recalled and brought before the Council of State. Louis-Napoleon needed a scapegoat and Lesseps was an easy target. Lesseps was accused of causing dishonor to the French army and was censured although he was not told to leave the Foreign Ministry. Lesseps was created on 30 August 1851 the 334th Commander and then the 200th Grand Cross of the Order of the Tower and Sword. Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic service, and never again occupied any public office. In 1853 he lost his wife and his son Ferdinand Victor at a few days' interval. In 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt of Said Pasha gave Lesseps a new impulse to act upon the creation of a Suez Canal. Suez Canal Lesseps had corresponded at least once with the Société d'Études du Canal de Suez during the reign of Abbas I in Egypt, but Abbas had closed off most of Egypt to foreign influence. Upon Abbas' assassination in 1854, Lesseps, made inquiries with a former, if short-term, acquaintance and successor in Egypt, Said Pasha. On 7 November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same month Said Pasha signed the concession authorizing him to build the Suez Canal. A first scheme, initiated by Lesseps, was immediately drawn out by two French engineers who were in the Egyptian service, Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds called "Linant Bey" and Mougel Bey. This project, differing from others that were previously presented or that were in opposition to it, provided for a direct link between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. After being slightly modified, the plan was adopted in 1856 by the civil engineers constituting the International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez. Encouraged by the engineers' approval, Lesseps no longer allowed anything to stop him. He listened to no adverse criticism and receded before no obstacle. Neither the opposition of Lord Palmerston, who considered the projected disturbance as too radical and a threat to the commercial position of the British Empire. Lesseps was similarly not deterred by the opinions entertained, in France as well as in Britain, that the sea in front of Port Said was full of mud which would obstruct the entrance to the canal, and that the sands from the desert would fill the trenches. Lesseps succeeded in rousing the patriotism of the French and obtaining by their subscriptions more