Moreover, all the great statesmen of every age and every country, including the most absolute despots,have regarded the popular imagination as the basis of their power, and they have never attempted to govern in opposition to it "It was by becoming a Catholic," said Napoleon to the Council of State,"that I terminated the Vendeen war. By becoming a Mussulman that I obtained a footing in Egypt.By becoming an Ultramontane that I won over the Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation of Jews I would rebuild Solomon＇s temple." Never perhaps since Alexander and Caesar has any great man better understood how the imagination of the crowd should be impressed. His constant preoccupation was to strike it. He bore it in mind in his victories, in his harangues,in his speeches, in all his acts. On his deathbed it was still in his thoughts.