Note 30 — EMPIRE OF RUSSIA (continued 10)

Colonel Napier, in his "Peninsular War," very justly observes, "The real principle of Napoleon's government, and secret of his popularity, made him the people's monarch, not the sovereign of the aristocracy. Hence Mr. Pitt called him 'the child and the champion of democracy,' a truth as evident as that Mr. Pitt and his successors 'were the children and the champions of aristocracy.' Hence also the privileged classes of Europe consistently turned their natural and implacable hatred of the French Revolution to his person; for they saw that in him innovation had found a protector; that he alone, having given preëminence to a system so hateful to them, was really what he called himself, The State. The treaty of Tilsit, therefore, although it placed Napoleon in a commanding situation with regard to the potentates of Europe, unmasked the real nature of the war, and brought him and England, the respective champions of Equality and Privilege, into more direct contact. Peace could not be between them while they were both strong, and all that the French emperor had hitherto gained only enabled him to choose his field of battle."