"Yet although Bonaparte could not perceive it, those atoms were held together by a principle – love of liberty; the right to arrange your own affairs in association with your fellows without being told what to do by a government and its bureaucrats. He could not begin to comprehend that through such free association and debate Englishmen might arrive at a union far more resilient than the brittle artificial unanimity he had imposed on France; at a truly national purpose in contrast to the mere acquiescence of the French people in his own designs. He failed as well to note the dynamism of a country where initiative and decision flourished everywhere in the soil of liberty instead of being the monopoly of one man at the top like himself. And despite his fulminations about English gold buying allies to fight against France, he no less underestimated the strategic importance of England's resources as the world's most powerful industrial and trading nation."