On the spot where French patriotism afterward planted the bronze lion to commemorate forever the extinction of the Old Guard of the French Empire, and of Napoleon the Great, the traveler from strange lands pauses, at the distance of eighty years from the horrible cataclysm, and reflects with wonder how within the memory of living men human nature could have been raised by the passion of battle to such sublime heroism as that displayed in these wheatfields and orchards where the Old Guard of France sank into oblivion, but rose to immortal fame.

SEBASTOPOL.

In the fall of 1852 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince President of the French Republic, about to become the French Empire, was invited to a banquet by the Chamber of Commerce in Bordeaux.  He was on his triumphal tour through the South of France.  At the banquet he spoke, saying:  “I accept with eagerness the opportunity afforded me by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce for thanking your great city for its cordial reception....  At present the nation surrounds me with its sympathies....  To promote the welfare of the country, it is not necessary to apply new systems, but the chief point above all is to produce confidence in the present and security for the future.  For these reasons it seems France desires a return to the Empire.  There is one objection to which I must reply.  Certain minds seem to entertain a dread of war; certain persons say the Empire is only war.  But I say the Empire is peace.”

The last four words of this extract became the motto of the Second Empire.  Everywhere the Prince President’s saying was blown to the world.  “The Empire is peace” was published in the newspapers, echoed on the stage, and preached from the pulpits.

But the Empire was not peace.  Just at this time Tennyson wrote his poem against France, as follows: 

    “There is a sound of thunder afar,
      Storm in the South that darkens the day—­
    Storm of battle and thunder of war;
      Well if it do not roll our way! 
    Form, form; riflemen, form! 
    Ready, be ready to meet the storm!”

In less than a year the storm broke.  It broke in Eastern Europe.  Of the personal forces that brought the breaking, the two principal were the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Louis Napoleon.  In 1853 the Czar demanded of the Sultan certain guarantees of the rights of the Greek Christians in the Turkish provinces.  This was refused, and the Crimean War broke out on the Danube.  The first power in Western Europe to support the Sultan was France, while England and Sardinia came hard after.  There was an alliance of England and France in support of the Turkish cause.  In the bottom of the difficulty lay this question:  Whether Russia might now move forward, gain control of the Black Sea, overawe the Porte, force her way through the Sea of Marmora into the Mediterranean, and thus rectify the mistake of Peter the Great in building his capital on the Gulf of Finland.  All this and much more was called The Eastern Question.