He Enclosed It In An Envelope, Sealed It With His Own Seal, And
Addressed It To Himself.
It was so found after his death."* (* Walpole,
Life of Lord John Russell 2 177.)
Oddly enough, the period within which Lord John received the piece of
information which he carefully kept to himself in the manner described,
corresponds with that of the most notorious effort of Napoleon III to
assert his power beyond the confines of Europe.
In 1853, the year after the establishment of the second Empire, the
Government of Napoleon III had annexed New Caledonia, commencing on this
island the policy of transportation in the very year in which Great
Britain ceased to send convicts to Australia. Thus for the first time did
France secure a footing in the South. This was a safe step to take, as
the annexation was performed with the concurrence of Great Britain. But
Napoleon's oversea move of nine years later was rash in the extreme.
From 1862 to 1866 - after a joint Anglo-French-Spanish movement to compel
the Republic of Mexico to discharge her debts to European bondholders,
and after a disagreement between the allies which led to the withdrawal
of the British and the Spaniards - forty thousand French troops were
engaged upon the quixotic task of disciplining Mexican opinion,
suppressing civil war, and imposing upon the people an unwelcome and
absurd sovereign in the person of Maximilian of Austria. His throne
endured as long as the French battalions remained to support it.
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