Meantime the new sultan, or his vizier, having offended the Capitan Pasha (or Admiral of the Fleet), that officer thought proper to carry the ships under his command over to Mehemet Ali.

It was a proud day for the viceroy when the Turkish ships sailed into the harbor of Alexandria.  This defection of the fleet so discouraged Abdul Medjid that he offered his vassal terms of peace, by which he consented to Mehemet’s hereditary viceroyalty in Egypt, and Ibrahim Pasha’s hereditary possession of the pashalik of Syria.

But the Great Powers would not consent to this dismemberment of the Turkish Empire.  A fierce struggle in diplomacy took place between France and England, which might have resulted in an open rupture, had not Louis Philippe and Marshal Soult (then Minister for Foreign Affairs in France) been both averse to war.  The old marshal had seen more than enough of it, and Louis Philippe felt that peace alone could strengthen his party,—­the bourgeoisie.  Mehemet Ali, his rights and his wrongs, seem to have been entirely overlooked in the tempest of diplomacy.

After some weeks of great excitement the Five Great Powers agreed among themselves that Mehemet Ali should become the Khedive, or hereditary viceroy, of Egypt, but that he must give up Syria.  To this he demurred, and the allied troops attacked Ibrahim Pasha.  Admiral Sir Charles Napier bombarded his stronghold, St. Jean d’Acre, and forced him into submission.  The triumph of Lord Palmerston’s policy was complete; as Charles Greville remarked:  “Everything has turned out well for him.  He is justified by the success of his operations, and by the revelations in the French Chambers of the intentions of M. Thiers; and it must be acknowledged he has a fair right to plume himself on his diplomacy.”

After the death of Talleyrand, only M. Thiers remained of the four great men who had assisted Louis Philippe to attain supreme power.  M. Thiers was not insensible to the advantage it would be to his History of the Consulate and Empire, if he could add to it a last and brilliant chapter describing the restoration to France of the mortal remains of her great emperor.  Therefore in the early part of 1840, before any disturbance of the entente cordiale, he made a request to the English Government for the body of Napoleon, then lying beneath a willow-tree at Longwood, on a desolate island that hardly seemed to be part of the civilized world.  Lord Palmerston responded very cordially, and Louis Philippe’s third son, the Prince de Joinville, in his frigate, the “Belle Poule,” attended by other French war-ships, was despatched upon the errand.  Napoleon had died May 5, 1821.  For almost twenty years his body had reposed at St. Helena.  With the Prince de Joinville went Bertrand and Gourgaud, who had been the Emperor’s companions in captivity.

The coffin was raised and opened.  The face was perfect.  The beard, which had been shaved before the burial, had apparently a week’s growth.  The white satin which had lined the lid of the coffin had crumbled into dust, and lay like a mist over the body, which was dressed in a green uniform, with the cocked hat across its knees.