try.

The intervention of France at its beginning concerned Spanish and not
Prussian affairs; the garbling of the matter in the Napoleonic policy,
by virtue of which the question was to become a Prussian one, was
internationally unjustifiable and exasperating, and proved to me that
the moment had arrived when France sought a quarrel against us and was
ready to seize any pretext that seemed available. I regarded the
French intervention in the first instance as an injury, and
consequently as an insult to Spain, and expected that the Spanish
sense of honor would resist this encroachment. Later on, when the turn
of affairs showed that, by her encroachment on Spanish independence,
France intended to threaten us with war, I waited for some days
expecting that the Spanish declaration of war against France would
follow that of the French against us. I was not prepared to see a
self-assertive nation like Spain stand quiet behind the Pyrenees with
ordered arms, while the Germans were engaged in a deadly struggle
against France on behalf of Spain's independence and freedom to choose
her king. The Spanish sense of honor which proved so sensitive in the
Carlist question simply left us in the lurch in 1870. Probably in both
cases the sympathies and international ties of the Republican parties
were decisive.

The first demands of France respecting the candidature for the Spanish
throne, and they were unjustifiable, had been presented on July 4, and
answered by our Foreign Office evasively, though in accordance with
truth, that the _ministry_ knew nothing about the matter. This was
correct so far, that the question of Prince Leopold's acceptance of
his election had been treated by his Majesty simply as a family
matter, which in no way concerned either Prussia or the North German
Confederation, and which affected solely the personal relations
between the Commander-in-Chief and a German officer, and those between
the head of the family and, not the royal family of Prussia,
but the entire family of Hohenzollern, or all the bearers of that
name.

In France, however, a _casus belli_ was being sought against Prussia
which should be as free as possible from German national coloring; and
it was thought one had been discovered in the dynastic sphere by the
accession to the Spanish throne of a candidate bearing the name of
Hohenzollern. In this the overrating of the military superiority of
France and the underrating of the national feeling i