Departure from Paris to join Provisional Government at Tours--Chaudordy on cession of territory--Attempt of Gustave Flourens to overthrow the Government at Paris--Thiers's interviews with Bismarck--Bismarck and _Les militaires_--Gladstone on cession of territory--Denunciation by Russia of Black Sea clauses in Treaty of Paris--Question of Bismarck's connivance--French and German grievances against England--Lord Lyons joins Provisional Government at Bordeaux--Difficulty in securing a French Representation at Black Sea Conference--Revival of French hopes at close of 1870--Bombardment of Paris--Thiers willing to cede territory: his superiority to Jules Favre--Armistice--General election--Thiers's conduct of the Peace Negotiations--Peace conditions accepted--Outbreak of the Commune: Lord Lyons and other diplomatists go to Versailles--Malet and Paschal Grousset--Murder of the Archbishop of Paris and the hostages--Suppression of the Commune--Return to Paris. 322
LORD LYONS _Frontispiece_ _From a photograph taken at Boston, U.S., in 1860_
Born in 1817, Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, second Baron and first Viscount and Earl Lyons, eldest son of the distinguished Admiral Sir Edmund (subsequently first Baron Lyons), was apparently destined like his younger brother for a naval career, since at the age of ten he was already serving as an honorary midshipman. A sailor's life, however, must have been singularly uncongenial to a person of pronounced sedentary tastes whom nature had obviously designed for a bureaucrat; in after years he never alluded to his naval experiences, and it was probably with no slight satisfaction that the navy was exchanged for Winchester. From Winchester he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1838, being apparently at that period a quiet, well-behaved, hard-working youth, living carefully upon a modest allowance, and greatly attached to his parents and family.
In the following year he entered the diplomatic service as unpaid attaché at Athens, where his father occupied the position of Minister. In 1844 he became a paid attaché at Athens, and passed thirteen uneventful years at that post.
At this stage of his career, prospects looked far from promising; he had started later than usual, being twenty-two at the period of his entry into the service; younger men were senior to him; he had had no opportunity of distinguishing himself at Athens, and as he laments in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury, written in April, 1852, he felt 'mortified and humiliated that a man six years younger than himself had been passed over him as Secretary to the Legation in which he had served for thirteen years.' Promotion indeed seemed so remote that, having reached the age of thirty-five, he seriously contemplated abandoning diplomacy altogether.