A Briton cannot help asking himself, as he realizes what men these were, what would have happened if 150,000 Cogniets and Bourgognes, with Marbots to lead them, and the great captain of all time in the prime of his vigour at their head, had made their landing in Kent?  For months it was touch-and-go.  A single naval slip which left the Channel clear would have been followed by an embarkation from Boulogne, which had been brought by constant practice to so incredibly fine a point that the last horse was aboard within two hours of the start.  Any evening might have seen the whole host upon the Pevensey Flats.  What then?  We know what Humbert did with a handful of men in Ireland, and the story is not reassuring.  Conquest, of course, is unthinkable.  The world in arms could not do that.  But Napoleon never thought of the conquest of Britain.  He has expressly disclaimed it.  What he did contemplate was a gigantic raid in which he would do so much damage that for years to come England would be occupied at home in picking up the pieces, instead of having energy to spend abroad in thwarting his Continental plans.

Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Sheerness in flames, with London either levelled to the ground or ransomed at his own figure—­that was a more feasible programme.  Then, with the united fleets of conquered Europe at his back, enormous armies and an inexhaustible treasury, swollen with the ransom of Britain, he could turn to that conquest of America which would win back the old colonies of France and leave him master of the world.  If the worst happened and he had met his Waterloo upon the South Downs, he would have done again what he did in Egypt and once more in Russia:  hurried back to France in a swift vessel, and still had force enough to hold his own upon the Continent.  It would, no doubt, have been a big stake to lay upon the table—­150,000 of his best—­but he could play again if he lost; while, if he won, he cleared the board.  A fine game—­if little Nelson had not stopped it, and with one blow fixed the edge of salt water as the limit of Napoleon’s power.

There’s the cast of a medal on the top of that cabinet which will bring it all close home to you.  It is taken from the die of the medal which Napoleon had arranged to issue on the day that he reached London.  It serves, at any rate, to show that his great muster was not a bluff, but that he really did mean serious business.  On one side is his head.  On the other France is engaged in strangling and throwing to earth a curious fish-tailed creature, which stands for perfidious Albion.  “Frappe a Londres” is printed on one part of it, and “La Descente dans Angleterre” upon another.  Struck to commemorate a conquest, it remains now as a souvenir of a fiasco.  But it was a close call.