled the most cynical of these, but also in cases which they did not contemplate. They pleaded self-defence and public necessity for their annexations. The plea was insufficient, but for the most part it was urged in sincerity. The same excuse of necessity and self-defence might be offered for the lawless conduct of the French Government in the first years of the revolutionary war. The country was at one time in extreme danger, and in addition the revolutionists sincerely believed that humanity itself was interested in their success. We may allow to Napoleon himself, so long as he was Bonaparte, the benefit of this excuse.
    But it cannot be alleged for the wars of the properly Napoleonic period, that is, the wars after 1803. France was now in no danger, and could urge no plea of necessity or self-defence. Her territory was greatly enlarged, and it was compact. When Napoleon now continued to practise the doctrine of Frederick and Joseph, he applied it to a state of things for which it had never been intended. His language was less cynical than Frederick's, because it was less frank; but his conduct was far more immoral. Frederick's ambition is sincerely for the state; it is for the state he sins; and he seeks for the state real, unquestionable, solid advantages. But for a state like France, at the height of prosperity and glory, to adopt in an ordinary colonial and maritime war against England the desperate maxims by which Frederick and Joseph had sought to found solid and defensible states in the midst of the confusion of Germany - this was not to follow a bad precedent, but to pervert a bad precedent into something infinitely worse. It was portentous and unique in the Napoleonic policy, that, while it far surpassed that of Frederick in cynicism and waste of human life, it had no definable object; for who could say what shape Europe would take, or how it would be governed, when the maritime tyranny of England should once for all be overthrown?
    Moreover, while he exaggerates the bad maxims of the past age, he shows no sympathy for the better maxims which his own age was substituting for them. The Machiavelism of the eighteenth century marked the dissolution of the old system. What better system was to arise? Frederick and Joseph could not be expected to know, but Napoleon might have known. His own unrivalled glory came from the leadership of a living nationality; he better than any man of his time might have foreseen that the nineteenth century would make Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, organic, as France had been made organic by her revolution. This development would create a new European system, in which no doubt wars would still have a place and armies become larger than ever, yet far nobler than the family system of the seventeenth century or the international anarchy of the eighteenth. I have said that Napoleon did not originate the lawlessness he practised, that he only reflected the morality of his age; unfortunately he reflected only one part of it, and presented a rugged, dull surface to the better part. He had assimilated all that Frederick could teach, but the generous maxims of the first French Revolution had made no impression on him. And yet he, a pupil of Paoli, a native of that Corsica which had been to Rousseau what Greece was later to Byron - so that he had exclaimed, 'I have a kind of presentiment that this little island will astonish Europe' - should have entered more than any of his contemporaries into all that is expressed by the word 'nationality'. It was indeed expected of him; the primitive type of heroism, founded on devotion to the fatherland, seemed embodied in the Corsican soldier with his classical face. It is therefore a strikingly individual trait that he altogether disappoints these expectations. As in Corsica itself he turned against Paoli, so in Europe he will know nothing of the principle of nationality. He goes all lengths in warring against it, so that at last he becomes absolutely identified with the tyranny against which 'Plutarch's men' fight. It is as if Tell should transform himself into Gessler, or Leonidas into Xerxes. And no hereditary tyrant, warring on national independence in mere invincible ignorance of its nature, was ever more ruthless and relentless than this tyrant, who had been bred in an atmosphere of national ideas. The oppressor of Tyrol and Spain is actually the same man who only twenty years earlier had written the 'Letters of Corsica.'
    But, forsooth, everything must yield to the paramount necessity of bringing to an end the maritime tyranny of England. We can enter into the frenzy of the ruler who, while he meets with no resistance elsewhere, finds himself steadily thwarted in the one direction in which from the beginning he had resolved to move. Germany, and Spain, and Russia felt the impatient force, which could not find an escape at Brest and Rochefort. And as he grew accustomed year after year to war on a large scale, it became perhaps more and more an object in itself. The character, which had always been remarked for its lonely pride and egoism, became, thus indulged on the one side and thwarted on the other, cynically unlike that of other men - inhuman. The former generation had trembled at the hard cynicism of Frederick, but human life was now wasted on a vastly greater scale, liberty more ruthlessly repressed, public law more contemptuously outraged, by one who sprang from the people. Frederick had pursued intelligible objects, but Napoleon's objects were scarcely definable. At last, when he sacrificed half a million of men in Russia to his crotchet of a commercial system, he seemed to pass out of the pale of civilised humanity, and to rank himself with Attila. The comparison was superficial; but had Napoleon, or had Attila, the better right to complain of it? The barbarian followed the maxims of his age and people, but we can only look with stupefaction on the Russian expedition. For we remember that this most monstrous of human sacrifices was performed by the person who twenty years earlier was pronounced 'a man of sensibility,' when he discussed in the style of Rousseau 'what sentiments it is important to inculcate upon human beings for their happiness.'
    Where it is possible, the best way to estimate the moral character of a man is to consider the general purpose and drift of his life. Particular acts usually admit of palliation or excuse; in a time so revolutionary as that in which Napoleon lived, almost every act may be plausibly defended on the plea of an exceptional necessity. No one has ever accused Napoleon of purely wanton crimes, such crimes as spring from an unhealthy nature. His crimes are for the most part acts of lawless violence, done openly, avowed, and justified by the reason of state. The language he uniformly held shows that he had adopted early, and with great decision, the maxim so current in the revolutionary age, that as long as the public good is our object, almost every act is permissible; or, as Mirabeau was fond of repeating, 'La petite morale est ennemie de la grande.' We may say that he elects to be tried by the standard of Frederick the Great. He does not profess to observe the morality of ordinary men; as Frederick frankly maintains that for the public good treaties may be broken, so Napoleon will break any engagement and violate any law for the public good.
    This principle is terrible; nevertheless it is a principle. Those who sincerely adhere to it will subject themselves to a certain restraint, will recognise certain acts to be criminal, and certain other acts to be obligatory. For Frederick himself, perhaps, the principle had really its positive as well as its negative side. The public good was to him perhaps no mere pretext, no mere synonym for his own interest. In his career, as we see the negative working of the principle in such particular acts as the invasion of Silesia and the partition of Poland, so we see the positive working of it in the general tendency of the whole. We see that at the beginning of his reign the Prussian state laboured under great disadvantages, which exposed it to great dangers. We see that it is to remove these disadvantages that Frederick devotes his life and commits his crimes. When he speaks of the public good he is serious, and we may, perhaps, acquit him on the whole of a purely selfish ambition. Hence he is remembered with gratitude by the Germany of the present day.
    The attempt has been made here to apply the same method to Napoleon. It is the only method which is sufficiently compendious to be admissible in a work of this kind, and it is perhaps in itself the most satisfactory. All his lawless deeds were regarded by him as means to an end, justified by the goodness of the end. He was full of the idea that he had to deal with a revolutionary age, to which ordinary maxims are inapplicable. 'You understand nothing of revolutions,' was his contemptuous comment, when some one related how he had yielded to a moral scruple at some crisis of French affairs. If this was his view, what can be gained by nicely shifting the evidence on which the special charges against him rest? 'Such men as I,' he said, 'do not commit crimes;' that is, they do what is necessary, and what is necessary is right.
    But Napoleon, like Frederick, had so much freedom and power that we are able to discover what general objects he has in view. We are able to apply to him the test he himself accepts.
    From the middle of the period of the Consulate he begins to be as free from all pledges and all responsibility as Frederick had been, and therefore from this date onward he reveals his own personal aims, whereas earlier he had been but an instrument of the aims of the French Revolution.
    In the former period, therefore, we see the man such as circumstances made him. He is the incarnation of the vitality of a great people, made organic for the first time. They have the instinct of subordination, formed in the time of despotism, and along with it the new feeling of life. Of such a nation he becomes the heroic king, in order to vindicate it and subdue its enemies. This period comes to an end in the Consulate, when Bonaparte accomplishes the pacification of the world.
    In the latter period we see the man such as he is in himself. He now no longer executes a commission derived from others, but forms his own plans. In the execution of them he is, like Frederick, unscrupulous. Both at home and abroad he makes slight account of engagements, like Frederick, too, he is hard and careless of human life. Moreover, as his power is far greater, his reckless violence oppresses mankind far more than Frederick's had done. The carnage and horror of the Seven Years' War are utterly eclipsed on the fields of Borodino and Leipzig, and in the retreat from Moscow. And, still further, he is himself the prime mover in the incessant wars of this period; whereas Frederick, after the invasion of Silesia, had remained for the most part on the defensive. But, like Frederick, he justifies his course by the plea of the public good.
    He pushes this wild morality to the utmost extreme. For it is scarcely possible to imagine any reform or improvement in human affairs so great as to compensate for all that Napoleon inflicted on mankind - for France decimated, for Russia invaded, for Spain made for five years the scene of a barbarous civil war, for Germany trampled under foot, for England blockaded, for a whole generation sacrificed to war. Still, in estimating Napoleon's character, the essential question is, Had he really the public good in view? Had he some object which, if it could be attained, might conceivably seem to him worth so many sacrifices, and which he might conceivably hope to attain by means of them? If he had, we may regard his career as in a certain sense magnanimous, if also wayward, and even monstrous: we may regard him as a great spirit labouring under a terrible but still sublime hallucination.
    Our conclusion is that he had neither any such grand conception, nor yet, on the other hand, the bare desire for personal glory. He pursued simply the ordinary objects of the French Foreign Office, and only failure and the impatience caused by failure led him to strain in such an unheard-of manner the enormous resources of his empire. His aim was to fight out the great quarrel with England which had occupied France throughout the eighteenth century, to avenge and repair the losses France had suffered in Canada and India, and on all the seas. This was what he promised to France; and being unable to accomplish his object by a direct attack, he forced all Europe into the war, 'conquering Europe into order to conquer England,' and offering nothing to Europe in return but the old points of the Armed Neutrality.
    This is what he promised; and what he promised he failed to perform, causing France to lose in the attempt all the dear bought conquests of the Revolution.
    When we review the career of Frederick the Great, we cannot refrain, however severely we may judge his crimes, from reflecting that after all his monument is modern Germany. That solid structure remains to honour the workman who did so much to build it. It is, in the main, just such a structure as Frederick would have desired to see, as he intended to found.
    For Napoleon, too, it may be said that modern France, in its internal constitution, is his monument. Its institutions are in the main the work of his reign. But this is the monument of that earlier Napoleon who was the child of his age.
    The Napoleon who has himself, who executed his iron plans with almost unlimited power, has no monument. All that he built, at such a cost of blood and tears, was swept away before he himself ended his short life.