What French influence effected in Italy is a topic so recondite as to require separate discussion; for the results were not so immediate or so dramatic as they were in Germany. But the destruction of petty governments was as ruthless as in the north; the ideas which marched in Bonaparte's ranks found at least a large minority of intelligent admirers among the invaded; and Italian unity, though won by a family he feared and abused, is in no doubtful sense indebted for its existence, not merely to Napoleon's age, but to the ideas he disseminated and to the efforts at a practical beginning which he made. As to Austria-Hungary, the new historical epoch which makes her essentially the empire of the lower Danube takes its rise from Napoleon's time and influence. The relaxation of her grasp on Italy has thrown her across the Adriatic for the territorial expansion essential to her position as a great power. It has been her mission to rescue by moral influence some of the fairest lands in the Balkan peninsula from waste and anarchy. Mere proximity is a powerful factor; the turbulence of Austrian local patriotism has been the seed of wholesome discontent among the Christian populations of Turkey, whose first awakening was largely due to the emissaries sent by Napoleon to fire the hearts of the oppressed and suffering subjects of that distracted land. Servia is one example of this; and in a sense the national awakening of Greece began with the hopes similarly aroused.
The astounding magic of his name in the United States is partly due to a quality of the American mind which makes its possessor the passionate and indiscriminating adorer of greatness in every form. The Americans are more French than the French in their admiration of power. But, after all, this is not the main reason for their interest in Napoleon. They are, dimly at least, aware of certain facts which have determined their history and made them an independent nation; though already stated and discussed, we may be pardoned for recapitulating them in this connection. Their first war for independence left them tributary to the mother-country both industrially and commercially. It was Napoleon who pitilessly, though slyly and indirectly, launched them into the second war with Great Britain, from which they emerged with some glory and some sense of defeat, but, after all, with the tremendous and permanent gain of absolute commercial independence. In the second place, their purchase of Louisiana, though understood by only a few at the moment, revolutionized their national system both inside and outside. That momentous step destroyed the literal interpretation of the constitution, hitherto enslaving a congeries of jarring little commonwealths in the bondage of verbalism, because, though manifestly beneficent and necessary, it could be justified before the law only by an appeal to the spirit and not to the letter. Thenceforward Americans have steadily been enlarging their constitutional law by interpretation, and the apparent timidity of amendment which they display is simply due to the absence of necessity for revision as long as expansion by interpretation continues. But certainly quite as important as this was also the displacement, by the acquisition of that vast territory, of what may be called the national center of gravity. Until then the aspirations of Americans had been toward Europe; the public opinion of the country had, until then, demanded the largest possible intercourse with that continent compatible with freedom from political entanglement. Thereafter there was a change in their spirit: a continent of their own was open to their energies. For two generations their history has been concerned with exploration, with mechanical invention, and with solving the great problem of how to prevent an extension of slavery corresponding to the extension of territory. But nevertheless, steadily and vigorously two correlated concepts were propagating themselves: neglect of Europe, in order to expand and assimilate their recent acquisition; industrial exclusiveness, for the sake of this great home market which immigration, settlement, and the formation of new commonwealths were creating, not at the front door, but in the rear of the states stretching along the Atlantic. This resulted in a temporary "about-face" of the nation; and it is only now, when the prize of material greatness and of territorial unity has been secured, that the people turn once more toward the rising sun, in order to get from older lands everything germane to its own civilization, and to assimilate these acquisitions, if possible, in realizing its own ideals of moral grandeur.