protects you, and will preserve you for the
happiness of France."

Tried before the Chamber of Peers,
Louis Napoleon, in spite of M. Berryer's
able defence, was sentenced to perpetual
imprisoment at Ham; Montigny and
three subordinates to twenty years' detention;
and the small fry to various terms of
imprisonment. The unfortunate lieutenant
was transported to Cayenne. In his speech
for his defence, and we should not forget
the words at this crisis, the prince said:

"The emperor, my uncle, chose rather
to abdicate than to consent by a treaty to
straitened frontiers, which would expose
France to scorn and menaces from the
stranger. I have never for a day forgotten
those lessons."

At the fortress of Ham, in Picardy, a
stronghold rebuilt at the end of the fifteenth
century, by the Constable de Saint Pol,
flanked with great round towers, and with
high gloomy ramparts, washed on two sides
by the St. Quentin Canal, the prince spent
six dismal but useful years. After the
Revolution of 1830, the Polignac ministry,
Jesuits and time-servers to a man, had
been immured in the same den of
half-dead feudalism. In this disagreeable
study the prince again turned author, and
wrote pamphlets on Pauperism, the
Adulteration of Sugar. Historical Fragments,
the Mode of Recruiting an Army, and the
History of Firearms. The prince's time was
passing in these occupations, not, assuredly,
without sorrow, but certainly without
regret; when, at the close of 1845, King
Louis, feeling his end approaching, begged
the French government to allow his son to
come to Italy and close his eyes. The
ministers sternly refused the son's passionate
request, even though he should give, as
he promised, his sacred word to return to
his prison. Then, concentrating all his
natural energy, the prince resolved to
venture everything to escape. On the 25th
of May, 1846, he bribed a mason at work
in the prison barracks, and, disguised in
the man's blouse and sabots, and with a
plank on his shoulder, safely passed the
sentinels, and once more breathed free air.
He immediately crossed into Belgium, and
wrote to the French ministers, giving them
the true reason of his escape, and asking
for passports to Italy. They were
contemptuously refused, and the father died
two months after the prisoner's escape from
Ham, without having seen the son who
loved him so much. Louis Bonaparte then
again took refuge in England, where he
became known as a genial man of society,
and a straight rider, and was not altogether
unrecognised by thoughtful and observant
men as the possible achiever of great
things.

On the revolution that drove Louis
Philippe from his throne in 1848, the prince
instantly returned to France, but left again
on his presence being thought dangerous
to the young and rather rickety republic.
At length a third time elected, and in
September by five electoral colleges in one
day, he returned and took his seat as a
representative in the National Assembly.
In December, 1848, Prince Louis
Bonaparte was elected President of the
Republic.

In his speech on this occasion, he said,
"I wish, like you, to treat society on its
bases, to strengthen democratic institutions,
and to discover all proper means to
soothe the miseries of this generous and
intelligent people which has given me so
remarkable a proof of its confidence....
Animated by this spirit, I have summoned
round me honest men, capable and devoted
to their country. We have, citizens and
representatives, a great mission to fulfil,
to found a republic in the interest of
all; a government just and firm, which
may be animated with a sincere love of
progress, without being reactionary or
utopian."

And in his manifesto the same patriot
said, with equal sincerity no doubt, "I
am not an ambitious person who dreams
of empire and war, or of the application
of subversive theories. Educated in free
countries, in the school of misfortune, I will
remain always faithful to the duties imposed
on me by your suffrages and the wishes of
the assembly."

On December the 2nd, 1851, before
sunrise, the patriot prince suddenly swept
into Vincennes, Fort Valérien, and Mazas,
all the chief of his opponents, Changarnier,
Cavaignac, and two hundred and thirty-two
representatives. An insurrection
instantly broke out. With an army of
forty-eight thousand men, the prince's myrmidons
fought furiously and cruelly with the
insurgents. According to a colonel's
evidence to Mr. Kinglake, one regiment alone
killed two thousand four hundred Reds,
and there were twenty regiments actually
at work on that day. Of the army only
twenty-five were killed, that is, according
to the official return in the Moniteur.
No doubt four or five thousand insurgents,
at least, fell in that street fight. In the