Читать книгу Men Who Have Made the Empire онлайн

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There is a very deep meaning in the seemingly flippant and almost impious saying of Napoleon: “God fights on the side of the biggest battalions.” He does—but you must reckon the bigness of the battalions, not only by their numbers, but by the value of their units, remembering always that one man with a stout heart and a cause he honestly believes in is worth a score who have neither heart nor faith.

Just such a man was William the Norman, son of Robert the Magnificent, otherwise styled the Devil, and Arlette the Fair, daughter of Fulbert the Tanner of Falaise. It is in this birth of his that we find the first clue to his real greatness. He was born of a union unhallowed by the sanction of the Church, among a people proud beyond all modern belief of their royal sea-king ancestry.

How did he come to achieve this almost miraculous triumph over a prejudice and hostility of which we can now form but a very dim idea?

We have to look no farther than his cradle to find the answer. Lying there, the little fellow used to grasp the straw in his baby fists with such a grip that it could not be pulled away from him. The straw broke first, and ever in his after life what William the Norman laid hold of he held on to; and that is why he became the first of our Empire-Makers.