And what was the real sentiment in Germany concerning this man at such a time? We hear that ninety German authors dedicated books to him and that servile newspapers were praising him; and we know that one of the immortal compositions of Beethoven was inspired by him. But we must recollect that he was too colossal and too dazzling to be accurately measured, except from a distance. Even yet we are almost too near to him for that, and the world is as divided in its estimate of Napoleon as of the true meaning of Shakspeare's "Hamlet." It is an eternal controversy. He was a monstrous creation; colossal in his plans, colossal in his grasp of the forces about him, colossal in ambition, in selfishness, in cruelty, and in intelligence. Napoleon realized the value of hereditary grandeur. He had been able to climb without it; but the sons who would succeed him as masters of Christendom must have the dignity of ancestry to fortify them. No blood but the Hapsburg was fit for this great office. He swept away Josephine as remorselessly as he had the Pope in Rome, and compelled Francis II. to bestow his daughter Marie Louise upon the man who had stripped him of his Crown and his Empire, and who was steadily absorbing what remained of his dignity. The marriage took place in 1810, and with his Hapsburg Empress, Napoleon established a temporary court at Dresden. Then there commenced the process which was intended finally to engulf all the separate German kingdoms in one universal abyss. The Kingdom of Holland was first annexed to the French Empire; then North Germany was swallowed up in the same way; the same fate evidently being intended next for the Rheinbund. The satellites had begun to fall into the sun! CHAPTER XVII. To the man guiding these astounding changes it seemed a very small matter then that a handful of Tyrolese peasants were in revolt against the French King in Bavaria; nor that a small group of philosophers, poets, and men of letters, were consulting together in Prussia over the shame of their betrayal by their rulers, and considering plans for guiding a popular movement for the emancipation of Germany. But these were the first stirrings of a force Napoleon had not before had to contend with. He had fought with kings and princes and proud aristocracies clinging to their ancient splendor and possessions, but his armies had never been face to face with _patriotism_.