Napoleon might have remained emperor; but he refused to make any concessions, and kept on fighting until his generals abandoned him, and his deposition was voted by the Senate. The people would not rise for him, as they had done for the Republic; and the Parisians refused to cry "Vive l'Empereur" as he returned from Elba, to be overthrown at Waterloo. Three million Frenchmen perished in his wars; and he left France smaller than he found her. His restrictions on commerce were removed so suddenly as to destroy the industries which he had tried to foster; and the proportion of paupers to the population was three times as great as in 1880. France was still desirous that the press should be free, and that taxation should be controlled by representatives of the people. Louis XVIII. had to promise that he would respect these rights which his predecessors had violated. Toleration continued; and the peasants kept the property and equality which the Revolution had given them, and which no sovereign could take away. Napoleon is the most famous of generals; but his greatness as a statesman would have been plainer if he had not undertaken so many showy enterprises which had little chance of success. He failed signally in founding a dynasty, in making France the greatest of manufacturers, and in giving her an invincible navy, though he might have gained the first of these objects by peace, and the last by free trade. He could not even leave to his successor the territory which had been conquered by the Revolution. Yet these were his dearest purposes, except the wild dream of humbling England. Was he the greatest of architects, every one of whose colossal structures fell under their own weight before they could be used? Greater is he who builds what lasts for ages. Napoleon made the twenty years ending with 1815 more glorious than any later period, and much more wretched. Western Europe was afflicted by bloody wars, and impoverished by restrictions on commerce. If his reign had been peaceable, he might have deprived France much more completely of what liberty she had enjoyed under the Directory. Every despot, however enlightened and benevolent, must necessarily interfere so much with the liberty of his subjects as to hinder their making themselves happy. France and Germany lost nothing in freedom and gained much in prosperity by his defeat; for it gave the world many years of peace. What he brought of political and religious equality to Prussia, Western Germany, and Switzerland survived him; for it was part of his inheritance from the Revolution which he closed treacherously. France had received her legacy without his help; and she retained much of it in spite of his interference. His victories over hereditary monarchs were so suggestive that books about him are still prohibited in Russia; but no people lost much by his overthrow except the Italians.