Twenty years later the Chamber of Peers was again to be convoked--this time under Louis Philippe--in order to judge Prince Louis Napoleon, who had invaded France to assert Napoleonic principles and his own personal right to the French throne. Only a few years previously Prince Louis Napoleon had made a like attempt at Strasburg, when, though a certain measure of support had been secured beforehand from the officers in the Strasburg garrison, he was arrested, and dismissed with no further punishment than an engagement on his part never again to set foot in France. After the failure at Strasburg Prince Louis Napoleon went for a time to Switzerland, whence he made his way to England, where, as princes usually are, he was well received. A friend of Count d’Orsay, he was a frequent visitor at Lady Blessington’s. What was more important, he maintained friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, who, according to some good authorities, looked from the first with favour upon Prince Napoleon’s project of gaining supreme power in France. Louis Blanc, in his “History of Ten Years” (from 1830 to 1840), declares that before starting on his expedition to Boulogne, the prince received a secret visit from Lord Palmerston; and in the Russian “Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War” it is set forth that during Prince Louis Napoleon’s stay in London, Lord Palmerston laid with him the basis of the understanding by which some dozen years afterwards France and England formed a compact against Russia. The tardy speculations of these prophets of the past must be taken for what they are worth. Prince Louis Napoleon formed, in any case, a plan for invading France, and, followed by the troops who at every step were to join him, marching towards Paris, there to be received with acclamations by an enthusiastic population, eager for the restoration of the Napoleonic dynasty and the Napoleonic mode of government. For Prince Napoleon appealed to democrats as well as imperialists. He was to give with the one hand universal suffrage and with the other military government. [Illustration: SALLE DES FÊTES, LUXEMBURG PALACE.]