In the same way, when Constantine won the battle of the Milvian
Bridge, with his men fighting under the standard of the Labarum, it was
subsequently found that the economic capital of civilization had silently
migrated from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, where Constantine seated himself
at Constantinople, which was destined to be the new capital of the world
for about eight hundred years. So in 1792, when the Prussians and the
French refugees together invaded France, they never doubted for an instant
that they should easily disperse the mob, as they were pleased to call it,
of Kellermann's "vagabonds, cobblers, and tailors." Nevertheless the
Germans recoiled on the slope of Valmy from before the republican army,
almost without striking a blow, nor could they be brought again to the
attack, although the French royalists implored to be allowed to storm the
hill alone, provided they could be assured of support. Then the retreat of
the Duke of Brunswick began, and this retreat was the prelude to the
Napoleonic empire, to Austerlitz, to Jena, to the dismemberment and to the
reorganization of Prussia and to the evolution of modern Germany: in
short, to the conversion of the remnants of mediaeval civilization into the
capitalistic, industrial, competitive society which we have known. And all
this because of the accelerated movement caused by science.
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