Excerpt from The Waterloo Roll Call: With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes Never since the days of Oliver Cromwell had any name caused so much fear in England as did that of Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1802 until his first downfall, in 1814, a spirit of alarm and uneasiness pervaded all classes in Great Britain, from the King and his Ministers down to the most illiterate peasant. Those who were witnesses of, and participators in, this panic have now passed away, but the national pride which our victory over Napoleon at Waterloo excited in every Briton's breast is as strong as ever, and will last till the crack of doom. In July, 1803, a little pamphlet, entitled Important Con siderations for the People of this Kingdom, was published in Londo'n, and sent to the officiating minister of every parish in England. This pamphlet, which bears the Royal Arms of England, was an appeal from the Government to the Nation, and a diatribe against Napoleon. Mark the closing lines of this appeal: Shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead - shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field - shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which our fathers So often dyed the land and the sea with their blood N 0, we are not so miserably fallen we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate; we have the strength and the Will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.