ABSTRACT
Dreaming always of his future destiny, and pondering often on the failure of his attempt to realise it, Louis Napoleon had convinced himself that a second effort could not but have a very different issue. In the former year his name, his very existence, was all but unknown in France. Thanks to the Strasburg affair itself, and to his own most skilful handling of its consequences, all the world knew that there existed in his person a vigorous and persistent claimant to the imperial inheritance. There were reasons far weighty than the personal ones which induced Louis Napoleon to repeat in the summer of 1840 his hazardous appeal to the French people. The French Government had allowed itself to espouse the cause of Mehemet Ali, a rebellious vassal of the Sultan. The French people had been deeply stirred by the brilliant successes of the Egyptian enigma, successor of the Mamelukes, conqueror of Nubia, founder of Khartoum.
