He had spent thirteen years of his life in the supreme effort of making him a hero, and his great work, contained in eight volumes, is a matchless piece of literature; but there is nothing in it to justify anyone believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a charlatan.  It is true Frederic finished better than he began, but truthfulness and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his.  He lied, broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable.  There is no doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa.  The powers of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it.  Had he been an honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits him with, he would have stood by his oath.  Instead of defending his ally, he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe into a devastating, bloody war, with the sole object of robbery; and all he could say for himself in extenuation of such base conduct was:  “Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for war.”

Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great was mainly acquired because the Powers and circumstances allowed him to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.

Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon’s career that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic.  He really usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral laws.  There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an industrious mediocrity.

These legitimate monarchs, through their Ministers, used barefacedly to inspire journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as being a natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation.  History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an impudent hypocrisy.  They might have had it at any time, but this did not suit their policy of legitimacy.  Countless thousands of human beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings and nobles to the plan of one man who towered above them, and insisted on breaking up the nefarious system of feudalism and kingship by divine right.  They loathed both him and his system.  They plotted for his assassination, and intrigued with all the ferocity of wild animals against his humane and enlightened government.  He trampled over all their satanic dodges to overthrow the power that had been so often enthusiastically placed in his hands by the sovereign people.  He constructed roads and canals, and introduced new methods of creating commerce.  He introduced a great scheme of expanding education, science, art, literature.  Every phase of enlightenment was not only initiated, but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its application.  He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of laws that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and eminently just.