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LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE. 



LESSEPS, FERDINAND DE, a French 

 diplomat and financier, born in Versailles, Nov. 

 19, 1805; died near Paris, Dec. 7, 1894. He 

 was a son of the Comte Mathieu de Lesseps, who 

 filled important diplomatic posts, as his father 

 had before him. In consideration of the serv- 

 ices of his father, Ferdinand was educated at 

 the expense of the state for the same career in 

 the Lycee Napoleon, which was called the Col- 

 lege Henri Quatre after the Restoration. He 

 was appointed attache to the French legation 

 at Lisbon in 1825, afterward served in the com- 

 mercial department of the Ministry of Foreign 

 Affairs at Paris for a short time, and in 1828 

 was attached to the consulate general iii Tunis, 



FERDINAND DE LESSEPS. 



whence he was transferred to Egypt in 1831. In 

 1833 he was appointed consul at Cairo, where he 

 remained six years, and then was transferred to 

 Rotterdam, subsequently to Malaga and Barce- 

 lona, where he was helpful in the negotiation of 

 a commercial treaty with Spain. He returned 

 to Egypt as consul at Alexandria in 1844, and 

 after a short time was sent back to Barcelona. 

 Immediately after the revolution of 1848 he was 

 appointed ambassador of the French Republic 

 to the court of Spain. He had lived eight years 

 in Spain, and was on excellent terms with the 

 royal family, the generals, and the members of 

 the Government. Soon after his arrival some 

 military officers belonging to leading families 

 at court were condemned to death for an insur- 

 rectionary attempt. Mile, de Monti jo, after- 

 ward the Empress Eugenie, having besought 

 his intervention, he threatened to take his leave 

 if the mutinous officers were executed, and by 

 this domineering attitude induced Narvaez and 

 Queen Isabella to pardon the condemned men. 

 Lesseps was a cousin of Mile de Montijo, whose 

 maternal grandmother, born a Mile, de Griveg- 

 nee and wife of a Scottish wine merchant at 

 Malaga named Kirkpatrick, was an elder sis- 



ter of his own mother. M. de Lesseps nego- 

 tiated an advantageous postal treaty with Spain 

 before he was replaced at the end of a year by 

 Prince Napoleon. He was appointed minis- 

 ter to Switzerland, but before going to Bern 

 he was dispatched on a special mission to the 

 Roman Republic, with which the French Re- 

 public had seriously compromised itself by the 

 expedition to restore the Pope. He succeeded 

 in arranging terms of peace with Mazzini, when, 

 the Reactionists in Paris having gained the up- 

 per hand, his treaty was repudiated and the at- 

 tack on Rome took place, whereupon he returned 

 to Paris, having already received letters of re- 

 call. On being censured for leaving his post he 

 resigned from the diplomatic service. 



As soon as he was his own master he threw 

 himself into the project of piercing the Suez 

 Isthmus with a canal, a scheme over which he 

 had brooded for ten years. On the advice of 

 Said Pasha, whom he visited in 1854 immedi- 

 ately after his accession as Viceroy of Egypt, he 

 got 100 wealthy friends to join him in subscrib- 

 ing 5,000 francs each for a preliminary survey 

 by European engineers of high standing. The 

 engineers confirmed his opinion that the two 

 seas had the same level, and that a maritime 

 canal could be made by a simple cutting. Many 

 disputed the feasibility of the project, but the 

 objections and obstacles that he had to over- 

 come were chiefly political. The Viceroy grant- 

 ed a firman approving the plans that Lesseps 

 submitted. In France the projector had the 

 warm support of his relative, the Empress, and 

 the approval of the Emperor, and this intensi- 

 fied the prejudice and opposition of Lord Palm- 

 erston, the English Prime Minister, who re- 

 garded the project as a Machiavellian scheme 

 against England. Taking their cue from the 

 Government, the English press and engineers 

 generally condemned it as visionary and im- 

 practicable. M. de Lesseps spent years in en- 

 deavoring to overcome the objections of the 

 British Government, and by his diplomatic skill 

 and persistence he gained the confidence and 

 good will of Prince Albert, Mr. Gladstone, Lord 

 Clarendon, of influential members of Parlia- 

 ment, and of some of the leading engineers, 

 commercial men, and shipowners. Still he 

 could not overcome the opposition of Lord Palm- 

 erston, who, in July, 1857, said in Parliament 

 that the English Government had used all its 

 influence at Constantinople and Cairo to pre- 

 vent the execution of the plan, which he de- 

 clared to be political, hostile to England, and 

 nothing but a bubble scheme to be palmed off 

 upon gullible capitalists. 



The regular concession was granted by Said 

 Pasha in 1856. In the same year M. de Lesseps 

 published an exposition of his scheme in a pam- 

 phlet entitled " Percement de 1'Isthme de Sue;:." 

 A capital of 2,000,000 francs was raised, and the 

 work was begun in 1859. The Viceroy of Egypt 

 took a large number of shares, and allowed na- 

 tive laborers to be employed on the canal. The 



