What French influence effected in Italy is a topic so recondite as to
require separate discussion; for the results were not so immediate or
so dramatic as they were in Germany. But the destruction of petty
governments was as ruthless as in the north; the ideas which marched
in Bonaparte's ranks found at least a large minority of intelligent
admirers among the invaded; and Italian unity, though won by a family
he feared and abused, is in no doubtful sense indebted for its
existence, not merely to Napoleon's age, but to the ideas he
disseminated and to the efforts at a practical beginning which he
made. As to Austria-Hungary, the new historical epoch which makes her
essentially the empire of the lower Danube takes its rise from
Napoleon's time and influence. The relaxation of her grasp on Italy
has thrown her across the Adriatic for the territorial expansion
essential to her position as a great power. It has been her mission to
rescue by moral influence some of the fairest lands in the Balkan
peninsula from waste and anarchy. Mere proximity is a powerful factor;
the turbulence of Austrian local patriotism has been the seed of
wholesome discontent among the Christian populations of Turkey, whose
first awakening was largely due to the emissaries sent by Napoleon to
fire the hearts of the oppressed and suffering subjects of that
distracted land. Servia is one example of this; and in a sense the
national awakening of Greece began with the hopes similarly aroused.
The astounding magic of his name in the United States is partly due to
a quality of the American mind which makes its possessor the
passionate and indiscriminating adorer of greatness in every form. The
Americans are more French than the French in their admiration of
power. But, after all, this is not the main reason for their interest
in Napoleon. They are, dimly at least, aware of certain facts which
have determined their history and made them an independent nation;
though already stated and discussed, we may be pardoned for
recapitulating them in this connection. Their first war for
independence left them tributary to the mother-country both
industrially and commercially. It was Napoleon who pitilessly, though
slyly and indirectly, launched them into the second war with Great
Britain, from which they emerged with some glory and some sense of
defeat, but, after all, with the tremendous and permanent gain of
absolute commercial independence. In the second place, their purchase
of Louisiana, though understood by only a few at the moment,
revolutionized their national system both inside and outside. That
momentous step destroyed the literal interpretation of the
constitution, hitherto enslaving a congeries of jarring little
commonwealths in the bondage of verbalism, because, though manifestly
beneficent and necessary, it could be justified before the law only by
an appeal to the spirit and not to the letter. Thenceforward Americans
have steadily been enlarging their constitutional law by