Women who had lost their husbands or sons in the war held France responsible for their afflictions. The Frenchmen, overthrowing and despoiling everything, foes of the human race, the enemies of morality and religion, brought suffering to princes in their palaces, to workmen in their factories, to tradespeople in their shops, to the priests in their churches, to the soldiers in their camps, to the peasants in their huts. The war of wrath was irresistible. Every one lamented the mistake that had been made in abandoning the struggle; all felt that they should have fought to the end, at the cost of every man and every florin; that a mistake had been made in not assisting Prussia at the time of the campaign of Jena; and that the moment had come for all the powers to combine against the common foe and to crush him. Did he make any pretence of concealing his intention to overthrow every throne, and to make himself the oldest sovereign? Had he not had the insolence to say at Milan in 1805, to the Prince of Cardito, the Neapolitan envoy extraordinary, "Tell your Queen that I shall leave to her and her family only enough land for their graves"? Had he not recently, under the walls of Madrid, uttered these significant words to the Spaniards, "If you don't want my brother Joseph for king, I shall not force him upon you. I have another throne for him; and as for you, I shall treat you as a conquered country"? This other throne, it was said at Vienna, this throne which Napoleon did not name, must be the throne of the Emperor Francis II. himself. Already the Imperial crown of Germany had been lost, and the Austrian crown was threatened. But, added all the archdukes and officers, that would not be so easy as the French imagined, and they would get a good lesson. The Hapsburgs were not so compliant as the Spanish Bourbons, and the Bayonne ambush could not be repeated. All Europe was thrilling with indignation; only a signal was needed for it to rise, and this signal Austria would give. This time there was every chance of success. Their cry was "Victory or Death!" but victory was certain. The French army, scattered from the Oder to the Tagus, from the mountains of Bohemia to the Sierra Morena, would not be able to withstand so many people eager to break their yoke. Were not Russia and Prussia as desirous as Austria of revenge? Was not the whole of Germany ready for the fray? Napoleon boasted that he was the Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine; but if the Confederate Princes were under his command, in his pay, the people, more patriotic, more truly German than their rulers, burned with a longing to expel the French. Let Napoleon suffer but a single defeat, and then on which one of his vassals would he be able to count? Could he even rely on his own subjects? Were there not already in his overgrown Empire many germs of decay and death? In Vienna in 1809 the same things were said as in Berlin in 1806; the same feelings prevailed. The military ardor had