SECRET TERMS OF NIEL'S MISSION. 123 So, the project of Niel and his Emperor was chap. no longer a mere creature of the brain, but a ! — military plan in full course of execution. The very peculiar task of restraining Canrobert's forces without showing them to be under re- straint was successfully begun and continued.( 2 ) The business of assembling an army to serve under Louis Napoleon was carried on with alac- rity. There of course came a time when the pro- cess of collecting this force on the Bosphorus disclosed itself to the world ; but the object for conceai- which it was destined could still be concealed, the plan And, concealed it was — concealed from our Gov- English; eminent, and concealed from Lord Raglan,* but also, strange to say, from General Canrobert him- self, the Emperor's half-trusted commander ! t France and England, remember, were — not and of iu merely joined in alliance but — arrayed side by 'article' side in the presence of a powerful enemy ; and, robert that under such conditions the French Emperor, and official men under him could deliberately persist in the notion of hiding away from Lord Raglan the very plan they were executing may seem almost too strange for credence, yet must quoted Rousset, vol. ii. p. 35. However, in the middle of April, the French ' Reserve ' army collected in the neighbourhood of Constantinople had a strength of only 25,000.
- So late as the 3d of April, Lord Raglau wrote : — ' What a
' body of French troops is collecting at Constantinople for, I ' cannot divine.' To Lord Panmure, Private Letter. t Rousset : — ' Le secret sur ce grand envoi de troupes devait
- etre absolument garde". Le general Canrobert lui-meme n'en
devait rien apprendre.' Vol. ii. p. 35.
