force Napoleon achieved supreme power in France, and he maintained that supreme power with the good will of the army. When his military reputation had declined, when he had lost the good will of the army, it was by military force that he was deposed. Whether anything short of a military disaster would have ended his reign or that of his dynasty is a question whose answer can never be known, and it can be left to the debate of the philosophers.
Arguments can indeed be put forward that every one of Napoleon’s wars was forced upon him — there have been plenty of apologists who have advanced this theory, although when the attacks on Portugal in 1807, on Spain in 1808, and on Russia in 1812 have to be defended the arguments seem feeble enough. Those attacks are hard to excuse; it is almost impossible to justify them as defensive or preventive wars, however irritating the behavior of the House of Braganza, of Godoy, or of Alexander I may have been to Napoleon. In the same way it is very hard to believe that he was forced into war with England after the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens. A more pliable man, a man less obsessed with a sense of his own importance, might, have maintained the peace until peace became a habit too hard to break, but a man of that sort would hardly have proclaimed himself First Consul for Life immediately before; in the same way it is obvious to us now that the monster who rose to power in Germany in the 1930s should never have been expected to act otherwise than to keep Europe in a turmoil as long as he lived.
