A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

offender who ought to be hanged to save further trouble. The English and the Prussians combined
to defeat him at Waterloo; then they packed him off to the remotest spot they could think of - the
island of St Helena, in the south Atlantic, where he died six years later, probably of poison.
Reading the story of the Revolution and the career of Napoleon, it is again difficult to avoid the
feeling that some invisible spirit of history was doing its best to teach the human race
commonsense. When we look back over the past eight thousand years, it is clear that the most
irritating characteristic of human beings is their passivity. The mass of people accept whatever
happens to them as cows accept the rain. It is true even of the great rulers and generals; we have
seen how, again and again, they achieve some triumph, relax for a brief period, then begin to feel
oddly bored and dissatisfied, and look around for fresh adventures. There is no evidence that
Alexander the Great really wept when he had no more worlds to conquer; but whoever invented the
story had a profound understanding of human psychology. So for more than seven thousand years
of civilised history, the human urge to escape boredom found its way into armed aggression, while
the common people huddled together and waited for the storm to pass over. Then came the
crusades, which taught the upper classes of Europe that the world was not quite static after all.
Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church taught the common people the same lesson. Then a
series of catastrophes - like the Thirty Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the wars of
Frederick the Great - made Europe aware that it ought to be looking actively for peace, while the
rise of science and industry showed the world that there were interesting alternatives to war. The
old cow-like spirit was vanishing. The British Civil War under Cromwell and the French
Revolution taught the common people that they could also influence the course of history. So when
the Revolution was over, and the French became aware that this massive bloodletting was not what
they wanted, they elected as first consul a young general who seemed capable of giving them what
they dreamed about: peace, prosperity and justice. The Americans, with their own revolution
behind them, and delighted to be at peace again, were displaying a vitality that was reminiscent of
the early days of Rome. When Napoleon revealed his limitations: that he was a mere replica of so
many past ‘conquerors’, and that his idea of greatness was to play chess with the lives of thousands
of his fellow countrymen, all Europe shouted ‘No!’ and combined to get rid of him as a modern
police force might combine to hunt down a Public Enemy Number One.
And with the nuisance finally on St Helena, everybody could sit back and take stock of this
remarkably changed world. What did they really want? In China and Japan they had already made
up their minds: they wanted to slow down the pace of change and stick to the old ways. India felt
the same, but had no choice as the East India Company became master of Bengal, then spread
across the rest of the continent. But Europe was fairly sure that it wanted to have done with war,
and to share the benefits of progress and the industrial revolution. So as soon as Napoleon was
safely on his way to St Helena, the major nations of Europe met together and tried to decide how
peace could be maintained. What they decided was, in effect, to put back the clock. If there is really
a spirit presiding over history, it must have groaned and cast its eyes up to heaven.
What happened is that England, Austria, Prussia and Russia decided to go back to the principle of
the divine right of kings. They called it ‘legitimacy’, but it meant the same thing. Louis XVIII was
restored to the French throne, and the remainder of the old aristocracy got out its silk dresses and
embroidered waistcoats. England was inclined to go its own way - it didn’t really care about
legitimacy, for its markets were undamaged, and it was still more interested in the future. But the
rest of the leaders who gathered at Vienna simply wanted to go back to the past. A Quadruple
Alliance soon turned into a Triple Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria, which they preferred to