me for peace with England were indefinitely postponed, his
impatient ally was again put off, while Austria and Prussia were
encouraged to revolt. Was the vast structure he had so laboriously
erected now to fall in one crash at his feet? The news of Junot's
surrender was further embittered by the receipt of information that
the Spanish troops under General La Romana, which had slyly been
posted first in Hamburg, and then sent to Denmark as Bernadotte's
advance-guard, had at last revolted, and were embarking on English
ships for home in order to join the movement of national redemption.
By this disaster the demonstration against Sweden promised to the Czar
was made impossible. This accumulation of misfortunes--defeat before
Valencia, defeat before Saragossa, disaster and surrender at Baylen,
disaster and disgrace at Vimeiro, retreat from Madrid, desertion of
the Duero as a line of defense, exchange of the offensive for a weak
defensive, and loss of the whole Iberian peninsula except the strip
behind the Ebro--all this was shameful and hard to bear. Nevertheless,
under favorable conditions the situation might have been retrieved.
The conditions, however, were most unfavorable. The example and
success of Spain were daily giving new comfort to Napoleon's enemies
both in France and abroad.

For the present, however, France might be trusted. The people as a
whole had become imperial to the core. The republicans and royalists
were so diminished in numbers, and so silenced by the censorship, that
they were virtually impotent. The real ability of the country was no
longer in retreat, but in the public service; the administration,
both financial and judicial, had every appearance of solidity, and the
industrial conditions were so steadily improving that the most
enterprising and intelligent merchants began to have faith in the
ultimate success of the Continental System as a means of securing a
European monopoly to French manufactures and commerce. The perfect
centralization of France kept the provinces in such close touch with
Paris that there was no open expression of discontent in any part of
the country. The people were not well informed as to the facts, and
they were slow to apprehend the significance of what they learned. By
this time the Emperor was France, and whatever he did must be well
done. The gradual infusion of the military spirit into the masses had
made them passive and obedient. There had been, they knew, some
un