Sternly adhering to his own system, Napoleon called the erring minister and the greedy speculators to account. Marbois was dismissed from office, the speculators thrown into jail, the property of the syndicate seized, and the debt due the treasury collected. The Bank of France was overhauled, the finances put into healthy condition, and the public funds advanced until they commanded a higher price than ever before, nearing par. CHAPTER XXVII After the treaty of Presburg the Archduke Charles, in paying off the Austrian troops, said to them, “Go and rest yourselves until we begin again.” Even at that early date the European powers were acting upon the fixed principle that the war against France was not to cease till she had been forced back into her ancient limits. No matter what battles might be fought, treaties made, and territories yielded, the one thing upon which England, Austria, and Russia were agreed, was that Napoleon must be crushed. He represented the New Order brought forth by the Revolution. He represented liberalism, civil and religious freedom, and progress in its modern sense of giving to every man a chance in life. Such principles were destructive to the repose of Europe, and the ruling classes in Europe were deeply attached to this repose. England’s ruling class, supported in lordly preëminence by the patient millions below them, wanted no levelling tendencies to invade her caste-ridden isles. Germany, whose nobles and landowners clung to all the privileges and barbarities of feudalism, abhorred the Code Napoléon, and the democratic germs of the Napoleonic system. Russia, almost as benighted as Persia or Turkey, dreaded a trend of events which meant freedom for the serf and civil rights for the common people. The nobleman in Russia, the peer of Great Britain, the petty lord in Germany, was at heart one and the same man. He had been born to wealth, privilege, and power; he meant to keep what birth had given him, and he meant to pass it on to his son, “forever in fee simple.” Of course he explained that God had ordained it so. And what the nobleman asserted, the priest maintained. If Napoleon foresaw that as Consul war would be made upon him continually by the opposing systems of Europe, how much less hope was there for peace now, when he had begun to shatter the ancient feudalisms? Let crimination and recrimination exhaust itself, let Thiers write bulky volumes in Napoleon’s favor, while Lanfrey and Baring-Gould print heavy pamphlets against him, the truth lies here:--