Roman history is a second edition of Grecian, enlarged in its sphere of
operations, and in its influence over the world. Rome, however, would
never have been possible, had Greece not first been a fact. But Rome was
vitiated in the character of her public men, as compared with those of
Greece, in about the same ratio that she was greater in other respects.
Greece was the admiration of the world, but Rome was its astonishment.
All that she was, sank with her as she went down into the dark ages. The
best of what made Greece, still lives in the people of the world. Greece
was the garden of modern civilization and will remain its inspiration
until three elements of character—the religious, the intellectual and
the social—shall join their powers to construct the future government of
the world.
Charlemagne was the basis of the first great national character that
evolved after the dark ages, and Otho the Great laid the foundation for
the present dominance of Bismarck and Von Moltke in Central Europe.
Cromwell, more than any other, is the inspiration of English character,
modified by its respect for the political rights of women by the
influence of Queen Elizabeth, under whom England reached the acme of its
power and glory. But in French history is to be found the most distinct
evidence of a communication to a whole people of the character of a
single individual that there is to be found anywhere. The French
character, both as a nation and as an individual, may be summed up in
one word—Bonaparte. With the advent of this giant mind came a crisis
over all modern Europe. Under his influence not only did the national
character of the French people change, but the individual character also
underwent many modifications. Nor was this confined to France, for this
man’s genius was felt in every capital in the world. He conquered the
nations and compelled them to change their laws, while to France he gave
an entire new code, to which, more than to anything else, France owes
her position among nations. It was the result of these laws that gave to
France the capacity to rise from the disaster inflicted upon her by
Prussia. Her immense loans came in small sums from the peasantry, and
when paid will remain in France, which will not suffer the double
impoverishment that most nations suffer from a public debt. The
possibility of this was due to the far-reaching statesmanship of
Napoleon Bonaparte, when he changed the laws regarding the inheritance
of property, taking the estate from the deceased and dividing it equally
among all the children—the greatest innovation that had ever been made
upon the old feudal system, and together with other reforms, fixing
France in a position to become more prosperous internally than any other
European nation. Bonaparte also broke down the barriers that divided the
nations and races of Europe, and opened up the way for closer commercial
and literary relations, and performed, during the twenty years that he
was in France, a greater service for the advancement of civilization
than was ever performed by any other person who ever lived. In a sense,
and in a good sense, too, it may be said that he dictated to the world,
because the changes that he instituted and compelled have produced a
modifying influence over the whole world. Taken as a whole, Bonaparte
was the greatest man who ever lived. Certainly he equalled the greatest
generals, and his campaigns, with those of Hannibal and
Scipio-Africanus, will be the textbooks for military students as long as
the art of war remains a study; while as a statesman he stands at the
head of the greatest. He was Lycurgus, Alexander, Hannibal, Talleyrand,
Bismarck combined. He represented, if he did not excel, the greatest of
all ages, save Confucius and Jesus, save Demosthenes and Cicero. He
never taught morality, _per se_, but he believed that a well-governed
and industrially-thrifty people would necessarily be also moral, and he
never made a speech except to point out the enemy to his soldiers. The
treachery of a single man—Grouchy—who permitted Blucher to hurl the
Prussian army unopposed upon his wearied troops after they had defeated
Wellington at Waterloo, changed the whole future destiny of Europe, and
prevented Bonaparte from becoming the beneficent law-giver of the world
as he had been of France. For behind all his ambition in which only he
is known to the world, and, therefore, not known at all, he had an
unalterably fixed purpose to raise the common people of Europe to their
proper position; but this he could do only by first conquering the
rulers who stood in his way.