Creasy, in his Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, says concerning the battle of Waterloo, “The great battle which ended the twenty-three years’ war of the first French revolution, and which quelled the man whose genius and ambition had so long disturbed and desolated the world, deserves to be regarded by us ... with peculiar gratitude for the repose which it secured for us and for the greater part of the human race.”

    10.  And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the
    beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed
    their tongues for pain,

    11.  And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and
    their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

Under this vial the symbols differ somewhat.  The “beast” is evidently the one of whom the image was made, referred to in verse 2—­the Papacy.  The seat that the Papacy occupied from the time the dragon resigned in favor of the beast (chap. 13:2) was his position of temporal power and authority.  In the following chapter the Papacy is described as seated upon a ten-horned beast, the ten horns of which symbolized the kingdoms of Europe.  In this position it was able to exercise a guiding influence over the European nations.  We have already seen what great power the Popes exercised in this direction during the Dark Ages.  But the “beast” of chapter 17 himself, as distinguished from his horns, symbolizes the Holy Roman Empire, which was a revival of the old empire of the Caesars.  This revived “world-empire” was closely allied to the Papacy.  When Charlemagne, the Carlovingian king, restored the empire of the West, he was crowned “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III., A.D. 800.  “The Popes made the descendants of Charles Martel kings and emperors; the grateful Frankish princes defended the Popes against all their enemies, imperial and barbarian, and dowering them with cities and provinces, laid the basis of their temporal sovereignty, which continued for more than a thousand years.”  After the decline of the Carlovingian power the imperial authority was again revived by Otto the Great (962), who was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope.  Henceforth the empire of the West was termed the Holy Roman Empire.  “From this time on it was the rule that the German king who was crowned at Aachen had a right to be crowned ... emperor at Rome.”  So the general rule was that the Popes upheld the emperors, and the emperors sustained the Popes in their position as the spiritual heads of the church and as temporal rulers over the Papal states, which were granted them originally by the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne.

In chapter 13 the civil powers of Europe and the ecclesiastical power of Rome are not shown by a double symbol—­a woman and a beast—­as in chapter 17, but are there represented by a combination of symbols drawn from the departments of human life and animal life, which shows that a politico-religious system is intended, as heretofore explained; hence the term beast, as there used, signifies either the Papacy or the civil power.  Thus the term is used in the present chapter under consideration, and has reference here to the beast as an ecclesiastical power—­the Papacy—­and his “seat” refers to his temporal authority.