who lacked that saving grace of moderation in which the diplomatist excelled, is consonant with all the teachings of history.  The fortunes of the colonial empires of Athens and Carthage in the ancient world, of the Italian maritime republics, of Portugal and Spain, and, above all, the failure of the projects of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. serve to prove that only as the motherland enjoys a sufficiency of peace at home and on her borders can she send forth in ceaseless flow those supplies of men and treasure which are the very life-blood of a new organism.  That beneficent stream might have poured into Napoleon’s Colonial Empire, had not other claims diverted it into the barren channels of European warfare.  The same result followed as at the time of the Seven Years’ War, when the double effort to wage great campaigns in Germany and across the oceans sapped the strength of France, and the additions won by Dupleix and Montcalm fell away from her flaccid frame.

Did Napoleon foresee a similar result?  His conduct in regard to Louisiana and in reference to Decaen’s expedition proves that he did, but only when it was too late.  As soon as he saw that his policy was about to provoke another war with Britain long before he was ready for it, he decided to forego his oceanic schemes and to concentrate his forces on his European frontiers.  The decision was dictated by a true sense of imperial strategy.  But what shall we say of his sense of imperial diplomacy?  The foregoing narrative and the events to be described in the next chapters prove that his mistake lay in that overweening belief in his own powers and in the pliability of his enemies which was the cause of his grandest triumphs and of his unexampled overthrow.

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CHAPTER XVI

NAPOLEON’S INTERVENTIONS

War, said St. Augustine, is but the transition from a lower to a higher state of peace.  The saying is certainly true for those wars that are waged in defence of some great principle or righteous cause.  It may perhaps be applied with justice to the early struggles of the French revolutionists to secure their democratic Government against the threatened intervention of monarchical States.  But the danger of vindicating the cause of freedom by armed force has never been more glaringly shown than in the struggles of that volcanic age.  When democracy had gained a sure foothold in the European system, the war was still pushed on by the triumphant republicans at the expense of neighbouring States, so that, even before the advent of Bonaparte, their polity was being strangely warped by the influence of military methods of rule.  The brilliance of the triumphs won by that young warrior speedily became the greatest danger of republican France; and as the extraordinary energy developed in her people by recent events cast her feeble neighbours to the ground, Europe cowered away before the ever-increasing bulk of France.  In their struggles after democracy the French finally reverted to the military type of Government, which accords with many of the cherished instincts of their race:  and the military-democratic compromise embodied in Napoleon endowed that people with the twofold force of national pride and of conscious strength springing from their new institutions.