Twenty years later the Chamber of Peers was again to be convoked—this time under Louis Philippe—in order to judge Prince Louis Napoleon, who had invaded France to assert Napoleonic principles and his own personal right to the French throne. Only a few years previously Prince Louis Napoleon had made a like attempt at Strasburg, when, though a certain measure of support had been secured beforehand from the officers in the Strasburg garrison, he was arrested, and dismissed with no further punishment than an engagement on his part never again to set foot in France.
After the failure at Strasburg Prince Louis Napoleon went for a time to Switzerland, whence he made his way to England, where, as princes usually are, he was well received. A friend of Count d’Orsay, he was a frequent visitor at Lady Blessington’s. What was more important, he maintained friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, who, according to some good authorities, looked from the first with favour upon Prince Napoleon’s project of gaining[{117}] supreme power in France. Louis Blanc, in his “History of Ten Years” (from 1830 to 1840), declares that before starting on his expedition to Boulogne, the prince received a secret visit from Lord Palmerston; and in the Russian “Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War” it is set forth that during Prince Louis Napoleon’s stay in London, Lord Palmerston laid with him the basis of the understanding by which some dozen years afterwards France and England formed a compact against Russia. The tardy speculations of these prophets of the past must be taken for what they are worth. Prince Louis Napoleon formed, in any case, a plan for invading France, and, followed by the troops who at every step were to join him, marching towards Paris, there to be received with acclamations by an enthusiastic population, eager for the restoration of the Napoleonic dynasty and the Napoleonic mode of government. For Prince Napoleon appealed to democrats as well as imperialists. He was to give with the one hand universal suffrage and with the other military government.
SALLE DES FÊTES, LUXEMBURG PALACE.
No one makes an invasion without reconnoitring beforehand the country to be invaded; and Prince Louis Napoleon’s emissaries had already ascertained that at Boulogne, at Calais, at Saint-Omer, and at the great military centre of Lille, there were officers ready to cast in their lot with his. According to Louis Blanc, Prince Louis Napoleon’s intention was, after securing the adhesion of the Boulogne garrison, to march upon Calais, whence he was to make his way to Saint-Omer. But the better-informed Count Orsi, who took part in the expedition, and was one of the prince’s most trusted friends, tells us, in a valuable little volume devoted to the subject, that the plan of campaign was to march from Boulogne straight to Saint-Omer. The point to be reached after Saint-Omer was in any case Lille; and if the garrison of Lille had once been secured, the prince’s enterprise would have been far, indeed, from hopeless.
To return once more to Louis Blanc—that brilliant, sensational, but by no means accurate historian. Prince Louis Napoleon was, according[{118}] to his account, encouraged in his hazardous project by Lord Palmerston; not because that statesman believed in its success, but because he knew that it must inconvenience and possibly injure Louis Philippe, whose policy he detested. Louis Blanc also holds, in connection with the Boulogne expedition, that the French embassy in London was kept well informed as to the progress of the enterprise, but did not interfere because, anticipating with confidence a complete failure, it looked upon this fiasco as destined to have a strengthening effect on the existing Government, certain at once to suppress it. However all this may have been, Louis Napoleon’s friends engaged for him, in the month of July, 1840, a steamer named the Edinburgh Castle. On the 4th of August the arms, ammunition, and baggage were taken on board at Gravesend, where the vessel remained for some little time. Here it was that the famous eagle, which has become the subject of a ridiculous legend, was brought on board. An officer of the party who had gone on shore happened to meet with a youth who was offering an eagle for sale. Struck by the appropriateness of the bird, he determined, more in a jocular than in a superstitious spirit, to purchase it and place the expedition under its auspices. It was afterwards pretended that the eagle had been trained in London to fly round the head of Prince Louis Napoleon; this gyration, according to Louis Blanc, being caused by the bird’s knowledge that a piece of bacon was secreted beneath the rim of his master’s hat.
Louis Blanc, in his “Histoire de Dix Ans,” gives a long account of the Boulogne expedition, which is in the main correct. Several inaccuracies, however, have crept into his narrative, so often one-sided; and the only authentic account of this invasion on a small scale that has been written by a participator in the events is the one published for the first time some dozen years ago by Count Orsi. In asking the count to join him in the expedition, Prince Napoleon declared that if he ever succeeded in placing himself on the throne of France, which, sooner or later, he was convinced he should do, one of his first cares would be to free Italy from the domination of Austria, and unite the different Italian states into one independent kingdom. Apart, however, from this assurance. Count Orsi was quite prepared to throw in his lot with that of the Prince. He it was who secured the Edinburgh Castle for the expedition, and who, before the day of starting, obtained for the prince a loan of twenty thousand pounds. The steamer left London with about sixty of Napoleon’s adherents on board, and anxious inquiries were made as to its destination before it had got farther than Gravesend.
“I want to know,” said the custom-house officer who came alongside in a boat, “what you are doing here in the middle of the river.”
“We are waiting for a party of friends, who should have arrived by this time.”