I shall return to the editors of the National; I shall tell how I have known them; but I must at once place M. Carrel on one side: superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, he had the simplicity to look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as coming after writers whom he excelled; he upheld with his sword the opinions which those penmen laid bare.
While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations for the Algerian Expedition were being completed. General Bourmont, the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that expedition: was it his intention to escape responsibility for the coup d'État which he felt coming? That was likely enough, to judge from his antecedents and his craftiness; but it was a misfortune for Charles X. Had the general been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands of M. de Polignac. Before striking the blow, presuming that he would have agreed to it, M. de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the whole of the Royal Guard in Paris; he would have got ready money and the necessary provisions, so that the soldier should have wanted for nothing.
Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from the French ports lately so abandoned. The roads were covered with ships which saluted the land as they moved away. Steamboats, a new discovery of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to the other, like sirens or the aides-de-camp of the admiral. The Dauphin stood on shore, where all the population of the town and mountains had gathered. After snatching his kinsman, the King of Spain, from the hands of the revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which Christianity was to be delivered: could he have believed night to be so near at hand[179]?
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The Algerian expedition.
The times were past in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III., not yet King of Poland! Algiers was about to become our daughter and our conquest, without anybody's permission, without England's daring to prevent us from taking that "Emperor's Fort" which recalled Charles V. and the change in his fortunes[180].
The Princesse de Lieven.