Napoleon III, Lord Palmerston and the Entente Cordiale

Roman Golicz explores relations between Britain and France under Pam's 'liberal' foreign policy during the Second Empire

In July 1830, the 'bourgeois revolution' in France ousted Charles X and the Second Bourbon Restoration, and a new era in Anglo-French relations ensued. The terms set down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 following Napoleon's defeat were now considered academic. Britain, as victor against France, had been obliged to uphold the articles of the various treaties, designed, as one of them stated, for the purpose of 'maintaining the order of things re-established in France'. The quasi-constitutional Orleans monarchy of Charles X's successor Louis-Philippe was therefore recognised by Britain. But from now on Anglo-French relations would depend on the ambiguous responses of individual politicians rather than on a set of codes signed in 1815.

Support for the new regime in Britain was initially forthcoming from Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary for four years from November 1830 and again from April 1835 to August 1841. In France, the triumvirate of Casimir Perier (soon to become prime minister), the Comte de Molé (minister of foreign affairs) and the Duc de Broglie (minister of the interior), was equally keen to repair the damage done to Anglo-French relations by Napoleon. In a diplomatic dispatch of 1832, Lord Granville, British ambassador in Paris, noted that Perier, then president of the Council, believed that 'the welfare of France and England and the peace of Europe depended upon an intimate alliance and concert between the two governments'.

A political liberal who admired the Revolution of 1789 during its benign phase, Palmerston had visited Paris in 1829 and predicted the fall of the Bourbon monarchy he despised. He quickly responded to the conciliatory overtures from Paris in 1830, and subsequently, in 1844 at a time when he was out of the Foreign Office, he was the first leading politician to employ the expression 'entente cordiale' to signify the 'warm understanding' between France and Briatin to which he had been ostensibly committed since 1830. But numerous events before and afterwards reveal that Palmerston was equally adept at dousing the rapprochement with cold water, as for him entente cordiale really meant a state of grace between the two nations in which Britain would be free to pursue it's own interests without French interference. By 1848, once more heading foreign affairs (June 1846 to December 1851), the 'Jupiter Anglicanus of the Foreign Office' allowed Anglo-French relations to sink to a level not witnessed since 1814. He had orchestrated the creation of Belgium in 1831, a supposedly neutral country but one which would naturally be pro-British and often anti-French. In 1841, during a speech at his Devon constituency of Tiverton, Palmerston had contrasted aggressive French colonial behaviour against benign British colonialism, in both cases misjudging the truth. Five years later he had attempted to manipulate the outcome of the marriage of Isabella II of Spain against French interests in order to align Britain with a liberal Spain. A defensive breakwater in St Peter Port, Alderney, in the Channel Islands was begun in 1847 to repel the forthcoming French invasion and can still be seen today. In February 1848, a new revolution in Paris threatened to upset Anglo-French relations altogether. The poet-politician Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), minister for foreign affairs in the new republican government, laboured to maintain moderate and pacific foreign policies, but a radical core within his circle openly favoured a righteous republican war in Europe. The Second Republic was therefore seen as unstable and potentially militaristic, and Palmerston's reaction was to issue a confidential paper outlining government preparations for an imminent invasion of Britain.

The attempt of the nationalist Young Ireland movement to enlist Lamartine's support for an attack on England, the attempted coup of May 15th, 1848, when radicals invaded the French Chamber of Deputies, and the serious June Days riots in Paris, all confirmed Palmerston's fears. There was considerable relief in London, then, when in October the political body in France agreed to usher in a republic under the authority of a president elected for four years by universal adult manhood suffrage. The future of Anglo-French relations would now hinge on the identity of the new president. In December, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew to the great defeated enemy of England, was elected first president of the Second Republic, gaining 74.3 per cent of the 7,449,471 votes cast in metropolitan France.

In Britain, initial reaction to the news was mixed. Louis-Napoléon had spent three years in exile in England between 1831 and 1848, and over five separate visits had acquired a respect for, and knowledge of, the country unrivalled among European heads of state. His personal connections ensured him the support of many influential English men and women, while his voluntary enrolment as a special constable on April 7th, 1848, in anticipation of the Chartist demonstration three days later - one of what the public appeal had called 'well-disposed persons' to aid in enforcing the provisions of the law - earned him widespread respect. But many of those who had not met him as an exile were uncertain, or suspicious. Part of Louis-Napoléon's success in winning overseas support resulted from his familial heritage, which engendered hope for strong government in Paris as much as alarm of potential European turmoil. On the whole, British politicians gambled that peace and prosperity would ensue, and they won, something reflected in the economies of France and Britain, which had begun to improve by the beginning of 1849 after a number of years of decline. But popular opinion in England remained suspicious of the Second Republic, and the economic upturn was accompanied by the first of three intense 'invasion panics', which recalled to mind those set in motion many years earlier by Napoleon I.

The first of these was due in part to the fact that Louis-Napoléon's authority as president was not fully understood in England, where he was mistaken for some form of monarch. Although legally elected by a huge majority, the president was restricted in his actions by a tortuous constitution, and when in April 1849 he exceeded his nominal authority by a filibustering expedition against the fledgling Roman Republic to restore the pope's temporal power, there were calls to impeach and arrest him. With little or no understanding of the complexity of this incident, all that many in Britain could see was that the Second Republic had invaded foreign territory, and if it was Rome today it might well be London tomorrow. When the French navy was not seen to be steaming up the Thames the panic dissipated, but the fears were resurrected after Louis-Napoléon's coup d'état of December 2nd, 1851, dissolving the National Assembly and declaring a new constitution. Opinion polarised both in France and Britain; on the one hand Louis-Napoléon was declared a 'saviour of society' and on the other the 'Antichrist'. Strictly speaking, he had simply declared for himself an extended term of executive presidential rule, but it was clear to most observers that this was a stepping stone to hereditary empire, and for many a second Napoleonic empire could mean only war. After all, less than four decades separated the birth of the nephew from his militaristic uncle, and Britain was still filled with men who in their youth had fought against Napoleon I. Those who had not, like the Conservative Earl of Derby (1799-1869), could take a more balanced view: 'The promptitude of his measures and the adherence of the army have saved France - and have perhaps for the present suppressed a general European outbreak'.

Palmerston too was momentarily free from the mania. During a conversation with Comte Walewski, the French ambassador in London, he gave his qualified approval of the coup, which fact was conveyed to Paris where it was considered a reflection of official British attitudes. In fact, all he had done was to praise the necessity of the action during a private talk, which he considered his right. Perhaps it was, but in subsequently explaining this to the British ambassador in Paris, and reiterating his view, he did so from the Foreign Office without first informing the Queen and Cabinet. Prime Minister Lord John Russell then conspired to remove him from office at the tacit request of Victoria, who had never liked Palmerston. 'I was not turned out; I was kicked out', he complained to Disraeli, and he took his revenge by moving an amendment to Russell's Militia Bill - the setting up of a rural force to protect Britain from foreign (French) invasion - which he won, thereby obliging Russell to resign.

The coup d'état, then, indirectly brought a new government for Britain, and although it would survive for just ten months, on the whole it favoured Louis-Napoléon as he consolidated his position and prepared France for empire. Derby's new Tory administration carried with it two of Louis-Napoléon's personal friends, Lord Malmesbury as Foreign Secretary and Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Others had their doubts. The Earl of Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, while disapproving of the method was grateful for the result, reflecting the view of most politicians - even the Queen hoped that Louis-Napoléon's enemies abroad would remain 'perfectly passive'. But the press and its public were united in bitter condemnation. By January 1852, the poet Coventry Patmore had persuaded nineteen friends to form the first Rifle Club as part of a nation-wide army of volunteers to repel, as he put it later, 'the threats of the French colonels and by suspicions of the intentions of Louis-Napoléon'.

Patmore went public on January 22nd, in a letter to The Times, which was read by Tennyson who was inspired to compose five poems against the state of affairs in France, published in The Examiner under the pseudonym 'Merlin'. The following stanza from The Penny-wise,

'O where is he, the simple fool,
Who says that wars are over?
What bloody portent flashes there,
Across the straits of Dover?'

may have caused educated readers to wince, but it captured the spirit of the renewed invasion panic as the defensive breakwater on Alderney was hurriedly extended. Louis-Napoléon, though, remained phlegmatic, having already ensured that his ambassador in Britain and foreign minister at home were either Anglophiles or at least committed to the entente cordiale, while his public speeches contained friendly overtures to Britain. The second invasion panic did not subside until a formal alliance was established in March 1854, preceding the Crimean War. In April 1855 the Emperor Napoleon III (as Louis-Napoléon had declared himself in December 1852) enjoyed a successful state visit to Britain, reciprocated by an equally successful visit by Victoria to Paris in August. Throughout the Crimean War, Napoleon III allowed Britain to lead affairs. Realising that the conflict would be expedited by the imposition of a single leader rather than by a council of generals, however, he suggested himself for this role - to the horror of the British, who feared a French victory under his authority as much as the possibility of his death and renewed turmoil in France. After much badgering he conceded, however, and Clarendon, now Foreign Secretary and no particular friend to the Emperor, later conspicuously defended him against calumnies spread by Alexander Kinglake in his 1863 alleged account of the Crimean War in which he insisted that Britain was dragged into the war by Louis- Napoléon 'in order to distract attention from his iniquities at home ...'.

But old adversaries of Napoléon I continued to debate the wisdom of any alliance with France. The Irish politician John Croker (1780-1857), for example, was never able to lay Boney's ghost to rest, complaining to the publisher John Murray in 1854 that 'in the new aspect of affairs, and especially the entente cordiale - I feel that I am out of date - I have a strong conviction that the present folly is likely to be short-lived, and to end in a terrible crisis'. His friend the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale took a more prescient view: 'As for Louis-Napoléon, I consider him a saviour in putting down the republic - The world has changed - two great powers have arisen and are increasing in force and strength, Russia and America; and the union of France and England seems necessary to resist them - it was the best piece of luck having such a man turn up.'

The sepoy revolt in India in May 1857 could hardly be blamed on Napoleon III, but in some quarters the suggestion was made that he was secretly helping them. A short visit to Osborne in August to meet the Queen and Palmerston put the matter straight (though none there had believed it). In fact, the Emperor allowed British troops to cross France from Calais to Marseilles after Palmerston, prime minister since 1855, had rejected an offer of a French fighting force. In a conspicuous attack of chauvinism, and knowingly taking a risk, he reckoned Britain should be seen by the world to be solving its problems by itself - 'off her own bat', as he put it. Perhaps as a result of this patriotic conceit the revolt was not fully suppressed until the late spring of 1859.

The incident most dangerous to Franco-British relations occurred on January 14th, 1858, when an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon III in the streets of Paris, the plot hatched in London by political refugees. The Italian patriot Felice Orsini, aided by a Spaniard and two other Italians, threw three bombs (manufactured in Birmingham and filled with explosives purchased and mixed in London) at the imperial carosse on the rue Lepelletier. The attempt had been orchestrated by Dr Simon Bernard, a French refugee who had remained in London and who had been helped by numerous others, some of them English. A few days after the full extent of the 'English connection' became known: French officers from four regiments announced their willingness to invade England in Le Moniteur universel, unwisely read out to the members of the Legislative Chamber. In Britain, where people could not believe that such statements could appear in the government organ if they did not reflect the view of the Emperor, absurd rumours circulated. The most bizarre was that Napoleon III was looking for the nephew of Marie Cantillon, a man who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris in 1818, to pay him money Napoléon I had bequeathed Cantillon in his recently published will. How seriously this nonsense was taken is revealed by the fact that Palmerston had to deny it in the Commons.

Outright war between France and England might have resulted had two different players been involved: Napoleon III apologised to Lord Cowley, Britain's ambassador in Paris, for having overlooked the jingoistic pronouncements in Le Moniteur universel, while Palmerston attempted to introduce a Conspiracy Bill, which would have elevated the crime of conspiring to murder persons abroad from a misdemeanour to a felony. However, such was the popular and parliamentary opposition to the notion of 'truckling to France' that the Bill was rejected and Palmerston was obliged to tender his resignation. Derby, Malmesbury, and Disraeli came into government for the second time.

Dr Bernard was arrested and tried in London, but acquitted on April 17th on a legal technicality despite an atmosphere of intense public francophobia. French detectives reckoned that weapons to assassinate foreigners were on open sale in London, but Malmesbury identified one such 'infernal machine' - ironically designed by Palmerston's boot-maker - as a rough-and-ready blunderbuss: 'It would do for firing into a flock of ducks providing the ducks, the machine and the shooter were all d'accord - what damned fools the French police here must be', he noted. Nevertheless, Walewski, now French minister of foreign affairs, publicly expressed his anger at Britain for harbouring known assassins, while Comte Persigny, ambassador in London, clenched the hilt of his ceremonial sword in front of Malmesbury and cried 'C'est la guerre! C'est la guerre!'

Napoleon III distanced himself from anglophobic blustering and made it clear via Cowley that he laid no blame on the British. A severe security measure within France instituted in February was chiefly concerned with underscoring this, while Persigny was replaced in London by a respected Crimean veteran. Disraeli restated the entente cordiale in the Commons to great applause, while the Emperpor took delivery of a ceremonial cannon inscribed 'To Napoleon III from Queen Victoria' promised to him in 1855 but somehow 'forgotten'. The entente had been saved by an imperial whisker.

Intense rivalry had always existed between France and Britain in the struggle for naval primacy, inevitably to French disadvantage. In the wake of the assassination attempt Napoleon III was keen to demonstrate that his improvements to the naval base at Cherbourg were not a threat to Britain, and in August 1858 he invited Victoria and Albert, several politicians and naval men, to inspect them as a mark of trust. The move had the exact opposite effect to that intended, and the British returned infuriated at France's obvious acceleration in quality and quantity. After reading a damning report drawn up for her by Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty, Victoria wrote a severe letter to Derby criticising the state of Britain's navy.

The third invasion panic, the following year, originated in Napoleon III's military attempt in May 1859 to oust Habsburg influence in Italy and prepare the peninsula for some form of unification and self-government. 'He is an emperor and he must have an empire', shrugged Disraeli, sympathising but entirely misjudging the situation. All the British could see was a French army in a foreign land, and Tennyson resurrected an old 'Merlin' poem, 'Riflemen Form', and published it in The Times on May 9th, 1859, as another exhortation to national defence in the face of French 'aggression'. A brief fashion for this again took hold of popular culture, finding expression in numerous songs and dances dedicated to the rifle volunteers, one or two of which even went so far as to allude to France in their jingoistic lyrics. But Palmerston's second administration, which he formed in June 1859, was initially largely unaffected by the anti-French feeling. Together with Russell, his Foreign Secretary, and Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Palmerston was also promoting Italian unity and the three were known on this account as the 'Italian triumvirate'. Yet they did not always approve of Napoleon III's methods or perceived aims, and gradually throughout his last term as prime minister, Palmerston pursued a random and incoherent regressive foreign policy, that seems to have had as its principal cause his advancing years. He made the second wave of rifle corps all his own and obtaining credit for coastal fortifications against Gladstone's wishes.

France's annexation of Nice and Savoy in 1860 as a reward from Piedmont-Sardinia following the war in Italy was wholeheartedly approved by the local populace in a referendum. It was also approved - though grudgingly - by the Italian triumvirate though vociferously opposed by Prince Albert. Napoleon III's attempt to set up by direct intervention a European monarchy in Mexico from October 1861 (when a French, Spanish and British naval fleet worked in concert to extract the payment of debts from a corrupt Mexican administration) was approved by Palmerston but again vigorously opposed by Albert and all the royal family - and was unpopular in Britain, although offset by several other actions. Napoleon III's vigorous support of free trade resulted in the pioneering Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 which, while it undoubtedly harmed a minority of trades, vastly improved the majority, increasing prosperity and mutual trust. At the same time, his constitutional reforms that began the lengthy process of quasi-liberalisation in France gave relief to many critics abroad who had called for them during the previous decade. Britain's 'Second Opium War', a punitive action against China in 1859-60, was undertaken with France in loose alliance, and Napoleon III was careful to appear subservient, enabling Palmerston to acknowledge that the British 'throughout had their own way and ... led the way', in spite of his open fears that the French would use the opportunity to spy on the new Armstrong cannon.

But in 1860, the two men - and nations - were again on opposite sides when Napoleon III went to the defence of the Christian Maronites in Palestine against the Shi'ite Duruz, whom Britain supported. The Duruz were the aggressors in this instance, and thousands of Christians were killed during a period resolved only through French diplomacy, Turkish aid and Algerian sympathy. Palmerston, again fearing that Napoleon III wished to occupy a foreign land, made a play on the new French national anthem Partant pour la Syrie - the story of a Crusader liberating Jerusalem - by changing it to Restant dans la Syrie. Palmerston was wrong, and fortunately for the Christian population the eventual solution was judged against Britain. Napoleon III reacted by sighing that once he used to say 'avec Lord Palmerston on peut faire les grandes choses' but now he seemed determined to prevent him doing anything at all.

Although the death of Prince Albert in December 1861 had removed one stumbling block to the maintenance of the entente cordiale, personal relations between Palmerston and Napoleon III continued to deteriorate throughout the early 1860s. The main obstacle was Palmerston himself, having become a 'blocus continental', as Disraeli characterised his attitude to French foreign policy. By 1865 Palmerston's coastal fortifications, particularly at Plymouth and Portsmouth, had resulted in a hugely expensive, if technically admirable, series of defensive forts. Never used, they became known as 'Palmerston's Follies'. The inhabitants of Alderney had increased their defensive breakwater to 1,600 yards by 1864, but this, too, was nothing but a drain on local resources.

Napoleon III's attempt to set up a European monarchy in Mexico was his only independent action undertaken in the 1860s to meet with Palmerston's general approval, but only for what the scheme potentially meant for British trade. The press, at first antagonistic, gradually altered its position, in particular the Illustrated London News, which on May 24th, 1862, noted that 'John Bull is not now in one of his periodical invasion panics' asking its readers not to see France's intervention in Mexico as a potential Napoleonic Empire. But Palmerston did not live to see the collapse, in 1867, of the visionary and romantic miscalculation he had supported, dying at an advanced age on October 18th, 1865.

Following military defeat by Prussia and deposition by Parisian ideologues in 1870, Napoleon III died in England on January 9th, 1873. He had been warmly welcomed to his final exile by the vast majority of English, even though Gladstone's first Cabinet, since its inception in December 1868, had done nothing to encourage the entente cordiale and had refused to intervene during the Franco-Prussian war.

Gladstone soon came to terms with the new Third French Republic, and the rest of Europe again took Britain's lead in officially recognising the new French regime. When Théophile Delcassé reversed Bismarck's isolation of France with his series of definitive Franco-British treaties in 1904-5, proclaimed under the umbrella title of the Entente Cordiale, he was following in the uneasy tracks of two men he would not have personally admired. The Napoleonic wars did not end at Waterloo, but in Paris in the hands of Napoleon III. Punch stated why on January 18th, 1873:

'Let who so will count of his faults the cost,
And point a moral in his saddened end;
This is the thought in England uppermost He,
who has died among us, lived our friend.

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