Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/23

 Jacobins, the second the France of the Emigrés, the third the France of everybody else.

Now no Restoration of any dynasty or régime was ever before confronted with such a situation. The English Restoration was altogether a different affair. Oliver Cromwell was a usurper. Certainly he embodied political ideas very different from those among which the Stuarts moved ; but between his government and that of Charles I. there was no impassable gulf such as was fixed between Louis XVI.'s government and that of Napoleon I. I grant that at the beginning of his reign Napoleon considered himself Louis XVI.'s heir, but later, as his ambition grew more vast, he traced his descent back as far as Charlemagne, not to say Cæsar. As a matter of fact, he never was the heir and successor of Louis XVI., that is to say, a real King of France. He had his origin and his raison d'être in the Revolution, and the Revolution alone ; he drew his profit from it ; he utilised its crimes in order to confiscate its rights ; he took possession of it to serve his own personal ends. The Jacobins were his most valuable servants, and the spirit of Jacobinism his weightiest lever.

A great deal has been written about