This ended all prospect of concerted action on the part of the combined forces. The landing of these troops, which brought the French contingent to a figure far exceeding that originally agreed upon, gave umbrage to the allies* and proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that, notwithstanding the most explicit assurances given by the French minister of foreign affairs to the British ambassador in Paris,** it was the intention of the French government to carry out its policy at all hazards. Moreover, the new military commander did not possess the tact and wisdom of the French admiral, whose policy had not been approved in Prance, where his signing of the convention of La Soledad had been received with dismay and disapproval. * Compare General Prim's letter to Napoleon III, foot-note to pp. 25-27. ** "No government shall be imposed upon the Mexican people" (despatch of Lord Cowley to Lord Russell, May 2, 1862). See "L'Empereur Maximilien," etc., par le Comte Emile de Keratry, p. 11 (Leipsic, 1867). Another time the minister, M. de Thouvenel, assured Lord Cowley that negotiations had been opened by the Mexicans alone, who had gone to Vienna for the purpose (ibid.). General de Lorencez came as the representative of the most aggressive policy, with orders to march without delay upon the capital; and there is no doubt that a worse man could not have been chosen to take the leading part in an enterprise where cool judgment was the most important requisite. Hotheaded, brave to rashness, and, if one may judge by his acts, wholly incapable of discrimination in his appreciation of the problems involved, General de Lorencez, when he arrived on the field of action, allowed himself to be misled by M. de Saligny's misrepresentations of fact. Only a bitter experience showed him his error--too late. Meantime he added to the difficulties in the way of the admiral by feeding the illusions of the French government with sanguine despatches in which he spoke in glowing terms of the "march of the French upon the capital," and of the "acclamation of Maximilian as sovereign of Mexico." The lack of knowledge of existing conditions that characterized the French leaders in the conduct of this wretched affair was conspicuous from the very beginning of the expedition. Prince Georges Bibesco, an accomplished young Wallachian nobleman whom I knew well, and who was then on the staff of General de Lorencez's brigade, has, in his spirited account of these early events,* furnished ample evidence of the manner in which the general and his chief of staff, Colonel Valaze, were deceived as to the strength of the Liberal party by the French minister, and how they were induced by him to misrepresent the caution and judgment which the French admiral alone seems to have in some measure possessed, as an evidence of weakness and of procrastination.