France, and the successes of his early wars, promised to build up a
lasting power. But then came the days of failing health and tottering
prestige--of financial scandals, of the Mexican blunder, of the
humiliation before the rising power of Prussia. To retrieve matters he
toyed with democracy in France, and finally allowed his Ministers to
throw down a challenge to Prussia; for, in the words of a French
historian, the conditions on which he held power "condemned him to be
brilliant[52]."

[Footnote 52: Said in 1852 by an eminent Frenchman to our countryman,
Nassau Senior (_Journals_, ii. _ad fin_).]

Failing at Sedan, he lost all; and he knew it. His reign, in fact, was
one long disaster for France. The canker of moral corruption began to
weaken her public life when the creatures of whom he made use in the
_coup d'état _of 1851 crept into place and power. The flashy
sensationalism of his policy, setting the tone for Parisian society, was
fatal to the honest unseen drudgery which builds up a solid edifice
alike in public and in private life. Even the better qualities of his
nature told against ultimate success. As has been shown, his vague but
generous ideas on Nationality drew French policy away from the paths of
obvious self-interest after the year 1864, and gave an easy victory to
the keen and objective statecraft of Bismarck. That he loved France as
sincerely as he believed in the power of the Bonapartist tradition to
help her, can scarcely admit of doubt. His conduct during the war of
1870 showed him to be disinterested, while his vision was clearer than
that of the Generals about him. But in the field of high policy, as in
the moral events that make or mar a nation's life, his influence told
heavily against the welfare of France; and he must have carried into
exile the consciousness that his complex nature and ill-matched