impression she had made on the world. Waterloo was as much a Prussian as
an English victory,--the loss of the Prussians in that action being
about as great as the purely English loss.[51] She became one of the
Five Powers which by common consent were rulers of Europe. Down to 1830
she had more influence than France, and from 1830 to the
re-establishment of the Napoleonic dynasty, she was France's equal; and
even after Napoleon III. had replaced France at the head of Europe,
Prussia was the only member of the Pentarchy which had not been
humiliated by his blows, or yet more by his assistance. England has
suffered from her connection with him,--a connection difficult on many
occasions to distinguish from inferiority and subserviency; and in war
the old superiority of the French armies to those of Russia and Austria
has been asserted in the Crimea and in Italy. Prussia alone has not
stooped before the avenger of the man whom she had so vindictive a part
in overthrowing, and whom her military chief purposed having slain on
the very spot where the Duc d'Enghien had been put to death by his
(Napoleon's) orders. Of all the enemies of Napoleon and France in 1815,
Prussia was the most malignant, or rather she was the only member of the
Alliance which exhibited malignity.[52] She would have had France
partitioned; and failed in her design only because openly opposed by
Russia and England, while Austria, fearing to offend German opinion,
secretly supported the Czar and Wellington. Bluecher, an earnest man, was
never more in earnest than when he purposed to shoot Napoleon in the
ditch of Vincennes; and it required all Wellington's influence to
dissuade him from so barbarous a proceeding. Yet Napoleon III. has never
been able to avenge these injuries and insults,--to say nothing of
Waterloo, and of the massacre of the flying French in the night after
the battle, or of the shocking conduct of the Prussians in France in
1815; and the events of the current year would seem to favor, and that
strongly, the opinion of those persons who say that France never will be
able to obtain her long-thought-of revenge. Certainly, if _Prussia_ was
safe, Prussia with most of Germany to back her cannot be in any serious
danger of being forced to drink of that cup of humiliation which
Napoleon III. has commended to so many countries.

After the settlement of Europe, in 1815, Prussia did not show much of
that encroaching character which is attributed to