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The hopes aroused in the Jews of Lithuania by the Napoleonic wars were disappointed. An iron hand held them down, and they continued to vegetate miserably in their gloomy, abandoned corner. The story goes that when Napoleon at the head of the grande armee entered Wilna, the exclamation was forced from him, "Why, this is the Jerusalem of Lithuania!"
Nor should it be thought that conditions have changed; circumstances and details of offence and defence have been modified, in these days as before, but the great conditions remain the same. Before and during the great Napoleonic wars, France had no port for ships-of-the-line east of Brest.
There were people still alive in the 'fifties and 'sixties who remembered the Napoleonic wars and the shadow cast by that giant figure upon the world; indeed, so slowly did thought move down in the far West that it might almost have been said that St. Renny was just beginning to realise the wars, and rather resented the fact that English and French had since fought side by side in the Crimea.
First, this royal dwelling is of the most ample and effective proportions; second, it possesses a remarkable series of luxurious apartments; third, it still contains some of the finest examples of furniture and furnishings of Renaissance and Napoleonic times; and, in addition, there is also to be seen that admirable series of paintings which represent the School of Fontainebleau.
Proud as Satan, and through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even one single opera of the Ring to be given, and then allowing single operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself there never was in the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813.
McEachern was playing a big game. Other eminent buccaneers in his walk of life had been content to be rich men in a community where moderate means were the rule. But about Mr. McEachern there was a touch of the Napoleonic. He meant to get into society and the society he had selected was that of England.
No French historian will now claim divine action in the Napoleonic wars, and assuredly few of us are prepared to see the finger of God in the fortunate issue of Prussia's many campaigns since Frederick the Great. Whatever we may think of the cosmic process generally, the human part of that process does not encourage a theological interpretation.
The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had been laid.
On 21 October, the allied French and Spanish fleets, issuing from the harbor of Cadiz, encountered the British fleet under Lord Nelson, and in a terrific battle off Cape Trafalgar were completely worsted. Lord Nelson lost his life in the conflict, but from that day to the close of the Napoleonic Era British supremacy on the high seas was not seriously challenged.
The suddenness and unexpectedness of this acclamation of the youth as the inheritor of the Napoleonic legend startled and impressed all those of us who were present as spectators. Alas! in how brief a space of time I attended another funeral at Camden Place, and saw the body of the boy, who had thus been hailed as Emperor, carried across the breezy common to rest by his father's side.
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