f international politics. The Mexican adventure, and the tragedy of
Maximilian's death at Queretaro, had thrown a black shadow over the
iridescent and rotten fabric of Napoleon's power. Prussian victory over
Austria at Sadowa had startled Europe like a thunderclap. The reactionary
movement within the catholic fold, as disclosed in the Vatican council,
kindled many hopes among the French clericals, and these hopes inspired a
lively antagonism to protestant Prussia in the breast of the Spanish-born
Empress of the French. Prussia in 1866 had humiliated one great catholic
power when she defeated the Austrian monarchy on the battlefields of
Bohemia. Was she to overthrow also the power that kept the pope upon his
temporal throne in Rome? All this, however, was no more than the fringe,
though one of the hardest things in history is to be sure where substance
begins and fringe ends. The cardinal fact for France and for Europe was
German unity. Ever since the Danish conflict, as Bismarck afterwards told
the British government,(200) the French Emperor strove to bring Prussia to
join him in plans for their common aggrandisement. The unity of Germany
meant, besides all else, a vast extension of the area from which the
material of military strength was to be drawn; and this meant the relative
depression of the power of French arms. Here was the substantial fact,
feeding the flame of national pride with solid fuel. The German
confederation of the Congress of Vienna was a skilful invention of
Metternich's, so devised as to be inert for offence, but extremely
efficient against French aggression. A German confederation under the
powerful and energetic leadership of Prussia gave France a very different
neighbour.

In August 1867, the French ambassador at Berlin said to the ambassador of
Great Britain, "We can never passively permit the formation of a German
empire; the position of the Emperor of the French would become untenable."
The British ambassador in Paris was told by the foreign minister there,
that "there was no wish for aggrandisement in the Emperor's mind, but a
solicitude for the safety of France." This solicitude evaporated in what
Bismarck disdainfully called the policy of _pourboires_, the policy of
tips and pickings--scraps and slips of territory to be given to France
under the diplomatic name of compensation. For three years it had been no
secret that peace was at the mercy of any incident that might arise.

The small Pow