The fall of Napoleon taught some awful and impressive lessons to humanity, which would have been unlearned had he continued to be successful to the end. It taught the utter vanity of military glory; that peace with neighbors is the greatest of national blessings, and war the greatest of evils; that no successes on the battlefield can compensate for the miseries of an unjust and unnecessary war; and that avenging justice will sooner or later overtake the wickedness of a heartless egotism. It taught the folly of worshipping mere outward strength, disconnected from goodness; and, finally, it taught that God will protect defenceless nations, and even guilty nations, when they shall have expiated their crimes and follies, and prove Himself the kind Father of all His children, even amid chastisements, gradually leading them, against their will, to that blessed condition when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall learn war no more.
What remains to-day of those grand Napoleonic ideas which intoxicated France for twenty years, and which, revived by Louis Napoleon, led to a brief glory and an infamous fall, and the humiliation and impoverishment of the most powerful state of Europe? They are synonymous with imperialism, personal government, the absolute reign of a single man, without constitutional checks,--a return to Caesarism, to the unenlightened and selfish despotism of Pagan Rome. And hence they are now repudiated by France herself,--as well as by England and America,--as false, as selfish, as fatal to all true national progress, as opposed to every sentiment which gives dignity to struggling States, as irreconcilably hostile to the civilization which binds nations together, and which slowly would establish liberty, and peace, and industry, and equal privileges, and law, and education, and material prosperity, upon this fallen world.
AUTHORITIES.
So much has been written on Napoleon, that I can only select some of the standard and accessible works. Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon I.; L. P. Junot's Memoirs of Napoleon, Court, and Family; Las Casas' Napoleon at St. Helena; Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire; Memoirs of Prince Metternich; Segur's History of Expedition to Russia; Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat; Vieusseau's Napoleon, his Sayings and Deeds; Napoleon's Confidential Correspondence with Josephine and with his Brother Joseph; Alison's History of Europe; Lockhart's and Sir Walter Scott's Lives of Napoleon; Court and Camp of Napoleon, in Murray's Family Library; W. Forsyth's Captivity at St. Helena; Dr. Channing's Essay on Napoleon; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Napoleon; J. G. Wilson's Sketch of Napoleon; Life of Napoleon, by A. H. Jomini; Headley's Napoleon and his Marshals; Napier's Peninsular War; Wellington's Despatches; Gilford's Life of Pitt; Botta's History of Italy under Napoleon; Labaume's Russian Campaign; Berthier's Histoire de l'Expédition d'Egypte.
PRINCE METTERNICH.
1773-1859.
CONSERVATISM.
In the later years of Napoleon's rule, when he had reached the summit of power, and the various German States lay prostrate at his feet, there arose in Austria a great man, on whom the eyes of Europe were speedily fixed, and who gradually became the central figure of Continental politics. This remarkable man was Count Metternich, who more than any other man set in motion the secret springs which resulted in a general confederation to shake off the degrading fetters imposed by the French conqueror. In this matter he had a powerful ally in Baron von Stein, who reorganized Prussia, and prepared her for successful resistance, when the time came, against the common enemy. In another lecture I shall attempt to show the part taken by Von Stein in the regeneration of Germany; but it is my present purpose to confine attention to the Austrian chancellor and diplomatist, his various labors, and the services he rendered, not to the cause of Freedom and Progress, but to that of Absolutism, of which he was in his day the most noted champion.