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Updated: June 10, 2025
It is a strange coincidence that in the month previous a rebellion of the janizaries had deprived Selim III of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus ended, France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed.
The once beautiful church was totally destroyed. In the square was the base of a monument upon which, before the war, stood a memorial to France's glorious dead in the war of 1870. The "kultured" Germans had destroyed the figure and, in its place, had stuck up a dummy stuffed with straw in the uniform of a French Zouave. Could ever a greater insult be shown to France!
If the Germans of Bohemia secede from the Czechoslovaks or the Croats from the Serbs, will British armies cross the sea to uphold the union which those peoples repudiate? And in the name of which of the Fourteen Points would they undertake the task? That of self-determination? France's interests, and hers alone, would be affected by such changes. And France would be left to fight single-handed.
Therefore no time was to be lost, all had to be done in haste. The rupture originated with Russia, for at the end of the year 1810 the Tzar annulled the blocus and even excluded French goods or placed an inordinate duty on them this was, in fact, a declaration of war. Russia wanted war while the Spanish campaign was taxing France's military forces.
He tells me, too, as a grand secret, that he do believe the peace offensive and defensive between Spayne and us is quite finished, but must not be known, to prevent the King of France's present falling upon Flanders.
To be sure there was his renown as a discoverer and explorer, but the city he had planned, that was to be the crowning point of France's possessions, was slowly falling to decay. These were sad times for old Quebec and for the little girl who was blossoming into a womanhood that should have been joyous and serene, she asked so little of life.
"Let the brute live," he said. "Duck him and truss him up, but don't dirty your hands with him. I'd as lief kill a woman as a monk." But Gaspard's smiling face was a rock. "This is no Englishman's concern. To-day's shame is France's and a Frenchman alone can judge it. Innocent blood is on this man's hands, and it is for me to pay the first instalment of justice. The rest I leave to God."
If they asked the British Governor at Annapolis to settle for them some vexed question of rights or ownership he did so and they did not even pay a fee. This is not, however, the whole story. England's neglect of the colony was France's opportunity. Perhaps the French court did not follow closely what was going on in Acadia.
The Government cannot raise its revenue by taxes. An Englishman slavishly pays half his income in taxes, but not a Frenchman. It is difficult to get five per cent. And there one comes suddenly upon France's greatest vice and weakness avarice. It is France's penuriousness and meanness and her exaggerated thrift that stands most in the way of her material greatness now.
It is true that the British colonies, even before the War, covered an area of thirty million square kilometres, while France's colonial empire was slightly over twelve millions. But it must be remembered that the British colonies are not colonies in the real sense of the word, but consist chiefly in Dominions which enjoy an almost complete autonomy.
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