The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-12-05

loudly expressed contempt, he was UNI
! able to conceal from himself her danger
| GUS rivalry In his eyes she was the
| geneI al enemy, and nothing but her COM
plete humiliation was necessary to the
peace and prosperity of Europe. WheIe E.
fore it was his dream TO send her to a
kind of political coventry, to exclude her
ships from every foreign port and to
make any intercourse with an English
man a capital ozSSnse. With what
energy and success he pursued this pol
icy of exclusion is made abundantly
clear A general who dared to receive
an Englishman at dinner was in imme-
date disgrace. The king of Holland
was always the enemy of France because
he was unable to exclude the ships of
Great Britain from his ports. In 1907
the emperor contemplated a descent
upon the recalcitrant island. His fleet,
said he, was ready, and vast army sta
toned at Boulogne. Meanwhile, he gave
orders that all the English dipfomatists
should be driven from the courts Of Eu-
rope, and that the whole continent
should be 'purged" of the enemies pres
ence. There was no city, from the chan
mel to Siberia, where letters were ad-
milted which bore the mark London
Seize them ALL" he cried, land throw
them in the fire. When Sir Arthur
Wellesley began his victorious cam
paign in the peninsula, the emperor de-
nounced the "impudence" of the English
who should dare to undertake a war on
land, and it was long before he would
believe in the possibility of defeat, THE
English" he wrote, ARE in fight, and
have sent for 10000 horses that they may
get away the more speedily" And with
his inexhaustible fertility he insisted
that this eowardice should be celebrated
in caIfcatures and comic songs, and that
the songs should be translated into Ger
man and italian and thrown broadcast
l., f11,a tt,latr. /,
suggests articles which should appear
in the journals to England's discredit,
and even sketches the line that the lead
er writer should adopt. Moreover there
was none of English birth in the whole
continent of Europe whom he did not
watch with sleepless ferocity. He had
as keen a scent for English blood as a
hound for a fox. The humblest mental
did not escape him. There is no rea-
son." he told the police, why M. de
Chevreuse should not have a governess
for his children, but there is every rea-
son why that governess should not be
an Englshwoman." And straightway
she was depoIlted or imprisoned The
policy was spirited and it failed because
it could rot be carried out by one man.
The world has known but one Napoleon,
and it needed a battalion to follow h S
designs to successful conclusion.
Nowhere, in fact, did Napoleon show
his disregard of history and tradition so
splendidly as in his firm treatment of the
church. He had more monks, priests,
cardinals ard bishops under lock and
key than he could count. He had set
himself to achieve the mastery of the
world, and nothing was allowed to i'm
pede his march. His daring outstripped
the bravest conceptions of Caesar or of
Alexander. He invented new world
for himself, like Shakespeare, and, Ike
Shakespeare, tore 1t to pieces that he
might have no worthy followers. Eng
land, the pope, Nine. de Stael-how he
hated them all. And if only he. had
trampled England into the same mre
wherein he flung the church, he never
would have seen the AS Inc of ST Hell
ena. But a man has only one brain and
two hands, and not even Napoleon could
do the work of thousand. His BROTH
ers could not help him. and herein lay
his deepest tragedy. He loved Louis
and he loved Joseph, and he believed
that the blood which flowed in their
veins was the blood that flowed In his.
But what had he, the greatest freak of
the modern world, to do with brothers
or cousins or uncles? He stood by
himself, and lived his own life, yet grum-
bled ever at the inevitable failure of
others. The letters addressed to the
king of Holland are pathetic for all their
tragedy. Are you the ally of Eng