Treitschke's History of Germany in the Nineteeth Century (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. BELLE ALLIANCE (WATERLOO). I. THE BELGIAN CAMPAIGN. Although it is a matter of daily experience that coming events cast their shadows before, it very rarely happens that the heroes of a closed chapter in history resume their places upon the transformed stage of time. In such a return of past greatness there always inheres a wonderful and dream-like magic, because there is involved a contradiction with the necessary and eternal process of historic life. Never has destiny assumed a more fantastic form than during the Hundred Days, when the men and the passions of an age of war emerged like a train of spectres in clear noonday to trouble the life of a new and peaceloving generation, and in which the grandiose adventure of the Napoleonic emperordom found its appropriate and stormy epilogue. On March 1st Napoleon with his nine hundred faithful followers landed on the coast near Cannes; on the evening of March 20th, the birthday of the king of Rome, his dusty carriage drove to the Tuileries through the silent capital, and a crowd of veterans drunk with joy greeted the returning hero on the portals of the abandoned royal palace. "The emperor has appeared and the royal government no longer exists," he wrote proudly to the foreign envoys. Never before had the elemental forces of genius and of reputation secured so brilliant a triumph; the bloodless victorious progress really seemed, as the Imperator assured the princes of Europe, "the work of an irresistible force, the unanimous will of a great nation aware of its duties and of its rights." Yet this miracle-like revolution proceeded almost exclusively from the army. The old corporals and sergeants who here, as in all professional armies, controlled the spirit of the, troops, regarded with idolat...