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52 BONAPARTE (NAPOLEON III.) resented as the initiation of Napoleon's pro- posed supremacy of the Latin race, of which he wished to become the arbiter in the new world as in the old ; but the increasing vic- tories of the United States made him afterward disclaim all purpose of territorial acquisitions. At home he continued to make himself accept- able, especially to the money-making classes, officeholders, contractors, and speculators, who profited by military and naval expeditions, by railways, and by all the other stupendous enterprises of the period ; and the embellish- ment and enlargement of the capital gave em- ployment to many paupers, while little or no- thing was done for the mental and moral eleva- tion of the masses, and the whole aim of the emperor seemed to be to dazzle by splendor and luxury, and by material grandeur at home and visions of glory abroad. But the drain upon his military resources in Mexico was regarded as paralyzing his strength for the contingency of war in Europe, and at the same time made, together with the other costly expeditions, heavy inroads on the treasury. He began also to feel uneasy at the increasing power of Prus- sia ; and to counteract her entente cordiale with Russia, he warmly advocated in 1863, in union with England and Austria, the treaty rights of Poland ; but as these powers declined to join him in ulterior measures, England especially refusing to take part in a congress which he proposed for the settlement of this and other questions, he had to content himself with a bar- ren declaration of sympathy for the Polish pa- triots. While his political situation in Paris was compromised by official tampering with the elections, and by the greater dignity imparted to the opposition in the corps Ugulatif by the ac- cession of Thiers, Berryer, and other influen- tial statesmen, he was obliged to remain a passive spectator of the Schleswig-Holstein war and the consequent aggrandizement of Prussia. After having at first made an una- vailing effort to prevent this war by mediation, he withdrew (January, 1864) from a conference of the powers at London, disguising his dissat- isfaction with the progress of these events by pretending to encourage the application of his theory of nationalities in favor of the Schleswig-Holstein people shaping their own destinies. The ignominious end of the Mexican expedition, from which the cabinet of Wash- ington had urged him to withdraw, especially after the termination of the civil war in 1865, and the Prusso-Italian coalition against Aus- tria in 1866, which he resented by denouncing the obsolete character of the treaty obligations of 1815, inflicted still greater injury upon his prestige ; while the independence of Italy from France was further exhibited by Napoleon's withdrawal of his troops from Rome at the end of 1866, in accordance with the convention of 1864. His participation in the peace negotia- tions between Austria and Italy after the over- whelming defeat of the former power by the Prussians at Sadowa (July 3), resulted in the nominal cession of Venetia to France and in its immediate transfer by Napoleon to Victor Emanuel ; but this afforded a poor consolation for the loss of influence, which had passed from his hands to those of Germany, under the lead of Prussia. The parliamentary opposi- tion, led by Thiers, increased in proportion to his vanishing repute, and the blunders of his foreign policy as well as the maladministration of financial affairs were unsparingly exposed. His repeated efforts in the course of 1866 to recover his lost ground by acquisition of Ger- man or Belgian territory, in consideration of his allowing Prussia to take the lead in united Germany, were unavailing against Bismarck's opposition ; and he was also disappointed in his hope of creating a division between the South and North German states ; so that all he could obtain after a grave conflict with Prussia in relation to Luxemburg, and subsequent nego- tiations with Holland for the acquisition of that territory, was its neutralization at the con- ference of London (May, 1867). He endeavor- ed nevertheless to explain away in his message to the legislative body the dangers of Ger- man consolidation, but proposed at the same time a considerable increase of armaments. The execution of Maximilian in June, 1867, shortly after the departure of the last French troops from Mexico, became known in Paris at the time when Napoleon was entertaining, during the great exposition,, almost all the crowned heads of Europe, including the sultan and the czar. The emperor went to Salzburg in August to condole with Francis Joseph on the tragical death of Maximilian, and this in- terview was regarded as a pledge of more inti- mate relations between the two emperors. He soon afterward sent French troops to Rome for the protection of the pope against the Gari- baldians, and insisted upon Victor Emanuel's joining his efforts in conformity with the con- vention of 1864; but the emperor's subsequent appeal to the European powers to settle the Roman question by a congress in Paris was not heeded. Despite his constant manipulation of public opinion, the general elections of 1868 showed a defection of 200,000 voters since 1863; and the new press law, adopted after stormy debates, and regarded as affording some- what greater liberty, resulted only in increas- ing the clouds that had been gathering round his throne and in the creation of many new journals, the most conspicuous of which in its invectives was Rochefort's Lanterne, whose first nine weekly issues reached a circula- tion of over 1,150,000. Other journals were almost equally bold, though much more dec- orous ; and 64 editors were sentenced to im- prisonment between May 11 and Dec. 31, 1868. According to the new law of Feb. 1, 1868, the military force, including the mobile guards, was brought up to 1,350,000 men. Yet on opening the new legislative session on Jan. 18, 1869, the emperor boasted of his friendly rela- tions with foreign powers and of the prosper-