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He had succeeded in establishing one on the ruins of a republic in the Old World. He now sought to build up Imperial power side by side with a republic in the New. Mexico was designed to be the seat of this empire; and, as that country greatly needed government of some kind, the time was deemed opportune for carrying into effect Napoleon’s idea.
It was broken largely through one of those small dynastic incidents which are of such vast importance under an absolute despotism. One of Napoleon’s main objects was to establish a Napoleonic Dynasty and to be adopted by marriage into one of the ruling families of Europe.
The Austrian fleet continued at anchor in the harbor of Trieste, and the army of the Mincio remained inactive, although, as may be supposed, indignant, in its quadrilateral, until Italian unity became a reality, and coalesced with Prussia in order to expel it. There must now be recorded another proof of the Emperor Napoleon’s double dealing.
At the Stewart Gallery the attendant was accustomed to offer the visitor a magnifying glass with which to examine the lustre of a horse’s eye or the buckles upon Napoleon’s saddle, in the “Review of Cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland” by Meissonier.
To oppose the strong army of Napoleon’s veterans, men who had been trained to victory under his own eye, Toussaint had a force of blacks little more than half as strong. As he looked at the soldiers disembarking from the ships in the Bay of Samana he exclaimed in dismay, "We are lost! All France is coming to invade our poor island!"
Many of the older monks must have been in Europe at the time when the Italy and the Spain from which they came were in act of taking their French lessons, or had parted so lately with their teachers, that not to know of “the Emperor” was impossible, and these men could scarcely, therefore, have failed to bring with them some tidings of Napoleon’s career.
Compare it, for example with Napoleon’s military road over the Simplon, and it will at once be seen how greatly it excels that work, not only in the constructive skill displayed in it, but also in its cost and magnitude, and the amount of labour employed in its formation. The road of the Simplon is 45 miles in length; the North Midland Railway is 72½ miles.
If, however, this had been Napoleon’s only object in recalling the troops, he could have accomplished it as easily by ordering four thousand five hundred of the Roman garrison to join the invading army, leaving the remaining five hundred to guard the city of the Popes. This smaller number would surely have been as able as five thousand to repel a Piedmontese force of sixty thousand men.
At least I like to cherish that delusion with regard to mine; my legs have the same curve as Napoleon’s, and I have been known as ‘Old Hoopo’ for years.” “But they don’t call you that to your face.” “No, not exactly. Have they been calling you ‘Kiddy’ to your face?”
The house was surrounded, two blacks that sought to defend him were killed on the spot, and he was dragged from his bed and taken to the coast. Here he was placed on board a man-of-war, which at once set sail for France. Napoleon’s treatment of Toussaint was one of the dark deeds in his career.
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