PREFACE.

republic, had himself proclaimed king (1), is not the ideal of the disinterested patriot. But how can one not love this unfortunate warrior who, after having brought Rome's greatest generalJulius Caesar. to the brink of ruin, had to suffer the humiliation of accompanying the victor in the ceremony of the triumph and who, afterwards, struck down in the depths of a dungeon by the hand of the executioner, paid with his head for the unrealized dream of national independence!

Joan of ArcA 15th-century French folk heroine and saint who led the French army against the English during the Hundred Years' War., that popular heroine of French patriotism in the Middle Ages, had, upon the pyre at Rouen, the consoling memory of the successes achieved by her marvelous mission; she could hope for their coming completion and count on the final expulsion of the executioners who took revenge for their own helplessness through the martyrdom of a defenseless young girl.

But VercingétorixThe leader of the Gallic resistance against Caesar in 52 BCE.! From his patriotism, he drew only the shame of total failure and a cruel death. A statue erected after nineteen centu-

(1) "He is called king by his own people" original: "Rex ab suis appellatur" (The Gallic War, Book VII, ch. 4, § 4).
"That he preferred to hold the kingship of Gaul by Caesar's grant rather than by their favor" original: "Regnum illum Galliae malle se Caesaris concessu quam ipsorum habere beneficio" (Ibid., Book VI, ch. 20, § 2).