When “Les Forces Militaires de la France en 1870” appeared the Bonapartist journals, as well as papers of another colour, declined to review it! The Comte de La Chapelle was the man to get it “noticed.” At the Emperor’s request he took several copies of the brochure to Paris, for personal distribution among the editors and reviewers of the leading papers. In one copy the Emperor wrote his own name, and commended the work to the attention of the well-known publicist, M. Saint-Genest (a nom de plume), of the “Figaro,” which at the time was hostile to Napoleon III. Saint-Genest was himself inimical to the fallen Sovereign, but he was an eminently just man, and a day or two after he had received the brochure from the Count he wrote an elaborate, and scrupulously fair, review of it in the then unfriendly “Figaro.” Other papers followed Saint-Genest’s courageous lead, and in the end the Emperor’s convincing pamphlet was widely reviewed. We may be certain that the Emperor did not think the less of the Comte de La Chapelle for this triumph.
In those days the Emperor was generally derided by the French Press, which, as M. Émile Ollivier has recently shown in the fifteenth volume of his masterly work, “L’Empire Libéral,” and also in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” drove him into the declaration of war. The Comte de La Chapelle and Paul de Cassagnac were almost the only supporters of the Emperor. Inertia prevailed amongst a large section of the Bonapartists, and probably they felt somewhat ashamed of their slackness when they read De La Chapelle’s fiery and pungent exhortations, which afforded the Emperor the greatest consolation. But there was reason in what the admiring Prince Imperial said to the Count after His Majesty’s death: “Not everybody here likes you.”
It is with sincere gratification that I now introduce as narrator the venerable Count’s eldest son.
_Reminiscences of Bazaine, Napoleon III., and the Prince Imperial._[141]
Marshal Bazaine,[142] immediately after his escape from the Island of St. Marguerite, came direct to London, saw my father, and sought an interview with the Empress Eugénie at Chislehurst. It was reported at the time that the Marshal did not, as he was originally said to have done, escape from the fortress by means of a rope, but owed his liberty to a friendly (and bribed) gaoler. Bazaine himself, however, told my father that he freed himself with