Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

The fourteenth volume of L'Empire LibÉral, issued in 1909, carries M. Émile Ollivier's very interesting reminiscences of that eventful period up to the outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870. It contains many curious particulars of the incidents and transactions culminating in the rupture with Prussia that brought about the downfall of his ministry and the ruin of the Second Empire. Autobiographies by men who have taken a prominent part in the momentous scenes which they describe have often the powerful effect of a dramatic representation: the actors reappear on the stage; they plead for themselves; they give vivid impressions of the scenes; they repeat the very words that were spoken; they revive the intense emotion of the audience during the contest between those who are hurrying on toward some fatal catastrophe and those who are striving to prevent it. M. Ollivier's volume is the story of a great historic tragedy; the principal dramatis personÆ are celebrities of the first rank; on their speech and action depend the destinies of France, and the spectators are the nations of Europe. If we make due allowance for the fact that the author's main object is to explain and defend the part which he himself played in these important affairs, we may credit him with an honest desire to set a strange, complicated, and oft-told story in a clear light before the present generation.

M. Ollivier cites, in the first page of this volume, Machiavelli's observation that mankind at large judges those who give advice in affairs of state not by the wisdom of their counsels but by the results. He agrees that this method is not rational, looking to the haphazard course of human affairs, but he admits that the multitude can judge by no other standard; and he appeals to historians for an impartial revision of the popular verdict, founded on careful examination of the real facts and circumstances. Yet he fears lest in his own country the decline of patriotic enthusiasm, the cooling of military ardour, that he notices in France at the present time, may have rendered Frenchmen incapable of realising the hot resentment, the intense susceptibility to affronts, the element of heroism, which were dominant forty years ago in the national character. And he therefore has little or no expectation that the falsehood of legends which have been circulated regarding the events of 1870 will be proved, to his countrymen, even by the most irrefragable demonstration. All political parties in France, he says, have combined to hold their own ministry responsible for that calamitous war; he despairs of obtaining from them a hearing. He awaits with resignation the time when some inquisitive student of history may light upon a dusty copy of his book in the recesses of a library, and may set himself to explain how these things actually happened to readers of the future.

The story of the decline and fall of the second French empire has often been told; yet it may be worth while to remind English readers of the political situation in France just forty years ago. The Emperor Napoleon III., importuned by reformers and reactionaries, by those who pressed him to step forward into Liberalism, and by those who insisted that he must stand still, had at last decided upon making those changes in the form of his government that inaugurated the Liberal Empire; and on January 3, 1870, the new ministry took office, supported by the goodwill of the moderate party in the Chamber of Deputies and by the general approval of the country. M. Ollivier was recognised as its leader and spokesman, chosen by the emperor, and enjoying his particular confidence; though he was not prime minister in the English constitutional sense, for the power of issuing direct orders, and of overruling the Cabinet, was still reserved to the sovereign; nor was he always consulted in important military or foreign affairs. The complex and enigmatic character of Napoleon III. is becoming gradually intelligible to the world at large, and public opinion has lately been veering round to a less unfavourable conclusion upon it than heretofore. He had long been reviled as a truculent despot, artful and dangerous, powerful and perfidious; the genius of Victor Hugo had set on him a brand of infamy. In reality, if we may trust later French writers, there was much that was good in his nature, and they are disposed to regard him with compassion. M. de la Gorce says that throughout his life Napoleon had been a humane prince. From the entertaining memoirs of General du Barail, whose military services brought him into frequent relations with the emperor, we should draw the impression that the emperor was affable, considerate, and sincerely well-intentioned. Giuseppe Pasolini, the Italian statesman, found him simple and easy in conversation, naturally right-minded and kindly,[42] though weak and irresolute. He was equally capable of forming bold projects or adopting cautious decisions; but he was apt to hesitate and turn round at the moment for action; and it was just here that he was so unlike his uncle, Napoleon I., who would have classed him among the idÉologues whom he despised. He invented the theory of nationalities to justify his polity of encouraging the unification of Italy, and of permitting the aggrandisement of Germany; in the former instance he alienated the Italians by refusing obstinately to allow them to occupy Rome; in the latter case his neutrality when Prussia attacked Austria in 1866 was the proximate cause of his ruin. He might have read in Machiavelli's Principe a warning of the danger of standing aside when the neighbouring potentates come to blows. The result, it is there said, is that the winner in such a contest becomes doubly formidable, while the loser resents your neutral attitude, and will not help you when the victor turns upon you with all his strength. Machiavelli declares that this policy has always been perniciosissimo; and so it proved to be in the case of the French Empire. In domestic affairs also the Liberal Empire took up a kind of half-way position, which was assailed by the extreme parties on both sides; for thorough-going Imperialists like Rouher asserted that a Napoleon could only rule by retaining absolute authority; while uncompromising Liberals demanded full parliamentary control. Ollivier's ministry took office with the avowed object of gradually extending constitutional administration; but he found that, as Tocqueville had said in his Ancien RÉgime, the most dangerous moment for an absolute government is when it endeavours to introduce reforms.

General du Barail, in the memoirs already quoted, gives M. Ollivier full credit for his honesty, ability, and sincere patriotism in undertaking his difficult task, which was begun in an evil hour, and failed through adverse circumstance. In May 1870, Ollivier, who was holding the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, transferred it to the Duc de Gramont, foreseeing no troubles abroad, and desiring to give his whole attention to politics at home. The external policy of the ministry was decidedly pacific; they relied on a quiet moment for developing the new constitutional system; they had no notion of changing horses in mid-stream, yet most unluckily they were caught by a sudden flood. At the end of June it was announced in Madrid that Leopold of Hohenzollern, son of the Roumanian prince, had accepted the crown of Spain that had been secretly offered to him by Marshal Prim; and the news, M. Ollivier says, startled all France like the bursting of a bomb. It had always, we must remember, been a cardinal maxim of French statesmanship that the maintenance of a preponderant influence in Spain was essential to the security of France; while, on the other hand, a complete subordination of Spanish to French interests has been held by other governments to be dangerous to the balance of power in Europe. The collision between these two principles had been the cause of great wars and diplomatic quarrels. Louis XIV. only succeeded in securing the Spanish throne for his grandson after a long war. When Napoleon I. made his nefarious attempt to impose his brother on the Spaniards as their king, his pretext was that under the Bourbon dynasty Spain had always been a dependency of France; and it had been the invariable aim of English policy to prevent a close association of the two kingdoms. The question had long been regarded on all sides as one of vital importance; and in 1869, when some information of secret negotiations between Bismarck and Marshal Prim had leaked out, the French ambassador at Berlin, Benedetti, had warned Bismarck that France would oppose the election of a Prussian prince to the vacant throne of Spain. Bismarck had treated the information as an improbable rumour, yet he had carefully abstained from a formal assurance that the king would forbid Prince Leopold to accept any such offer.[43] It was therefore quite certain that in 1870, when the relations between France and Prussia were in a very critical state, the announcement that Prince Leopold had been chosen for Spain would be treated as a most threatening move on the political chessboard. Italy was under deep obligation to Prussia for aid in expelling the Austrians from Venice; the St. Gothard railway had been openly promoted and subsidised by Germany for direct and secure communication with Italy in case of need; and now the family connection which was obviously contemplated would bring Spain into the circle of alliances that Bismarck was drawing round the French frontier. It was a strategical manoeuvre that the imperial government was bound to resist. Within France all factions were for once unanimous in demanding immediate and resolute protest; and the clerical party, very powerful in that country, were especially vehement in denouncing the project of placing the scion of a great Protestant dynasty on the 'throne of Charles V.' M. Ollivier tells us that when the news first reached him it brought upon him suddenly and painfully the presentiment of impending war, to the discomfiture of all his efforts for the preservation of peace until the Liberal Empire should have been consolidated in France.

The plot—for it was nothing less—had been skilfully concerted between Berlin and Madrid; and even the parts to be played in anticipation of French remonstrances had been rehearsed. When Benedetti went to the Berlin Foreign Office for explanations, he found that Bismarck was absent at his country house and the king at Ems; and Von Thiele, the Under-Secretary, cut short his interrogation by replying at once that the Prussian Government knew nothing of, and had no concern with, the Hohenzollern candidature, adding that the Spanish people had a right to choose their own king. At Madrid, notwithstanding the French ambassador's attempts to check Prim's jubilant activity, Leopold's acceptance of the crown was proclaimed to all the foreign courts as a matter for joyful congratulation; and the Cortes were summoned for July 20 to elect their new monarch. To demand satisfaction from Spain would have been to fall into Bismarck's net; for the Hohenzollern prince would have been elected nevertheless, and if French troops had then marched into Spain the Prussian army would have crossed the Rhine, whereby the French would have been placed between two fires. It was necessary to fix the responsibility for these proceedings upon Prussia, and to act promptly; but the precise line to be adopted was the subject of anxious deliberation in the emperor's council—that is, in a meeting of the Cabinet presided over by him. Finally, Ollivier proposed, as he has told us, to speak out so plainly that Prussia must understand France to be in earnest, and to say that the Hohenzollern could not be permitted to reign at Madrid. Marshal Le Boeuf had assured the council that the army was in the highest condition of efficiency and readiness; and when M. Ollivier inquired whether, in the event of war, any help from other governments could be relied upon, Napoleon produced certain letters from the Austrian emperor and the King of Italy, which he interpreted as distinct assurances of armed support in the case of a rupture with Prussia. The wording of a declaration to be made before the French Chamber of Deputies was carefully settled—it was delivered next day (July 6) by the Duc de Gramont, and received with immense enthusiasm. Some objection was taken, then and afterwards, to its menacing tone; but we may agree with M. Ollivier that this outspoken warning to Prussia was at the moment judicious and effective; and we may admit that up to this point no exception could be taken to the procedure of the French Government.

M. Ollivier dates from July 6 the first of five phases, or alternating changes (pÉripÉties), which the diplomatic campaign, as he terms it, traversed in its headlong course. They are successively described and commented upon in the chapters of his volume; and they may be here set down in his own language, for the guidance of our readers through the complicated transactions that ensued:

'Le premier moment est la dÉclaration ministÉrielle du 6 juillet; le second, la renonciation du Prince Antoine (11 juillet); le troisiÈme, la demande de garanties de la droite (12 juillet); le quatriÈme, le soufflet de Bismarck et la fabrication de la dÉpÊche d'Ems; le cinquiÈme, notre rÉponse au soufflet de Bismarck par notre dÉclaration de guerre du 15 juillet.'

These are, in fact, the five acts of a portentous drama, full of shifting scenes and striking situations, on the issues of which depended the fortunes of France and of Germany; it was played out with ill-omened rapidity in nine days. In regard to the train of causes and consequences that brought France to the tremendous disaster upon which the curtain fell, diverse accounts have been given to the world by the leading actors—by M. de Gramont, by Bismarck, Benedetti, and, the latest by many years, by M. Ollivier. His narrative does raise somewhat higher the veil which has hitherto kept in partial obscurity certain dark corners of the stage upon which these things went on. We know more now of the precise motives and considerations, the personal influences and impulses which diverted the Cabinet, after starting on the right path, into leaving it for rash and perilous adventures. On some points of interest he is, indeed, still reticent, and on others his evidence is in conflict with different narratives; but in regard to facts actually known to him we may accept his testimony, though in matters of opinion we may sometimes differ from him.

M. Ollivier insists that Gramont's declaration of July 6 was altogether irrÉprochable; he writes that he has read it again after so many years with satisfaction. He admits that it contained, substantially, an intimation to Prussia that she must choose between withdrawing the Hohenzollern candidate and accepting war with France; but he argues that this straightforward and peremptory warning was justified by its effects; that Bismarck was taken aback and discomfited by the resolute attitude of the French ministry, supported enthusiastically by the Chamber of Deputies; and that Prince Antoine was thereby so intimidated as to compel his son Leopold to retract his acceptance of the Spanish crown. On the other hand, this stern language alarmed cautious deputies, and though it stirred Paris to a pitch of wild excitement it was read with uneasiness in the cooler air of the French provinces, where the prospect of imminent war met with scanty welcome.[44] The foreign governments were startled. Bismarck, in his Reminiscences, says that it was an 'official international threat, uttered with the hand on the sword-hilt,' From the Austrian chancellor, Count Beust, came earnest advice against marching hastily into Prussia; while the British Cabinet, in particular, doubted the wisdom of taking up such high ground, from which it might be difficult to retreat, at the opening of a grave and complicated question. And our ambassador in Paris, Lord Lyons, whose calm judgment and friendly counsels M. Ollivier acknowledges unreservedly, exerted himself throughout this critical time to deprecate precipitate words and deeds.

Simultaneously Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, had been ordered to seek an interview with the Prussian king, and to impress upon him the necessity of appeasing the just indignation of the French people by forbidding Leopold to accept the crown of Spain. The king replied, as is well known, that he had treated the candidature entirely as a family matter, quite apart from the sphere of international politics; that he had nevertheless communicated with Leopold, and could give Benedetti no positive answer until he should have heard from that prince. If, as has been asserted, the king had been cognisant of Bismarck's secret negotiations, this reply was more evasive than ingenuous; and we may note that he immediately directed his own ambassador, Werther, who was present at Ems, to return at once to Paris. M. Ollivier scores the king's order to the credit of Benedetti's diplomacy, since it amounted to an admission that the question in debate was much more than a mere family concern. And he adds that he immediately urged Gramont to allow no more equivocation upon this essential point, but to press Werther for a straightforward reply upon it. It will be seen that this pressure was carried rather too far at the French Foreign Office, with an important effect upon the course of negotiations.

But at this juncture supervened the coup de thÉÂtre, as M. Ollivier styles it, which opens the second act of the drama. Olozaga, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, had been left in complete ignorance of the privy correspondence between Prim and Bismarck for procuring the nomination of a king from the Hohenzollern family, and this sudden revelation of its result by no means pleased him. He proposed to the Emperor Napoleon to despatch to Prince Antoine at Sigmaringen (in Prussian territory) an agent of his own, who should use every effort to convince the prince that his son must be imperatively commanded to withdraw his acceptance of Prim's offer. The emperor, whose sincere wish was for peace, consented willingly, and the mission was entirely successful. By long and strenuous argument the envoy had finally persuaded the father that his son, Leopold, would find himself in a precarious position on the Spanish throne, with France alienated and openly hostile; and the result was that Prince Antoine not only laid on his son a positive command to withdraw, but also telegraphed the decision to the principal German newspapers, to Olozaga at Paris, and to Madrid. According to M. Ollivier, Bismarck felt the blow keenly; it shattered his carefully organised plans; he found himself baffled and humiliated; he has himself said that his first thought was to resign office.[45] To the king, on the other hand, the news brought welcome relief; he supposed that he had now only to await Prince Antoine's letter confirming the public telegram, when the dispute would naturally drop with the disappearance of its cause. This was, moreover, the expectation at that moment of the French emperor, who observed that, if France and England were preparing to fight for the possession of an island in the Channel, it would be absurd to go to war after discovering that the island had sunk to the bottom of the sea.

In those days, M. Ollivier explains, any telegram of political interest that passed over the Paris wires was communicated, by special arrangement, to the MinistÈre de l'IntÉrieur; and accordingly he received a copy of Prince Antoine's message to Olozaga before it reached its address. The contents filled him with exultation—he could feel no doubt that peace had now been triumphantly secured, mainly by the unflinching tone of the Cabinet's declaration. He carried the paper with him to the Chamber, where Olozaga rushed up to him in the lobby, drew him into a corner, read to him with much obvious excitement the telegram which Ollivier had already in his pocket, and hurried on to the Foreign Office. Naturally the incident aroused general curiosity; the deputies surrounded the minister, and eagerly pressed him for information. M. Ollivier tells us that he hesitated for some time before divulging his secret; but that on the whole he found no good reason for withholding news that would certainly appear within a few hours in the evening papers, so he read out the telegram to all present. We believe that few men, who had not been trained by experience to the cautious habits of official life, would have done otherwise. But M. de la Gorce[46] has pointed out that the chief minister ought to have kept silence until the renunciation had been approved and confirmed by the King of Prussia, who was in hourly expectation of Prince Antoine's letter, and whose acquiescence, transmitted through Benedetti to the French Government, would have probably brought the whole affair to an honourable termination. It may be objected that this is to argue from consequences, since known, which could hardly be foreseen at the moment; yet one must admit that reticence would have been preferable, for we have to remember that M. Ollivier was disclosing a telegram intercepted, so to speak, on its passage to a foreign embassy, thereby forestalling not only the Spanish ambassador but also the French Foreign Office.

The news ran round the Palais LÉgislatif, inside and outside, and spread through Paris with electrical rapidity.

'En mÊme temps dÉbouchait du Palais LÉgislatif une bande agitÉe; c'Était À qui envahirait les fiacres de la place, À qui les escaladerait, À qui les prendrait d'assaut. À la Bourse, criaient les hommes d'affaires; nous doublons le prix de la course, et au triple galop. Parmi les journalistes, mÊme empressement et concert de mÊme nature, et on voyait les haridelles de la place sortir l'une aprÈs l'autre et s'Élancer rapides comme des flÈches.'

Apparently all this stir and hurry had already affected M. Ollivier with some misgivings; for when, on going into one of the committee-rooms, he met Gressier, formerly a minister, he assured him that he (Ollivier) had no intention of making the renunciation a stepping-stone toward further demands. 'To take up that ground,' replied Gressier, 'will be a proof of courage, but it will bring down your ministry, for the country will never be content with this degree of satisfaction.' M. Ollivier soon found that he was right; for a crowd of deputies began to protest against the faint-heartedness of a government that seemed willing to drop the whole affair, leaving Prussia to escape scot-free; and M. Ollivier had scarcely entered the Chamber when ClÉment Duvernois rose with an interpellation asking what guarantees the Cabinet proposed to require for the purpose of restraining Prussia from inventing more complications of this sort.

Olozaga had taken his telegram to M. de Gramont, who by no means shared M. Ollivier's joy over it. He observed that the effect was rather to embarrass his negotiations with Prussia, since that government could now make the renunciation a pretext for disowning the responsibility which he desired to fix upon the king with regard to the whole business; and, moreover, he added, public opinion in France will consider such a conclusion unsatisfactory. He was at that moment engaged in colloquy with Werther, the Prussian ambassador, who had presented himself at the Foreign Office, where presently M. Ollivier joined them, Olozaga having departed. What followed is treated by some French writers as the most ill-conceived of all the false moves made by the French players in this hazardous diplomatic game. Gramont had been urging Werther to advise the Prussian king to write a letter to the emperor, to the effect that in authorising the acceptance of the Spanish throne by Leopold he had no idea of giving umbrage to France; that the king associated himself with the prince's renunciation, and hoped that all causes of misunderstanding between the two governments were thereby removed. Gramont sketched out what he thought the king might say, and actually made over his note to the Prussian ambassador, by way of aide-mÉmoire; precisely as in 1867 Benedetti had trusted Bismarck with his draft of the secret treaty proposed for the annexation of Belgium to France, which Bismarck afterwards published in the Times of July 1870. M. Ollivier, who agreed with and supported Gramont, now maintains that his arrival changed the character of the conference, that it ceased to be an official interview between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and an ambassador, and thenceforward became merely one of those free unofficial conversations in which politicians explain their views without compromising their respective governments. But we are obliged to remark that in our judgment this plea is inadmissible, for M. de Gramont has explicitly stated that the interview, so far as he was concerned, was official,[47] and Werther could not have been expected to appreciate this subtle yet important distinction—of which nothing seems to have been said to him—while M. Ollivier should have foreseen that Bismarck would certainly ignore it. The result was that Werther did transmit to his king the suggestion of the two French ministers; that the king was deeply offended at having been required to send what he called, not unreasonably, a letter of excuses; that Bismarck used Werther's despatch to kindle national indignation throughout Germany; and that Werther himself was reprimanded and recalled.

The scene now shifts to St. Cloud, where the poor emperor, who had supposed that Prince Antoine's telegram signified peace with honour, found a military party eager for war, and hotly asserting that the empire would be totally discredited unless satisfaction were demanded from Prussia for conniving at the Hohenzollern candidature. The interpellation of Duvernois in the Chamber was cited as a forcible expression of public opinion. M. Gramont now arrived at the palace with his report of the interview with Werther, in which the latter had persistently declared that the king had nothing whatever to do with Leopold's withdrawal. The emperor's unstable mind began to waver; he forgot or put aside his arrangement with M. Ollivier—that the ministers should meet him next morning for consultation over this new aspect of the affair—and he proceeded then and there to hold a Cabinet Council.

What passed at this Council has never been exactly known. The reproach of a ruinous blunder lies heavy on those who took part in it. Gramont says no more than that the deliberations were conscientious, and that every one, including the emperor, earnestly desired peace.[48] M. Ollivier tells us, in the volume now before us, that of all the Cabinet ministers the Duc de Gramont alone was summoned; whether he learnt subsequently who were also present, and what share they took in promoting the decision, he leaves his readers to guess. It is clear that the proceeding was irregular and totally unconstitutional, and other French writers hint that Gramont's silence is intended to shield une personne auguste from responsibility for a decision that was fatally wrong. When the Council broke up at 7 P. M. (July 12) Gramont immediately despatched from the Foreign Office his famous telegram to Benedetti at Ems, instructing him to require from the Prussian king a positive assurance that he would not authorise the renewal of Leopold's candidature—a demand, in short, for guarantees. At his office he met Lord Lyons, to whom he expounded his reasons for treating the single renunciation as inadequate, to the great surprise of our ambassador, who objected so strenuously to Gramont's views and intentions that the minister, somewhat shaken, merely said that the formal decision would be made public next morning. While the emperor and two councillors were then taking irrevocable steps toward a collision, and were unconsciously playing into the hands of their arch-enemy, the leaders of the warlike faction in the Chamber and the Parisian press were clamouring with fury and vitriolic sarcasm against a faint-hearted and contemptible ministry that shrank from seizing the opportunity of humbling Prussia.

Again the scene changes, this time to the Foreign Office, where M. Ollivier, in total ignorance of that evening's Council at St. Cloud, sought and found the Duc de Gramont about midnight. He had come to ask whether any fresh news had been received from Benedetti at Ems; and Gramont answered by showing him the telegram just despatched by the Council's order to Benedetti, with a letter to himself from the emperor desiring that its language should be stiffened. Naturally M. Ollivier could hardly control his resentment at discovering that an extremely grave resolution had been adopted and acted upon without consulting or even warning him beforehand; that the emperor, in spite of his promises to govern constitutionally, had reverted to such an extreme use of autocratic power; and that Gramont had made no attempt to check it, had even abetted the irregularity. However, the telegram had gone to Ems—it was too late to remedy that mischief—but the Cabinet would have to answer before the Chamber for its despatch. He said to Gramont:

And he at once drafted a telegram instructing Benedetti to require from the king no more than that he should agree not to permit Leopold to retract the particular renunciation which his father had obtained from him; instead of requiring a general assurance against any future retractation. Gramont telegraphed accordingly, but in continuation, not in correction, of his earlier message, so that the latter part of the instructions to Benedetti was inconsistent with the former part. But this second telegram reached Ems, as M. Ollivier had foreseen, too late, for Benedetti had already seen the king, and had been urging him persistently to satisfy the French Government by conceding the general assurance.

M. Ollivier's description of the distress and perplexity that kept him without sleep during the rest of that eventful night will be read with a feeling of sincere commiseration. This, then, he reflected, was the first fruit of imperial liberalism, that the chief minister was slighted by his sovereign, ill-served and even betrayed by his colleagues, and committed, behind his back, to a most hazardous policy. He had been too soft-hearted to insist on making a clean sweep of the old official class in forming his Cabinet; he had thought to replace the decrepit absolutism by a young and liberal empire; and here was the personal power reappearing at the first crisis. The idea of having given the signal for war was abhorrent to him; he felt violently tempted to resign and retire. Yet, on reflection, to tender his resignation at such a moment would be, he felt, an act of culpable egoism, it would inevitably bring on the war; for the government would pass into the hands of a rash and impetuous war-party, manifestly bent on marching against Prussia if the king persisted in refusing, as on hearing of Ollivier's resignation he would assuredly refuse, the guarantees that had been demanded by the Council held at St. Cloud. On the other hand, by remaining in the ministry he might still command a majority in the Cabinet; nor did he despair of a majority in the Chamber to support him in cancelling, at some future stage of the negotiations, this demand for guarantees if he could recover the emperor's confidence. He might fail, but then he would fall honourably, having subordinated personal susceptibilities to considerations of his country's interest; so he finally determined not to resign office.

Our sympathies are unquestionably due to a minister who, finding himself placed, by no act of his own, in a situation of the utmost perplexity, resolves to take no account of his political reputation and personal interests, and to choose the course that he believes to be necessary, in arduous circumstances, for the honour and safety of his country. To a British prime minister his duty would have been clear, he would have tendered his resignation immediately; but under the Liberal Empire the ultimate decision upon questions before the Cabinet still lay with the sovereign, and thus the responsibilities of his principal minister remained ambiguous and indefinite. Nevertheless, though it is easy to be wise after the event, our opinion must be that M. Ollivier would have done his country better service by resigning office; for though it is very probable that war could not have been thereby averted, yet unqualified disapproval of the demand for guarantees might have rallied to his side all those who, in the Cabinet, the Chamber, and the country, were undoubtedly opposed to incurring terrible risks in order to obtain pledges against future contingencies. Among the late Lord Acton's Historical Essays there is a remarkable paper on 'The Causes of the Franco-Prussian War,' in which the considerations that may justify Gramont's demand for guarantees are fairly stated. It is there argued that the Prussian king, who had first 'sanctioned' Prince Leopold's candidature, and afterwards its withdrawal, had left the initiative in both cases to Prince Leopold. He had thus kept himself quite free to sanction a second acceptance as he had done the first—'he held in his hands a convenient casus belli, to be used or dropped at pleasure'; remembering that the Hohenzollern candidature had been 'a meditated offence, long and carefully prepared, insolently denied, which demanded reparation.'[50] But one might reply that the best way of foiling these deep and deliberate designs, manifestly contrived to provoke war, was to give the adversary no such plausible pretext for driving France into hostilities as was furnished to Bismarck by Gramont's demand. It is evident, however, that in July 1870 all Paris was in a state of irrepressible agitation, that the Imperialists in the Chamber were determined to push the Government into a defiant and warlike policy, and that they were acting in the foolhardy conviction that the French army could beat the Prussians, and that a victorious campaign would consolidate the Napoleonic dynasty.

The next day, July 13, is an evil date in the history of France, when she was hurried into war by a swift succession and very unlucky conjunction of incidents. The Council met early, and decided by a majority not to call out the army reserves, although Marshal Le Boeuf energetically declared that if there were any prospect of war, not an hour should be lost in preparation. M. de la Gorce relates that four of the councillors passed grave censure on the irregular proceedings of the previous evening, and condemned Gramont's telegram. M. Ollivier says that it was resolved not to insist further if the guarantees were refused by the king, and for the moment to keep the demand for them secret, merely informing the Chamber that negotiations with Prussia were in progress. Ollivier took his dÉjeuner at the palace, where the household staff greeted him very coldly, and the empress, by whom he sat, turned her back on him. In the Chamber Duvernois asked in a surly tone when the debate on his interpellation would come on, and July 15 was fixed for it. Everything now depended on the issue of Benedetti's interview with the king at Ems, which took place early on the morning of the 13th, when they met as the king was returning by the public promenade from taking the waters. What followed is well known. The king was surprised and disappointed at learning from the ambassador that Prince Leopold's resignation had not settled everything; Benedetti pressed on him Gramont's new demand for ulterior guarantees; the king positively refused to give them, and parted from him coldly though courteously, promising, however, to see him again after receiving the letter expected from Prince Antoine. But in the course of that day came Werther's report of his conversation with the two French ministers, which the king's private secretary opened and carried, in some trepidation, to his majesty. The king was grievously offended; he wrote to Queen Augusta that to require him to stand before the world as a repentant sinner was nothing less than impertinence, and he sent his aide-de-camp, Prince Radziwill (one of the highest Prussian nobles), to inform Benedetti that Leopold's letter of resignation had arrived, and that, as the affair was thus completely ended, no further audience was necessary. The ambassador replied that he was particularly instructed to obtain the king's specific approbation of Leopold's action, and was therefore obliged to solicit another interview. The king replied by his aide-de-camp that so far as he had approved Leopold's acceptance of the crown he approved the retractation; but the request for another interview, though it was twice repeated during the day, was civilly and firmly refused.

M. Ollivier argues that Werther's report in no way affected the king's behaviour to Benedetti; he affirms that it made no difference at all, and that the king's determination to hold no further intercourse with him was entirely due to Benedetti's indiscreet importunity at the morning's meeting, which was witnessed, it may be noted, by a crowd of observant bystanders. We may assume that the king had at no time the slightest intention of acceding to the demand for guarantees; but it seems to us impossible to maintain that Werther's report, which was put into his majesty's hand at such a critical moment, and which undeniably gave serious offence, did not exacerbate relations which had already been strained, or induce the king to break off abruptly the personal negotiations with the French minister. And we may add that if Benedetti had been cognisant of this report, he might have understood the king's sudden change of temper, and might have spared himself some rebuffs. When the matter came afterwards to his knowledge, he declared that the effect on the king of Werther's report had been deplorable.

Bismarck had been telegraphing from Berlin to Ems that if the king accorded to Benedetti any more interviews he must resign office; and the news of Prince Leopold's renunciation seemed to cut away the ground upon which he had been manoeuvring for a quarrel with France. But his spirits revived on receiving by telegraph from the king a brief summary of the Ems incidents, stating that Benedetti's importunate requisition for guarantees had been rejected by his majesty, who had subsequently resolved

The telegram also authorised Bismarck to communicate this statement to the foreign courts and to the press, whereupon Bismarck gave it immediate publication, having made (to use his own phrase) 'some suppressions'; having, in fact, maliciously tampered with the text and falsified the tone, according to M. Ollivier and other French writers. His official organ, the North German Gazette, was directed to print off a supplement and to paste it up all over Berlin, and copies of this supplement were distributed gratis in the streets. A thrill of patriotic enthusiasm electrified the nation, who were unanimous in applauding the king in defying the French, and mocking at their ambassador's humiliation.

This is what M. Ollivier has called 'Le soufflet de Bismarck'; and never was the art of changing the tone and import of words without altering their substance more effectively employed; for it must be acknowledged that the communication to the press was an accurate rendering of the facts contained in the king's telegram, which was stiff but not actually discourteous; whereas Bismarck put the sting into it by little more than adroit condensation. We are told that when the king received this revised edition of his message he read it twice, was much moved, and said, 'This means war'; and that it rang throughout Europe like an alarm-bell. At the same time, and before Bismarck's action had been known in Paris, M. Ollivier, as he tells us, was struggling vigorously against the torrent of reproaches and imputations of cowardice which threatened to overthrow his Cabinet if they flinched from the demand for guarantees.

Late on July 13 came a telegram from Benedetti that the king had consented to approve unreservedly Prince Leopold's renunciation, but distinctly refused any further concession. This, cried the war-party at St. Cloud, is totally insufficient; the emperor was irresolute, and merely summoned his Council for next day. Ollivier was determined, for his part, to accept the king's assurance as conclusively satisfactory; and he relates how, on the morning of the 14th, he was engaged in drafting, for approval by the Council, a ministerial declaration to that effect, when the Duc de Gramont entered his room with a copy of Bismarck's circular telegram, and said:

At the Council, which was immediately summoned, Gramont threw his portfolio on the table, saying that after what had happened a Foreign Minister who should not vote for war would be unworthy to hold office; and Marshal Le Boeuf informed his colleagues that they had not a moment to lose, for Prussia was already arming. Nevertheless the Council set themselves to a deliberate investigation of the actual facts. Their conclusion, after six hours of discussion, was that, according to diplomatic rule and international custom, no exception could have been taken to the king's refusal, courteously worded, of the interview which Benedetti had, it seemed to them, rather pertinaciously desired; but that a reasonable refusal had been converted into one that was offensive by its publication in terms that were intentionally curt and stinging. Nevertheless Ollivier, clinging to any slight chance of avoiding war, persuaded the emperor and the Council to agree that Leopold's resignation, as approved by the Prussian king, should be accepted by France, and that, on the further question, whether members of a reigning family in one country could be permitted to become kings in another, an appeal for some authoritative ruling should be made to a general congress. But in the course of that day the ministers received from various quarters more evidence that Bismarck's inflammatory telegram had been sent officially to the Prussian diplomatists at all the foreign courts; and they heard that Paris was literally foaming with exasperation at their dilatory indecision, while the temper of the Chamber convinced them that the proposal for a congress would be rejected with fiery scorn. Berlin and Paris vied with each other in turbulent patriotism and warlike fury, and Marshal Le Boeuf, being again and for the last time questioned by the Council, replied positively that the French army was quite ready, and that no better opportunity of settling accounts with Prussia could be expected. The Council rescinded its former decision, and voted unanimously for war. The empress alone (Ollivier notes particularly) expressed no opinion and gave no vote.

On July 15 Ollivier pronounced in the Chamber the declaration that had been drawn up by himself and the Duc de Gramont. It was to the effect that the Cabinet had throughout made every possible exertion to preserve peace, but that their patience was exhausted when they found that the King of Prussia had sent an aide-de-camp to the French ambassador informing him that no more interviews could be granted, and that the Prussian Government, by way of giving point and unequivocal significance to this message, had circulated it to all other foreign governments in Europe. Having spared no pains to avoid war, the ministers would now accept the challenge, and prepare for the consequences.

M. Ollivier has given a vivid description of the scene that ensued. His final words were barely audible in the storm of applause that swept through the assembly, and the vote of urgency for the motion to provide the necessary war-funds was demanded with enthusiastic outcries, varied by angry vituperation of the few deputies who stood up to oppose it. But Thiers immediately arose and, in spite of many disorderly interruptions, made a passionate appeal to the assembly to reflect before precipitating the country into war. His speech, with the violent cries of dissent interjected by the war-party, is reproduced by M. Ollivier in order, as he says, that his readers may judge for themselves how far it merited the unstinted eulogy that has since been bestowed upon it; for M. Ollivier evidently considers that those who have credited Thiers with heroic patriotism in making this strenuous effort to avert the catastrophe have over-praised him. Yet with this view we believe that few of those who read the pages in this volume which contain the speech will agree. They will admire, rather, the courage and fervid eloquence of a veteran statesman who vainly strove to persuade a frantic assembly that it was fatally misled, that it was plunging the nation into war on a mere point of form, grasping at a shadow after the substantial and reasonable demand for satisfaction had been obtained by Leopold's renunciation; who reminded the deputies that the official papers authenticating the supposed insult had never been laid before them, and implored them not to risk the issues of a terrible contest upon a doubtful question of national susceptibility. M. Ollivier goes so far as to affirm that no one could be more justly accused of having brought on the war of 1870 than Thiers himself, because it was his vehement condemnation of the policy which allowed Prussia to beat down Austria in 1866, and to set up a formidable military power on the frontier of France, that inspired the whole French people with the suspicion, jealous animosities, and alarm which rendered a war on the Rhine between the two nations eventually unavoidable. But Thiers in his speech emphatically repeated his conviction that sooner or later France must fight Prussia to redress the balance of military power between the rival countries; and the whole point of his speech lay in one sentence: 'Je trouve l'occasion dÉtestablement choisie' ('Your casus belli is ill chosen and utterly indefensible'). It cannot be denied that in 1870 the public opinion of Europe was on his side: for England and Austria, whose goodwill toward France was unquestionable, were foremost in their efforts to deter the French ministers from war and in deploring their infatuation when it had been proclaimed. At St. Petersburg the Russian emperor told the French ambassador plainly that the demand for guarantees was unreasonable. Nor is it likely that the general judgment of the time—that Thiers did his best to save the empire from a disastrous blunder—will have been revoked by posterity, or affected by anything that has since been pleaded in extenuation.

'If (said Thiers) the Hohenzollern candidature had not been withdrawn, all France would have rallied to the support of your declaration, and all Europe would have held you to be in the right; but it has been withdrawn with the approbation of the Prussian king, and you had absolutely no pretext for making any further demand. What will Europe say when you shed torrents of blood on a point of form?' M. Thiers concluded his speech by urging the ministers to lay before the Chamber the actual documents which, as they asserted, rendered war inevitable.

M. Ollivier, in his reply, declined to communicate certain documents which, he said, were confidential and could not be produced without infringement of diplomatic rules; and he laid stress on the impossibility of tolerating the affront which had been intentionally put upon France by Bismarck's circular telegram. And it was at the end of this speech that he made use of the phrase which has become historical as the typical expression of the levity and rashness with which his ministry threw their nation into a tremendous war, insomuch that it has become one main cause why he is so commonly charged, very unfairly, with the whole responsibility for the blind haste that led to the defeat and dismemberment of his country. 'Oui, de ce jour commence pour les ministres mes collÈgues et pour moi, une grande responsabilitÉ. Nous l'acceptons le coeur lÉger.' The words were at once taken up sharply and severely; and M. Ollivier went on to explain that he meant a heart not weighted by remorse, since he and his colleagues had done everything that was consistent with humanity and with honour to avert a dire necessity; and since the armies of France would be upholding a cause that was just. He now comments bitterly on the malignity which has fastened this stigma on his name, merely because in the heat and flurry of debate, which left him not a moment to pick his words or arrange his sentences, he said something that he is sure no honest man who listened to his explanation could misconstrue into unfeeling frivolity. And in his criticism of the speech in which M. Thiers so vehemently condemned the conduct of the ministers he repeats emphatically that the war was not brought on by the demand for guarantees, but by Bismarck's false and insulting publication of the king's refusal to consider that demand. This affront, he maintains, was insufferable. Yet we learn from his narrative that before entering the Chamber on this eventful day M. Ollivier had found at the Foreign Office Benedetti, just arrived from Ems, who had already seen Bismarck's telegram in a newspaper, and could have assured the ministers that it was a perfidious misrepresentation, since the king had not treated him with actual discourtesy. Nevertheless M. Ollivier quotes and entirely adopts the 'proud and manly' utterances of the Duc de Gramont who stood up and addressed the assembly towards the close of the debate.

'After what you have just heard,' he said, 'one fact is enough. The Prussian Government has informed all the Cabinets of Europe of the refusal to receive our ambassador or to continue the discussion with him. That is an affront to the emperor and to France, and if (par impossible) a Chamber could be found in my country to bear or suffer it, I would not remain Minister of Foreign Affairs for five minutes.'

These haughty words (we are told) electrified the Chamber, and a committee to examine the papers on which the ministers relied to prove their case was immediately appointed. These were brought by Gramont, who, however, said that he would not lay before the committee the precise words of Bismarck's insulting telegram, because his knowledge of it came only from a very confidential communication made to him by the French representatives at certain foreign courts who had been permitted to see the original, so that the authentic text was not in his possession. This excuse was accepted, somewhat imprudently, by the committee; and their chairman proceeded to question Gramont closely on one point—whether, after Leopold's retirement had become known, the King of Prussia had been required at one and the same time to approve it formally and to promise that the candidature should never be revived. During the debate it had been objected by those who opposed the war-party that after obtaining the king's approval, and not till then, the Foreign Secretary demanded this promise, and that on this new demand the king took offence and briefly declined any further interview with Benedetti. Gramont answered the chairman with a direct affirmative; he stated that the two concessions had been required simultaneously, and M. Ollivier undertakes to prove that this statement was correct. He argues, if we understand him rightly, that before Leopold had withdrawn his candidature, the king had been pressed to advise or order him to do so, and that this requisition included by implication the demand for a guarantee against its renewal. When Leopold had retired without the king's intervention, the royal order became unnecessary; but the implied demand still remained in force, and was merely repeated in subsequent telegrams.[51] On this we must remark that both Benedetti and the Prussian king entirely missed the alleged implication; that the question of guarantees was never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And it is no matter for surprise that various French writers have since accused the Duc de Gramont of misstating the facts upon which the committee reported to the Chamber that the papers laid before them amply sustained the ministerial request for the grant of an urgent war-subsidy, which was thereupon voted by an immense majority. In the Senate, where the money was granted with even more promptitude and with zealous unanimity, the proceedings were expedited by a report from Marshal Le Boeuf that the enemy had already crossed the French frontier, and M. Rouher, a thorough Imperialist, headed a deputation of senators to congratulate the emperor, in the name of the Senate, on having drawn the sword when the Prussian king rejected the demand for guarantees. M. Ollivier reasonably complains that this unauthorised demonstration was awkward and mischievous; for while the Senate was thus made to attribute the rupture to the king's refusal, the ministry was declaring war on account of the 'soufflet de Bismarck'—the insult embodied in the Prussian telegram. Yet M. Ollivier, looking back in the calm evening of life on these stormy days, might have brought himself by reflection to admit that between these two pretexts there was little to choose—that neither of them justified a government in staking the fortunes of the nation and the empire on the hazard of a great war. When Rouher had read his address, the sovereigns conversed with the senators, and it was remarked that while the empress was lively and confident of success, the emperor spoke sadly of the long and difficult task, requiring a most violent effort, that lay before them.

Having brought his narrative up to the moment when the Chamber by voting the subsidy had practically determined upon war, M. Ollivier stops to comment upon and explain the strenuous opposition made to the vote by M. Thiers and by the small section of deputies who represented the Radical Left. He is convinced that this latter party were mainly actuated in their ardent protests by a desire to embarrass and, if possible, to overthrow his Government, of which they had been consistent adversaries. They had calculated, he explains, on the probability that the ministry would flinch from the rupture with Prussia, would adopt some pacific compromise that would be rejected with indignation by the Chamber, and would be contemptuously expelled from office. When this calculation had been foiled by the resolutely courageous attitude of the Cabinet, they foresaw (he believes) that a triumphant campaign would greatly strengthen the Government and would utterly discredit the Opposition, so they changed their tactics and fought against the ministerial proposals with accusations of criminal recklessness and prophecies of disaster. It is hardly possible, after so long an interval of time, to form any opinion upon these somewhat invidious suggestions. The action of those who opposed the war, whatever may have been their motives, was outwardly consistent enough, and the construction placed upon it by M. Ollivier may seem rather subtle and far-fetched. At the present day, however, this question does not particularly concern any one, though we may agree that at that moment no one in France contemplated the possibility of defeat in the field. The French army was assumed by all parties to be invincible, and the minority in opposition did undoubtedly believe and fear that the empire would be consolidated by victories. M. Thiers in his speech only touched generally upon the chances and perils of war, and even Gambetta voted with the Government upon the conviction that success was beyond doubt; while not only in Paris, but in all the great towns, the determination to fight was acclaimed because a triumphant campaign was supposed to be certain. It was to be anticipated, indeed, that a brave and high-spirited nation, very sensitive on the point of honour, and confident in its military superiority, would respond enthusiastically to the signal of war against a rival whose ill-will was notorious, who was accused of plotting the injury of their country and of deliberately insulting their Government.

A public declaration of hostilities was sent to Berlin, though M. Ollivier tells us that his ministry regarded it as a superfluous formality which they would have preferred leaving to Prussia.

This perfunctory method of composition is characteristic of the prevailing official atmosphere.

The document was delivered by the French chargÉ d'affaires to Bismarck, and in the dialogue that followed between the two diplomatists, which M. Ollivier relates in full, we have an excellent sample of the Prussian Chancellor's sardonic and incisive manner. Bismarck asserted that if he had been present at the interviews with Benedetti he might have prevented the war, whereas the king's conciliatory tone at Ems had misled the French ministers into the blunder of using threats and making intolerable demands, until at last they found themselves confronted by a strong Government, backed by the Prussian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting this conversation to the Foreign Office the chargÉ d'affaires said that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late, his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature, and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:

We may agree that the sympathy of the chargÉ d'affaires with Bismarck's ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M. Ollivier's otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the transactions that culminated in the war.

When Bismarck announced to the Prussian Reichstag that war had been declared, he was interrupted by an outburst of long and enthusiastic cheering. He said, briefly, that he had no papers to lay before them, because the single official document received from the French Government was the declaration of war; and the only motive for hostilities he understood to be his own circular tÉlÉgramme de journal addressed to Prussian envoys abroad and to other friendly Powers for the purpose of explaining what had occurred. This, he observed, was not at all an official document. He added that a demand for a letter of excuses had been made through Werther to the king; and the real origin of the war he alleged to be the hatred and jealousy with which the independence and prosperity of Germany were regarded in France. Upon this adroit but incomplete exposition of causes and circumstances M. Ollivier comments with intelligible severity, laying stress on the fact that afterwards Bismarck threw off his disguise, and openly took to himself the credit of having deliberately contrived to bring on the war at his own time. In fact, the later German historians have confirmed this statement by their critical examination of the records and other evidence; though instead of concluding that his conduct was immoral they unite, according to M. Ollivier, in applauding his political genius. Almost the whole story of the connected machinations by which France was led step by step into war have since been disclosed, and the only part which is still unrevealed relates to the original devices by which Bismarck and Marshal Prim concerted the preliminaries to the offer of the Spanish throne to Leopold.[52]

It is cheerfully admitted by the German historians who are cited in this volume that the train of incidents which produced so well-timed an explosion was scientifically laid by the Prussian chancellor. But they maintain that he was only countermining the underground combinations of the French, who were known to be organising a triple alliance with Italy and Austria for a combined assault upon Prussia; and that the journey of the Austrian Archduke Albert to Paris in March 1870 convinced Bismarck that he had no time to lose, because war must be provoked before these alliances were consummated. And they cite the example of Frederick the Great, who disconcerted the secret preparations of his enemies by the sudden dash upon Dresden which opened the Seven Years' War. This defence of his own very skilful and not less astute manoeuvres was endorsed by Bismarck in a speech before the Chamber in 1876; nor does it appear to us so untenable as M. Ollivier holds it to be. He argues that the fear of being attacked by France, if it had really influenced Bismarck's conduct in 1870, must have been a wild hallucination, for the chancellor must have been well aware that the emperor's policy at that time was decidedly pacific, and that his own (Ollivier's) views were still more so. He assures us that the project of a triple alliance was intended to be exclusively defensive, that it never passed beyond the 'academic' stage, or reached any practical form. The confidential negotiations of 1869 with Austria and Italy had been left, he says, in the stage of unfinished outline, nor was it even suspected either by the French or by the Italian ministry that they had been carried further. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in 1869 these negotiations had been carried quite far enough to inspire the Prussian chancellor with serious disquietude, if, as is very probable, he had good information of them. We know, from M. Ollivier's very interesting account of what passed at the first meeting of the Cabinet on July 6, when the ministers resolved to announce to the Chamber their determination to resent and resist the Hohenzollern candidature, that the emperor and M. de Gramont regarded the understanding with Italy and Austria as being much more than academic. It is there stated that when Ollivier hesitated to accept Gramont's assurance that the assistance of these two Powers, in the event of hostilities with Prussia, had been virtually secured, the Emperor Napoleon took from a drawer in his bureau certain letters written in 1869 by the Austrian emperor and the King of Italy, and, after reading them aloud, told the ministers that these writings undoubtedly amounted to promises of help in the circumstances that were then actually under discussion. The Cabinet accepted these proofs that the alliances might be reckoned upon as substantial, so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bismarck had drawn the same conclusion from the intimations that had reached him, and had set himself to provoke a war before the secret combinations against him should be ready for action. It must be borne in mind that from 1866 he had been deliberately preparing for it, being convinced, as he said later, that until France had been defeated in the field, his grand design of founding a German empire, with its capital at Berlin, could not be realised.

We may therefore be permitted to suggest that the discussion with which M. Ollivier closes this volume is to some extent superfluous, for it is incontestable that Bismarck had reasons for desiring the war, and that France was inveigled into declaring it. In the final section he returns to the question whether France or Prussia were responsible for the rupture; and after summing up the evidence he pronounces judgment against Prussia. It was Prussia that invented the Hohenzollern candidature, against which France was bound to protest forcibly; and even if it be admitted, he says, that the French Cabinet was wrong in taking mortal offence at the insolent official version of the king's refusal to receive the French ambassador, there can be no doubt that this public affront infuriated the French nation, and drove it to the extremity of war. That the explosion was instantaneous he regards as a proof that it had not been expected nor premeditated by France. All these things are, indeed, neither denied nor deniable, for Bismarck's own arrogant revelations leave no doubt that the war had been desired and premeditated by that astute and far-seeing politician; and though upon the methods by which the Hohenzollern candidature was originally started Bismarck is judiciously silent, we may be morally certain that the instigation came from Berlin. The maxim Fecit cui prodest affords fair ground for this inference, particularly when we remember the obvious improbability that the Spanish ministry would have gratuitously set up a candidature which must infallibly have brought their country into collision with its formidable neighbour.

How the French Government fell into a net that had been spread for them is to most of us sufficiently clear. Whether the emperor and his ministers ought to have detected and avoided it, is the real question, and it is practically the only question that concerns M. Ollivier. In the final pages of his book, which touch in dignified and pathetic words upon the injustice of the reproaches that have been heaped upon him and the rancorous calumnies by which he has been pursued, his readers are told that, having done his best to defend the cause of his nation, he will terminate his work without taking up his personal justification, though on one point he desires not to be misunderstood. It has been pleaded on his behalf, he says, that he was in fact opposed to the declaration of war, but agreed to it under the violent pressure of public opinion, or else from reluctance to betray internal dissensions that would have broken up the ministry, or for other reasons. M. Ollivier insists, on the contrary, that after Bismarck's 'soufflet' he was convinced that peace could be maintained only at the price of his country's abject humiliation; and that he chose the alternative of war as infinitely preferable, without the least regard to his personal reputation or interests. We may willingly agree that M. Ollivier acted throughout from motives of high-minded patriotism, and although we cannot acquit him on the charge of grave imprudence we may freely admit that he was entangled in a situation of extraordinary difficulty. To Englishmen, who are familiar with the regular and recognised working of constitutional government, it will be plain that he was the victim of a system that had placed him before the public as the nominal head of a Cabinet that he was supposed to have formed, and of a party in the Chamber that he was expected to lead. Whereas in fact he had no proper control over the policy of the Cabinet, and no solid support in the Chamber. The emperor presided at the meetings of the Cabinet; and it is clear that the ultimate decision in the supremely important departments of the army and of foreign affairs was still reserved to the sovereign, on whom the Foreign Secretary (as we should call him) could urge his views separately, and from whom he could take orders independently of the first minister. In this radically false position M. Ollivier found himself committed to measures on which he had not been consulted, and hurried into dangerous courses of action for which he had no recognised official responsibility, since they were sanctioned by the emperor's unquestionable authority. We have to remember, also, that in July 1870, liberal institutions had been no more than six months under trial after eighteen years of autocratic rule, that the advocates of the old rÉgime were numerous and openly hostile to the reforms, and that all the ministers of the new rÉgime lacked experience in the art and practice of constitutional administration. It is among those conditions and circumstances that we must find some explanation of their imprudence, and of their inability to make a stand against the emperor's weakness, the clamour of hot-headed deputies, and the war-cries of journalists; some excuse, in short, for the heedlessness with which a well-meaning ministry stepped into the snare that had been laid for them.

When, in 1871, the ex-emperor was told of M. Ollivier's earnest protest against the cruel injustice of holding him alone answerable for the national disasters, Napoleon is reported to have replied that this responsibility must be shared by the ministry, the Chamber, and himself.

'Si je n'avais pas voulu la guerre, j'aurais renvoyÉ mes ministres; si l'opposition Était venue d'eux, ils auraient donnÉ leur dÉmission; enfin, si la Chambre avait ÉtÉ contraire À l'entreprise, elle eÛt votÉ contre.'[53]