A Career of Contrasts.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 101, 30 April 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Career of Contrasts.

The vicissitudes which Louis Napoleon experienced almost from the cradle to the grave (says Archibald Forbes in his 'Life of Napoleon the Third ') were probably all but unexampled. He was a fugitive before he could apeak articulately. In the interval between his 20th and his 40th year he was a prisoner iv Strasburg, Lorient, Ham, and the Conciergerie. He was an outlaw for more than half of his life. There were incidents at Strasburg, and later at Boulogne, which brought upon him the mock and jeer of Europe. He carried a baton as a special constable in Park-lane on Chartists' Day. Then, by a sudden turn of fortune, he became President of the French Republic. The Coup d'Etat made him Emperor of the French; and thenceforth for somo 15 year« he was perhaps the most considered muu of Europe. It was said of him that on being asked whether he should not find it difficult to rule the French nation, he replied, ' Oh, no! nothing is more easy. "Illeurfaut une guerre tous les quatre ans." ' This policy held good in a modified degree. The Crimean War was for him a success, although not a triumph ; the Italian campaign, in spite of its hard-fought victories, ended abruptly in approximation to a failure. The Mexican expedition was an utter fiasco. Yet Napoleon might have gone on with hiu programme of a war every four years but for the circumstance that there happened to bo in Europe in the middle ' sixties ' an infinitely stronger, more masterful, and more ' ruse ' man than the dreamy and decaying Napoleon. t When he aud Bismarck walked along the Biarritz beach in October, 1865, Bismarck expounding his political speculations as they strolled — 'Is he mad?' the Emperor whispered to Prosper MeVimee, on whose arm he leant. Napoleon had very soon to recognise that madnese had no part in that character of Otto yon Bismarck. The Prussian Premier was his superior in energy, in determination, and in finesse ; and ho foiled the Frenoh Emperor at every turn.