English soldiers looked coldly on the
French army and its achievements.[152] The result was a feeling of
secret dissatisfaction on both sides, which found, however, no actual
expression until an unexpected circumstance afforded opportunity for its
manifestation. The war had been succeeded by a period of inaction, a
state of things always dreaded by Louis, who was now harassed by plots
and conspiracies, and a certain foreigner connected, or supposed to be
connected, with one of these had sought and found an asylum on our
shores. Certain valorous French colonels, desirous of displaying their
loyalty at a cheap cost, presented an address to his Majesty, which
contained the following intemperate passage:--"Let the miserable
assassins--the subaltern agents of such crimes--receive the chastisement
due to their abominable attempts; but also, let the _infamous haunt_
where machinations so infernal are planned _be destroyed for ever_....
Give us the order, sire, and we shall pursue them even to their places
of security." French military composition, even in the time of the first
Napoleon, was never of the highest order of merit, and the third
Napoleon, whose policy it was to distract the attention of his people
from reflecting on the questionable means by which he had attained his
position, never lost an opportunity of earning popularity with any class
of his subjects, particularly with the army. He suffered this
quintessence of bombastic absurdity to appear in the pages of the
official _Moniteur_, whence it was duly copied by the English
newspapers, and afforded us the most intense amusement. _Punch_ answered
this valorous appeal with Leech's celebrated cartoon (in vol. xxxiv.) of
_Cock-a-doodle-do!_ wherein the French cock, habited in the uniform of a
French colonel, crows most lustily on his own dunghill. This remarkable
caricature possesses a singular historical interest, as it exactly
expresses the feeling which pervaded England for some time after the
close of the Crimean war. The hostile spirit towards Frenchmen which
formed a part of John Leech's nature, once aroused was not easily
allayed, and in the same volume he gives us specimens of _Some Foreign
Produce that Mr. Bull can very well Spare_, in which he angrily includes
French conspirators, vile French women, organ grinders (the artist's
peculiar abomination), and other foreign refuse of an objectionable
character. Further on, he follows up the subject in _A Discussion