On the other hand, the advance of all this was much slower, much more disturbed, much less complete, than it would have been had Napoleon not failed in Russia, suffered his decisive defeat at Leipzig, and fallen for ever upon that famous field of Waterloo; and one particular characteristic, namely, the imposition of all these things upon Europe by the will of a government at Paris, wholly disappeared. We may sum up, then, and say that the political effect of the battle of Waterloo and its campaign was an immediate success for the Allies: that their ultimate success the history of the nineteenth century has reversed; but that the victory of Waterloo modified, retarded, and perhaps distorted in a permanent fashion the establishment of those conceptions of society and government which the Revolution, and Napoleon as its soldier, had set out to establish. * * * * * There is a side question attached to all this, with which I shall conclude, because it forms the best introduction to what is to follow: that question is,--"Would Napoleon have ultimately succeeded even if he had triumphed instead of fallen upon the 18th of June 1815?" In other words, was Waterloo one of these battles the winning or losing of which by _either_ side, meant a corresponding decisive result to that side? Had Wellington's command broken at Waterloo before the arrival of Blucher, would Napoleon's consequent victory have meant as much to _him_ as his defeat actually meant to the allies? The answer of history to this question is, No. Even had Napoleon won on that day he would have lost in the long run. The date to which we must affix the reverse of Napoleon's effort is not the 18th of June 1815, but the 19th of October 1812, when the Grand Army began its retreat from Moscow; and the political decision, his failure in which was the origin of his fall, was not the decision taken in June 1815 to advance against the Allies in Belgium, but the decision taken in May 1812 to advance into the vast spaces of Russia. The decisive action which the largest view of history will record in centuries to come as the defeat which ruined Napoleon took place, not south of Brussels, but near the town of Leipzig, two years before. From the last moment of that three days' battle (again the 19th of October, precisely a twelvemonth after the retreat from Moscow had begun), Napoleon and the French armies are continually falling back. Upon the 4th of April in the following year Napoleon abdicated; and exactly a month later, on the 4th of May, he was imprisoned, under the show of local sovereignty, in the island of Elba.