His final destiny was the Island of St. Helena, where he lived in failing health till his death six years later. One good work at least he did, in directing his lawyers to draw up into a code, called the Code Napoleon, the laws of France, which also were the laws which he imposed on a large part of conquered Europe. Based on the existing system of laws, it embodied many wise and liberal changes and is widely accepted even to-day. He was twenty-six years of age when he won his first victories in Italy in 1796. He had become virtual ruler of France by 1799, was acclaimed Emperor in 1804, and set kings, chiefly of his own family, on the thrones of Europe from 1806 onward, was prisoner in Elba in 1814, and finally in St. Helena in 1815--surely the most amazing chapter in the whole of this Greatest Story! {178} CHAPTER XIV THE EXPANSION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE SLAV In such manner this tragedy, called the French Revolution, was played to its dénouement at Waterloo on the European stage, and on its conclusion, despite all the agony, we find that stage strangely little altered. Norway had been separated from Denmark and joined to Sweden. Belgium was no longer Austrian, and Belgium and Holland were united as the kingdom of the Netherlands. Austria had become independent of the rest of Germany and was dominant in Italy, but all main boundaries of the greater nations' territories were restored nearly as they were before. A great change, however, had been wrought in the minds of men, by the French Revolution in the first place and by the Napoleonic wars in the second. Kings had been so thrown from their pedestals and set up again that they could never more have the sanctity in the eye of the people which they had long enjoyed. The exaggerated reverence paid to social rank, surviving from the exaggerated regard paid to the knight by popular opinion in the Middle Ages, had gone. The no less exaggerated ideas on the subject of liberty with which the Revolution had opened had been modified by the inevitable discovery that it is impossible for men to live together in anarchy and without discipline. Indeed there was a marked reaction in thought for a {179} few years after the Revolution, because men had realised the excesses to which these liberal ideas could lead. But still all that was best in those ideas was retained. The principle was conceded that no class should be treated as slaves by the class above. Even the humblest was recognised to have his rights as man. Perhaps that is the most important lesson which had to be learnt by all men, kings, nobles, and poor men alike, from those cruel years in Europe; and it was more important than changes in territorial possessions. [Sidenote: Anglo-Saxon world-power]