TREATY OF PEACE
The victories in Italy filled the French people with the warmest admiration for their emperor, they thinking, in their enthusiasm, that a true successor of Napoleon the Great had come to bring glory to their arms. Italy also was full of enthusiastic hope, fancying that the freedom and unity of the Italians was at last assured. Both nations were, therefore, bitterly disappointed in learning that the war was at an end, and that a hasty peace had been arranged between the emperors which left the hoped-for work but half achieved.
Napoleon estimated his position better than his people. Despite his victories, his situation was one of danger and difficulty. The army had suffered severely in its brief campaign, and the Austrians were still in possession of the Quadrilateral, a square of powerful fortresses which he might seek in vain to reduce. And a threat of serious trouble had arisen in Germany. The victorious career of a new Napoleon in Italy was alarming. It was not easy to forget the past. The German powers, though they had declined to come to the aid of Austria, were armed and ready, and at any moment might begin a hostile movement upon the Rhine.
Napoleon, wise enough to secure what he had won, without hazarding its loss, arranged a meeting with the Austrian emperor, whom he found quite as ready for peace. The terms of the truce arranged between them were that Austria should abandon Lombardy to the line of the Mincio, almost its eastern boundry, and that Italy should form a confederacy under the presidency of the pope. In the treaty subsequently made only the first of these conditions was maintained, Lombardy passing to the king of Sardinia. Hw received also the small states of Central Italy, whose tyrants had fled, and ceded to Napoleon, as a reward for his assistance, the realm of Savoy and the city and territory of Nice.
INVASION OF MEXICO
Napoleon III had now reached the summit of his career. In succeeding years the French were to learn that whatever his ability Napoleon III was not a counterpart of the great Napoleon. He gradually lost the prestige he had gained at Magenta and Solferino. His first serious mistake was when he yielded to the voice of ambition, and, taking advantage of the occupation of the Americans in their civil war, sent an army to invade Mexico.
The ostensible purpose of this invasion was to collect a debt which the Mexicans had refused to pay, and Great Britain and Spain were induced to take part in the expedition. But their forces were withdrawn when they found that Napoleon had other purposes in view, and his army was left to fight its battles alone. After some sanguinary engagements, the Mexican army was broken into a series of guerilla bands, incapable of facing his well-drilled troops, and Napoleon proceeded to reorganize Mexico into an empire, placing the Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the throne.
All went well while the people of the United States were fighting for their national union, but when their war was over the ambitious French emperor was soon taught that he had committed a serious error. He was given plainly to understand that the French troops could only be kept in Mexico at the cost of a war with the United States, and he found it convenient to withdraw them early in 1867. They had no sooner gone than the Mexicans were in arms against Maximilian, whose rash acceptance of the advice of the clerical party and determination to remain quickly led to his capture and execution as a usurper. Thus ended in utter failure the most daring effort to ignore the “Monroe Doctrine.”
END OF NAPOLEON’S CAREER
The inaction of Napoleon during the wars which Prussia fought with Denmark and Austria gave further blows to his prestige in France, and the opposition to his policy of personal government grew so strong that he felt himself obliged to submit his policy to a vote of the people. He was sustained by a large majority, and then loosened somewhat the reins of personal government, in spite of the fact that the yielding of increased liberty to the people would diminish his own control. Finally, finding himself failing in health, confidence and reputation, he yielded to advisers who convinced him that the only hope for his dynasty lay in a successful war. As a result he undertook the war of 1870 against Prussia. The story of this war will be given in a subsequent chapter. All that need be said here is that it proved the utter incompetence of Napoleon III in military matters, he being completely deceived in the condition of the French army and unwarrantably ignorant of that of the Germans. The conditions were such that victory for France was impossible, France losing its second empire and Napoleon his throne. He died two years later, an exile in England, that place of shelter for the royal refugees of France.