PREFACE



Constitution of 1799, which made Napoleon dictator and
so, in the phrase of the time, "finished" the French Revolu-
tion, and closing with the uprising against autocracy of the
Russian mechanics and peasants commanded by the so-called
"invisible government," an(l the organization of the Dinua,
a representative body certain in a short space of time to throw
off the bonds with which autocracy still hilampers its actions,
and assume full power of legislation and financial control.
  The complete period under discussion mnay be considered
as subdivided into three eras, each of which is treatedl in
a separate volume. Volume I extends from the close of
1799, when -Napoleon was elected First Consul, to his death
in 1821, completing the era of AMilitary Conquest. Volume
II, beginning wTithl the declaration of Greek independence
in 1822, and ending with the assurance of Italian unity by
Garibaldi's conquest of Naples in 1860, covers another fairly
complete period, that of Patriotic Revolution.  The last
volume, beginning with the outbreak of the Civil War in
America in 1861, and closing with the uprising of the Rus-
sian people for economic as w-ell as political freedom in the
strikes and industrial disorders of 1906, may also be con-
sidered as comprising a third distinct era, the period of Pop-
ular Emancipation.
   The succeeding period of the world's history may be char-
acterized even more by the progress of natural than politi-
cal science. The great and unforeseen disasters of the erup-
tion of Vesuvius and the earthquake in California are here
chronicled and bring the work to a close.



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