Editing Napoleon III (section)

===Second coup, prison, escape and exile (1840–1848)===
Living in the comfort of London, he had not given up the dream of returning to France to seize power. In the summer of 1840 he bought weapons and uniforms and had proclamations printed, gathered a contingent of about sixty armed men, hired a ship called the ''Edinburgh-Castle'', and on 6 August 1840, sailed across the [[English Channel|Channel]] to the port of [[Boulogne]]. The attempted coup turned into an even greater fiasco than the Strasbourg mutiny. The mutineers were stopped by the customs agents, the soldiers of the garrison refused to join, the mutineers were surrounded on the beach, one was killed and the others arrested. Both the British and French press heaped ridicule on Louis-Napoleon and his plot. The newspaper ''[[Le Journal des Débats]]'' wrote, "this surpasses comedy. One doesn't kill crazy people, one just locks them up." He was put on trial, where, despite an eloquent defense of his cause, he was sentenced to life in prison in the fortress of [[Ham, Somme|Ham]] in the [[Somme (department)|Somme]] department of Northern France.{{Sfn|Milza|2006|pp=122–133}}{{Sfn|Strauss-Schom|2018|pp=65–70}}