German life began to lose much of the quaint diversity beloved of artists and poets; but it also gained much.  No longer did the Count of Limburg-Styrum parade his army of one colonel, six officers, and two privates in the valley of the Roehr:  he and his passed under the sway of Murat, and the lapse of these pigmy forces made a national army possible in the dim future.  No more did the Imperial lawyers at Wetzlar browse on evergreen lawsuits:  justice was administered after the concise methods of Napoleon.  The crops of the Swabian peasant were now comparatively safe from the deer of His Translucency of the castle hard by; for the spirit of the French Revolution breathed upon the old game laws and robbed them of their terrors.  And the German patriot of to-day must still confess that the first impulse for reform, however questionable its motives and brutal its application, came from the new Charlemagne.

NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.—­In a volume of Essays entitled “Napoleonic Studies” (George Bell and Sons, 1904) I have treated somewhat fully the questions of Pitt’s Continental policy, and of Napoleon’s relations to the new thought of the age, in two Essays, entitled “Pitt’s Plans for the Settlement of Europe” and “Wordsworth, Schiller, Fichte, and the Idealist Revolt against Napoleon.”

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CHAPTER XXV

THE FALL OF PRUSSIA

We now turn to consider the influence which the founding of the Rhenish Confederation exerted on the international problems which were being discussed at Paris.  Having gained this diplomatic victory, Napoleon, it seems, might well afford to be lenient to Prussia, to the Czar, even to England.  Would he seize this opportunity, and soothe the fears of these Powers by a few timely concessions, or would he press them all the harder because the third of Germany was now under his control?  Here again he was at the parting of the ways.

As the only obstacles to the conclusion of a durable peace with England were Sicily and Hanover, it may be well to examine here the bearing of these questions on the peace of Europe and Napoleon’s future.

It is clear from his letters to Joseph that he had firmly resolved to conquer Sicily.  Before his brother had reached Naples he warned him to prepare for the expulsion of the Bourbons from that island.  For that purpose the French pushed on into Calabria and began to make extensive preparations—­at the very time when Talleyrand stated to Lord Yarmouth that the French did not want Sicily.  But the English forces defending that island prepared to deal a blow that would prevent a French descent.  A force of about 5,000 men under Sir John Stuart landed in the Bay of St. Euphemia:  and when, on the 4th of July, 1806, Reynier led 7,000 troops against them in full assurance of victory, his choicest battalions sank before the fierce bayonet charge of the British:  in half an hour the French were in full retreat, leaving half their numbers on the field.