the head of a Prince of the house of
Hohenzollern. Napoleon remonstrated, and threatened war. The youthful
German prince generously renounced a candidature which it was not hard to
see would lead to a rupture between the two Powers, and cause a
destructive war. The King of Prussia, head of the Hohenzollerns,
sanctioned, if he did not command, this act of moderation on the part of
the prince, his relative. But moderation was of no avail. Napoleon,
surrounded by a Jacobinical ministry, insisted upon war. The very idea of
proposing a German for the throne of Spain appeared to him to be a
sufficient cause for issuing a declaration of hostilities. The gauntlet
thus thrown down, the Prussian monarch was too chivalrous to decline the
challenge. He relied on his great military strength, and could afford to
despise the comparatively inferior preparations of the French Empire. With
the vast resources of France at his command, the Emperor, one would
suppose, might have managed, in the course of three years, to increase and
discipline his army, garrison his fortresses and seek alliances. He might
have taken more time if necessary. He had no need to precipitate events,
as he so recklessly did, by declaring war when there was positively no
preparation made for it. We shall presently see whether he were not one of
those whom Providence deprives of reason when it has resolved on their
destruction. In the absence of more effective preparations, the small
garrison at Rome of five thousand men was withdrawn in order to augment
the army which all France believed was destined to crush the formidable
Teuton and capture Berlin. If, however, this had been Napoleon's only
object in recalling the troops, he could have accomplished it as easily by
ordering four thousand five hundred of the Roman garrison to join the
invading army, leaving the remaining five hundred to guard the city of the
Popes. This smaller number would surely have been as able as five thousand
to repel a Piedmontese force of sixty thousand men. But there was question
of more than mere physical power. So long as it was evident that France
protected the Papal city, whether by a greater or smaller number of
soldiers, the legions of Piedmont never would have marched against it.
Napoleon's minister, M. de Gramont, revealed the pretext: "It is certainly
not from strategetical necessity that we evacuate the Roman States, but
the political urgency is obvious. We must conciliate the good