The feeling arose, and at once became general, not only in France, but in Europe, that these words of the Emperor meant an appeal to force. The Revolution had claimed to have a world-wide mission in protecting the oppressed and establishing justice. The nations had felt a solemn awe when they saw this task intrusted to the greatest general of his day. But now in a twinkling all was changed; here was a new kind of monarch; not a king, but a king of kings; and headstrong, wilful, and selfish, just as kings were, with no more respect than they for the rights of man. The greatest general of Europe was now its most ambitious and ruthless sovereign. It was a powerful argument for the royalists of the Continent that their old kings, whom they knew, were better than this novel, unknown tyrant.
It is a trite remark that, however rapidly events may move, no gulf or cleft separates two epochs either of national life or of general history. The germs of that national uprising which later overwhelmed Napoleon can be observed as early as 1805. The tide of his success was still to flow high before the turn, but his alliance with a great idea began to dissolve before he struck the first blow for his dynasty. It was with a light heart and a new enthusiasm that Europe went to war in 1805. Even the Russian peasants, peering into the misty diplomacy which strove to conceal the Czar's Oriental ambitions and dynastic pride under complaints about the Duc d'Enghien, and demands for indemnity to Piedmont, a kingdom almost extinct, saw dimly that the principles of eternal justice and right were no longer on the side of France, but on theirs. If France was to live henceforth under monarchical rule, her ruler must be made to keep his place in the former political equipoise and abide by the old rules of international law. This fact constituted the moral strength of Russia's position when she somewhat hastily dismissed the French envoy from St. Petersburg. Even then men began dimly to apprehend that, for the triumph of the rights of man which the republic had so loudly proclaimed, the nations must now rise against Napoleon and rally to their dynasties.
While this change of sentiment, elemental in the history of the time, was gradually taking place outside of France, that nation was interested in itself as rarely before. Commerce and industry were rising and developing under a sense of security. Trade and engineering had received a mighty impulse by the inception of those splendid public works which still make the First Empire illustrious,--the superb highways of the Simplon, Mt. Cenis, and Mt. Genèvre, the great canals of St. Quentin, Arles, Aigues-Mortes, in France proper, with those of even higher importance in Belgium,--and by the improvement of every land and water route which made intercommunication easy. Where the Emperor's interest made it seem best, public buildings rose like magic. Labor was abundant, and prosperity almost commonplace; the spell of Napoleon's name and dynasty fascinated men to an ever-growing degree. There were shadows: the budget for 1805 was alarming, for the last harvest had been bad; the American payment was spent, Spain could not be asked for a further subsidy when arming herself for French support, and the prohibition of English trade diminished the customs revenues. The price of French bonds fell for a time at a tremendous rate. But the ingenuity of the Emperor was still fecund. A new tariff, a new syndicate of bankers to scale the public debt, a new tax laid on litigants: such were his expedients, and they temporarily succeeded. When the senate adjourned in March, the members of that high assembly were requested to report how the new machinery was working in their respective homes. It appeared to be working very well.