put pressure on the provisional government at Madrid to
withdraw their candidate, and on the government at Berlin "effectually to
discourage a project fraught with risks to the best interests of Spain."
The draft of this despatch was submitted by Lord Granville to Mr.
Gladstone, who suggested a long addition afterwards incorporated in the
text. The points of his addition were an appeal to the magnanimity of the
King of Prussia; an injunction to say nothing to give ground for the
supposition that England had any business to discuss the abstract right of
Spain to choose her own sovereign; that the British government had not
admitted Prince Leopold's acceptance of the throne to justify the
immediate resort to arms threatened by France; but that the secrecy with
which the affair had been conducted was a ground for just offence, and the
withdrawal of the prince could alone repair it.(205) Austria made
energetic representations at Berlin to the same effect. In sending this
addition to Lord Granville, Mr. Gladstone says (July 8), "I am doubtful
whether this despatch should go till it has been seen by the cabinet,
indeed I think it should not, and probably you mean this. The Queen
recollects being told something about this affair by Clarendon--without
result--last year. I think Gramont exacts too much. It would never do for
us to get up a combination of Powers in this difficult and slippery
matter."

Events for a week--one of the great critical weeks of the century--moved at
a dizzy speed towards the abyss. Peace unfortunately hung upon the
prudence of a band of statesmen in Paris, who have ever since, both in
their own country and everywhere else, been a byword in history for
blindness and folly. The game was delicate. Even in the low and broken
estate into which the moral areopagus of Europe had fallen in these days,
it was a disadvantage to figure as the aggressor. This disadvantage the
French Empire heedlessly imposed upon itself. Of the diplomacy on the side
of the government of France anterior to the war, Mr. Gladstone said that
it made up "a chapter which for fault and folly taken together is almost
without a parallel in the history of nations."(206)

On July 6 the French Ministers made a precipitate declaration to their
Chambers, which was in fact an ultimatum to Prussia. The action of Spain
was turned into Prussian action. Prussia was called to account in a form
that became a public and international threat, as Bismar