The twenty years, from October 1867, in which Lyons was British Ambassador to France included the last years of the
Second French Empire, the
Franco-Prussian War, the
Paris Commune, the establishment of the
Third Republic and the beginning of the
Boulanger crisis, which threatened to destroy the republican settlement. Lyons served in this position for a continuous twenty years, which made him one of its longest serving occupants, in which his political neutrality enabled him to develop amicable relationships with Liberal ministers to whose political sympathies he was averse: Jenkins contends that ‘the presence of such a reliable and conciliatory man in the most sensitive and important post in Europe gave both
Liberal and
Conservative British Governments an essential guarantee that their instructions would always be carried out according to the terms determined in London’. Queen Victoria stayed with Lyons in Paris. Lyons's political neutrality demonstrates that his promotion to the highest ambassadorial rank, by the British Tories, was a consequence of '[his] professional not political considerations'. When Lyons arrived in Paris during the last months of 1867, at the height of the Paris Exhibition, the
Second French Empire was stable. Lyons was entrusted by
Napoleon III, but considered
Napoleon's war with Prussia to be idiotic, and predicted, again correctly, that it was to culminate with the destruction of the French Empire. Lyons's correspondence provides contemporaneous commentary on the siege of Paris, and on the insurgency of the
Paris Commune, and on the power of Germany, and on France's unsuccessful attempts to establish a stable polity. Lyons arranged an interview between
Otto von Bismarck and M.
Jules Favre that failed to resolve their dispute. During the investment of Paris, Lyons, departed for Tours, and subsequently to Bourdeaux, with ministers of the French provisional government, for which Lyons was criticised in the British House of Commons, despite that Britain had recognised the Provisional Government as the veritable government. Lyons advocated the restoration of French military power to restore the balance of power on the Continent. but his actions were met with French aversion to Britain.
Advocacy of an entente with France and forecast of world war Lord Lyons contended that
democracy had been unsuccessful in France, for which favoured leaders such as
Napoleon III and
Léon Gambetta, whom he believed were able to organise French society and to perpetuate the France's adherence to a free-trade policy. The later years of Lyons's tenure in France included those in which the
Eastern Question determined international policy; those in which France invaded
Tunisia; and those in which the Egyptian Question became important. Lyons therein advocated policies that he thought would prevent a conflict between France and Germany and that would consequently perpetuate British dominance of Europe. Subsequent to the British Action in Egypt in the summer of 1882, and to the abolition of the dual rule in Egypt, Lyons was involved in a confrontation between Britain and France that lasted until 1904, in which Lyons contended that Britain ought to not withdraw from reform of Egyptian finances and from acknowledgement of French financial rights in Egypt. Lyons's competence in France led the Prime Minister
Salisbury to in 1886 offer Lyons the office of British Foreign Secretary: this was the third occasion on which Lyons was offered the office of Foreign Secretary, and for the third time, Lyons declined. Lyons, who had inherited the titles of 2nd Baronet and 2nd Baron Lyons subsequent to the death of his father in 1858, received the higher noble titles of Viscount, in 1881, and Earl, in 1887, but he died before he had been formally invested with the latter. Lyons agreed with Salisbury that he was to remain Ambassador to France until October 1887, when he was succeeded as Ambassador to France by
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, who had been his Secretary. ==Retirement, death, and legacy==