Page:The Hero in History.djvu/90

90 him in which to avail himself of Fulton’s invention: “I have just read the proposition of the Citizen Fulton, engineer, which you have sent me much too late, since it is one which may change the whole face of the world. Submit it instantly for examination to a special committee.”

Let us assume that Fulton’s invention had not been buried in committee but had been acted upon, a fleet of steam transports equipped, and Napoleon’s army ferried across the Channel. Would his invasion have been successful? Whatever our answer, it will have to be made in terms of certain principles or laws of military warfare as these have been established in comparable situations. Since an army lives on its stomach, supplies, and reinforcements, Napoleon would have had to keep open at all costs his line of communications. So long as the British fleet remained in existence, that would have been impossible. Since he could not count on the wind to hold the English fleet permanently becalmed, he would have had to destroy it. By the time he had equipped a steam battle fleet, the English with their greater shipbuilding and industrial capacities would have met him on at least equal terms. We may, therefore, conclude that even if Napoleon had landed in England, he would still have been far from victory. This conclusion would, of course, be much more assured if he had managed to reach the English shore only with sailing vessels.

One of the most famous of all “if” questions was originally raised by the German historian, Eduard Meyer, and used as a key illustration by Max Weber in his discussion of “objective possibility” in history. What would the subsequent history of Europe have been like if the Persian hosts had been victorious at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platea? Meyer maintains with justification that the political history as well as the cultural values of Greek and European civilization would have been profoundly different from the legacy that has come down to us. Since the settled policy of the Achæmenian Empire was to impose its own autocratic and priestly rule upon the territories subjugated by its armies, the Greek city-state with its traditions of autonomy and limited democracy would in all likelihood have disappeared from Europe, and the great efflorescence of Greek