Excerpt from Eighteen Presidents: And Contemporaneous Rulers I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis XVI. Was a fool of my own knowledge, and despite the answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and dispatched two couriers a week one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as Regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, son of the Great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus, of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England. You know, was in a straight waistcoat. [his son was made Regent after this was writ ten.] There remained, then, none but old Catharine (of Russia, ) who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe, and it was this state of its rulers that lost it with scarcely a struggle. 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.