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 appointed commander of the French expedition to China, where with a small force he had conducted hostilities with the greatest vigour, repeatedly decimating or scattering the hordes of Chinamen who were opposed to him, and, in conjunction with the English, victoriously taking Pekin. A kind of stain rested on the expedition by reason of the looting of the Chinese Emperor's summer-palace, but the entire responsibility of that affair could not be cast on the French commander, as he only continued and completed what the English began. On his return to France, Napoleon III created him Comte de Palikao (the name being taken from one of his Chinese victories), and in addition wished the Legislative Body to grant him a _dotation_. However, the summer-palace looting scandal prevented this, much to the Emperor's annoyance, and subsequent to the fall of the Empire it was discovered that, by Napoleon's express orders, the War Ministry had paid Palikao a sum of about L60,000, diverting that amount of money (in accordance with the practices of the time) from the purpose originally assigned to it in the Estimates.