Nothing now remained to the conquerors but to advance to the siege of Paris. The throne of Napoleon III. was overturned, and few felt sympathy for his misfortunes, since he was responsible for the overwhelming calamities which overtook his country, and which his country never forgave. In less than a month he fell from what seemed to be the proudest position in Europe, and stood out to the eye of the world in all the hateful deformity of a defeated despot who deserved to fall. The suddenness and completeness of his destruction has been paralleled only by the defeat of the armies of Darius by Alexander the Great. All delusions as to Louis Napoleon's abilities vanished forever. All his former grandeur, even his services, were at once forgotten. He paid even a sadder penalty than his uncle, who never lost the affections of his subjects, while the nephew destroyed all rational hopes of the future restoration of his family, and became accursed. It is possible that the popular verdict in reference to Louis Napoleon, on his fall, may be too severe. This world sees only success or failure as the test of greatness. With the support of the army and the police--the heads of which were simply his creatures, whom he had bought, or who from selfish purposes had pushed him on in his hours of irresolution and guided him--the _coup d'état_ was not a difficult thing, any more than any bold robbery; and with the control of the vast machinery of government,--that machinery which is one of the triumphs of civilization,--an irresistible power, it is not marvellous that he retained his position in spite of the sneers or hostilities of statesmen out of place, or of editors whose journals were muzzled or suppressed; especially when the people saw great public improvements going on, had both bread and occupation, read false accounts of military successes, and were bewildered by fêtes and outward grandeur. But when the army was a sham, and corruption had pervaded every office under government; when the expenses of living had nearly doubled from taxation, extravagance, bad example, and wrong ideas of life; when trusted servants were turned into secret enemies, incapable and false; when such absurd mistakes were made as the expedition to Mexico, and the crowning folly of the war with Prussia, proving the incapacity and folly of the master-hand,--the machinery which directed the armies and the bureaus and all affairs of State itself, broke down, and the catastrophe was inevitable. Louis Napoleon certainly was not the same man in 1870 that he was in 1850. His burdens had proved too great for his intellect. He fell, and disappeared from history in a storm of wrath and shame, which also hid from the eyes of the people the undoubted services he had rendered to the cause of order and law, and to that of a material prosperity which was at one time the pride of his country and the admiration of the whole world.