_Back to France!_ In those three words burns the purpose of the European Kings. The Russian army is far advanced on its homeward march, but it must be halted; the tired feet of the soldiers must not rest an hour. _Back to France!_ The Austrian legions are at home, ready to enjoy the well-earned rest. Must the bugles call once more?--once more the streets and the lanes thrill at the beat of the drums? _Back to France!_ The Prussian and the British armies have not had time to start home. They are in cantonments, in the Low Countries, close to the frontier of France. Old Blücher--“_that drunken hussar who has given me as much trouble as anybody_,” as Napoleon used to say--is already in the saddle, with a splendid staff which plans his campaigns for him. The Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Congress of Vienna, must now hasten to Brussels to take command of his army. All the world believes that Napoleon will force the fighting, and that he will strike the enemy nearest him, there on the Belgian frontier. Thus, in 1815, as the month of June lavishes its splendors on the earth, the eyes of all Christendom are fastened upon Napoleon Bonaparte. It is hardly too much to say that the world stands still, this fateful month, to watch the unequal fight--Napoleon against the Kings! How hard it is to understand the delusion under which some of the best men of the time labored! With eyes to see, why were they so blind? With ears to hear, why were they so deaf? Grattan!--why did _your_ electric oratory smite with its lightnings this great enemy of tyranny, when Ireland, _your own home_, was bleeding under the remorseless cruelty of the very system which Napoleon had struggled to tear down? La Fayette!--why were _you_ throwing stumbling blocks in this big man’s way, fettering him with shackles and cords, when your French Samson needed the uttermost length of his locks? Why was it that every Liberal in Europe could not realize as Carnot did,--he of the Great Committee which piloted France through the storm of the Revolution!--that in Napoleon’s fate, _at that time_, was bound up the best interests of the human race? Behind the confederated Kings _lurked the Ancient Régime_. It panted for life. It wanted to re-establish the blessed order of things in which the Few, booted and spurred, put into governmental form their modest claim to the privilege of riding the Many. It wanted to stamp out the revolutionary principles which had been _lifting the masses_, and lowering the monstrous pretensions of the classes.