Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/84

68 the continent, 'he must settle with the corps législatif.'. ..

I have seen your soldiers,' says Metternich to him, 'they are children. When this army of boys is gone, what will you do then?' At these words, which touch his heart, he grows pale, his features contract, and his rage overcomes him. Like a wounded man who has made a false step and exposes himself, he says violently to Metternich: 'You are not a soldier! You do not know the impulses of a soldier's breast! I have grown up on a battle-field, and a man like me does not care a for the lives of a million men.

Nor did he, for here is the final record of his rule of France:

"Between 1804 and 1815 he has had slaughtered 1,700,000 Frenchmen, born within the boundaries of ancient France, to which must be added, probably, 2,000,000 of men born outside these limits, and slain for him under the title of allies, or slain by him under the title of enemies. All that the poor enthusiastic and credulous Gauls have gained by entrusting their public welfare to him is two invasions; all that he bequeaths to them as a reward for their devotion, after this prodigious waste of their blood and the blood of others, is a France shorn of fifteen departments acquired by the Republic, deprived of Saxony, of the left bank of the Rhine, and of Belgium, despoiled of the north-east angle by which it