The only consequence of these disturbances was the vote by the Chamber of a new grant towards the reinforcement of the army: "No doubt," said the Minister Rogier on that occasion, "it will cost something to equip a greater number of men. But has one ever estimated the cost of an invasion, even if it only lasted a week?" In 1850, Leopold II wrote to one of his ministers: "Without means of defence you will be the plaything of everyone."
A greater danger loomed ahead. Louis Napoleon had, by the coup d'état of December 1, 1851, imposed his dictatorship on France. Many prominent exiles and refugees came to Belgium, and the Brussels papers openly expressed their opinion of the new dictator. So that Belgium, which three years before had been branded as ultramontane, was now denounced as a nest of communists and rebels. Pressure was even brought to bear on the Government to introduce Press censorship. It was duly ignored, and the relations between the two countries became strained. One year later, Napoleon became Emperor of the French, and all clear-sighted Belgians realized that he was only awaiting an opportunity to extend his power and authority towards the North. This was shown plainly by the French policy with regard to Luxemburg.
The emperor having approached the King of Holland in view of obtaining from him the cession of the Grand Duchy, a conference was called in London (May 1867) at which the independence, neutrality and inviolability of the duchy were placed under the collective guarantee of the Powers. Thwarted in this direction by European diplomacy, Napoleon III attempted to obtain a footing in Luxemburg by controlling the railways. In January 1868 the Compagnie de l'Est, under guarantee of the French Government, took over from the Compagnie Guillaume Luxembourg its railway lines both in Luxemburg and Belgian territory. Further negotiations began with the Belgian companies Grand Luxemburg and Chemins de fer Liégeois-Limbourgeois, which would have placed all the main railways of Luxemburg and South-eastern Belgium in French hands. Warned in time, the Premier, Frère-Orban, instructed the Belgian representative in Paris to declare that Belgium would never consent to such an arrangement. Napoleon's threats remained without result, the Belgian policy being strongly upheld by Lord Clarendon, and, in July 1869, a protocol was signed annulling the contracts of the Compagnie de l'Est as far as the Belgian railways were concerned. At the same time, Napoleon III, anxious to find at any cost "compensations" for the increased prestige which Prussia obtained from her Danish and Austrian victories, had sounded that Power regarding a project of partition of the Netherlands. His proposal, first kept secret and subsequently revealed by Bismarck on the morrow of the declaration of war in 1870, was to annex Belgium to France, while Prussia would be left a free hand in Holland. The publication of this revelation by _The Times_ did more than anything else to alienate British public opinion, if not from France at least from the French emperor, during the Franco-Prussian War.