The people now made their hero consul for life. After that it was easy for him to make himself Emperor of the French. At his coronation Napoleon snatched the crown out of the hands of the pope and placed it on his own head, to show that he was emperor by the right of his own might. Yet Emperor Napoleon kept on leading his armies in person. He still had to fight with other nations to hold his place as master of Europe. He gained even more brilliant victories, as Emperor Napoleon, than he had won as General Bonaparte. Not content with his record as a great conqueror, he gave the French people the _Code Napoléon_, a set of laws [Illustration: EMPEROR NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO WATCHING THE DOWNFALL OF HIS WONDERFUL ARMY. _From the painting by David Neal_] which proved him to be also a wise statesman and law-giver. The kings and nobles of Europe always hated Napoleon. They said he was vulgar, and called him “the Corsican upstart.” But the French people loved him as one of themselves. No general or emperor ever had more devoted followers than Napoleon Bonaparte. Millions of men gave their lives willingly to fight his battles. He waged war after war till there were but few fighting men left in France. Then the people began to think that Napoleon loved them because they could help him win victories to give him more power and fulfill his high ambition. They began to say among themselves, “He is sacrificing us for his own glory.” While at the height of his power, Napoleon exclaimed, “What are a million lives to a man like me!” When the people lost their faith in him, Napoleon began to lose instead of win his battles. Generals and nobles stopped flattering him and began to fight him. His own brothers and sisters, whom he had made kings and queens, deserted him. Even his wife forsook him, taking with her his only son, the idol of his heart. Napoleon’s last battle was at Waterloo, in Belgium. Because this loss brought ruin to him, the name of the place became a kind of proverb. When overwhelming defeat comes to a great man, people say, “He has met his Waterloo!” The conquered conqueror was taken prisoner and sent thousands of miles away as a captive to the bleak island of St. Helena. He made the best of his hard lot as “the fortunes of war.” But the years of loneliness endured by this friendless conqueror, who all his life had been selfish and merciless, are suggested by a well-known picture, which shows Napoleon on the shore of that far-off rock in the southern sea, standing with hands clasped behind him, looking off across the ocean to where France lay. NELSON, THE HERO OF TRAFALGAR A small English boy strayed away from his grandmother’s house after she had warned him that gypsies encamped near by might carry him off. When the old lady found the little fellow sitting beside a stream too wide for him to cross, she exclaimed: “Why did you run away, Horatio? I was half dead with fear--”