CHAPTER XV.
BATTLE OF WATERLOO, A.D. 1815.
Thou first and last of fields, king-making victory!—Byron.
England has now been blessed with thirty-six years of peace. At no other period of her History can a similarly long cessation from a state of warfare be found. It is true that our troops have had battles to fight during this interval for the protection and extension of our Indian possessions and our colonies, but these have been with distant and unimportant enemies. The danger has never been brought near our own shores, and no matter of vital importance to our empire has ever been at stake. We have not had hostilities with either France, America, or Russia; and when not at war with any of our peers, we feel ourselves to be substantially at peace. There has, indeed, throughout this long period, been no great war, like those with which the previous history of modern Europe abounds. There have been formidable collisions between particular states, and there have been still more formidable collisions between the armed champions of the conflicting principles of absolutism and democracy; but there has been no general war, like those of the French Revolution, like the American, or the Seven Years’ War, or like the war of the Spanish Succession. It would be far too much to augur from this that no similar wars will again convulse the world; but the value of the period of peace which Europe has gained is incalculable, even if we look on it as only a long truce, and expect again to see the nations of the earth recur to what some philosophers have termed man’s natural state of warfare.
No equal number of years can be found during which science, commerce, and civilization have advanced so rapidly and so extensively as has been the case since 1815. When we trace their progress, especially in this country, it is impossible not to feel that their wondrous development has been mainly due to the land having been at peace.[1] Their good effects can not be obliterated
- ↑ See the excellent Introduction to Mr. Charles Knight’s History of the "Thirty Years’ Peace."
