He has been the fate of the world until his hour
struck. Many say providence had selected him to castigate the universe and
its enslaved peoples. A great German historian, Gervinus, has said: "He was
the greatest benefactor of Germany who removed the gloriole from the heads
crowned by the grace of God." He accomplished great things because he had
great power, he committed great faults because he was so powerful. Without
his unrestricted power he could not have accomplished one nor committed the
other.
History is logic. Whenever great wrongs prevail, some mighty men appear and
arouse the people, and these extraordinary men are like the storm in winter
which shatters and breaks what is rotten, preparing for spring.
The German school boy, when he learns of the greatest warriors and
conquerors, of Alexander the Great, of Julius Caesar, is most fascinated
when he hears the history of the greatest of all the warriors of the world,
the history of Napoleon, and he is spellbound reading the awfully beautiful
histories concerning his unheard of deeds, his rise without example, and
his sudden downfall.
And he, the great man, the soldier-emperor, he rides on his white horse in
the boy's dreams, just as depicted on the engravings upon which the boys
look with a kind of holy awe.
The son of a Corsican lawyer, becoming in early manhood the master of the
world, what could inflame youthful fiction more than this wonderful career?
All great conquerors come to a barrier.
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