On September 28, 1840, Prince Louis Napoleon and some of his fellow-conspirators were tried at the Luxembourg before the Cour des Pairs, M. Pasquier presiding over the tribunal. Fifty-five persons had been arrested at Boulogne, but only twenty-two were proceeded against. The Prince was defended by the ablest advocate of his day, Berryer, whose brief was marked with a fee of £600; with him were MM. Marie and Ferdinand Barrot. M. Jules Favre defended other of the prisoners.
After President Pasquier had begun the “interrogation of identity,” the Prince rose and requested permission to read a short written statement in his defence. He began: “For the first time in my life I am allowed to raise my voice in France and to speak freely to Frenchmen.”
Towards the end of his address he said: “A last word, gentlemen. I represent before you a principle, a cause, a defeat. The principle is the sovereignty of the people; the cause that of the Empire; the defeat, Waterloo. The principle you have recognized, the cause you have served, the defeat you wish to avenge.”
The trial lasted until October 6, when the prisoners were sentenced: the Prince to perpetual imprisonment in a fortress; Montholon, Lombard, Conneau, and De Persigny to five years’ imprisonment; one was deported; others were sent to gaol for fifteen, ten, five, and two years.
The Prince heard his fate unmoved. To the greffier he remarked spiritedly: “Sir, they said formerly that the word ‘impossible’ was not French; to-day the same may be said of the word ‘perpetual.’”
During the trial the Prince sat in a fauteuil, guarded by two soldiers with fixed bayonets. He was a trim, alert-looking figure, in frock-coat and high black stock, wearing to and fro a tall hat.
His six years’ isolation at Ham—a huge fortress, with a moat—converted Louis Napoleon into a littérateur of almost the first rank. His industry was excessive. Reams of paper were covered with his straggling, careless writing, chiefly on military subjects. His foster-sister, Mme. Cornu, gave him valuable assistance by forwarding books which otherwise he would probably have been unable to obtain, looking after his proof-sheets, writing to his publishers, and sending him extracts from volumes for which she ransacked libraries. When, in his stonemason’s or bricklayer’s long blouse, cap, and canvas trousers, carrying a plank and smoking a pipe, he made his escape, “Badinguet” was the father of at least two children, boys, for whose maintenance and education he made adequate provision.[30]
On May 27, 1846, Louis Napoleon reached London, and put up at the Brunswick Hotel, where his name was entered as Comte d’Arenenberg. He is said to have astonished Lady Blessington and the friends who were dining with her by appearing at Gore House the same evening. He wrote to the French Ambassador (M. de Saint-Hilaire, who had been a friend of Queen Hortense) informing him that he had escaped from Ham solely to revisit his old father, and that he had no intention of making any more “attempts” against the French Government, his previous efforts having resulted so disastrously to himself. The Prince’s widowed father, the Comte de Saint-Leu, ex-King Louis of Holland, was residing at Florence, and Louis Napoleon vainly applied to the Austrian Ambassador in London and to the Grand Duke Leopold for permission to visit his father, who passed away in the following July.
All that the Comte de Saint-Leu possessed he left to his only surviving son, Louis Napoleon—his palace at Florence, his landed property at Civita Nuova, his money, and all his relics of Napoleon I. By his father’s death the Prince became a comparatively wealthy man. D’Ambès asserts that he had to his credit at Barings 150,000 francs (£6,000), and at Farquhar’s 3,000,000 francs (£120,000). We are led to believe that the Prince was unmercifully “bled” on all sides, and that he was soon deluged with begging letters from France, Switzerland, and Poland. “He spends a great deal. He already owns several houses in London, and has bought a house in Berkeley Street for Miss Howard.”