ot deserved to be dethroned." These ideas soon vanished. He
became the incarnation of ruthless but highly intelligent despotism. The
reputation acquired at Marengo gave him the authority which was
necessary as a preliminary to decisive action, and albeit, if all
accounts are true, he lost his head at the most important crisis of his
career and owed success to the firmness of that Sieyes whom he
scornfully called an "ideologue" and a "faiseur de constitutions,"
nevertheless on the 18th Brumaire he was able to make captive a tired
nation which pined for peace, and little recked that it was handing over
its destinies to the most ardent devotee of the god of war that the
world has ever known.

Once seated firmly in his saddle Napoleon proceeded to centralise the
whole French administration, and to establish a regime as despotic as
that of any of the hereditary monarchs who had preceded him. But it was
a despotism of a very different type from theirs. Theirs was stupid, and
excited the jealousy and hatred of almost every class. His was
intelligent and appealed both to the imagination and to the material
interests of every individual Frenchman. Theirs was based on privilege;
his on absolute equality. "About Napoleon's throne," Lady Blennerhassett
says, "were gathered Girondists and Jacobins, Royalists and
Thermidorians, Plebeians and the one-time Knights of the Holy Ghost,
Roman Catholics and Voltaireans. Kitchen lads became marshals; Drouet,
the postmaster of Varennes, became Under-Secretary of State; Fouche, the
torturer and wholesale murderer, a duke; the Suabian candidate for the
Lutheran Ministry, Reinhard, was appointed an Imperial Ambassador;
Murat, son of an innkeeper, a king."

Death, it has been truly said, is the real measure of greatness. What
now remains of the stupendous fabric erected by Napoleon? "Of the work
of the Conqueror," Lady Blennerhassett says, "not one stone remains upon
another." As regards the internal reconstruction of France, the case is
very different. All inquirers are agreed that Napoleon's work endures.
Taine said that "the machinery of the year VIII." still remains. Mr.
Fisher, in his work on _Napoleonic Statesmanship_, says that Napoleon
"created a bureaucracy more competent, active, and enlightened than any
which Europe had seen." Mr. Bodley bears similar testimony. "The whole
centralised administration of France, which, in its stability, has
survived every political crisis, was the creat