The Holy Roman Empire
vs. Ottoman Empire
Scene 4 opens as a Pope wearing a fish hat faces off with a Caliph in a jeweled turban. Both the Roman Empire and the Islamic Empire were in disarray by the year 1200, but in the center of each tattered empire stood a single powerful voice that kept the smoldering embers of empire alive. In the South it was the Moslem religion and in the North it was apostate Christianity. The violent, unremitting competition between North and South was continually provoked by these blasphemous voices of propaganda. The wars were many and long, and "many ten-thousands" were lost. Daniel 11 prerecorded it this way:
“And when he [the South] hath taken away the multitude [the multitudes of Crusade armies], his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands: but he shall not be strengthened by it.
For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and much riches.
And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south: also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall.” (Daniel 11.12‑14)
The Turks not only thwarted the Crusades and cast the North out of the Promised Land, they forced the Holy Roman Empire to turn inward to its own defenses in order to rid itself of Islam's foothold in Europe. But Europe, as the Beast, remained powerful and persistent. Even though the South had beaten back the Crusades they were unable to discourage the relentless North from trying to overrun their empire and regain the Holy Land for itself. As was written the King of the South would not be strengthened in victories over the North, for Rome would keep coming and coming, and after many years, at the time appointed, would overtake the decayed Ottoman Empire. It would take six hundred years of relentless campaigning from the North but Rome's return to the Promised Land, and the defeat of the South was preordained.
From A.D. 1300 to World War I in 1914, the competition between North and South was manifest in the confrontations between the Holy Roman Empire
and the Ottoman Empire. The Roman spirit was expanding itself into the "New World", into deepest Africa, and the Far East, colonizing, culturalizing, and "religiousizing", the rest of the globe. All the while the Ottoman Empire continued at Rome's doorstep, a menacing thorn in Rome's beleaguered side. Despite Rome's outrage, the barbarous infidels of the South remained solidly lodged within the boundaries of the "northern fortress". Between the years, 1300 ‑ 1550, the Ottoman Turks rode across desert and mountain gobbling up its southern turf as well as vast areas of Eastern Europe. Turk conquests in Hungary, the Balkans, Serbia, Croatia, Transylvania, Macedonia, the Crimea, Albania and other European provinces, all parts of the old Eastern Roman Empire, more than compensated for earlier Islamic losses in Western Europe. Each new province was put under the tight bureaucratic control of the Turks and by 1550, the Turks had wrested control of Greece and the entire eastern half of the Austrian Empire.
But most importantly, the Turks ruled the heartland of the earth; Israel. They also reigned uncontested in the surrounding Middle East, west along the Mediterranean coast of Africa and east to India. Islam had provided the South with a comparative soul and spirit to Rome and an equivalent anti-scriptural, antichrist power; but it took the Ottoman Turks to give the empire a unified diplomacy, a strict centralized government that administered the soul and spirit of the empire with the iron fist of practicality. The Ottomans gave the South a body of such magnitude that it could compete for the antichrist vision on the same scale as its older and wiser counterpart.
Making the Southern threat even more imposing was the fact that the Holy Roman Empire remained throughout this period in a hopeless state of confusion and turmoil brought on by its internal divisions. Intrigues and wars were without end, a natural result of the prophetic ailment of division. Religious authority competed with secular powers and secular powers competed with religious authority. The Empire of the Beast remained a hulking, but crippled giant.
Rome Split; Politically and Religiously
Two lucid illustrations show the type of spiritual and political division that plagued the Empire during its years of competition with the Ottoman Turks.
About the year 1000 the title of the Roman Empire settled on the ruling house of Hapsburg. Through this family the Roman Empire lived on; and in this ruling family God's prophetic imperative to keep the Empire divided, partly weak and partly strong, can be seen with crystal clarity. The House of Hapsburg, from small beginnings in Central Europe, grew with leaps and bounds, inheriting royal lands in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. By uniting in royal marriages the House of Hapsburg came to rule nearly the entire continent, thus the saying in Europe was: "Let others wage war; thou, happy Austria, marry." In the Hapsburgs Satan literally conspired to marry the Roman Empire into one unified power. Though it was a scheme well conceived it never bore the intended fruit of its insidious unity. The House of Hapsburg itself split into two rival empires. The Austrian Hapsburgs officially held the title "rulers of the Holy Roman Empire", while the Spanish Hapsburgs ruled in Spain and in the New World through its colonial possessions. There were schemes and hopes to unite the two houses down through the centuries, but for various reasons they never materialized. Wars, and threats of war, petty squabbles, royal insanity, reckless kings, hemophilia, all worked against each other at the most crucial of times in seemingly unlucky and haphazard ways to keep the Hapsburgs from uniting into what could have been the most powerful force in the world. In the end the crown of Rome was never solidified under the Hapsburgs and the spiritual conspiracy to unite the Empire by marriage, to make it a family affair, was frustrated by acts of God. The Beast remained divided.
The second example of the division in Rome is the division in its soul. Divisions in the Empire were not confined to the crowned heads of Europe, they ran deep into the "crowner" as well. The Papacy, maker of monarchs and crowner of kings, often craved the power and authority of the emperor for itself, and more often than not caused schisms and divisions among kings and nations simply by its own craven desire for power. But as if that was not enough, the Papacy was also divided within itself. Competition, assassination, briberies, and political intrigues kept the Papacy in a continually tenuous state. The perpetual undercurrent of intrigue which has always ruled Papal affairs is best exemplified in the following chain of bizarre events.
In the fourteenth century a dispute arose over the election of the Pope and the French delegation saw an opening to move the Holy See to another station in France. Through a series of political maneuvering the French Cardinals gained control of the electorate, engineered the election of a French Cardinal as Pope and claimed the Papal title in the name of the French king. Immediately the French Pope moved the seat of the Papacy to Avignon, France and set up shop there. Naturally, Rome was having none of it and the Italian bishops elected their own Italian Pope keeping the seat at Rome. But that was not the end. Incredibly, in the midst of this unsettling competition, a third Pope reared up to lay claim to the title of the "Sole Representative of Christ on Earth". For a brief period three Popes donned the fish hat. It took seventy years (and so it became known as the Papal Babylonian Captivity because it lasted seventy years just as Israel's time in Babylon had lasted seven decades) before the dispute was finally resolved and the seat of the Papacy was moved permanently back to the City of the Seven Hills, Rome. The Papacy, instead of keeping the peace, could always be counted on to drive a further wedge into the already large split in the Empire.
Ottomans Slip into Slow Decline
While the Roman Empire was becoming the "holy" empire, struggling with its inward division and extending its influence into the New World, the Ottoman Empire continued to exert pressure on Europe. Map 9 shows the borders of the two competing empires of North and South as they met face to face.
The South, not being fully strengthened by its defeat of the North in the Promised Land, gradually was pushed out of Western Europe but dug its heels in firmly in the East. By the seventeenth century the Hapsburgs and the Czars of Russia had become obsessed with driving the Ottomans out of their northern fortress. From 1700 to 1918 the Ottoman Empire went into slow decline, eventually becoming known in European diplomacy as the "Sick Man of Europe". Yet miraculously and supernaturally, it withstood two centuries of attacks by the North to bring it down. During those two centuries many of Europe's leaders and nations aspired to cast out the "Sick Man of Europe", unify the Empire, and fulfill the vision of the Antichrist; but as it was written, "[they] shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall."
Many men rose up in Europe during the time of the Holy Roman ‑ Ottoman competition hoping to fulfill the vision of the Antichrist Empire, but all were doomed to failure just as Daniel 11.14 had said. The Caesars (Czars) of Russia, the Holy Roman Emperors of Central Europe, and the alliances of Western Europe, all took a turn at trying to unify the Empire, capture Israel, and set up the throne of the Beast, but none were as prophetically significant or shed as much light on understanding the end times as the magnificent designs of an obscure little Frenchman.
Napoleon: The Prototype Antichrist
“And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south...
At this point in the Redemption Play, as time winds its way closer and closer to the end, our attention turns to center stage where we gaze on the familiar figure of a proud general arrayed in a decorated blue military uniform. Wearing a Bonaparte hat, his hand is tucked underneath the breast of his coat and his hawk-like eyes stare defiantly at the heavens. The Roman Empire has had many aspiring Antichrists: Charlemagne, the Czars, the Caesars, the Hapsburgs, but all were dim shadows in comparison to Napoleon. Ever since the Tower of Babel, Satan and the religion of Man has promised the world a wonderful unity and a marvelous leader to lead it. The Antichrist Empire has been created for that purpose; its first great figure, Alexander the Great, lit the way and the world has waited for the "second coming of Alexander" ever since. Napoleon Bonaparte, the ultimate Holy Roman Emperor, came in that hope.
Satan made a daring move by raising Napoleon up when he did. With Napoleon's sudden rise Satan hoped to prematurely establish the Antichrist throne on earth and fulfill the ultimate vision of world dominance and worship of the Antichrist Kingdom itself. Knowing that the greatest single factor in prophecy is the reestablishment of the Jews and their Temple in the Promised Land, Satan plotted to throw prophecy off course and out of time by having Napoleon unite the Empire, take over Israel, and declare himself God; all before the Jews returned to the Promised Land. Satan knew also that if these vital promises to the Jews were confused or neglected then it would give credibility to his false claim that he too is worthy of worship and at the same time fuel his contention that the fulfillment of all of God's prophecy is an impossible delusion.
Of course God knew what Satan was up to. In fact the attempt to pervert prophecy by a partial, premature fulfillment was invited by God who characteristically turned it into a tool for fulfilling his promises. As was written, "... also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision [the vision of the Antichrist unity and throne]; but they shall fall." Satan's daring move was, as usual, a disaster. Not only did it fail miserably, but the Church should applaud Napoleon because his career tipped Satan's hand by exposing many of the subtle Antichrist methods and tactics which will be employed by the Beast during the final Antichrist regime.
Napoleon came very close to consolidating the Roman Empire and setting up the Antichrist throne; he failed for one reason and one reason only: the time for the prophecy's fulfillment had not yet come. Napoleon was reported to have said, the one person in history he most admired was Jesus Christ, and that if he could have just a fraction of the devotion that Christ had, he could rule the world. Napoleon knew spirits; he knew where the power was; he knew who competed against whom; and he preached a counter gospel that was carefully prepared by the Enemy's spiritual forces. This updated Babylonian gospel not only incorporated Greek and Roman humanism but it also minced in the ideas of the so‑called "enlightenment", the Age of Reason, and the French Revolution, updating the message to fit Napoleon's vision of the "New Europe".
Just as the Gospel of God was further revealed at the coming of Jesus Christ, so the anti-gospel of Satan was further manifested by the ‘coming’ of the antichrist genius, Napoleon. The Antichrist is the spirit which is always countering against Christ, giving a false salvation contrary to the true salvation of the Christ. Likewise the anti gospel of the Antichrist counters the gospel of Christ, often point for point throwing different shades of meaning or subtly poisoning it with a tainted ingredient her and there. For example, it preaches a fleshly kind of freedom, liberty, peace, unity and love. Antichrist spirits have worked hard to give the world a convincing story, a good sell job, on this bogus form of salvation while offering the world a way to obtain it and straddle the fence between God and His enemies. But when it is time to quench the thirst in a dusty time the well is found dry. When it is time to eat of the hope the Antichrist has offered they are handed a bone. The Antichrist spirit speaks great things, and offers wonderful hopes of freedom and liberty, of love and peace, and of harmony and equity, but they are carnal remedies for wholly spiritual problems. Both God's gospel and the gospel of the Antichrist speak of the same goals but one is the creature's way, the other is the Creator's way.
Don't be deceived by the pretty sounding words the way much of Europe was tricked by the persuasive promises of the sorceries of Napoleon. With the help of demonic spiritual insight he wove his spell of false hope over the continent. It is a common misconception to think that the Antichrist will be an atheist, a hater of freedom and unity, a hater of peace and liberty. Nothing could be more misleading about the Antichrist. He will be in love with words like integrity, equality, dignity and freedom. To listen merely to the words without looking at the spiritual fruit is a grave spiritual mistake today and will be even more so as the end fast approaches. It is generally believed that the Antichrist and his kingdom is now, and will be at the end, easily detected by its overt tyranny and bigotry. How wrong!
The Antichrist has always, and will always talk of high human ideals and freedoms; it will only be the fruit of his spiritual rebellion that will expose his blasphemous heart. Nor will he be detected as an atheist, because his final objective is to get all people of the world to worship the Dragon and himself as God ‑ he strongly believes in worship, and religion, and "god", because he wants to usurp the throne, not do away with it. To win the souls of Mankind the Antichrist must have a system that offers his brand of freedom, liberty, dignity, equality and brotherhood to all those who submit and worship him. Those who refuse to submit to world order must be put out of the way; they will lose their lives. For the majority of the world the Antichrist is, and will be, their "savior" and defender, but in reality he will only be Satan's servant. Napoleon's career offers a great preview of this man and his gospel and the order of Napoleon's military campaigns reveals that his rise to power was an attempted spiritual coup designed to fulfill the Antichrist vision.
Napoleon's Career foreshadowing of the vile One
Napoleon's tactics and military priorities have long baffled historians. The order in which he went about his conquests seems to make no sense - unless - we look at them in a spiritual light. Then, and only then, do his tactics make sense. And in viewing them correctly we understand how Napoleon's career was nothing more than a confrontation between spiritual powers, a confrontation between Satan's lies and God's prophetic power.
Having gained power in France during the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoleon marched immediately into Italy and forced the spiritual head of the Empire, the Pope, into a one-sided alliance. Bang! So the first thing Napoleon did was subdue the spiritual head of the Beast.
Second, Napoleon embarked on what seems to be nothing more than a wild excursion. Not yet Emperor, and holding only the title of Commander of the French Revolutionary Army, Napoleon embarked for the Southern Kingdom hoping to destroy its power and secure the Promised Land before unifying the Beast. First he landed in Egypt and defeated the armies there. Swiftly he then went to the Holy Land and to Syria to confront the Ottoman Empire. Despite his spiritual guidance he utterly failed in the South. While the Turks were repelling Napoleon and his troops in Syria, the British navy was sending 90 per cent of the French fleet to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Napoleon was forced to tuck his tail between his legs and flee for his life, leaving most of his expeditionary forces in Egypt doomed to a hopeless situation.
If it were not for two spiritually significant things which happened during the venture to the Southern Kingdom the expedition would have been a total bust. The first matter held general implications for the future fulfillment of prophecy, while the second happened personally to Napoleon.
First, Napoleon's armies unearthed a stone artifact that has since been used to decipher ancient Egyptian writings. The Rosetta Stone, as it has become known, had Greek and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics written side by side describing the same events. Up until that time the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs had remained a mystery, but the Rosetta Stone, with its parallel interpretation, unlocked Egypt's past and is one of the keys in the end time revival of that second mountain of prophecy, Egypt. The spirit and past glories of ancient Egypt could be understood and studied and were soon resurrected. The stories of glories past filled history books around the world and rekindled the Egyptian spirit. Egypt's national pride, so important to its revival, was kick started by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
The second matter of significance happened to Napoleon personally, and helps to explain why Napoleon returned to Europe with such boldness and confidence in spite of his discouraging setbacks in the South.
As Alexander before him, Napoleon visited the Great Pyramid and demanded to be left alone inside the ancient mausoleum. After a long time, Napoleon emerged from the pyramid shaken to the very core. White as a ghost and in a trance‑like state, Napoleon was unable to speak. After regaining his speech Napoleon refused to talk about his experience and commanded that all those who knew about it never bring it up either. It was not until he was near the end of his life, while dictating his memoirs from his exiled home on the island of St. Helena that he began to tell of his experience but stopped short, saying to the note taker, "Oh what's the use. You would never believe me anyway." So Napoleon, defeated and near the end of his life, never gave an account of what transpired in the tomb, but it is likely Satan or some angel of light appeared to Napoleon, as happened to Alexander before him, telling Napoleon that he was the chosen "son" destined to unite the world and sit on the throne of "God". We can be sure that both men who had this experience in the tomb of the Great Pyramid came away believing they would rule the world as God. Satan had promised Napoleon the world and could not deliver. the time was not right.
So Napoleon's mission to the South had failed on the grand scale, but it had unearthed a key ingredient for reviving the spirit and nation of Egypt for the end times, and it had given Napoleon his "anointing" as the Antichrist, as a "son of perdition". Convinced of his destiny to rule the world, Napoleon returned home to France and wasted no time acting on his "anointing".
Napoleon had one of the major qualities of the Antichrist which is to come: he was a reformer. Back at home Napoleon moved to unify the Roman Empire with the energy and zeal of a man possessed. Bolstered by the spirit of Greece and the enlightenment of the French Revolution with its motto, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity", Napoleon completely reconstructed the government of France. He liberalized laws in favor of commoners, peasants, merchants and businessmen by instituting the Napoleonic Code of Law. [This was no less radical than Abraham Lincoln's freeing of the slaves.] He set up a governmental banking system to control the economy by creating the Bank of France. [A device used today by the western world to control economies.] He reformed taxes. [A method used by modern politicians everywhere to woo the hearts of the people.] And he created the New Republic, using Parliament to declare him as 1st Consul, after the Roman pattern [Something perhaps to look for in the coming unity of Europe.]
In short, Napoleon seduced the people with the hope of Roman glories, by relaxed laws, and enhanced economic freedoms. Restrictions of class were dropped, the old nobility was destroyed and the common man was given a piece of the action. Masses flocked to the "new order". The French Revolution had given birth to a new gospel and in Napoleon it had found a "god" to cement the whole thing together into a smooth system. The Napoleonic System was created to give this fraternity of Man an equality under the law which the commoners of the world had never known. Providing economic liberty and social mobility was at the heart of Napoleon's reforms and for that Napoleon was hailed among the common people all over Europe as the "savior".
Armed with this common appeal and Antichrist boldness, Napoleon took off to conquer Europe. In 1804, Napoleon declared the New Empire and himself its almighty Emperor. He summoned the Pope to Paris to crown him Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. At this event Napoleon's true Antichrist character and belief in his own divinity began to show through. During the coronation, just as the Pope was about to place the crown on Bonaparte's head, Napoleon tore the crown from the hands of Pius VII and crowned himself Emperor. Instantly, in one gesture, Napoleon had acted out a great prophetic truth. Killing two birds with one stone, he had belittled the Papacy and by association Jesus Christ, and he had openly declared his own divinity by claiming to have the authority to crown kings. Europe had accepted for centuries that the power to crown kings was conveyed directly by God and to crown himself king was to declare his divinity. Not only had the little tyrant gotten rid of Christ and Christianity, he had in effect declared himself God.
Like the Antichrist of the End He Betrays the Whore
In this one act Napoleon exposed the heart of the Antichrist and pointed to the prophesied relationship of the end between the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon. In Revelation, chapter 17, it is foretold that the Antichrist Kingdom will turn on its religious ally, the Whore of Babylon, and strip her of all pretenses of power and authority. As Napoleon did, the Empire will exploit the Whore's false religion to its own end and when it is no longer of use the Beast will refuse to share power with her. Napoleon was willing to use the Papacy for a while because the Pope's prestige filled a need, but Napoleon quickly betrayed the Papacy when its authority stood in the way of his deification. When the betrayal was finished, Napoleon had confiscated all Papal Lands and imprisoned the Pope; foreshadowing the way the Antichrist will also use the Whore's prestige and authority and then rape and plunder her.
Napoleon could no longer tolerate the pretenses of the worldly Christian religion; they intruded on Antichrist power and worship. With the modern humanism of the French Revolution, he no longer needed apostate Christianity, and so between 1805 and 1809 Napoleon carried the banner of the French Revolution with a religious fervor over the whole continent of Europe. Throughout the countries of Europe the message of Napoleon's "New Republic" as hailed by the common people. Napoleon defeated the armies of the kings of Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Prussia, and all the lesser kingdoms while meeting little or no resistance from the commoners and peasants of the countryside.
Russia was still a sometimes ally to the east, so the only obstacle in the way of total conquest of the Empire was Britain, fittingly the furthest outpost of the ancient Roman Empire. It was the only piece of the puzzle Napoleon was unable to make fit and it proved to be the stumbling block in Satan's plan to rush prophecy's fulfillment. Napoleon was unable to defeat Britain's navy and therefore could never get across the channel to invade the island. Ultimately Britain's defiance of Napoleon's New Republic ended his run at trying to fulfill the "vision" of the Antichrist. Frustrated by Britain's stubborn resistance Napoleon turned to economic warfare (something the Antichrist of the end will also employ). Known as Napoleon's "Continental System", this original scheme combined a military blockade with an embargo on goods from Europe against the British Isles. The system was designed to deflate the British economy and destroy Britain's capacity to wage war. A forerunner of modern economic warfare, the idea was brilliant on paper, but in practice it was a debacle of catastrophic proportion. The tactic in fact started the chain of events that eventually led to Napoleon's total ruin.
Suddenly, after piling success upon success, this false savior, this invincible leader, was on his way to ruin just as the prophecy had promised. Russia, inclined to stay with France as a friend against Britain, was forced to defect from Napoleon's ranks because of the devastating effects that the Continental System had on its economy. And instead of weakening Britain, economic warfare had only increased Britain's resolve to challenge Napoleon on the Continent. Economic warfare had backfired; it had alienated an ally and strengthened and united the enemy. Napoleon was forced to attack Russia with all his forces and the rest is history. Napoleon was irreparably crippled in Russia and Britain was able to rally resistance on the Continent to defeat him.
Napoleon attempted a comeback after his initial defeat (foreboding the comeback of the actual Antichrist after his mortal wound to the head) but it was brief and doomed to failure. Napoleon died of cancer, banished to St. Helena by the British [an ending also pointing to the Antichrist's end who will be banished to the lake of fire forever].
Napoleon was an enlightened leader with liberal and radical ideas welcomed by the populace, just as the Antichrist will be. He did popular things: reforming laws, restructuring government for the people and easing taxation, just as the Antichrist will. Napoleon offered a disgruntled Europe freedom from the yoke of their oppressive governments, seducing them with promises of liberty, equality, and fraternity, just as the Antichrist will do. He promised to deliver the people from bondage and the people believed him, just as the people will believe the Antichrist. The Antichrist of then, the Antichrist of now, and the Antichrist of the future offer the same thing: a form of salvation in troubled times. The Antichrist was then, and will be in the end, a great man: intelligent, charismatic and bold. He will ally himself with religion and have a form of godliness and righteousness. With the help of the false prophet the Antichrist will wage a brilliant war to win the souls of men, just as his forerunner Napoleon had done before, but he will succeed were Napoleon failed. The Antichrist will unify the Empire, cast down the power of the South, deceive the Jew, and set up his throne in God's temple in Jerusalem. But in the end, just as Napoleon was defeated, so the Antichrist will be defeated. (Rev. 19)
Napoleon ended in utter failure never uniting the Empire or setting up the throne of the Antichrist. Just as Daniel's prophecy had promised, those trying to fulfill the vision before its time would fail. Satan had tried to rush the cadence of prophecy, but was foiled. Once again the Lord had proved who was Lord (as in the lesson of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon) by showing who sets up and deposes rulers on earth. God had turned the tables on Satan using the Devil's child, Napoleon, to fulfill prophecy and pave the way for its future fulfillment. Napoleon's antichrist ambitions had given Mankind a glimpse into the future. The world, for a brief moment, had seen the embryo of the horrible "Beast" which will spread its gospel of deception at the end and lead the world into war, hatred, pestilence, death and Hell.
The remaining prophecies of Daniel 11 were now set, able to fall into place as we shall see as the Redemption Play now hurries headlong picking up speed toward its dramatic climax. The idea of a ‘united world order’ had not only been resurrected from the ancient ashes of Alexander’s memory, but the possibility of a ‘new world order’ inaugurated by Napoleon's satanic genius. In the process the spirit of ancient Egypt was revived which paved the way for revival of the all the ancient nations of the Middle East in accord with biblical prophecy. The North was again looking with covetous eyes at the jewel of the earth, Israel. And the entire globe was full of the spirit of revolution and rebellion and turmoil that has grown in intensity ever since leading up to the final thrust of the Antichrist which the world stands on the brink of enduring in these very days.
> On to Act 4: Scene 5: Great Britain