Page:The Second Armada - Hayward - 1871.pdf/18

cumstances it is possible that a narrative which represents the other view of the case will be listened to, though, of course, it is only opinion against opinion, and wemust form by independent reflection a judgment as to which romancer's fiction is founded on the sounder basis of fact. This type of composition has been applied before to this very subject. Napoléon Apocryphe was written to show what the great Emperor might have done if only he had not been ruined by the hostility of the elements and the treachery of his allies. His chief feat was the invasion and conquest of England. He landed on the east coast, fought a battle at Ipswich, and totally broke the power of England at Cambridge. The British Isles were divided into Departments. The National University was established in London, while Oxford and Cambridge were reduced to the rank of Lycées; the laws were recast on the basis of the Code Napoléon, and many other substantial and excellent changes were introduced. To a whole generation of Frenchmen the feasibility of such an invasion was an article of faith, and they believed, in fact, that Pitt only succeeded in saving England by precipitating the campaign which ended at Austerlitz. Numbers of Englishmen have held the same opinion. Yet the most painstaking and impartial inquirers have since come to the conclusion that Napoleon, having duly examined all the contingencies of the enterprise, saw that it was impracticable; that, in fact, the French invasion was a boast on the one side and a bugbear on the other, even when England, with little more than a third of the population of France as it then was, had to face the greatest military genius of the world. The imagination of a writer of romance could describe, with