It is too much to attempt to pack into a sentence or two the
complicated drama of deceit, lies, and graft, through which he
created at last a pretext for intervention in the affairs of
Mexico; it is enough that in the autumn of 1862 a French army of
invasion marched from Vera Cruz upon Mexico City. We have
already seen that about this same time Napoleon proposed to
England and Russia a joint intervention with France between North
and South--a proposal which, however, was rejected. This Mexican
venture explains why the plan was suggested at that particular
time.
Disappointed in England and Russia, Napoleon unexpectedly
received encouragement, as he thought, from within the United
States through the medium of the eccentric editor of the "New
York Tribune". We shall have occasion to return later to the
adventures of Horace Greeley--that erratic individual who has
many good and generous acts to his credit, as well as many
foolish ones. For the present we have to note that toward the
close of 1862 he approached the French Ambassador at Washington
with a request for imperial mediation between the North and the
South. Greeley was a type of American that no European can
understand: he believed in talk, and more talk, and still more
talk, as the cure for earthly ills.
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