eme power for which Louis Napoleon
will be most severely judged by his country and by posterity. Cromwell
was a usurper, and yet he is regarded as a great benefactor. It was the
policy which Napoleon III. pursued as a supreme ruler for which he will
be condemned, and which was totally unlike that of Cromwell or Augustus.
It was his policy to embroil nations in war and play the _role_ of a
conqueror. The policy of the restored Bourbons and of Louis Philippe was
undeniably that of peace with other nations, and the relinquishment
of that aggrandizement which is gained by successful war. It
was this policy,--upheld by such great statesmen as Guizot and
Thiers,--conflicting with the warlike instincts of the French people,
which made those monarchs unpopular more than their attempts to suppress
the liberty of the Press and the license of popular leaders; and it was
the appeal to the military vanity of the people which made Napoleon III.
popular, and secured his political ascendency.

The quarrel which was then going on between the Greek and Latin monks
for the possession of the sacred shrines at Jerusalem furnished both the
occasion and the pretence for interrupting the peace of Europe, as has
been already stated in the Lecture on the Crimean war. The French
usurper determined to take the side of the Latin monks, which would
necessarily embroil him with the great protector of the Greek faith,
even the Emperor Nicholas, who was a bigot in all matters pertaining to
his religion. He would rally the French nation in a crusade, not merely
to get possession of a sacred key and a silver star, but to come to the
assistance of a power no longer dangerous,--the "sick man," whom
Nicholas had resolved to crush. Louis Napoleon cared but little for
Turkey; but he did not want Constantinople to fall into the hands of the
Russians, and thus make them the masters of the Black Sea. France, it is
true, had but little to gain whoever possessed Constantinople; she had
no possessions or colonies in the East to protect. But in the eye of her
emperor it was necessary to amuse her by a war; and what war would be
more popular than this,--to head off Russia and avenge the march
to Moscow?

Russia, moreover, was the one power which all western Europe had cause
to dread. Ever since the Empress Catherine II., the encroachments and
territorial aggrandizement of this great military empire had been going
on. The Emperor Nicholas was the most powerful sovere