I have been desirous of conducting General Bonaparte, now become the Emperor Napoleon, up to the popular summit of his glory. He had already tainted it by many acts of violence, and by an exclusive devotion to personal ends, in defiance of justice and liberty. Henceforward and under the disastrous inspirations of a mad ambition, victory itself was to become a fatal seduction which by inevitable degrees draws us on to ruin. Great and terrible lesson of Divine justice on the morality of nations! Starting from the violation of the peace of Amiens, and in spite of the glory of the sun of Austerlitz, the history of the glory of the conqueror includes in germ the history of his fall, and of the ever-increasing misfortunes of France. CHAPTER IX. GLORY AND CONQUEST (1805-1808). Guizot has said at the commencement of his essay on Washington: "There is a spectacle as fine as that of a virtuous man struggling with adversity, and not less salutary to contemplate; it is the spectacle of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and assuring his triumph." There is a spectacle, sorrowful and sad, also salutary to contemplate in its austere teachings: it is that of a man of genius bearing along in his train an enthusiastic nation, and squandering all the living forces of his genius and his country in the service of a senseless ambition, as fatal to the sovereign as the people, both foolishly dragged along by a vision of glory towards injustices and crimes not at first foreseen. Such is the spectacle offered to us by the history of the Emperor Napoleon, and of France, after the battle of Austerlitz and the Peace of Presburg. For the moment a stupor seemed to oppress the whole of Europe. Prussia, humiliated and indignant, had, however, just ratified the treaty of Schönbrunn; Austria was panting and conquered; England had lost her great minister: William Pitt died 23rd January, 1806, struck to the heart in his patriotic passion, by the new victory of the conqueror whom he dreaded for the liberty of the world. "Roll up this map of Europe," said he when the news was brought to him as he lay dying in his little house at Putney, "in ten years time there will be no further need for it." Already his rival had succeeded him in office, and Fox did not yet foresee that he would presently be inevitably brought to adopt the policy of resistance to the long increasing power of Napoleon. He was then making cordial advances towards him. The Emperor Alexander had not disarmed, but the appeals to him from the Court of Naples found him immovable. Already the Bourbons were trembling on the thrones they still occupied.