On the night of August 6 he received telegraphic news of the Battles of Woerth 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'etat_ of 1851; and his gifts for war were scarcely greater than those of the other _Napoleonides_, 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.