first epoch of their Revolution endeavoured to impart to Europe--the spirit of liberty and self-government--they had now renounced themselves. The belief in popular right, which made the difference between the changes of 1789 and those attempted by the Emperor Joseph, sank in the storms of the Revolution. [Bonaparte legislates in the spirit of the reforming monarchs of the 18th century.] Yet the statesmanship of Bonaparte, if it repelled the liberal and disinterested sentiment of 1789, was no mere cunning of a Corsican soldier, or exploit of mediæval genius born outside its age. Subject to the fullest gratification of his own most despotic or most malignant impulse, Bonaparte carried into his creations the ideas upon which the greatest European innovators before the French Revolution had based their work. What Frederick and Joseph had accomplished, or failed to accomplish, was realised in Western Germany when its Sovereigns became the clients of the First Consul. Bonaparte was no child of the French Revolution; he was the last and the greatest of the autocratic legislators who worked in an unfree age. Under his rule France lost what had seemed to be most its own; it most powerfully advanced the forms of progress common to itself and the rest of Europe. Bonaparte raised no population to liberty: in extinguishing privilege and abolishing the legal distinctions of birth, in levelling all personal and corporate authority beneath the single rule of the State, he prepared the way for a rational freedom, when, at a later day, the Government of the State should itself become the representative of the nation's will. CHAPTER V. Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massena besieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses the St. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle of Marengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England and Austria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace of Lunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle of Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army enters Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo and Alexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at London, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and his retirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during the Continental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany under French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States and Free Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The Civil Code--The Concordat. [Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and to England, 1799.]