and anxious conferences were held by the ministers. When the Legislative
Body met on the morrow, a number of deputies roundly denounced the manner
in which the military operations were being conducted. One deputy, a
certain Guyot-Montpeyroux, who was well known for the outspokenness of his
language, horrified the more devoted Imperialists by describing the French
forces as an army of lions led by jackasses. On the following day Ollivier
and his colleagues resigned office. Their position had become untenable,
though little if any responsibility attached to them respecting the
military operations. The Minister of War, General Dejean, had been merely
a stop-gap, appointed to carry out the measures agreed upon before his
predecessor, Marshal Le Boeuf, had gone to the front as Major General of
the army.

It was felt; however, among the Empress's _entourage_ that the new Prime
Minister ought to be a military man of energy, devoted, moreover, to the
Imperial _regime_. As the marshals and most of the conspicuous generals of
the time were already serving in the field, it was difficult to find any
prominent individual possessed of the desired qualifications. Finally,
however, the Empress was prevailed upon to telegraph to an officer whom
she personally disliked, this being General Cousin-Montauban, Comte de
Palikao. He was certainly, and with good reason, devoted to the Empire,
and in the past he had undoubtedly proved himself to be a man of energy.
But he was at this date in his seventy-fifth year--a fact often overlooked
by historians of the Franco-German war--and for that very reason, although
he had solicited a command in the field at the first outbreak of
hostilities, it had been decided to decline his application, and to leave
him at Lyons, where he had commanded the garrison for five years past.

Thirty years of Palikao's life had been spent in Algeria, contending,
during most of that time, against the Arabs; but in 1860 he had been