t the recent inroads of
Lancashire cottons, while the wine-growers of the Garonne were equally
favourable to the enlightened Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786.
It was Napoleon's lot to win the favour of the rigid protectionists,
while not alienating that of the men of the Gironde, who saw in him
the champion of agrarian liberty against the feudal nobles. Moreover,
the nation still cherished the pathetic belief that the war was due to
Albion's perfidy respecting Malta, and burned with a desire to
chastise the recreant islanders. For these reasons, Frenchmen endured
the drain of men and money with but little show of grumbling.

They were tired of the wars. _We have had enough glory_, they said,
even in the capital itself, and an acute German observer describes the
feeling there as curiously mixed. Parisian gaiety often found vent in
lampoons against the Emperor; and much satire at his expense might
with safety be indulged in among a crowd, provided it were seasoned
with wit. The people seemed not to fear Napoleon, as he was feared in
Germany: the old revolutionary party was still active and might easily
become far more dangerous than the royalist coteries of the Boulevard
St. Germain. For the rest, they were all so accustomed to political
change that they looked on his government as provisional, and put up
with him only as long as the army triumphed abroad and he could make
his power felt at home. Such was the impression of Paris gained by
Varnhagen von Ense. Public opinion in the provinces seems to have been
more favourable to Napoleon; and, on the whole, pride in the army and
in the vigorous administration which that nation loves, above all,
hatred of England and the hope of wresting from her the world's
empire, led the French silently to endure rigorous press laws,
increased taxes, war prices, licences, and chicory.

For Germans the hardships were much greater and the alleviations far
less. They had no deep interest in Malta or in the dominion of the
seas; and political economy was then only beginning to dawn on the
Teutonic mind. The general trend of German thought had inclined
towards the _Everlasting Nay_, until Napoleon flashed across its ken.
For a time he won the admiration of the chief thinkers of Germany by
brushing away the feudal cobwebs from her fair face. He seemed about
to call her sons to a life of public activity; and in the famous
soliloquy of Faust, in which he feels his way from word to thought,