n a crime, since it
arrayed against him all the friends of Legitimacy in Europe.

Had Napoleon been contented with the power he then enjoyed as First
Consul for life, and simply stood on the defensive, he could have made
France invincible, and would have left a name comparatively
reproachless. But we now see unmistakable evidence of boundless personal
ambition, and a policy of unscrupulous aggrandizement. He assumes the
imperial title,--greedy for the trappings as well as the reality of
power; he openly founds a new dynasty of kings; he abolishes every
trace of constitutional rule; he treads liberty under his feet, and
mocks the very ideas by which he had inspired enthusiasm in his troops;
his watchword is now not _Liberty_, but _Glory_; he centres in himself
the interests of France; he surrounds himself, at the Tuileries, with
the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient kings; and he even induces the
Pope himself to crown him at Notre Dame. It was a proud day, December 2,
1804, when, surrounded by all that was brilliant and imposing in France,
Napoleon proceeded in solemn procession to the ancient cathedral, where
were assembled the magistrates, the bishops, and the titled dignitaries
of the realm, and received, in his imperial robes, from the hands of the
Pope, the consecrated sceptre and crown of empire, and heard from the
lips of the supreme pontiff of Christendom those words which once
greeted Charlemagne in the basilica of St. Peter when the Roman clergy
proclaimed him Emperor of the West,--_Vivat in oeternum semper
Augustus_. The venerable aisles and pillars and arches of the ancient
cathedral resounded to the music of five hundred performers in a solemn
_Te Deum_. The sixty prelates of France saluted the anointed soldier as
their monarch, while the inspiring cry from the vast audience of _Vive
l'Empereur!_ announced Napoleon's entrance into the circle of European
sovereigns.

But this fresh usurpation, although confirmed by a vote of the French
people, was the signal for renewed hostilities. A coalition of all
governments unfriendly to France was formed. Military preparations
assumed a magnitude never seen before in the history of Europe, which
now speedily became one vast camp. Napoleon quit his capital to assume
the conduct of armies. He had threatened England with invasion, which he
knew was impossible, for England then had nearly one thousand ships of
war, manned by one hundred and twenty thousand men. But when