n Germany was
clearly the chief reason why the tenability of this pretext was not
examined either with honesty or judgment. The German national outburst
which followed the French declaration, and resembled a stream bursting
its sluices, was a surprise to French politicians. They lived,
calculated, and acted on recollections of the Confederation of the
Rhine, supported by the attitude of certain West German ministers;
also by Ultramontane influences, in the hope that the conquests of
France, "_gesta Dei per Francos_," would make it easier in Germany to
draw further consequences from the Vatican council, with the support
of an alliance with Catholic Austria. The Ultramontane tendencies of
French policy were favorable to it in Germany and disadvantageous in
Italy; the alliance with the latter being finally wrecked by the
refusal of France to evacuate Rome. In the belief that the French army
was superior the pretext for war was lugged out, as one may say, by
the hair; and, instead of making Spain responsible for its reputed
anti-French election of a king, they attacked the German Prince who
had not refused to relieve the need of the Spaniards, in the way they
themselves wished, by the appointment of a useful king, and one who
would presumably be regarded as _persona grata_ in Paris; and the King
of Prussia, whom nothing beyond his family name and his position as a
German fellow-countryman had brought into connection with this Spanish
affair. In the very fact that the French cabinet ventured to call
Prussian policy to account respecting the acceptance of the election,
and to do so in a form which, in the interpretation put upon it by the
French papers, became a public threat, lay a piece of international
impudence which, in my opinion, rendered it impossible for us to draw
back one single inch. The insulting character of the French demand was
enhanced, not only by the threatening challenges of the French press,
but also by the discussions in parliament and the attitude taken by the
ministry of Gramont and Ollivier upon these manifestations. The utterance
of Gramont in the session of the "Corps Legislatif" of July 6:

"We do not believe that respect for the rights of a neighboring
people binds us to suffer a foreign Power to set one of its Princes
on the throne of Charles V. * * * This event will not come to pass,
of that we are quite certain. * * * Should it prove otherwise we
shall know how to fulfil our duty without shrink