And that duel, on which depended all that our Europe has since become, had great Russia and gallant Spain and our own glorious island only as subordinates or seconds.

That duel, first, last, and for ever, was a duel between the Frenchman and the German; that is, between the citizen and the barbarian.
It is not necessary nowadays to defend the French Revolution, it is not necessary to defend even Napoleon, its child and champion, from criticisms in the style of Southey and Alison, which even at the time had more of the atmosphere of Bath and Cheltenham than of Turcoing and Talavera.

The French Revolution was attacked because it was democratic and defended because it was democratic; and Napoleon was not feared as the last of the iron despots, but as the first of the iron democrats.
What France set out to prove France has proved; not that common men are all angels, or all diplomatists, or all gentlemen (for these inane aristocratic illusions were no part of the Jacobin theory), but that common men can all be citizens and can all be soldiers; that common men can fight and can rule.

There is no need to confuse the question with any of those escapades of a floundering modernism which have made nonsense of this civic common-sense.

Some Free Traders have seemed to leave a man no country to fight for; some Free Lovers seem to leave a man no household to rule.