"He had the power to enkindle others with the torch of his own restless energy, that burned in him till at last it consumed even his almost deathless vitality."

Henry, the fifth English monarch of that name, was born at Monmouth, on the banks of the pleasant Wye, in the year 1384-5. He was the eldest son of Henry earl of

The Italian War was the turning-point in the history of the Second Empire. Up to 1860 everything seemed to have succeeded with the man who twelve years before could not boast of

Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon, was the third son of Louis, the ex-King of Holland, and his wife Hortense Beauharnais. He was born in 1808, recollected having seen his illustrious uncle

The Bourbon dynasty who were recalled to France in 1814 owed this sudden favour of fortune to no merit of their own. Their party was almost extinct, their persons dim and forgotten,

To those who concentrate their attention upon the civil work of Napoleon, upon the chaos which he found and the order which he created, and above all upon the endurance of his

It was part of France's good fortune that the man who came to save her was himself a homeless adventurer, sprung not of French but of Italian stock, and attached to no

There is no mystery about the origins of Bonapartism. It is the child of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution, deriving its force and vitality not only from the genius of the