and in the pliability of his
enemies which was the cause of his grandest triumphs and of his
unexampled overthrow.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS

War, said St. Augustine, is but the transition from a lower to a
higher state of peace. The saying is certainly true for those wars
that are waged in defence of some great principle or righteous cause.
It may perhaps be applied with justice to the early struggles of the
French revolutionists to secure their democratic Government against
the threatened intervention of monarchical States. But the danger of
vindicating the cause of freedom by armed force has never been more
glaringly shown than in the struggles of that volcanic age. When
democracy had gained a sure foothold in the European system, the war
was still pushed on by the triumphant republicans at the expense of
neighbouring States, so that, even before the advent of Bonaparte,
their polity was being strangely warped by the influence of military
methods of rule. The brilliance of the triumphs won by that young
warrior speedily became the greatest danger of republican France; and
as the extraordinary energy developed in her people by recent events
cast her feeble neighbours to the ground, Europe cowered away before
the ever-increasing bulk of France. In their struggles after democracy
the French finally reverted to the military type of Government, which
accords with many of the cherished instincts of their race: and the
military-democratic compromise embodied in Napoleon endowed that
people with the twofold force of national pride and of conscious
strength springing from their new institutions.

With this was mingled contempt for neighbouring peoples who either
could not or would not gain a similar independence and prestige.
Everything helped to feed this self-confidence and contempt for
others. The venerable fabric of the Holy Roman Empire was rocking to
and fro amidst the spoliations of its ecclesiastical lands by lay
princes, in which its former champions, the Houses of Hapsburg and
Hohenzollern, were the most exacting of the claimants. The Czar, in
October, 1801, had come to a profitable understanding with France
concerning these "secularizations." A little later France and Russia
began to draw together on the Eastern Question in a way threatening to
Turkey and to British influence in the Levant.[217] In fact, French
diplomacy used the partition of the