Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European StatesmenLord, John
History
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European Statesmen
Lord, John
History
What remains to-day of those grand Napoleonic ideas which intoxicated
France for twenty years, and which, revived by Louis Napoleon, led to a
brief glory and an infamous fall, and the humiliation and impoverishment
of the most powerful state of Europe? They are synonymous with
imperialism, personal government, the absolute reign of a single man,
without constitutional checks,--a return to Caesarism, to the
unenlightened and selfish despotism of Pagan Rome. And hence they are
now repudiated by France herself,--as well as by England and
America,--as false, as selfish, as fatal to all true national progress,
as opposed to every sentiment which gives dignity to struggling States,
as irreconcilably hostile to the civilization which binds nations
together, and which slowly would establish liberty, and peace, and
industry, and equal privileges, and law, and education, and material
prosperity, upon this fallen world.
AUTHORITIES.
So much has been written on Napoleon, that I can only select some of the
standard and accessible works. Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon I.; L.
P. Junot's Memoirs of Napoleon, Court, and Family; Las Casas' Napoleon
at St. Helena; Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire; Memoirs
of Prince Metternich; Segur's History of Expedition to Russia; Memoirs
of Madame de Rémusat; Vieusseau's Napoleon, his Sayings and Deeds;
Napoleon's Confidential Correspondence with Josephine and with his
Brother Joseph; Alison's History of Europe; Lockhart's and Sir Walter
Scott's Lives of Napoleon; Court and Camp of Napoleon, in Murray's
Family Library; W. Forsyth's Captivity at St. Helena; Dr. Channing's
Essay on Napoleon; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Napoleon; J. G. Wilson's
Sketch of Napoleon; Life of Napoleon, by A. H. Jomini; Headley's
Napoleon and his Marshals; Napier's Peninsular War; Wellington's
Despatches; Gilford's Life of Pitt; Botta's History of Italy under
Napoleon; Labaume's Russian Campaign; Berthier's Histoire de
l'Expédition d'Egypte.
PRINCE METTERNICH.
1773-1859.
CONSERVATISM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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