r their own hearths, would have given an invader a very rough
time of it. But let it be remembered that Napoleon was a military
genius of the first order, and that the 130,000 soldiers waiting on the
heights above Boulogne to leap on British soil were, to quote Mahan,
"the most brilliant soldiery of all time." They were the men who
afterwards won Austerlitz, who struck down Prussia with a single blow
at Jena, who marched as victors through the streets of Vienna and of
Berlin, and fought their way to Moscow. Imagine such an army, with
such a leader, landed on the green fields of Kent! In that case there
might have been an English Austerlitz or Friedland. London might have
shared the fate of Moscow. If Napoleon had succeeded, the fate of the
world would have been changed, and Toronto and Cape Town, Melbourne and
Sydney and Auckland might have been ruled by French prefects.

Napoleon himself was confident of success. He would reach London, he
calculated, within four days of landing, and then he would have issued
decrees abolishing the House of Lords, proclaiming a redistribution of
property, and declaring England a republic. "You would never have
burned your capital," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena; "you are too
rich and fond of money." The London mob, he believed, would have
joined him, for, as he cynically argued, "the _canaille_ of all nations
are nearly alike."

Even Napoleon would probably have failed, however, in subduing Great
Britain, and would have remained a prisoner where he came intending to
be a conqueror. As he himself said when a prisoner on his way to St.
Helena, "I entered into no calculation as to the manner in which I was
to return"! But in the battles which must have been fought, how many
English cities would have perished in flames, how many English rivers
would have run red with the blood of slain men! "At Waterloo," says
Alison, "England fought for victory; at Trafalgar for existence."

But "the streak of silver sea" guarded England, and for more than two
years Napoleon framed subtle plans and organised vast combinations
which might give him that brief six hours' command of the Strait which
was all he needed, as he thought, to make himself the master of the
world. The flotilla could not so much as get out of the ports, in
which the acres of boats lay, in a single tide, and one half of the
army of invasion must lie tossing--and, it may be suspected, dreadfully
sea-sick--for hours outs