With this talisman against evil, and with the wedding-ring with which Napoleon had married Josephine, upon his finger, Prince Louis Napoleon set out upon an expedition so rash that we can hardly bring ourselves to associate it with the character popularly ascribed to the Third Emperor Napoleon.

His plan was to overturn the government of Louis Philippe, and then appeal to the people by a plebiscite,—­i. e., a question to be answered yes or no by universal suffrage.  This same plan he carried out successfully several times during his reign.

He went from Arenenberg to Baden-Baden,[1] where he made his final arrangements.  Strasburg was to be the scene of his first attempt, and at Baden-Baden he had an interview with Colonel Vambery, who commanded the Fourth Regiment of Artillery, part of the Strasburg garrison.

[Footnote 1:  Louis Blanc, Dix Ans.]

Louis Blanc, the republican and socialist historian, writing in 1843, speaks thus of Louis Napoleon:—­

“Brought up in exile, unfamiliar with France, Louis Bonaparte had assumed that the bourgeoisie remembered only that the Empire had curbed the Revolution, established social order, and given France the Code Napoleon.  He fancied that the working-classes would follow the eagle with enthusiasm the moment it appeared, borne, as of old, at the head of regiments, and heralded by the sound of trumpets.  A twofold error!  The things the bourgeoisie in 1836 remembered most distinctly about Napoleon were his despotism and his taste for war; and the most lasting impression of him amongst the most intelligent in the working-classes was that whilst sowing the seeds of democratic aspiration throughout Europe, he had carefully weeded out all democratic tendencies in his own dominions.”

But though Louis Blanc is right in saying that the evil that Napoleon did, lived after him in the memories of thinking men, it is also true that those born since the fall of the Second Empire can have no idea of the general enthusiasm that still lingered in France in Louis Philippe’s reign, round memories of the glories of Napoleon.  Men might not wish him back again, but they worshipped him as the national demigod.  After Sedan he was pulled down literally and metaphorically from his pedestal; and the old feelings about him which half a century ago even foreign nations seemed to share, now seem obsolete and extravagant to readers of Lanfrey and the books of Erckmann-Chatrian.

Even in 1836, when Louis Napoleon in secret entered Strasburg, he was surprised and disappointed to find that those on whom he had counted to assist him in making the important “first step” in his career, were very doubtful of its prudence.  He had counted on the co-operation of General Voirol, an old soldier of the Empire who was in command of the Department in which Strasburg was situated; but when he wrote him a letter, in the most moving terms appealing to his affection for the emperor, the old