few weeks following the 2nd of December,
twenty-six thousand persons were sent to
Cayenne, for the most part to die. St.
Arnauld, Magnan, Morny, and Maupas were
not too merciful in the fury of their new
zeal. According to his bitter historian, in
the hour of danger, Louis Napoleon
disgraced himself not only by offensively
turning a greenish colour, but by surrounding
himself with cavalry, and keeping his
carriage ready, and still more, by distributing
his last five hundred thousand francs among
the soldiers, whom he had promised to lead,
but did not. But, as a matter of fact, there
appears to be no valid reason for doubting
Louis Napoleon's personal courage.

Treating chiefly of the prince's personal
history, we must dismiss briefly the
well-known events of his becoming president for
ten years, and in 1852 emperor by a
plebiscite majority of five or six million votes.

In 1854, the Crimean war enabled the
emperor to give St. Arnauld and other
adherents places of honour, and to chastise
Russia for her somewhat tardy recognition
of his new title. In 1853 he had married
Eugénie de Téba, granddaughter of a Scotch
consul at Malaga, and whose mother had
married a Spanish count. The opposition
of the northern powers had previously
debarred him from a projected union with
the Princess Caroline Vasa, of Sweden.
The only issue of this match, the Prince
Imperial, was born in 1856, and is now
therefore a lad of fourteen. In 1855 the
emperor visited England, when the queen
invested him with the Order of the Garter.
In 1858 his life was attempted by that
daring fanatic, Orsini. In 1859, aiding
Victor Emmanuel, he overthrew (or rather
perhaps his generals overthrew) the
Austrians in the rapid Magenta and Solferino
campaigns, and, by the disgraceful peace of
Villafranca, to Cavour's rage secured
Lombardy to Sardinia, but left Rome to the
priests, Venetia to the Austrians, and as a
reward, coolly annexed Savoy to Nice. The
Emperors of France and Austria met at a
cottage near Solferino; Napoleon, men
say, was courteous and friendly, but firm
and unyielding. Francis Joseph was cast
down, and tears sprang into his eyes, but
he was dignified in his bearing, as became
a Hapsburg, and resigned. From a glass
in the room he half unconsciously took
flowers and picked them to pieces, leaf by
leaf. A dialogue of a few minutes only,
then the conqueror and conquered shook
hands and parted. Cavour raged when
he heard of this treaty, and the Austrian
officers, wounded in their pride, snapped
their swords and cast the sharp splinters
under their feet. To this sunshine came
the cloud. In 1862 the emperor planned
the miserable Mexican expedition, that,
after great loss of blood and money, ended
in the miserable death of the Austrian
prince, Maximilian. One by one the
daring and unprincipled men of the coup
d'état passed from the emperor's side. The
able De Morny, the daring, the ruthless
Walewski, St. Arnauld, unprincipled but
brave; last of all, the very day of the
surrender of himself and his eighty thousand
at Sedan, that faithful old servant of his
house, the Count de Flahault.

The time has not come, perhaps, to
pronounce finally on the talents, the merits, or
demerits of him who, but yesterday, seemed
so firmly fixed on the throne of Imperial
France. Mr. Kinglake pronounced long ago
a stern and cruel verdict upon the now fallen
man. The historian of the Crimean war talks
of his blank wooden looks, his bearing as
of a weaver oppressed by long hours of
monotonous indoor work, which makes the
body stoop and keeps the eyes downcast.
He is, he says, dull, his ideas flow
sluggishly, his features are opaque. He spent
the hours of a studious youth and the
prime of a thoughtful manhood in
contriving how to apply stratagem to the
science of jurisprudence. "He knew how
to put the word 'jury' in laws which
robbed men of their freedom, he could set
the snare which he called 'universal
suffrage,' he knew how to strangle a nation
in the night-time with a thing he called a
plebiscite, and partly from habits acquired
in secret societies, and among the calm
self-possessed men of the English turf, he
has devised the power of keeping long
silence."  He was not "void of all idea of
truth." His boldness is that rather
produced by reflection than that which is
the result of temperament. "So," says the
terrible historian, "he was most venturesome
in his schemes for action; yet when
at last he stood face to face with the very
danger which he had been long courting,
he was liable to be scared by it as though
it were something new or strange." Surely
the calmer judgment of posterity can say
no worse of the mysterious man, now "fallen,
fallen, fallen from his high estate," than what
is here said, with the bitterness and
exaggerated emphasis of an almost personal
hatred, or what Lammenais said of him long
years ago: "A man of no convictions, for
good or evil—all wrapt up in self."