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 German ecclesiastical lands and
the threatened collapse of the Ottoman power as a potent means of
busying the Continental States and leaving Great Britain isolated.
Moreover, the great island State was passing through ministerial and
financial difficulties which robbed her of all the fruits of her naval
triumphs and made her diplomacy at Amiens the laughing-stock of the
world. When monarchical ideas were thus discredited, it was idle to
expect peace. The struggling upwards towards a higher plane had indeed
begun; democracy had effected a lodgment in Western Europe; but the
old order in its bewildered gropings after some sure basis had not yet
touched bottom on that rock of nationality which was to yield a new
foundation for monarchy amidst the strifes of the nineteenth century.
Only when the monarchs received the support of their French-hating
subjects could an equilibrium of force and of enthusiasms yield the
long-sought opportunity for a durable peace.[218]

The negotiations at Amiens had amply shown the great difficulty of the
readjustment of European affairs. If our Ministers had ma