nce; 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