Michelet, the historian, showed his extreme aversion to the First Napoleon by describing him as “without eyelashes or eyebrows; with a small quantity of hair of an uncertain brown; with eyes gray, like a pane of glass, wherein one sees nothing; in short, an incomplete and obscure impersonality which appears phantasmagorical.”
GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES.
Fortuna quæ plurimum potest, cum in aliis rebus, tum præcipue in bello, in parvis momentis magnus rerum mutationes efficit.—Cæsar, De Bello Civili.
In Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1758, Franklin quotes,—“He adviseth to circumspection and care even in the smallest matters, because sometimes ‘A little neglect may breed great mischief,’ adding, ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost’; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.” And St. James (ch. iii. v. 5) gives a fine illustration in respect to the government of the tongue, “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”
In the relations of cause and consequence there must, of course, be many greater causes in readiness to act. An accidental spark may blow up a fortress—provided there be gunpowder in the magazine. But it is as legitimate as it is curious to trace the successive links of a chain of events back to small accidents.
“How momentous,” says Campbell, “are the results of apparently trivial circumstances! When Mahomet was flying from his enemies, he took refuge in a cave; which his pursuers would have entered, if they had not seen a spider’s web at the entrance. Not knowing that it was freshly woven, they passed by, and thus a spider’s web changed the history of the world.”
When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. of England. She had for her marriage-dower the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions of men. All this probably had never occurred had Louis not been so rash as to crop his head, and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of Queen Eleanor.
Warton mentions, in his Notes on Pope, that the Treaty of Utrecht was occasioned by a quarrel between the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne about a pair of gloves.
The expedition to the island of Ré was undertaken to gratify a foolish and romantic passion of the Duke of Buckingham.
The coquetry of the daughter of Count Julian introduced the Saracens into Spain.