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occupy Rome. The Pope is arrested
and detained. "The present Pope
has too much power," Napoleon
writes his brother. " Priests are not
made to rule."
1n 1809 Napoleon decrees the
Papal States annexed as a part of
the French Empire. Pius replies
with a bull of excommunlcation on
June 1O. Napoleon's repl y? " In
these enlightened days none but
children and nursemaids are afraid
of curses," he laughs.
The Pope becomes Napoleon's
prisoner, and is eventually trans–
ferred to Fontainebleau, near París.
He does not return to the Vatican
until May 1814.
Decline and Fall
1n Apri1 181 O Napoleon marries
Archduchess Marie-Louise of Aus–
tria, having dissolved his childless
marriage with the empress J ose–
phine. Marie-Louise is a Habsburg
princess, the eldest daughter of the
last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis
11. In March 1811 she bears Napa–
lean a long-desired son, who is giv–
en the title " King of Rome."
Though elated at the birth of an
heir, Napoleon is growing rest less.
Western Europe is already begin–
ning to seem too small for him. He
now plans what is to be the cap–
stone of his career-the incorpora–
tion of Russia into his Empire.
In June 1812 Napoleon and his
600,000-man Grand Army cross
the Niemen River and invade Rus–
sia. Following the Batt le of Borodi–
no on September 7, the Russians
retreat. The French reach Moscow
on September 14 only to find it
burned by the Russians at the
encouragement of the British.
But Napoleon has overreached
himsclf. In trying to grasp too
much, he loses all. The freezing
Russian winter devours his men by
the thousands. A disastrous retreat
from Russia begins.
1t is the beginning of the end.
Napoleon returns to France having
lost more than 400,000 men! The
handwriting is on the wall.
In October 1813 Napoleon
meets the allied armies of Prussia,
Russia and Austria at Leipzig in
the "Battle of the Nations." His
army is torn to shreds.
The Allies clase in on París. In
March 1814 the Treaty of Chau-
36
mont is signed by Russia, Prussia,
Austria and Great Britain.
It
restares the Bourbon dynasty.
With everything crashing around
him, Napoleon fina lly abdicates in
favor of his young son on April 6,
1814. The Allies reject this solu–
tion. The Senate, too, does not rec–
ognize the child's title, and calls the
Bourbon Louis XVIII to the throne
instead. Napoleon then abdicates
unconditionally and is sent into
exile on the island of Elba.
l nto the Abyss
With the fall of Napoleon in 1814,
the time-honored system of Ro–
man-inspired govcrnment first res–
urrected by Justinian in A.D. 554
comes to an end after 1,260 years.
A year later, Napoleon escapes
from his island home. Recruiting
an army, he marches on París. His
brief return to power is to last but
lOO days.
On June 18, 1815, Napoleon
meets a combined Bri tish-Prussian
army at the Belgian town of
Waterloo. After a bitter battle he is
delivered a crushing defeat. As the
French author Víctor Hugo will
write:
"lt was time
for this vast man
to fall."
On July 15 Napoleon surrenders
and, ·as a prisoner, is sent to Saint
Helena, a volcanic island in the
South Atlantic Ocean. The little
Corsican who had conquered
Europe becomes a caged eagle.
" What can 1 do on a little rock at
the world's end?" he laments.
From the abyss of Saint Helena,
Napoleon reminisces: "1 wanted to
found a European system, a Euro–
pean code of laws, a European judi–
ciary. There would have been but
one people
throughout Europe."
Napoleon dies on May 5, 1821,
on Saint Helena, having been slow–
ly poisoned by one of his disen–
chanted countrymen. His dream of
a unified Europe will have to be left
to others.
Even as Napoleon's body is
being interred in the island's rocky
soil (later to be entombed in París),
the Continent is beginning to
reform and reshape itself. The
nations of Europe are moving
toward a new configuration-an
unexpected destiny.
(Next Month: "The Second Reich")
1985
(Continued from page 8)
American worker's addiction to
higher wages from a declining
economy meant that debt was
almost the norm. Worse still, bor–
rowed money and government
funding in a sagging market meant
more pressure for prices to rise.
By the time President Ronald
Reagan was inaugurated in J anuary
1981, unemployment in the United
S tates s tood at 7.4 percent, interest
rates in sorne areas reached 20 per–
cent and intlation raged in the dou–
ble digits.
The President's commitment to
economic recovery was a faint
breath of life to the stricken busi–
ness community. By 1983 a defi–
nite recovery was in progress. But
are we seeing a healthy rebound
whereby the United States can
once again lead the West into a new
decade of recovery?
Recovery, or Respite?
The
Economist
of London warns:
" Three things stand in the way
of a long recovery. Real rates of
interest are too high, particularly in
the United States, choking any
temptation for business to invest.
One consequence is that the dollar
is too strong (making U.S. exports
more expensive since they're paid
for in hard-to-get American cur–
rency), which
turns Americans
protectionists to keep out cheap
imports.
Third , bankers and busi–
nessmen are wor ried that overbor–
rowed countries like Brazil will not
be able to service their debt if they
are also finding it hard to earn
enough foreign exchange from a
protectionist world" (April 23,
1983).
Basically, the recovery is con–
sumer led. The recession has set up
a buyer's market temporarily. But
unless business fully joins in, the
recovcry will fade. In Canada, indi–
vidual savings are at their lowest
leve l in years. Savings in the
Unitcd States are severely down.
Fortune
magazine even warns of
a possible return to controlled dou–
ble-digit inflation from its current
4-5 percent level in the United
States: " l nflation is headed back up
dramatically, perhaps even to dou–
ble digits,
as early as /985" (For-
The PLAIN TRUTH