Clad in his favourite green uniform, he fared forth to his resting-place under two large weeping willow trees in a secluded valley:  the coffin, surmounted by his sword and the cloak he had worn at Marengo, was borne with full military honours by grenadiers of the 20th and 66th Regiments before a long line of red-coats; and their banners, emblazoned with the names of “Talavera,” “Albuera,” “Pyrenees,” and “Orthez,” were lowered in a last salute to our mighty foe.  Salvos of artillery and musketry were fired over the grave:  the echoes rattled upwards from ridge to ridge and leaped from the splintery peaks far into the wastes of ocean to warn the world beyond that the greatest warrior and administrator of all the ages had sunk to rest.

His ashes were not to remain in that desolate nook:  in a clause of his will he expressed the desire that they should rest by the banks of the Seine among the people he had loved so well.  In 1840 they were disinterred in presence of Bertrand, Gourgaud, and Marchand, and borne to France.  Paris opened her arms to receive the mighty dead; and Louis Philippe, on whom he had once prophesied that the crown of France would one day rest, received the coffin in state under the dome of the Invalides.  There he reposes, among the devoted people whom by his superhuman genius he raised to bewildering heights of glory, only to dash them to the depths of disaster by his monstrous errors.

* * * * *

Viewing his career as a whole, it seems just and fair to assert that the fundamental cause of his overthrow is to be found, not in the failings of the French, for they served him with a fidelity that would wring tears of pity from Rhadamanthus; not in the treachery of this or that general or politician, for that is little when set against the loyalty of forty millions of men; but in the character of the man and of his age.  Never had mortal man so grand an opportunity of ruling over a chaotic Continent:  never had any great leader antagonists so feeble as the rulers who opposed his rush to supremacy.  At the dawn of the nineteenth century the old monarchies were effete:  insanity reigned in four dynasties, and weak or time-serving counsels swayed the remainder.  For several years their counsellors and generals were little better.  With the exception of Pitt and Nelson, who were carried off by death, and of Wellington, who had but half an army, Napoleon never came face to face with thoroughly able, well-equipped, and stubborn opponents until the year 1812.

It seems a paradox to say that this excess of good fortune largely contributed to his ruin:  yet it is true.  His was one of those thick-set combative natures that need timely restraint if their best qualities are to be nurtured and their domineering instincts curbed.  Just as the strongest Ministry prances on to ruin if the Opposition gives no effective check, so it was with Napoleon.  Had he in his early