rance could not be forced into
war by "indirection." According to Slidell's version of the interview
"the Minister's tone changed completely" when Slidell replied with "a
detailed history of the affair showing that the idea originated with the
Emperor." Perhaps the Minister knew more than he chose to betray. From
this hour the game was up. Napoleon's purpose all along seems to have
been quite plain. He meant to help the South to win by itself, and,
after it had won, to use it for his own advantage. So precarious was
his position in Europe that he dared not risk an American war without
England's aid, and England had cast the die. In this way, secrecy was
the condition necessary to continued building of the ships. Now that
the secret was out, Napoleon began to shift his ground. He sounded the
Washington Government and found it suspiciously equivocal as to Mexico.
To silence the French republicans, to whom the American minister had
supplied information about the ships, Napoleon tried at first muzzling
the press. But as late as February, 1864, he was still carrying water on
both shoulders. His Minister of Marine notified the builders that they
must get the ships out of France, unarmed, under fictitious sale to
some neutral country. The next month, reports which the Confederate
commissioners sent home became distinctly alarming. Mann wrote from
Brussels: "Napoleon has enjoined upon Maximilian to hold no official
relations with our commissioners in Mexico." Shortly after this Slidell
received a shock that was the beginning of the end: Maximilian, on
passing through Paris on his way to Mexico, refused to receive him.

The Mexican project was now being condemned by all classes in France.
Nevertheless, the Government was trying to float a Mexican loan, and
it is hardly fanciful to think that on this loan the last hope of the
Confederacy turned. Despite the popular attitude toward Mexico, the loan
was going well when the House of Representatives of the United States
dealt the Confederacy a staggering blow. It passed unanimous resolutions
in the most grim terms, denouncing the substitution of monarchical
for republican government in Mexico under European auspices. When this
action was reported in France, the Mexican loan collapsed.

Napoleon's Italian policy was now moving rapidly toward the crisis
which it reached during the following summer when he surrendered to the
opposition and promised to withdraw the French troops from Rom