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 BETWEEN THE CZAE AND THE SULTAN. 217 the State. It is not true, as was afterwards pre- CHAP, tended, that the Executive was wickedly or per- XIV> versely thwarted either by the votes of the As- sembly, or by the speeches of its members ; still less is it true that the representative body was engaged in hatching plots against the President ; and although the army, remembering the humili- ations of 1848, was in ill-humour with the people, and was willing upon any fit occasion to act against them, there was no general officer of any repute who would consent to fire a shot without what French Commanders deemed to be the one lawful warrant for action — an order from the Minister of War. II. But the President of the republic was Prince PrmeeLoais Charles Louis Napoleon Lonaparte, the statutory onal>ar1 heir of the first French Emperor.* The election which made him the chief of the State had been conducted with perfect fairness ; and since it happened that in former years he had twice en- gaged in enterprises which aimed at the throne of France, he had good right to infer that the millions of citizens who elected him into the presidency were willing to use his ambition as a means of restoring to France a monarchical form of government. But if he had been open in disclosing the ambition which was almost cast upon him by the
 * i.e., by the Senatus-Consulte of ISO i.