There had been signs of disaffection in the army.

In Ireland the spirit of revolt was smouldering, and in a few months broke out in the fierce flames of a great rebellion.

And it was the year of the political crime of Campo Formio, that sinister pacification in which violence and fraud once more asserted their unveiled ascendancy in Europe.

These sombre shadows were falling over the western world when a life went out which, notwithstanding some grave aberrations, had made great spaces in human destiny very luminous..