English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2)Ashton, John
History
English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2)
Ashton, John
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Caricatures and cartoons
He put his foot on the neck of Kings, who would have put
their yokes upon the necks of the People: he scattered before
him with fiery execution, millions of hired slaves, who
came at the bidding of their Masters to deny the right of
others to be free. The monument of greatness and of Glory
he erected, was raised on ground forfeited again and again
to humanity--it reared its majestic front on the ruins of
the shattered hopes and broken faith of the common enemies
of mankind. If he could not secure the freedom, peace, and
happiness of his country, he made her a terror to those who
by sowing civil dissension, and exciting foreign wars, would
not let her enjoy those blessings. They who had trampled
upon Liberty could not at least triumph in her shame and her
despair, but themselves became objects of pity and derision.
Their determination to persist in extremity of wrong, only
brought on themselves repeated defeat, disaster, and dismay:
the accumulated aggressions their infuriated pride and
disappointed malice meditated against others, returned in just
and aggravated punishment upon themselves: they heaped coals of
fire upon their own heads: they drank deep and long, in gall
and bitterness, of the poisoned chalice they had prepared for
others: the destruction with which they had threatened a people
daring to call itself free, hung suspended over their heads,
like a precipice, ready to fall upon and crush them. ‘Awhile
they stood abashed,’ abstracted from their evil purposes, and
felt how awful Freedom is, its power how dreadful. Shrunk
from the boasted pomp of royal state into their littleness as
men, defeated of their revenge, baulked of their prey, their
schemes stripped of their bloated pride, and with nothing
left but the deformity of their malice, not daring to utter
a syllable or move a finger, the lords of the earth, who had
looked upon men as of an inferior species, born for their use,
and devoted to be their slaves, turned an imploring eye to the
People, and with coward hearts and hollow tongues invoked the
Name of Liberty, thus to get the people once more within their
unhallowed grip, and to stifle the name of Liberty for ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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