en generally supposed to be
great both as a general and as an administrator, when he was neither a
general nor an administrator, as subsequent events proved. But his court
was splendid; distinguished foreigners came to do him homage; even
monarchs sought his friendship, and a nod of his head was ominous. He
had delivered Italy as he had humiliated Russia; he had made France a
great political power; he had made Paris the most magnificent city of
the world (though at boundless expense), and everybody extolled the
genius of Hausmann, his engineer, who had created such material glories;
his fetes were beyond all precedent; his wife gave the law to fashions
and dresses, and was universally extolled for her beauty and graces; the
great industrial exhibition in 1855, which surpassed in attractiveness
that of London in 1851, drew strangers to his capital, and gave a
stimulus to art and industry. Certainly he seemed to be a most fortunate
man,--for the murmurs and intrigues of that constellation of statesmen
which grew up with the restoration of the Bourbons, and the antipathies
of editors and literary men, were not generally known. The army
especially gloried in the deeds of a man whose successes reminded them
of his immortal uncle; while the lavish expenditures of government in
every direction concealed from the eyes of the people the boundless
corruption by which the services of his officials were secured.

But this splendid exterior was deceptive, and a turn came to the
fortunes of Napoleon III.,--long predicted, yet unexpected. Constantly
on the watch for opportunities to aggrandize his name and influence, the
emperor allowed the disorders of civil war in Mexico--resulting in many
acts of injustice to foreigners there--to lead him into a combination
with England and Spain to interfere. This was in 1861, when the United
States were entering upon the terrific struggles of their own civil war,
and were not able to prevent this European interference, although
regarding it as most unfriendly to republican institutions. Within a
year England and Spain withdrew. France remained; sent more troops;
declared war on the government of President Juarez; fought some battles;
entered the City of Mexico; convened the "Assembly of Notables;" and, on
their declaring for a limited hereditary monarchy, the French emperor
proposed for their monarch the Archduke Maximilian,--younger brother of
Francis Joseph the Austrian emperor. Maximilian accep