Here, then, in a nutshell, you have the whole matter in dispute. While
Mrs. Corbett and the Prince de Joinville were innocently interchanging
compliments at St. Helena,--bang! bang! Commodore Napier was pouring
broadsides into Tyre and Sidon; our gallant navy was storming breaches
and routing armies; Colonel Hodges had seized upon the green standard of
Ibrahim Pacha; and the powder-magazine of St. John of Acre was blown up
sky-high, with eighteen hundred Egyptian soldiers in company with it.
The French said that l'or Anglais had achieved all these successes, and
no doubt believed that the poor fellows at Acre were bribed to a man.
It must have been particularly unpleasant to a high-minded nation like
the French--at the very moment when the Egyptian affair and the balance
of Europe had been settled in this abrupt way--to find out all of a
sudden that the Pasha of Egypt was their dearest friend and ally. They
had suffered in the person of their friend; and though, seeing that the
dispute was ended, and the territory out of his hand, they could not
hope to get it back for him, or to aid him in any substantial way, yet
Monsieur Thiers determined, just as a mark of politeness to the Pasha,
to fight all Europe for maltreating him,--all Europe, England included.
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