rg, the
Prince Primate of the Confederation.

German life began to lose much of the quaint diversity beloved of
artists and poets; but it also gained much. No longer did the Count of
Limburg-Styrum parade his army of one colonel, six officers, and two
privates in the valley of the Roehr: he and his passed under the sway
of Murat, and the lapse of these pigmy forces made a national army
possible in the dim future. No more did the Imperial lawyers at
Wetzlar browse on evergreen lawsuits: justice was administered after
the concise methods of Napoleon. The crops of the Swabian peasant were
now comparatively safe from the deer of His Translucency of the castle
hard by; for the spirit of the French Revolution breathed upon the old
game laws and robbed them of their terrors. And the German patriot of
to-day must still confess that the first impulse for reform, however
questionable its motives and brutal its application, came from the new
Charlemagne.

NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.--In a volume of Essays entitled
"Napoleonic Studies" (George Bell and Sons, 1904) I have treated
somewhat fully the questions of Pitt's Continental policy, and of
Napoleon's relations to the new thought of the age, in two Essays,
entitled "Pitt's Plans for the Settlement of Europe" and
"Wordsworth, Schiller, Fichte, and the Idealist Revolt against
Napoleon."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXV

THE FALL OF PRUSSIA

We now turn to consider the influence which the founding of the
Rhenish Confederation exerted on the international problems which were
being discussed at Paris. Having gained this diplomatic victory,
Napoleon, it seems, might well afford to be lenient to Prussia, to the
Czar, even to England. Would he seize this opportunity, and soothe the
fears of these Powers by a few timely concessions, or would he press
them all the harder because the third of Germany was now under his
control? Here again he was at the parting of the ways.

As the only obstacles to the conclusion of a durable peace with
England were Sicily and Hanover, it may be well to examine here the
bearing of these questions on the peace of Europe and Napoleon's
future.

It is clear from his letters to Joseph that he had firmly resolved to
conquer Sicily. Before his brother had reached Naples he warned him to
prepare for the expulsion of the Bourbons from that island. For that
purpose the French pushed on into Calabr