the night of August 6 he received telegraphic news of the Battles of
Wörth and Forbach, whereupon he exclaimed, "Poor Emperor! I pity him,
but I have had a lucky escape." Austria also drew back, and thus left
France face to face with the naked truth that she stood alone and
unready before a united and triumphant Germany, able to pour treble her
own forces through the open portals of Lorraine and northern Alsace.

Napoleon III., to do him justice, had never cherished the wild dreams
that haunted the minds of his consort and of the frothy "Mamelukes"
lately in favour at Court; still less did the "silent man of destiny"
indulge in the idle boasts that had helped to alienate the sympathy of
Europe and to weld together Germany to withstand the blows of a second
Napoleonic invasion. The nephew knew full well that he was not the Great
Napoleon--he knew it before Victor Hugo in spiteful verse vainly sought
to dub him the Little. True, his statesmanship proved to be mere dreamy
philosophising about nationalities; his administrative powers, small at
the best, were ever clogged by his too generous desire to reward his
fellow-conspirators of the _coup d'état_ of 1851; and his gifts for war
were scarcely greater than those of the other _Napoléonides_, Joseph and
Jerome. Nevertheless the reverses of his early life had strengthened
that fund of quiet stoicism, that energy to resist if not to dare, which
formed the backbone of an otherwise somewhat weak, shadowy, and
uninspiring character. And now, in the rapid fall of his fortunes, the
greatest adventurer of the nineteenth century showed to the full those
qualities of toughness and dignified reserve which for twenty years had
puzzled and imposed on that lively emotional people. By the side of the
downcast braggarts of the Court and the unstrung screamers of the
Parisian Press, his mien had something of the heroic. _Tout peut se
rétablir_--"All may yet be set right"--such was the vague but dignified
phrase in which he summarised the results of August 6 to his people.