Abstract
It was an anxious and worried French Emperor who found himself early in 1854 on the brink of war. In January he wrote to Nicholas a personal plea for peace, which, however, contained a threat. The Czar hurled back an outright challenge with the biting comment that Russia would show herself to be in 1854 what she had been in 1812. This affront could not be ignored and Napoleon III turned to his army.1 His highest officers were the officers of the coup d’état. Besides these, Bosquet and Pelissier were capable leaders whose adherence was not really assured but who could perhaps be counted upon. These were to become “the chiefs of the Bonapartist army”2 in the war against Russia.
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References
Joseph Alexander von Hübner, Neun Jahre der Erinnerungen eines Österreichischen Botschafters in Paris unter dem Zweiten Kaisserreich, 1851–1859 (2 vols., Berlin, 1904), I, 73.
Le Moniteur, Mar. 11, 1854; and Castellane, Journal, V, 34. Saint-Arnaud and Vaillant were both carried in the budget as marshal, senator, minister, and dignitaries at court. See Pierre de La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire (4th ed., 7 vols., Paris, 1899), I, 127.
Sencourt, Napoleon III, p. 126, Hübner to Schwarzenberg, Jan. 22, 1850; and see also Albert Thomas, “Napoleon III and the Period of Personal Government (1852–1859)” in Cambridge Modern History (14 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1902–1912), XI, 293.
Andre Gayot, ed., “Lettres de François de Guizot à Laure de Gasparin,” Revue des Deux Mondes, XVII (1933), 283–284.
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© 1959 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Gooch, B.D. (1959). Commanders for the Expedition to the East. In: The New Bonapartist Generals in the Crimean War. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1001-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1001-1_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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